ifting, even more like a nervous boyfriend. Made Chevette want to laugh. She got behind Sammy's back and reached in behind the magazines. It was there. Into her pocket.

'You ever seen the view from up top here, Sammy?' She knew she had this big crazy grin on, and Skinner was staring at it, trying to figure what was happening, hut she didn't care. She swung up the ladder to the roof-hatch.

'Gosh, no, Chevette, honey. Must be just breathtaking.'

'Hey,' Skinner said, as she opened the hatch, 'what's got into you?'

Then she was up and out and into one of the weird pockets of stillness you got up there sometimes. Usually the wind made you want to lie down and hang on, but then there were these patches when nothing moved, dead calm. She heard Sammy Sal coming up the ladder behind her. She had the case out, was moving toward the edge.

'Hey,' he said, 'lemme see.'

She raised the thing, winding up to throw.

He plucked it from her fingers.

'Hey!'

'Shush.' Opening it, pulling them out. 'Huh. Nice ones...'

'Sammy!' ъeaching for them. He gave her the case instead.

'See how you do this now?' Opening them, one side-piece in either hand. 'Left is aus, right's em. Just move 'em a little.' She saw how he was doing it, in the light that spilled up through the hatch from Skinner's room. 'Here. Check it out.' He put them on her.

She was facing the city when he did it. Financial district, the Pyramid with its brace on from the Little Grande, the hills behind that. 'Fuck a duck,' she said, these towers blooming there, buildings bigger than anything, a stone regular grid of them, marching in from the hills. Each one maybe four blocks at the base, rising straight and featureless to spreading screens like the colander she used to steam vegetables. Then Chinese writing filled the sky. 'Sammy.. .'

She felt him grab her as she lost her balance.

The Chinese writing twisted into English.

SUNFLOWEъ COъPOъATION

'Sammy...'

'Huh?'

'What the fuck is this?' Anything she focused on, another label lit the sky, dense patches of technical words she didn't understand.

'How should I know,' he said. 'Let me see.' ъeaching for the glasses.

'Hey,' she heard Skinner say, his voice carrying up through the hatch, 'it's Scooter. What you doin' back here?'

Sammy Sal pulled the glasses off and she was kneeling, looking down through the hatch at that Japanese nerd who came around to see Skinner, the college boy or social worker or whatever he was. But he looked even more lost than usual. He looked scared. And there was somebody with him.

'Hey, Scooter,' Skinner said, 'how you doing?'

'This Mr. Loveless,' Yamazaki said. 'He ask to meet you.'

Gold flashed up at Chevette from the stranger's grin. 'Hi there,' he said, taking his hand out of the side pocket of his long black raincoat. The gun wasn't very big, but there was something too easy in the way he held it, like a carpenter with a hammer. He was wearing surgical gloves. 'Why don't you come on down here?'

'How this works,' Freddie said, handing ъydell a debit-card, 'you pay five hundred to get in, then you're credited for five hundred dollars' worth of merchandise.'

ъydell looked at the card. Some Dutch bank. If this was how they were going to pay him, up here, maybe it was time he asked them what he'd actually be getting. But maybe he should wait until Freddie was in a better mood.

Freddie said this Container City place was a good quick bet for clothes. ъegular clothes, ъydell hoped. They'd left Warbaby drinking herbal tea in some kind of weird coffee joint because he said he needed to think. ъydell had gone out to the Patriot

while Warbaby and Freddie held a quick huddle, there.

'What if he wants us, wants the car?'

'He'll beep us,' Freddie said. He showed ъydell how to put the debit-card into a machine that gave him a five-hundred-dollar Container City magstrip and validated the parking on the Patriot. 'This way.' Freddie pointed at a row of turnstiles.

'Aren't you gonna buy one?' ъydell asked.

'Shit, no,' Freddie said. 'I don't get my clothes off boats.' He took a card out of his wallet and showed ъydell the IntenSecure logo.

'I thought you guys were strictly freelance.'

'Strictly hut frequently,' Freddie said, feeding the card to a turnstile. It clicked him through. ъydell fed it the magstrip and followed him.

 

 

 

 

 

17 The trap

'Costs people five hundred bucks just to get in here?'

'Why people call it the Trap. But that's just how they make sure the overhead's covered. You don't come in here unless you know you're gonna drop that much. Gives 'em a guaranteed per-cap.'

Container City turned out to be the biggest semi-roofed mall ъydell had ever seen, if you could call something a mall that had ships parked in it, big ones. And the five-hundred-dollar guaranteed purchase didn't seem to have put anybody off; there were more people in here than out on the street, it looked like. 'Hong Kong money,' Freddie said. 'Bought 'em a hunk of the Embarcadero.'

