All Tomorrow's Parties bt-3 Page 10

  The guard tried to snatch them back. Which was definitely a mistake, as the attempt occupied both his hands.

  'Suck my dick! Creedmore shrieked, striking with far more speed and force than Rydell would've credited him with, and sank his fist wrist-deep into the guard's stomach, just below the sternum. Taken by surprise, the guard doubled forward. Rydell, as Creedmore was winding back to slug the man in the face, managed to tangle Creedmore's wrist in the straps of the fanny pack, almost dropping the bulky parcel in the process.

  'Come on, Buell, Rydell said, spinning Creedmore back out the door. Rydell knew someone would've hit a foot button by now.

  'Motherfucker says I'm drunk, Creedmore protested.

  'Well, you are, Buell, said the heavy man, ponderously, behind them.

  Creedmore giggled.

  'Let's get out of here, Rydell said, starting for the bridge. As he walked, he was trying to stuff the fanny pack back into his duffel and trying not to lose his precarious underarm grip on the GlobEx package. A twisting gust of wind blew grit into his eyes, and, blinking down to clear them, he noticed for the first time that the waybill was addressed not to him but to 'Cohn Laney.

  Cohn space Laney. So why had they let Rydell pick it up?

  Then they were in the thick of the crowd, headed up the ramp of the lower level.

  'What is this shit? Creedmore asked, peering up.

  'San Francisco-Oakland Bay, Rydell said.

  'Shit, Creedmore said, squinting at the crowd, 'smells like a fuckin' baitbox. Bet you, you could get you some weird-ass pussy, out here.

  'I need a drink, the heavy man with the delicate mouth said softly.

  'I think I do too, said Rydell.

  22. VEXED

  FONTAINE has two wives. Not, he will tell you, a condition to aspire to.

  They live, these two wives, in uneasy truce, in a single establishment, nearer the Oakland side. Fontaine has for some time now been opting to sleep here, in his shop.

  The younger wife (at forty-eight, by some five years) is a Jamaican originally from Brixton, tall and light-skinned, whom Fontaine has come to regard as punishment for all his former sins.

  Her name is Clarisse. Incensed, she reverts to the dialect of her childhood: 'You tek de prize, Fonten.

  Fontaine has been taking the prize for some years now, and he is taking it again today, Clarisse standing angrily before him with a shopping bag full of what appear to be catatonic Japanese babies.

  These are in fact life-sized dolls, manufactured in the closing years of the previous century for the solace of distant grandparents, each one made to resemble photographs of an actual infant. Produced by a firm in Meguro called Another One, they are increasingly collectible, each example being to some degree unique.

  'I don't want them, Fontaine allows.

  'Listen up, Clarisse tells him, folding her dialect smoothly away, 'there is no way you are not taking these. You are taking them, you are moving them, you are getting top dollar, and you are giving it to me. Because there is no way, otherwise, that I am staying where you left me, cheek by jowl with that mad bitch you married'

  Who I was married to when you married me, thinks Fontaine, and no secret about it. The reference being to Tourmaline Fontaine, aka Wife One, whom Fontaine thinks of as being only adequately described by the epithet 'mad bitch.

  Tourmaline is an utter terror; only her vast girth and abiding torpor prevent her coming here.

  'Clarisse, he protests, 'if they were 'mint in box …

  'These never mint in box, idiot! They always played with!

  'Then you know the market better than I do, Clarisse. You sell 'em.

  'You want to talk child support?

  Fontaine looks down at the Japanese dolls. 'Man, those things ugly. Look dead, you know?

  'Cause you gotta turn 'em on, fool. Clarisse sets the bag on the floor and snatches up a naked baby boy. She stabs a long emerald-green fingernail into the back of the doll's neck. She is attempting to demonstrate the thing's other, uniquely individual feature, digitally recorded infant sounds, or possibly even first words, but what they hear instead is heavy, labored breathing, followed by a childish giggle and a ragged chorus of equally childish fuck-you's. Clarisse frowns. 'Somebody been messing with it.

  Fontaine sighs. 'I'll do what I can. You leave 'em here. I'm not promising anything.

  'You better believe I leave 'em here, Clarisse says, tossing the baby headfirst into the bag.

