Virtual Light Page 20

  ‘No shit,’ Rydell said. ‘You ever see these guys?’

  ‘You don’t see them,’ she said, ‘not like live. You talk to them, on the phone. Or like with goggles, and that’s the wildest.’

  ‘Why?’

  ‘’Cause they look like lobsters and shit. Or some tv star. Anything. But I don’t know why I’m telling you.’

  ‘Because I’ll nod out otherwise, then how’re we gonna decide if we’re getting the creature-feet or the crotch-carnations?’

  ‘It’s your turn,’ she said, and just sat there until he started talking.

  He told her how he was from Knoxville and about getting into the Academy, about how he’d always watched Cops in Trouble and then when he’d been a cop and gotten in trouble, it had looked like he was going to be on the show. How they’d brought him out to Los Angeles because they didn’t want Adult Survivors of Satanism stealing their momentum, but then the Pookey Bear murders had come along and they’d sort of lost interest, and he’d had to get on with IntenSecure and drive Gunhead. He told her about Sublett and living with Kevin Tarkovsky in the house in Mar Vista, and sort of skipped over the Republic of Desire and the night he’d driven Gunhead into the Schonbrunns’ place in Benedict Canyon. About how Hernandez had come over, just the other morning but it seemed like years, to tell him he could come up here and drive for this Mr. Warbaby. Then she wanted to know what it was that skip tracers did, so he explained what it was they were supposed to do, and what it was he figured they probably did do, and she said they sounded like bad news.

  When he was done, she just looked at him. ‘That’s it? That’s how you got here and what you’re doing?’

  ‘Yeah,’ he said, ‘guess it is.’

  ‘Jesus,’ she said. Sort of shook her head. They both watched a couple of full body-suits blip past, one of them all circuit-patterns, like they stenciled on old-fashioned circuit-boards. ‘You got eyes,’ she said, and yawned in the middle of it, ‘like two piss-holes in a snowbank.’

  There was a knock at the door. It opened a crack, and somebody, not the man who jingled when he walked, said: ‘You having any luck picking a design? Henry’s gone home…’

  ‘Well it’s just so hard to decide,’ Chevette Washington said, ‘there’s so many of them and we want to get just the right one.’

  ‘That’s fine,’ said the voice, bored. ‘You just go right on looking.’ The door closed.

  ‘Let me see those glasses,’ Rydell said.

  She reached over and got her jacket. Got out the case with the glasses, the phone. Handed him the glasses. The case was made out of some dark stuff, thin as eggshell, rigid as steel. He opened it. The glasses looked exactly like Warbaby’s. Big black frames, the lenses black now. They had a funny heft to them, weighed more than you thought they would.

  Chevette Washington had flipped open the phone’s keypad.

  ‘Hey,’ Rydell said, touching her hand, ‘they’ll have your number for sure. You dial out on that, or even take a call, they’ll be in here in about ten minutes.’

  ‘Won’t have this number,’ she said. ‘It’s one of Codes’s phones. I took it off the table when the lights went out.’

  ‘Thought you said you didn’t just steal things.’

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘if Codes had it, it’s stolen already. Codes trades ’em off people in the city, then Lowell gets somebody to tumble ’em, change the numbers.’ She tapped the pad, held the little phone to her ear. ‘Dead,’ she said, shrugging.

  ‘Here,’ Rydell said, putting the glasses down on his lap and taking the phone. ‘Maybe it got wet, or the battery’s knocked loose. What’s old Codes trade for these, anyway?’ He ran his thumbnail around the back of the phone, looking for the place where you could pry it open.

  ‘Well,’ she said, ‘stuff.’

  He popped the case. Saw a tightly rolled mini-Ziploc wedged in there beside the battery. It had pushed the contacts out of alignment. He took it out and unrolled it. ‘Stuff?’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  ‘This type of stuff.’

  ‘Uh-huh.’

  He looked at her. ‘If this is 4-Thiobuscaline, it’s a controlled substance.’

  She looked at the bag of grayish powder, then at him. ‘But you aren’t a cop anymore.’

  ‘You don’t do this stuff, do you?’

  ‘No. Well, once or twice. Lowell did, sometimes.’

  ‘Well, just don’t do any around me, because I’ve seen what it does. Nice normal people do a couple of hits of this, they go snake-shit crazy.’ He tapped the bag. ‘Enough in this to get half a dozen people fucked up like you wouldn’t believe.’ He handed it to her and picked up the phone, trying to get the battery back where it belonged.