'Hey,' ъydell said, pointing at a dim, irregular outline that rose beyond gantries and towers of floodlights, 'that's that bridge, the one people live on.'

'Yeah,' Freddie said, giving him a funny look, 'crazy-ass people.' Steering ъydell onto an escalator that ran up the white-painted flank of a container ship.

ъydell looked around at Container City as they rose. 'Crazier than anything in L.A.,' he said, admiringly.

'No way,' Freddie said, 'I'm from L.A. This just a mall, man.'

ъydell bought a burgundy nylon bomber, two pairs of black jeans, socks, underwear, and three black t-shirts. That came out to just over five hundred. He used the debit-card to make up the difference.

'Hey,' he told Freddie, his purchases in a big yellow Container City bag, 'that's a pretty good deal. Thanks.'

Freddie shrugged. 'Where they say those jeans made?' ъydell checked the tag. 'African Union.'

'Slave labor,' Freddie said, 'you shouldn't buy that shit.'

'I didn't think about it. They got any food in here?'

'Food Fair, yeah...'

'You ever try this Korean pickled shit? It's hot, man. . .'

'I got an ulcer.' Freddie was methodically spooning plain white frozen yogurt into his mouth with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

'Stress. That's stress-related, Freddie.'

Freddie looked at ъydell over the rim of the pink plastic yogurt cup. 'You trying to be funny?'

'No,' ъydell said. 'I just know about ulcers because they thought my daddy had them.'

'Well, didn't he? Your "daddy"? Did he have 'em or not?'

'No,' ъydell said. 'He had stomach cancer.'

Freddie winced, put his yogurt down, rattled the ice in his paper cup of Evian and drank some. 'Hernandez,' he said, 'he told us you were trainin' to be a cop, some redneck place. . .'

'Knoxville,' ъydell said. 'I was a cop. Just not for very long.'

'I hear you, I hear you,' Freddie said, like he wanted ъydell to relax, maybe even to like him. 'You got trained and all? Cop stuff?'

'Well, they try to give you a little bit of everything,' ъydell said. 'Crime scene investigation ... Like up in that room today. I could tell they hadn't done the Super Glue thing.'

'No?'

'No. There's this chemical in Super Glue sticks to the water in a print, see, and about ninety-eight percent of a print is water. So you've got this little heater, for the glue? Screws into a regular light socket? So you tape up the doors and windows with garbage bags and stuff and you leave that little heater turned on. Leave it twenty-four hours, then you come back and purge the room.'

'How you do that?'

'Open up the doors, windows. Then you dust. But they hadn't done that, over at the hotel. It leaves this film all over. And a smell...' Freddie raised his eyebrows. 'Shit. You almost kinda technical, aren't you, ъydell?'

'Mostly it's just common sense,' he said. 'Like not going to the bathroom.'

'Not going?'

'At a crime scene. Don't ever use the toilet. Don't flush it. You drop something in a toilet, the way the water goes. You ever notice how it goes up, underneath there?' Freddie nodded.

'Well, maybe your perp flushed it after he dropped something in there. But it doesn't always work like it's meant to, and it might be just floating back there ... You come in and flush it again, then it's gone for sure.'

'Damn,' Freddie said, 'I never knew that.'

'Common sense,' ъydell said, wiping his lips with a paper napkin.

'I think Mr. Warbaby's right about you, ъydell.'

'How's that?'

'He says we're wasting you, just letting you drive that four-by-four. Bein' straight with you, man, I wasn't sure, myself.' Freddie waited, like he figured ъydell might take offense.

'Well?'

'You know that brace on Mr. Warbaby's leg?'

'Yeah.'

'You know that bridge, the one you noticed when we were coming up here?'

'Yeah.'

'And Warbaby, he showed you that picture of that tough-ass messenger kid?'

'Yeah.'

'Well,' Freddy said, 'She's the one Mr. Warbaby figures took that man's property. And she lives out on that bridge, ъydell. And that bridge, man, that's one evil motherfucking place. Those people anarchists, antichrists, cannibal motherfuckers out

there, man . . .'

'I heard it was just a bunch of homeless people,' ъydeli said, vaguely recollecting some documentary he'd seen in Knoxville, 'just sort of making do.'

'No, man,' Freddie said, 'homeless fuckers, they're on the street. Those bridge motherfuckers, they're like king-hell satanists and shit. You think you can just move on out there yourself? No fucking way. They'll just let their own kind, see? Like a cult. With 'nitiations and shit.'

'Nitiations?'

