The Bridge Trilogy Part 120

-le sat down on the foot of the bed and took off his shoes. There were holes in the toes of both his black socks. Have to buy more.

lie pulled the gla.s.ses out of his jacket, put them on, and speeddiakd Laney. He listened to a

phone ringing somewhere in Tokyo and imaiined the room it was ringing in, some expensive hotel, or maybe it was ringing on a desk the size of Tong's, but real. Laney answered, nine ring~ in.

'Bad Sector," Laney said.

'What?"

'The cable. They have it."

'What cable?"

'The one you need for the projector."

Rydell was looking at the GlobEx box. "What projector?"

"The one you picked up from GlobEx today."

"Wait a minute," Rydell said, "how do you know about that?"

There was a pause. "It's what I do, Rydell."

"Listen," Rydell said, "there was trouble, a fight. Not me, another guy, but I was there,

involved. They'll check the GlobEx security recordings and they'll know I signed for you, and

they'll have footage of me."

"They don't," Laney said.

"Of course they do," protested Rydell, "I was there."

"No," Laney said, "they've got footage of me."

"What are you talking about, Laney?"

"The infinite plasticity of the digital."

"But I signed for it, My name, not yours."

"On a screen, right?"

"Oh." Rydell thought about it. "Who can get into GlobEx and alter that stuff?"

"Not me," said Laney. "But I can see it's been altered."

"So who did it?"

"That's academic at this point."

"What's that mean?" Rydell asked.

"It means don't ask. Where are you?"

"In a bed-and-breakfast on the bridge. Your cough sounds better."

"This blue stuff," Laney said. Rydell had no idea what he meant. "Where's the projector?"

"Like a thermos? Right here."

"Don't take it with you. Find a shop there called Bad Sector and tell them you need the cable."

"What kind of cable?"

"They'll be expecting you," Laney said and hung up.

Rydell sat there on the end of the bed, with the sungla.s.ses on, thoroughly p.i.s.sed off at Laney.

Felt like bagging the whole deal. Get a job back at that parking garage. Sit around and watch nature in downtown Detroit.

Then his work ethic caught up with him. He took off the gla.s.ses, put them in his jacket, and started putting his shoes back on.

117.

28. FOLSOM STREET.

FOOT of Folsom in the rain, all these soot-streaked RVs, spavined campers, gut-sprung vehicles of any description, provided that description included old; things that ran, if they ran at all, on gasoline.

"Look at that," Tessa said, as she edged the van past an old Hummer, ex-military, every square inch covered with epoxied micro-junk, a million tiny fragments of the manufactured world glittering in Tessa's headlights and the rain.

"Think there's a spot there," Chevette said, peering through the bad wiper wash. Tessa's van had Malibu-style wiper blades; old and hadn't been wet for quite a while. They'd had to creep this last block along the Embarcadero, when the rain had really started.

It was drumming steadily on the van's flat steel roof now, but Chevette's sense of San Francisco weather told her it wouldn't last all that long.

The black kid with the dreads had earned his fifty. They'd found him crouching there like a gargoyle on the curb, his face somehow already as old as it would ever need to be, smoking Russian cigarettes from a red-and-white pack he kept tucked into the rolled-up sleeve of an old army shirt, three sizes too big. The van still had its wheels on and the tires were intact.

"What do you think he meant," Tessa said, maneuvering between a moss-stained school bus of truly ancient vintage and a delaminating catamaran up on a trailer whose tires had almost entirely rotted away, "when he said somebody was looking for you?"

"I don't know," Chevette said. She'd asked him who, but he'd just shrugged and walked off. This after determinedly trying to hustle Tessa for G.o.d's Little Toy. "Maybe if you'd given him the camera platform, he'd've told me."

"No fear," Tessa said, killing the engine. 'That's half my share of the Malibu house."

Chevette saw that there were lights on in the tiny cabin of the cat- 118.

boat, through little slit-like windows, and somebody moving in there. She started cranking down the window beside her, but it stuck after two turns, so she opened the door instead.

"That's Buddy's s.p.a.ce there," said a girl, straightening up from the catamaran's hatch, her voice raised above the rain, hoa.r.s.e and a little frightened. She hunched there, under some old poncho or piece of tarp, and Chevette couldn't make out her face.

"S'cuse us," Chevette said, "but we need to stop for the night, or anyway till this rain lets up."

"Buddy parks there."

"Do you know when he'll be back?"