  Fontaine glances into the rear of the shop, where the boy is seated cross-legged on the floor, barefoot, his head close-cropped, the notebook open on his lap, lost in concentration.

  'Who the hell's that? Clarisse inquires, noticing the boy for the first time as she steps closer to the counter.

  Which somewhat stumps Fontaine. He tugs at one of his locks. 'He likes watches, he says.

  'Huh, Clarisse says, 'he likes watches. How come you don't have your own kids over here? Her eyes narrow, deepening the wrinkles at their outer corners, which Fontaine desires suddenly to kiss. 'How come you got some 'spanic-fatboy-likes-watches instead?

  'Clarisse-

  'Clarisse my butt. Her green eyes widen in furious emphasis, a green pale as drift glass, DNA-echo of some British soldier, Fontaine has often surmised, on some chosen Kingston night, these several generations distant. 'You move these dolls or you be vexed, understand?

  She spins smartly on her heel, not easily done in the black galoshes she wears, and marches from his shop, proud and erect, in a man's long tweed overcoat Fontaine recalls purchasing fifteen years earlier in Chicago.

  Fontaine sighs. Something weighs heavy on him now, evening coming on. 'Legal, here, be married to two women, Fontaine says to the empty, coffee-scented air 'Fucking crazy, but legal. He shuffles over in his unlaced shoes and closes the front door, locks it behind her. 'You still think I'm a bigamist or something, baby, but this is the State of Northern California.

  He goes back and has another look at the boy, who seems to have discovered the Christie's auction.

  The boy looks up at him. 'Platinum tonneau minute repeating wristwatch, he says. 'Patek Philippe, Geneve, number 187145.

  'I don't think so, Fontaine says. 'Kind of out of our bracket.

  'A gold hunter-cased quarter repeating watch-

  'Forget it.

  '-with concealed erotic automaton.

  'Can't afford that either, Fontaine says. 'Look, he says, 'tell you what: that notebook's the slow way to look. I'll show you a fast way.

  'Fast. Way.

  Fontaine goes rummaging through the drawers of a paint-scabbed steel filing cabinet, until eventually he comes up with an old pair of military eyephones. The rubbery lip around the binocular video display is cracked and peeling. It takes another few minutes to find the correct battery pack and to determine that it is charged. The boy ignores him, lost in the Christie's catalog. Fontaine plugs the battery pack into the eyephones and returns. 'Here. See? You put this on your head.

  23. RUSSIAN HILL

  THE apartment is large and has nothing in it that is not of practical use. Consequently, the dark hardwood floors are bare and quite meticulously swept.

  Seated in an expensive, semi-intelligent Swedish workstation chair, he is sharpening the knife.

  This is a task (he thinks of it as a function) requiring emptiness.

  He sits facing a nineteenth-century reproduction of a seventeenth-century refectory table. Six inches in from its nearest edge, two triangular sockets have been laser-cut into the walnut at precise angles. Into these, he has inserted a pair of nine-inch-long rods of graphite-gray ceramic, triangular in cross section, forming an acute angle. These ones fit the deep, laser-cut recesses perfectly, allowing for no movement whatever.

  The knife lies before him on the table, its blade between the ceramic rods.

  When it is time, he takes it in his left hand and places the base of the blade against the left hone. He draws it down, a single, smooth, sure stroke, pulling it toward
him as he does. He is listening for any indication of imperfection, although this would only be likely if he had struck bone, and it has been many years since the knife struck bone.

  Nothing.

  He exhales, inhales, places the blade against the right hone.

  The telephone rings.

  He exhales. Places the knife on the table again, its blade between the hones. 'Yes?

  The voice, emerging from several concealed speakers, is a voice he knows well, although it has been nearly a decade since he has shared physical space with the speaker. He knows that the words he hears come in from a tiny, grotesquely expensive piece of dedicated real estate somewhere in the planet's swarm of satellites. It is a direct transmission, and nothing to do with the amorphous cloud of ordinary human communication. 'I saw what you did on the bridge last night, the voice says.

  The man says nothing. He is wearing a shirt cut from very fine gray cotton flannel, its collar buttoned but tieless, French cuffs secured with plain round links of sandblasted platinum. He places his hands on his thighs and waits.