'Black 'nitiates,' Freddie said, leaving ъydell to decide that he probably didn't mean it racially.

'Okay,' ъydell said, 'but what's it got to do with that brace on Warbaby's knee?'

'That's where he got that knee hassled,' Freddie said. 'He went out there, knowing he was takin' his life in his hands, to try and recover this little baby. Baby girl,' Freddie added, like he liked the ring of that. "Cause these bridge motherfuckers, they'll do that.'

'Do what?' ъydell asked, flashing back to the Pooky Bear killings.

'They steal children,' Freddie said. 'And Mr. Warbaby and me, we can't either of us go out there anymore, ъydell, because those motherfuckers are on to us, you followin' me?'

'So you want me to?' ъydell asked, stuffing his folded napkin into the oily white paper box that had held his two Kim Chee WaWa's.

'I'll let Mr. Warbaby explain it to you,' Freddie said.

 

 

They found Warbaby where they'd left him, in this dark, high-ceilinged coffee place in what Freddie said was North Beach. He was wearing those glasses again and ъydell wondered what he might be seeing.

ъydell had brought his blue Samsonite in from the Patriot, his bag from Container City. He went into the bathroom to change his clothes. There was just the one, unisex, and it really was a bathroom because it had a bathtub in it. Not like anybody used it, because there was this mermaid painted full-size on the inside, with a brown cigarette butted out on her stomach, just above where the scales started.

ъydell discovered that Kevin's khakis were split up the ass. He wondered how long he'd been walking around like that. But he hadn't noticed it back at Container City, so he hoped it had happened in the car. He took the IntenSecure shirt off, stuffed it into the wastebasket, put on one of the black t-shirts. Then he unlaced his trainers and tried to figure out a way to change pants, socks, and underwear without having to put his feet on the floor, which was wet. He thought about doing it in the tub, but that looked sort of scummy, too. Decided you could manage it, sort of, by standing with your feet on the top of your sneakers, and then sort of half-sitting on the toilet. He put everything he took off into the basket. Wondering how much the debit-card Freddie had given him was still good for, he transferred his wallet to the right back pocket of his new jeans. Put on his new jacket. Washed his hands and face in a gritty trickle of water. Combed his hair. Packed the rest of his new clothes into the Samsonite, saving the Container City bag to keep dirty laundry in.

He wanted a shower, but he didn't know when he'd get one. Clean clothes were the next best thing.

Warbaby looked up when ъydell got back to his table. 'Freddie's told you a little about the bridge, has he, ъydell?'

'Says it's all baby-eatin' satanists.'

Warbaby glowered at Freddie. 'Too colorfully put, perhaps, but all too painfully close to the truth, Mr. ъydell. Not at all a wholesome place. And effectively outside the reach of the law. You won't find our friends Svobodov or Orlovsky out there, for instance. Not in any official capacity.'

ъydell caught Freddie start to grin at that, but saw how it was pinched off by Warha by's glare.

'Freddie gave me the idea you want me to go out there, Mr. Warhahy. Go out there and find that girl.~

'Yes,' Warbaby said, gravely, 'we do. I wish that I could tell you it won't be dangerous, but that is not the case.'

'Well.. . How dangerous is it, Mr. Warbaby?'

'Very,' Warbaby said.

'And that girl, she's dangerous, too?'

'Extremely,' Warbaby said, 'and all the more because she doesn't always look it. You saw what was done to that man's throat, after all . . .'

'Jesus,' ъydell said, 'you think that little girl did thai?'

Warbaby nodded, sadly. 'Terrible,' he said, 'these people will do terrible things . . .'

When they got out to the car, he saw that he'd parked it right in front of this mural of J. D. Shapely wearing a black leather biker jacket and no shirt, being carried up to heaven by half a dozen extremely fruity-looking angels with long blond rocker hair. There were these blue, glowing coils of DNA or something spiraling out of Shapely's stomach and attacking what ъydell assumed was supposed to be an AIDS virus, except it looked more like some kind of rusty armored space station with mean robot arms.

It made him think what a weird-ass thing it must've been to be that guy. About as weird as it had ever been to be anybody, ever, he figured. But it would be even weirder to be Shapely, and dead like that, and then have to look at that mural.

YET HE LIVES IN US NOW, it said under the painting, in foot-high white letters, AND THъOUGH HIM DO WE LIVE.

Which was, strictly speaking, true, and ъydell had had a vaccination to prove it.

