The Bridge Trilogy Part 127

"That's good," Durius said. "Well, just wanted to see how you're doing. PraiseG.o.d, she says hi.

Wants to know if you like the gla.s.ses."

The Rio street maps shuddered, contracted, stretched again. "Tell her they're great," Rydell said.

"Tell her thanks." "Will do," said Durius. "You take care."

"You too," Rydell said, the maps vanishing as Durius hung up. Rydell removed the gla.s.ses and put them away.

Beef bowl. Maybe he could grab some Ghetto Chef Beef Bowl on the way back.

Then he thought about Klaus and the Rooster and decided bed better check on the thermos first.

145.

WHATS this look like to you, Martial?" Fontaine asked his lawyer, Martial Mat.i.tse, of Mat.i.tse Rapelego Njembo, whose premises consisted of three notebooks and an antique Chinese bicycle.

Martial made tooth-sucking noises on the other end of the line, and Fontaine knew he was looking at the lists the boy had pulled up. "They seem to be lists of the contents of safety deposit boxes, as required under state law in various jurisdictions. Ant.i.terrorist legislation. Keeps people from stashing drug precursors, nuclear warheads, like that. Plus it was supposed to help prevent money laundering, but that was when money could still be big stacks of green paper. But if I were you, Fontaine, I would be asking my lawyer a different question. To wit: am I not breaking the law by being in possession of these doc.u.ments?"

"Am I?" Fontaine asked.

Martial maintained telephone silence for a few seconds. "Yes," he said, "you are. But it depends

on how you got them. And I have just determined that the actual owners of the listed properties, in every case, are dead."

"Dead?"

"Entirely. These are probate doc.u.ments. Still protected by law, but I would say that some items on these lists are property to be auctioned off as the various estates are executed."

Fontaine looked over his shoulder and saw the boy, still seated on the floor, down his third iced- guava smoothie.

"How did you get these?" Martial asked.

"I'm not sure," Fontaine said.

"You aren't supposed to be able to decrypt files like this," Martial said. "Not unless you're the fed. If someone else does the decryption, it's merely a privacy issue insofar as you're concerned.

But if you're doing this yourself, or are knowingly party to it, you are in possession of or are party to possession of proscribed technology which can earn you a stay 146.

34. MARKET DISCONTINUITIES.

in one of those extremely efficient prisons the private sector has done such a fine job of building and maintaining."

"I'm not," said Fontaine.

"Be that as it may," said Martial, "if you were, you might be able, through judicious application, and with all due secrecy, to use said technology to reveal certain lucrative market discontinuities. Follow me, Fontaine?"

"No," said Fontaine.

"Put it this way: if you have a way of getting hold of doc.u.ments n.o.body else can, you might want to talk about it with someone who'd have an idea of exactly which doc.u.ments might be most lucratively obtained."

"Hey, Martial, I'm not into-"

"Fontaine, please. Anyone who sells secondhand cutlery and old rat-sucked toys, I understand it's an avocation. A calling. You are not in it for the money, I know. However, if you have a back channel into something else, I advise you to consult with your lawyer, me, at your very earliest.

Hear me?"

"Martial, I don't-"

"Clarisse has been making inquiries of another partner in our firm, Fontaine. I tell you that in confidence."

Fontaine was not happy to hear it.

"She is talking divorce, my friend,"

"Gotta go, Martial. Customers."

Fontaine hung up. Martial's news about Clarisse was not all that new to Fontaine, but he had been so far successful in avoiding thinking about it.

He became aware of a soft, steady clicking and turned to see that the boy had put the eyephones back on.

147.

CHEVETTE hadn't closed her eyes when she'd pulled Creedmore down and kissed him, but with her arms locked around his neck, to hold him there and hide her from Carson, she couldn't see past the sleeve of Skinner's jacket. What she could see, past an out-of-focus view of Creedmore's cheekbone

and left ear, was an adrenaline-sharp shot of Carson's progress through the crowd. This was sufficiently arresting that she had managed to ignore Creedmore's response, which had his tongue trying apparently to subdue hers with a so-far unsuccessful combination of speed and leverage, and his hands, up under Skinner's jacket, hunting frantically for nipple.

The crystal-clear shot of Carson was eclipsed by a close-up of Tessa, eyes wide with amazement and about to burst out laughing, just as Creedmore found one of the nipples he was after, and Chevette, in pure reflex, let go of his neck with her left arm and punched him, as hard and as discreetly as possible, in the ribs, going in with all the knuckle she could leverage.

Creedmore's eyes flew open, blue and bloodshot, and Chevette let go of him, ducked off her chair, and rolled under the table, all on automatic now. She thought she heard Creedmore's head hit the table as he tried to follow her, but now that he didn't have his mouth actually on hers, she was aware of the taste of it, and something naggingly familiar there, but that was just something her mind was doing while her body took her out of there the quickest way it saw. Which was a scramble on hands and knees, still under the table; out on the floor, still crouching but getting up speed; sprinting, still bent low, arms up to block anyone who might try to stop her; out through the door.

Where instinct, something, some recollection, took her right, toward Oakland.

And she didn't slow down until she felt it was safe to, but by then she'd realized what the taste in Creedmore's mouth was: dancer, and she wondered how much of that she'd taken on. Not much, probably, 148.

35. ON AUTOMATIC.

but she could feel it in the pounding of her heart, see it in a faint aura around every source of light now, and know it in the fact that none of what had just happened actually bothered her, very much.

Trouble could look abstract, on dancer.

Carson, she thought, was trouble, and seeing the look on his face then, a look she'd suspected, she now thought, but had never quite managed to catch there, had made her scared of him. She'd been scared of him since the time he'd hit her, but she hadn't understood it in quite the same way. He hadn't really hurt her much, not physically, when he'd hit her. She was coming from a place where she'd seen people maimed, hurt really bad, and this cute media boy, who didn't even know how to punch, how dangerous was that?

But now she saw, the residual drug in Creedmore's saliva having its effect, that what she'd been afraid of wasn't that he'd hit her that time, or the possibility he'd do it again, but some instinctive, underlying recognition that there was something wrong, something way worse. That he was bad news and covered it up. Always, more carefully even than he chose his clothes.

And Tessa, when Chevette had had the conversation with her that had resulted in her moving to Malibu, had said that she envied men the inability to get it up, when there was something wrong.

Even if they don't consciously know, Tessa said, it won't happen. But we don't have that, so something can be just as wrong as can be, and we still stay. But you can't stay if he's. .h.i.t you, because he'll do it again.

Walking on, toward Treasure now, the bridge gone spectral, monochrome, and maybe that was the dancer too, she didn't know.

"Out of control," she said. That was how she felt her life was now. She was just reacting to things. She stopped. Maybe she was just reacting to Carson.

"Hey. Chevette."

Turning to see a face she knew, though she couldn't put a name to it. Ragged pale hair above a thin hard face, bad scar snaking his left cheek. A sometime messenger from her Allied days, not part of her crew but a face from parties. "Heron," the name came to her.