  'They think you're mad, says the voice.

  'Who do you employ to tell you these things?

  'Children, the voice says. 'Hard and bright. The best I can find.

  'Why do you bother?

  'I like to know.

  'You like to know, the man says, adjusting the crease along the top of his left trouser leg, 'but why?

  'Because you interest me.

  'Do you fear me? the man asks. 'No, the voice says, 'I don't believe I do. The man is silent.

  'Why did you kill them? the voice asks.

  'They died, the man says. 'But why were you there?

  'I wished to see the bridge.

  'They think you went there knowing you'd attract someone, someone who'd attack you. Someone to kill.

  'No, says the man, a note of disappointment in his voice, 'they died.

  'But you were the agent.

  The man shrugs. His lips purse. Then: 'Things happen.

  ' 'Shit happens, we used to say. Is that it?

  'I am unfamiliar with that expression, the man says.

  'It's been a long time since I've asked for your help.

  'That is the result of maturation, I would think, the man says. 'You are less inclined now to move counter to the momentum of things.

  Now the voice falls silent. The silence lengthens. 'You taught me that, it says finally.

  When he is positive that the conversation has ended, the man picks up the knife and places the base of its blade against the top of the right hone.

  He draws it, smoothly, down and back.

  24. TWO LIGHTS ON BEHIND

  THEY found a dark place that felt as though it hung out beyond where the bridge's handrails would've been. Not a very deep space, but long, the bar along the bridge side and the opposite all mismatched windows, looking south, past the piers, to China Basin. The panes were filthy, patched into their mullions with yellowing translucent gobs of silicone.

  Creedmore in the meantime had become startlingly lucid, really positively cordial, introducing his companion, the fleshy man, as Randall James Branch Cabell Shoats, from Mobile, Alabama. Shoats was a session guitarist, Creedmore said, in Nashville and elsewhere.

  'Pleased to meet you, said Rydell. Shoats' grip was cool and dry arid very soft but studded with concise, rock-hard calluses, so that his hand felt to Rydell like a kid glove set with rough garnets.

  'Any friend of Buell's, Shoats said, with no apparent irony.

  Rydell looked at Creedmore and wondered what trough or plateau of brain chemistry the man was currently traversing and how long it would be until he decided to alter it.

  'I have to thank you for what you did back there, Buell, Rydell said, because it was true. It was also true that Rydell wasn't sure you could say Creedmore had done it so much as been it, but the way things had worked out, it looked as though Creedmore and Shoats had happened along at exactly the right time, although Rydell's own Lucky Dragon experience suggested to him that it was far from over.

  'Sons of bitches, Creedmore said, as if commenting generally on the texture of things.

  Rydell ordered a round of beer. 'Listen, Buell, Rydell said, 'it's possible they'll come looking for us, 'cause of what happened.

  'Why the fuck? We're here, them sons of bitches back there.

  'Well, Buell, Rydell said, pretending to himself he was having to explain this to a stubborn and willfully obtuse six-year-old, 'I'd just picked up this package here, before we had us our little argument, and then you poked the security man in the gut. He won't be too happy about it, and chances are he'll recall that I was carrying this package. Big GlobEx logo here see? So he can look in the GlobEx records and get video of me, voiceprint, whatever, and give it to the police.

  'The police? Sunbitch wants to make trouble we give it to 'im, right?

  'No, said Rydell, 'that won't help.

  'Well, then, said Creedmore, resting his hand on Rydell's shoulder, 'we'll come see you till you're out.

  'Well, no, Buell, Rydell said, shrugging off the hand. 'I don't think he'll bother much about the police. More he'll want to find out who we work for and if he could sue us and win.

  'Sue you?

  'Us.

  'Huh, said Creedmore, absorbing this. 'You in an ugly place.

  'Maybe not, said Rydell. 'Matter of witnesses.

  'I hear you, said Randy Shoats, 'but I'd have to talk to my label, see what the lawyers say.

  'Your label, said Rydell.

  'That's right.

  Their beer arrived, brown long necks. Rydell took a sip of his. 'Is Creedmore on your label?

  'No, said Randy Shoats.

  Creedmore looked from Shoats to Rydell, back to Shoats. 'All I did was poke him one, Randy. I didn't know it had anything to do with our deal.