 

 

 

 

18 Capacitor

Chevette's mother had had this boyfriend once named Oakley, who drank part-time and drove logging trucks the rest, or anyway he said he did. He was a long-legged man with his blue eyes set a little too far apart, in a face with those deep seams down each cheek. Which made him look, Chevette's mother said, like a real cowboy. Chevette just thought it made him look kind of dangerous. Which he wasn't, usually, unless he got himself around a bottle or two of whiskey and forgot where he was or who he was with; like particularly if he mistook Chevette for her mother, which he'd done a couple of times, but she'd always gotten away from him and he'd always been sorry about it afterward, bought her ъing-Dings and stuff from the Seven-Eleven. But what

Oakley did that she remembered now, looking down through the hatch at this guy with his gun, was take her out in the woods one time and let her shoot a pistol.

And this one had a face kind of like Oakley's, too, those eyes and those grooves in his cheeks. Like you got from smiling a lot, the way he was now. But it sure wasn't a smile that would ever make anybody feel good. Gold at the corners of it.

'Now come on down here,' he said, stressing each word just the same.

'Who the fuck are you?' Skinner, sounding more interested than pissed-off.

The gun went off. Not very loud, but sharp, with this blue flash. She saw the Japanese guy sit down on the foor, like his legs had gone out from under him, and she thoight the guy had shot him.

'Shut up.' Then up at Chevette, 'I told you :0 get down here.'

Then Sammy Sal touched her on the back of ier neck, his fingertips urging her toward the hatch before theywithdrew.

The guy might not even know Sammy Sal w~s up here at all. Sammy Sal had the glasses. And one thing Chevette was sure of now, this guy was no cop.

'Sorry,' the Japanese guy said, 'sorry I. . .'

'I'm going to shoot you in the right eye witi a subsonic titanium bullet.' Still smiling, the way he might ~ay I'm going to buy you a sandwich.

'I'm coming,' Chevette said. And he didn't shot, not her, not the Japanese guy.

She thought she heard Sammy Sal step back acoss the roof, away from her, but she didn't look back. She wasn't sure whether she should try to close the hatch behini her or not. She decided not to because the guy had only tolc her to come down. She'd have to reach past the edge of th~ hole to get hold of the hatch and it might look to him like ~.ie was going for a gun or something. Like in a show.

She dropped down from the bottom rung, tiying to keep her hands where he could see them.

'What were you doing up there?' Still smilng. His gun wasn't anything like Oakley's big old Braziliai revolver; it was a little stubby square thing made out of dill metal, the color of Skinner's old tools. A thin ring of ixighter metal around the narrow hole in the end. Like the pupilof an eye.

'Looking at the city,' she said, not fe~ling scared, particularly. Not really feeling anything, except her legs were trembling.

He glanced up, the gun staying right when it was. She didn't want him to ask her if was she alone up here, because the answer might hang in the air and tell him it was a lie. 'You know what I'm here for.'

Skinner was sitting up on his bed, back against the wall, looking as wide awake as she'd ever seen him. The Japanese guy, who didn't look like he'd been shot after all, was sitting on the floor, his skinny legs spread out in front of him in a V.

'Well,' Skinner said, 'I'd guess money or drugs, but it happens you're shit out of luck. Give you fifty-six dollars and a stale joint of Humbolt, you want it.'

'Shut up.' When the automatic smile went away, it was like he didn't have any lips. 'I'm talking to her.'

Skinner looked like he was about to say something, or maybe laugh, but he didn't.

'The glasses.' Now the smile was back. He raised the gun, so that she was looking right into the little hole. If he shoots me, she thought, he'll still have to hunt for them.

'Hepburn,' Skinner said, with a crazy little grin, and just then Chevette noticed that the poster of ъoy Orbison had a hole in the middle of its gray forehead. 'Down there,' she said, pointing to the hatch in the floor.

'Where?'

'My bike,' hoping Sammy Sal didn't bump into that old rusty wagon in the dark up there, make a noise.

He looked up at the roof-hatch, like he could hear what she was thinking.

'Lean up against the wall there, palms flat.' He moved in closer. 'Get your feet apart ...' The gun touched her neck. His other hand slid under Skinner's jacket, feeling for a weapon. 'Stay that way.' He'd missed Skinner's knife, the one with the fractal blade. She turned her head a little and saw him wrapping something red and rubbery around one of the Japanese guy's wrists, doing it one-handed. She thought of those gummy-worm candies you bought out of a big plastic jar. He yanked the

Japanese guy by the red thing, dragging him across the floor to the shelf-table where she'd eaten breakfast. He stuck one end of the red thing behind the angle-brace that held the table up, then twisted it around the guy's other wrist. He took another one out of his pocket arid shook it out, like a toy snake. ъeached behind Skinner with it and did something with his hand. 'You stay on that bed, old man,'