The Bridge Trilogy Part 16

131.

Chevette closed her eyes, saw a bunch of cops (whatever that would look like) standing around

Skinner's room. Opened her eyes and stuck her head up, eyes level with the floor.

Skinner was on his bed, his little television propped on his chest, big old yellow toenails sticking out of holes in his lumpy gray socks. He looked at her over the television.

'Hey,' she said, 'I brought Sammy. From work.' She climbed up, making room for Sammy Sal's head and shoulders.

'Howdy,' Sammy Sal said.

Skinner just stared at him, colors from the little screen flicking across his face.

'How you doin'?' Sammy Sal asked, climbing up.

'Bring anything to eat?' Skinner asked her.

'Thai Johnny'll have soup ready in a while,' she said, moving toward the shelves, the magazines.

Dumb-a.s.s thing to say and she knew it, because Johnny's soup was always ready; he'd started it years ago and just kept adding to the pot.

'How you doin', Mr. Skinner?' Sammy Sal stood slightly hunched, feet apart, holding his helmet with both hands, like a boy saying h.e.l.lo to his girlfriend's father. He winked at Chevette.

'What you winkin' at, boy?' Skinner shut the set off and snapped its screen shut. Chevette had bought it for him off a container-ship in the Trap. He said he couldn't tell the difference anymore between the 'programs' and the 'commercials,' whatever that meant.

'Somethin' in my eye, Mr. Skinner,' Sammy Sal said, his big feet shifting, 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.

132.

'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!' Reaching 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. 'f.u.c.k 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.

SUNFLOWER CORPORATION.

'Sammy...'

'Huh?'

'33.

'What the f.u.c.k 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.' Reaching for the gla.s.ses.

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

Sammy Sal pulled the gla.s.ses off and she was kneeling, looking down through the hatch at that j.a.panese 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 Rydell a debit-card, 'you pay five hundred to get in, then you're credited for five hundred dollars' worth of merchandise.'

Rydell 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. Regular clothes, Rydell hoped. They'd left Warbaby drinking herbal tea in some kind of weird coffee joint because he said he needed to think. Rydell 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 Rydell 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?' Rydell asked.

's.h.i.t, no,' Freddie said. 'I don't get my clothes off boats.' He took a card out of his wallet and showed Rydell 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.

Rydell fed it the magstrip and followed him.

135.

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 Rydell 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,' Rydell 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-a.s.s people.' Steering Rydell onto an escalator that ran up the white-painted flank of a container ship.

Rydell 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.'

Rydell 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?' Rydell checked the tag. 'African Union.'

'Slave labor,' Freddie said, 'you shouldn't buy that s.h.i.t.'

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

'Food Fair, yeah...'

'You ever try this Korean pickled s.h.i.t? It's hot, man. . .'

'I got an ulcer.' Freddie was methodically spooning plain 136.

white frozen yogurt into his mouth with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

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

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

'No,' Rydell 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,' Rydell 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,' Rydell said. 'I was a cop. Just not for very long.'

'I hear you, I hear you,' Freddie said, like he wanted Rydell 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,' Rydell 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. 's.h.i.t. You almost kinda technical, aren't you, Rydell?'

'37.

'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.'