  ‘I’d believe it,’ she said. ‘I saw what it did to Lowell…’

  ‘Dial tone,’ he said. ‘Who you want to call?’

  Thought about it, then she took the phone and flipped it shut. ‘Guess there isn’t anybody.’

  ‘That old man have a phone?’

  ‘No,’ she said, and her shoulders hunched. ‘I’m scared they killed him, too. ’Cause of me…’

  Rydell couldn’t think of anything to say to that. He was too tired to flick the remote. Some guy’s arm with a furled Confederate flag on it. Just like home. He looked at her. She sure didn’t look anywhere near as tired as he was. That could just be being young, he thought. He sure hoped she wasn’t on any ice or dancer or anything. Maybe she was in some kind of shock, still. Said this Sammy had been killed, two others she was worried about. Evidently she’d known the guy plowed in Svobodov on that bicycle, but she didn’t know yet that he’d been shot. Funny what you miss seeing in a fight. Well, he didn’t see any reason to tell her, not right now.

  ‘I’ll try Fontaine,’ she said, opening the phone again.

  ‘Who?’

  ‘He does Skinner’s electricity and stuff.’ She dialled a number, put the phone to her ear.

  His eyes closed and his head hit the back of the couch so hard it almost woke him up.

  27 After the storm

  ‘Smells like piss,’ Skinner said, accusingly, waking Yamazaki from a dream in which he stood beside J. D. Shapely on a great dark plane, before a black and endless wall inscribed with the names of the dead.

  Yamazaki raised his head from the table. The room in darkness. Light through the church window.

  ‘What are you doing here, Scooter?’

  Yamazaki’s buttocks and lower back ached. ‘The storm,’ he said, still half in his dream.

  ‘What storm? Where’s the girl?’

  ‘Gone,’ Yamazaki said. ‘Don’t you remember? Loveless?’

  ‘What are you talking about?’ Skinner struggled up on one elbow, kicking off the blankets and the sleeping-bag back, his gray-stubbled face twisted with disgust. ‘Need a bath. Dry clothes.’

  ‘Loveless. He found me in a bar. He made me bring him here. I think he must have followed me, earlier, when I left you—’

  ‘Sure. Shut up, Scooter, okay?’

  Yamazaki closed his mouth.

  ‘Now we need a bunch of water. Hot. First for coffee, then some so I can wash off. You know how to work a Coleman stove?’

  ‘A what?’

  ‘Green thing over there, red tank on the front. You go jiggle that tank off, I’ll tell you how to pump it up.’

  Yamazaki stood up, wincing at the pain in his back, and stumbled toward the green-painted metal box Skinner was pointing at.

  ‘Gone off fucking that no-ass greaseball boyfriend of hers again. Useless, Scooter…’

  He stood on Skinner’s roof, pantlegs flapping in a breeze that gave no hint of last night’s storm, looking out at the city washed in a strange iron light, shreds of his dream still circling dimly… Shapely had spoken to him, his voice the voice of the young Elvis Presley. He said that he had forgiven his killers.

  Yamazaki stared at Transamerica’s upright thorn, bandaged with the brace they’d applied after the Little Grande, half-hea
ring the dreamed voice. They just didn’t know any better, Scooter.

  Skinner cursing, below, as he sponged himself with water Yamazaki had warmed on the Coleman stove.

  Yamazaki thought of his thesis advisor in Osaka.

  ‘I don’t care,’ Yamasaki said, in English, San Francisco his witness.

  The whole city was a Thomasson. Perhaps America itself was a Thomasson.

  How could they understand this in Osaka, in Tokyo?

  ‘Yo! On the roof!’ someone called.

  Yamazaki turned, saw a thin black man atop the tangle of girders that braced the upper end of Skinner’s lift. He wore a thick tweed overcoat and a crocheted cap.

  ‘You okay up there? How ’bout Skinner?’

  Yamazaki hesitated, remembering Loveless. If Skinner or the girl had enemies, how could he recognize them?

  ‘Name’s Fontaine,’ the man said. ‘Chevette called me, told me to get over here and see if Skinner got through the blow all right. I take care of the wiring up here, make sure his lift’s running and all.’