  'It doesn't, said Shoats, 'long as you're able to go into the studio and record.

  'Goddamn, Rydell, said Creedmore, 'I don't need you comin' in here and fucking things up this way.

  Rydell, who was fumbling under the table with his duffel, getting the fanny pack out and opening it, looked at Creedmore but didn't say anything. He felt the Kraton grips of the ceramic switchblade. 'You boys excuse me, Rydell said, 'I've gotta find the can. He stood up, with the GlobEx box under his arm and the knife in his pocket and went to ask the waitress where the Men's was.

  For the second time that day, he found himself seated in but not using a toilet stall, this one considerably more odorous than the last. The plumbing out here was as makeshift as any he'd seen, with bundles of scummy-looking transparent tubing snaking everywhere, and NoCal NOT POTABLE stickers peeling off above the sink taps.

  He took the knife out of his pocket and pressed the button, watching the black blade swing out and lock. Then he pressed it again, unlocking the blade, closed it, and opened it again. What was it about switchblades, he wondered, that made you do that? He figured that that was a big part of what made people want them in the first place, something psychological but dumb, monkey-brained. Actually they were kind of pointless, he thought, except in terms of simple convenience. Kids liked them because they looked dramatic, but if somebody saw you open one, then they knew you had a knife, and they'd either run or kick your ass or shoot you, depending on how they felt about it and how they happened to be armed. He supposed there could be very specific situations in which you could just click one open and stick somebody with it, but he didn't think they'd be too frequent.

  He had the GlobEx box across his lap. Gingerly, remembering how he'd cut himself back in LA, he used the tip of the blade to slit the gray tape. It went through the stuff like a wire through butter. When he got it to the point where he thought he'd be able to open it, he cautiously folded the knife and put it away. Then he lifted the lid.

  At first he thought he was looking at a thermos bottle, one of those expensive brushed-stainless numbers, but as he lifted it out, the heft of it and the general fineness of manufacture tol
d him it was something else.

  He turned the thing over, finding an inset rectangular section with a cluster of micro-sockets, but nothing else except a slightly scuffed blue sticker that said FAMOUS ASPECT. He shook it. It neither sloshed nor rattled. Felt solid, and there was no visible lid or other way to open it. He wondered about something like that going through customs, how the GlobEx brokers could explain what it was, whatever that was, and not something full of some kind of contraband. He could think of a dozen kinds of contraband you could stick in something this size and do pretty well if you got it here from Tokyo.

  Maybe it did contain drugs, he thought, or something else, and he was being set up. Maybe they'd kick the stall's door in any second and handcuff him for trafficking in proscribed fetal tissue or something

  He sat there. Nothing happened.

  He lay the thing across his lap and searched through the fitted foam packing for any message, any clue, something that might explain what this was. But there was nothing, so he put the thing back in its box, exited the stall, washed his hands in non-potable bridge water, and left, intending to leave the bar, and Creedmore and Shoats in it, when he'd picked up his bag, which he'd left them minding.

  Now he saw that the woman, that Maryalice, the one from breakfast, had joined them, and that Shoats had found a guitar somewhere, a scuffed old thing with what looked like masking tape patching a long crack down the front. Shoats had pushed his chair back from the table to allow himself room for the guitar, between the table edge and his belly, and was tuning it. He wore that hearing-secret-harmonies expression people wore when they tuned guitars.

  Creedmore was hunched forward, watching, his wet-look streaked-blonde hair gleaming in the bar gloom, and Rydell saw a look there, an exposed hunger, that made him feel funny, like he was seeing Creedmore want something through the wall of shit he kept up around himself. It made Creedmore seem suddenly very human, and that somehow made him even less attractive.

  Now Shoats, absently, produced what looked like the top of an old-fashioned tube of lipstick from his shirt pocket and began to play, using the gold metal tube as a slide. The sounds he coaxed from the guitar caught Rydell in the pit of his stomach, as surely as Creedmore had sucker-punched that security man: they sounded the way rosin feels on your fingers in a poolroom and made Rydell think of tricks with glass rods and the skins of cats. Somewhere inside the fat looping slack of that sound, something gorgeously, nastily tight was being figured out.