“Third exit right,” Laney said, watching the cursor. He felt her accelerate and heard the speed-limit warning kick in. Another glittering sign: FREEDOM SHOWER BANFF.
“Laney-san,” Yamazaki asked, around the headrest. “Did you apprehend any suggestion of Rez's death or other misfortune?”
“No, but I wouldn't, not unless there was a degree of intentionality that would emerge from the data. Accidents, actions by anyone who isn't represented…” The clanging stopped as she slowed, approaching the exit indicated on the map. “But I saw their data as streams, merging, and whatever it was merging around seemed to be where we're going.”
Arleigh made the exit. They were on the off-ramp now, swinging through a curve, and Laney saw three young girls, their shoes clumped with mud, descending a sharp slope planted with some kind of pale rough grass. One of them seemed to be wearing a school uniform: kneesocks and a short plaid skirt. They looked unreal, in the harsh sodium light of the intersection, but then Arleigh stopped the van and Laney turned to see the road in front of them completely blocked by a silent, unmoving crowd.
“Jesus,” Arleigh said. “The fans.”
If there were boys in the crowd, Laney didn't see them. It was a level sea of glossy black hair, every girl facing the white building that rose there, with its white, brilliantly illuminated sign framed by something meant to represent a coronet: HOTEL DI. Arleigh powered down her window and Laney heard the distant wail of a siren.
“We'll never get through,” Laney said. Most of the girls held a single candle, and the combined glow danced among the tear-streaked faces. They were so young, these girls: children. Kathy Torrance had particularly loathed that about Lo/Rez, the way their fan-base had refreshed itself over the years with a constant stream of pubescent recruits, girls who fell in love with Rez in the endless present of the net, where he could still be the twenty-year-old of his earliest hits.
“Pass me that black case,” Arleigh said, and Laney heard Yamazaki scrabbling through the bubble-pack. A flat rectangular carrying case appeared between the seats. Laney took it. “Open it,” she said. Laney undid the zip, exposing something flat and gray. The Lo/Rez logo on an oblong sticker. Arleigh pulled it from its case, put it on the dashboard, and ran her finger around its edge, looking for a switch. LO/REZ, mirror-reversed in large, luminous green letters, appeared on the windshield. **TOUR SUPPORT VEHICLE**. The asterisks began to flash.
Arleigh let the van roll forward a few inches. The girls directly in front turned, saw the windshield, and stepped aside. Silently, gradually, a few feet at a time, the crowd parted for the van.
Laney looked out across the black, center-parted heads of the grieving fans and saw the Russian, the one from the Western World, still in his white leather evening jacket, struggling through the crowd. The girls' heads came barely to his waist, and he looked as though he were wading through black hair and candle-glow. The expression on his face was one of confusion, almost of terror, but when he saw Laney at the window of the green van, he grimaced and changed course, heading straight for them.
42. Checking Out
Chia looked out and saw that the rain had stopped. Beyond the chainlink fence, the parking lot was full of small, unmoving figures holding candles. A few of them were standing on the tops of the trucks parked there, and there seemed to be more on the roof of the low building behind. Girls. Japanese girls. All of them seemed to be staring at the Hotel Di.
The big man was telling Rez that someone had announced that he'd died, that he'd been found dead in this hotel, and it was out on the net and was being treated like it had really happened.
The Russian had produced his own phone now and was talking to someone in Russian. “Mr. Lor-ess,” he said, lowering the phone, “we are hearing police come. This nanotech being heavily proscribed, is serious problem.”
“Fine,” Rez said. “We have a car in the garage.”
Someone nudged Chia's elbow. It was Masahiko, handing her her bag. He'd put her Sandbenders in it and zipped it up; she could tell by the weight. He had his computer in the plaid bag. “Put your shoes on now,” he said. His were already on.
Eddie was curled into a knot on the carpet; he'd been like that since the Russian had kicked him. Now the Russian took a step toward him again and Chia saw Maryalice cringe, where she sat beside Eddie on the carpet.
“You are lucky man,” the Russian said to Eddie. “We are honoring our agreement. Isotope to be delivered. But we are wanting no more the business with you.”
There was a click, and another, and Chia watched as the big man with no left ear folded his axe, collapsing it smoothly into itself without looking at it. “That thing you're holding is a heavy crime, Rozzer. Your fan-club turnout's bringing the police. Better let me be in possession.”
Rez looked at the big man. “I'll carry it myself, Keithy.”
Chia thought she saw a sudden sadness in the big man's eyes. “Well then,” he said. “Time to go.” He slipped the folded weapon inside his jacket. “Come on, then. You two.” Gesturing Chia and Masahiko toward the door. Rez followed Masahiko, the Russian close behind him, but Chia saw that the room key was on top of the little fridge. She ran over and grabbed it. Then she stopped, looking down at Maryalice.