  ‘He’s bathing now,’ Yamazaki said. ‘In the storm, he became… confused. He doesn’t seem to remember.’

  ‘Have some power for you in about another half an hour,’ the man said. ‘Wish I could say the same for over my end. Lost four transformers. Got us five dead bodies, twenty injured that I know of. Skinner got coffee on?’

  ‘Yes,’ Yamazaki said.

  ‘Do with a cup about now.’

  ‘Yes, please,’ Yamazaki said, and bowed. The black man smiled. Yamazaki scrambled down through the hatch. ‘Skinner-san! A man named Fontaine, he is your friend?’

  Skinner was struggling into yellowed thermal underwear. ‘Useless bastard. Still don’t have any power…’

  Yamazaki unlatched the hatch in the floor and hauled it open. Fontaine eventually appeared at the bottom of the ladder, a battered canvas tool-bag in either hand. Putting one down and slinging the other over his shoulder, he began to climb.

  Yamazaki poured the remaining coffee into the cleanest cup.

  ‘Fuel-cell’s buggered,’ Skinner said, as Fontaine pushed his bag ahead of him, through the opening. Skinner was layered now in at least three threadbare flannel shirts, their tails pushed unevenly into the waistband of an ancient pair of woolen Army trousers.

  ‘We’re working on it, boss,’ Fontaine said, standing up and smoothing his overcoat. ‘Had us a big old storm here.’

  ‘What Scooter says,’ Skinner said.

  ‘Well, he’s not shittin’ you, Skinner. Thanks.’ Fontaine accepted the steaming cup of black coffee and blew on it. He looked at Yamazaki. ‘Chevette said she might not get back here for a while. Know anything about that?’

  Yamazaki looked at Skinner.

  ‘Useless,’ Skinner said. ‘Gone off with that shithead again.’

  ‘Didn’t say anything about that,’ Fontaine said. ‘Didn’t say much at all. But if she’s not going to be around, you’re going to need somebody take care of things for you.’

  ‘Take care of myself,’ Skinner said.

  ‘I know that, boss,’ Fontaine assured, ‘but we got a couple of fried servos in your lift down there. Take a few days get that going for you, the kind of backlog we’re looking at. Need you somebody go up and down the rungs. Bring you food and all.’

  ‘Scooter can do it,’ Skinner said.

  Yamazaki blinked.

  ‘That right?’ Fontaine raised his eyebrows at Yamazaki. ‘You stay up here and take care of Mr. Skinner?’

  Yamazaki thought of his borrowed flat in the tall Victorian house, its black marble bathroom larger than his bachelor apartment in Osaka. He looked from Fontaine to Skinner, then back. ‘I would be honored, to stay with Skinner-san, if he wishes.’

  ‘Do what you like,’ Skinner said, and began laboriously stripping the sheets from his mattress.

  ‘Chevette told me you might be up here,’ Fontaine said. ‘Some kind of university guy…’ He put his cup down on the table, bent to swing his tool-bag up beside it. ‘Said maybe you people worried about uninvited guests.’ He undid the bag’s two buckles and opened it. Tools gleamed there, rolls of insulated wire. He took out something wrapped in an oily rag, looked to see that Skinner wasn’t observing him, and tucked the thing behind the glass jars on the shelf above the table.

  ‘We can pretty much make sure nobody you don’t know will get up here for the next couple days,’ he said to Yamazaki, lowering his voice. ‘But that’s a .38 Special, six rounds of hollow-point. You use it, do me a big favor and toss it off the side, okay? It’s of, uh,’ Fontaine grinned, ‘ “dubious provenance.” ’

  Yamazaki thought of Loveless. Swallowed.

  ‘You gonna be okay up here?’ Fontaine asked.

  ‘Yes,’ Yamazaki said, ‘yes, thank you.’

  28 Rv

  It was ten-thirty before they finally had to hit the street, and then only because Laurie, who Chevette knew from that first day she’d ever come in here, said that the manager, Benny Singh, was going to be showing up and they couldn’t stay in there anymore, particularly not with her friend asleep like that, like he was passed out or something. Chevette said she understood, and thanked her.

  ‘You see Sammy Sal,’ Laurie said, ‘you say hi for me.’

  Chevette nodded, sad, and started shaking the guy’s shoulder. He grunted and tried to brush her hand away. ‘Wake up. We gotta go.’

  She couldn’t believe she’d told him all that stuff, but she’d just had to tell somebody or she’d go crazy. Not that telling it had made it make any more sense than it did before, and with this Rydell’s side of it added on, it sort of made even less. The news that somebody had gone and murdered the asshole just didn’t seem real, but if it was, she supposed, she was in deeper shit than ever.

  ‘Wake up!’

  ‘Jesus…’ He sat up, knuckling his eyes.

  ‘We gotta go. Manager’ll be in soon. My friend let you sleep a while.’

  ‘Go where?’

  Chevette had been thinking about that. ‘Cole, over by the Panhandle, there’s places rent rooms by the hour.’

  ‘Hotels?’

  ‘Not exactly,’ she said. ‘For people just need the bed for a little while.’

  He dug behind the couch for his jacket. ‘Look at that,’ he said, sticking his fingers into the rip in the shoulder. ‘Brand new last night.’

  Neighborhoods that mainly operated at night had a way of looking a lot worse in the morning. Even the beggars looked worse off this time of day, like that guy there with those sores, the one trying to sell half a can of spaghetti sauce. She stepped around him. Another block or two and they’d start to hit the early crowd of day-trippers headed for Skywalker Park; more cover in the crowd but more cops, too. She tried to remember if Skywalker’s rentacops were IntenSecure, that company Rydell talked about.

  She wondered if Fontaine had gone to Skinner’s like he’d said he would. She hadn’t wanted to say too much over the phone, so at first she’d just said she was going away for a while, and would Fontaine go over and see how Skinner was doing, and maybe this Japanese student guy who’d been hanging around lately. But Fontaine could tell she sounded worried, so he’d sort of pushed her about it, and she’d told him she was worried about Skinner, how maybe there were some people gonna go up there and hassle him.

  ‘You don’t mean bridge people,’ he’d said, and she’d said no, she didn’t, but that was all she could say about it. The line went quiet for a few seconds and she could hear one of Fontaine’s kids singing in the background, one of those African songs with the weird throat-clicks. ‘Okay,’ Fontaine finally said, ‘I’ll look into that for you.’ And Chevette said thanks, fast, and clicked off. Fontaine did a lot of favors for Skinner. He’d never talked to Chevette about it, but he seemed to have known Skinner all his life, or anyway as long as he’d been on the bridge. There were a lot of people like that, and Chevette knew Fontaine could fix it so people would watch the tower there, and the lift. Wat
ch for strangers. People did that for each other, on the bridge, and Fontaine was always owed a lot of favors, because he was one of the main electricity men.

  Now they were walking past this bagel place had a sort of iron cage outside, welded out of junk, where you could sit in there at little tables and have coffee and eat bagels, and the smell of the morning’s baking about made her faint from hunger. She was thinking maybe they’d better go in there and get a dozen in a bag, maybe some cream cheese, take it with them, when Rydell put his hand on her shoulder.

  She turned her head and saw this big shiny white RV had just turned onto Haight in front of them, headed their way. Like you’d see rich old people driving back in Oregon, whole convoys of them, pulling boats on trailers, little jeeps, motorcycles hanging off the backs like lifeboats. They’d stop for the night in these special camps had razor-wire around them, dogs, NO TRESSPASSING signs that really meant it.

  Rydell was staring at this RV like he couldn’t believe it, and now it was pulling up right beside them, this gray-haired old lady powering down the window and leaning out the driver’s side, saying ‘Young man! Excuse me, but I’m Danica Elliott and I believe we met yesterday on the plane from Burbank.’

  Danica Elliott was this retired lady from Altadena, that was down in SoCal, and she’d flown up to San Francisco, she said on the same plane as Rydell, to get her husband moved to a different cryogenic facility. Well, not her husband, exactly, but his brain, which he’d had frozen when he died.

  Chevette had heard about people doing that, but she hadn’t ever understood why they did it, and evidently Danica Elliott didn’t understand it either. But she’d come up here to throw good money after bad, she said, and get her husband David’s brain moved to this more expensive place that would keep it on ice in its own private little tank, and not just tumbling around in a big tank with a bunch of other people’s frozen brains, which was where it had been before. She seemed like a really nice lady to Chevette, but she sure could go on about this stuff, so that after a while Rydell was just driving and nodding his head like he was listening, and Chevette, who was navigating, was mostly paying attention to the map-display on the RV’s dash, plus keeping a lookout for police cars.