Maryalice's mouth, with her lipstick gone, looked old and sad. It was a mouth that must've been hurt a lot, Chia thought. “Come with us,” Chia said.
Maryalice looked at her.
“Come on,” Chia said. “The police are coming.”
“I can't,” Maryalice said. “I have to take care of Eddie.”
“Tell your Eddie,” Blackwell said, reaching Chia in two steps, “that if he whines to anyone about any of this, he'll be grabbed and his shoe size shortened.”
But Maryalice didn't seem to hear, or if she did, she didn't look up, and the big man pulled Chia out of the room, closed the door, and then Chia was following the back of the Russian's tan suit down the narrow corridor, his fancy cowboy boots illuminated by the ankle-high light-strips.
Rez was stepping into the elevator with Masahiko and the Russian when the big man caught his shoulder. “You're staying with me,” he said, shoving Chia into the elevator.
Masahiko pushed the button. “You are having vehicle?” the Russian asked Masahiko.
“No,” Masahiko said.
The Russian grunted. His cologne was making Chia's stomach turn over. The door opened on the little lobby. The Russian pushed past her, looking around. Chia and Masahiko followed. The elevator door closed. “Looking for vehicle,” the Russian said. “Come.” They followed him through the sliding glass door, into the parking area, where Eddie's Graceland seemed to take up at least half the available space. Beside it was a silver-gray Japanese sedan, and Chia wondered if that was Rez's. Someone had put black plastic rectangles over the license plates of both cars.
She heard the glass door hiss open again and turned to see Rez coming out, the nanotech unit tucked beneath his arm like a football. The big man was behind him.
Then a really angry man in a shiny white tuxedo burst through the pink plastic strips that hung down across the entrance. He had a smaller man by the collar of his jacket, and the smaller man was trying to get away. Then the smaller man saw them there and shouted “Blackwell!” and actually managed to slip right out of his jacket, but the man in the white tuxedo reached out with the other hand and caught him by the belt.
The Russian was yelling in Russian now and the man in the white tuxedo seemed to see him for the first time. He let go of the other man's belt.
“We've got the van,” the other man said.
The big man with the missing ear stepped up really close to the man in the white tuxedo, glared at him, and took the other man's jacket. “Okay, Rozzer,” he said, turning to Rez. “You know the drill this one. Old hat. Same as leaving that house in St. Kilda with the bastard Melbourne tabs outside, right?” He draped the jacket over Rez's head and shoulders, slapped him encouragingly on the upper arm. He walked over
to the pink strips and drew one aside, looking out. “Fucking hell,” he said. “Right then, all of you. It's move fast, stay together, Rez in the center, and into the van. On my count of three.”
43. Toecutter's Breakfast
“You aren't eating,” Blackwell said, after he'd cleared his second plate of links and eggs. He'd appropriated this dining room on one of the Elf Hat's executive floors, and insisted Laney join him. The view was similar to the one from Laney's room, six floors below, and sunlight was glinting from the distant parapets of the new buildings.
“Who put out the word that Rez was dead, Blackwell? The idoru?”
“Her? Why d'you think she would?” He was using the edge of a triangle of toast to squeegee his plate.
“I don't know,” Laney said, “but she seems to like to do things. And they aren't necessarily that easy to understand.”
“It wasn't her,” Blackwell said. “We're checking it out. Looks as though some fan of his in Mexico went berserk; used some fairly drastic sort of 'ware-weapon on the Tokyo club's central site. Took that over from a converted corporate website in the States and issued the bulletin. Called on every fan local to Tokyo to get up immediately and go to that love hotel.” He popped the toast into his mouth, swallowed, and wiped his lips with a thick white napkin.
“But Rez was there,” Laney said.
Blackwell shrugged. “We're looking into it. We have more than enough on our hands, now. Have to dissociate Lo/Rez from this death hoax, reassure his audience. Legal's flying in from London and New York for talks with Starkov and his people. Her people too,” he added. “Going to be busy.”
“Who were those kids?” Laney asked. “The little redhead and the Japanese hippie?”
“Rez says they're okay. Have 'em here in the hotel. Arleigh's sorting it out.”
“Where's the nanotech unit?”
“You didn't say that,” Blackwell said. “Now don't say it again. The official truth of the night's events is currently being formulated, and that will never be a part of it. Am I understood?”
Laney nodded. He looked out at the new buildings again. Either the angle of light had changed or that parapet had shifted slightly. He looked at Blackwell. “Is it my imagination, or has your attitude on all this undergone some kind of change? I thought you were adamantly opposed to Rez and the idoru getting together.”
Blackwell sighed. “I was. But it's starting to look like something of a done deal now, isn't it? De facto relationship, really. I suppose I'm old-fashioned, but I'd hoped that he might eventually wind up with a bit of the ordinary. Someone to polish his gun, pick up his socks, have a baby or two. But it isn't going to happen, is it?”
“I guess not.”
“In which case,” Blackwell said, “I have two options. Either I leave the silly bastard to his own resources, or I stay and I do my job and try to adjust to whatever it is this is going to become. And at the end of the bloody day, Laney, regardless, I have to remember where I'd be if he hadn't come behind the walls at Pentridge to give that solo concert. Aren't you going to eat that?” Looking at the scrambled eggs going cold on Laney's plate.
“My job's done,” Laney said. “It didn't work out the way you wanted it to, but I did it. Agreed?”
“No question.”
“Then I'd better go. Get me paid off, I'm out of here today.”
Blackwell looked at him with new interest. “That fast, eh? What's your hurry? Don't find us agreeable?”
“No,” Laney said. “It's just that that way's better all 'round.”
“Not what Yama's saying. Rez either. Not to mention her otherness, who no doubt will voice an opinion in that regard. I'd say you were set to become the court prognosticator, Laney. Unless, of course, that whole business with the Kombinat turns out to be absolute bollocks, and it's discovered that you simply make that nodal nonsense up—which I for one would actually find quite amusing. But no, your services are very much desired now, you might even say required, and none of us would currently be happy to see you go.”
“I have to,” Laney said. “I'm being blackmailed.”
This brought Blackwell's lids to half-mast. He leaned slightly forward. The pink worm of scar tissue squirmed in his eyebrow. “Are you?” he said softly, as though Laney had just ventured to confess some unusual sexual complication. “And may I ask who by?”
“Slitscan. Kathy Torrance. It's sort of personal, for her.”
“Tell me about it. Tell me all about it. Do.”
And Laney did, including the 5-SB trials and their record for eventually turning the participants into homicidal stalkers of celebrities. “I didn't want to bring that up, before,” Laney said, “because I was afraid you might think I was at risk. That I might go that way.”
“Not that I haven't had experience with the type,” Blackwell said. “We have a young man in Tokyo right now who is the author of all of the songs Lo and Rez have ever written, not to mention Blue Ahmed's complete output for Chrome Koran. And he's an explosives expert. Watch him closely. But we have that capacity, you see. So the safest place for you, Laney, in the event you go werewolf on us, would be right here, at the watchful heart of our security apparatus.”
Laney thought about it. It almost made sense. “But you won't want me around if Slitscan runs that footage. I won't want myself around. I don't have any family, nobody else for it to damage, but I'm still going to have to live with it.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“I'll go somewhere where people don't watch that shit.”
“Well,” said Blackwell, “when you find that fair land, I will go there with you myself. We'll live on fruit and nuts, commune with all that's left of bloody nature. But ‘til then, Laney, I'm going to have a conversation with your Kathy Torrance. I will explain certain things to her. Nothing complicated. Simple, simple protocols of cause and effect. And she will never allow Slitscan to run that footage of your doppelgänger.”
“Blackwell,” Laney said, “she dislikes me, she has her motive for revenge, but she wants, she needs, to destroy Rez. She's a very powerful woman in a very powerful, fully global organization. Some simple threat of violence on your part isn't going to stop her. It'll only up the ante; she'll go to her security people—”
“No,” said Blackwell, “she won't, because that would be a violation of the very personal terms I will have established in our conversation. That's the key word here, Laney, ‘personal.’ ‘Up close, and.’ We will not meet, we will not carve out this deep and meaningful and bloody unforgettable episode of mutual face-time as representatives of our respective faceless corporations. Not at all. It's one-on-one time for your Kathy and I, and it may well prove to be as intimate, and I may hope enlightening, as any she ever had. Because I will bring a new certainty into her life, and we all need certainties. They help build character. And I will leave your Kathy with the deepest possible conviction that if she crosses me, she will die—but only after she's been made to desire that, absolutely.” And Blackwell's smile, then, giving Laney the full benefit of his dental prosthesis, was hideous. “Now how was it exactly you were supposed to contact her, to give her your decision?”
Laney found his wallet, produced the blank card with the pencilled number. Blackwell took it. “Ta.” He stood up. “Shame to waste a good breakfast that way. Ring the hotel doctor from your room and get yourself sorted. Sleep. I'll deal with this.” He tucked the card into the breast pocket of his aluminum jacket.
And as Blackwell left the room, Laney noticed, centered on the bodyguard's squeegeed plate and standing upright on its broad flat head, a one-and-a-half-inch galvanized roofing-nail.
Laney's ribs, an ugly patchwork of yellow, black, and blue, were sprayed with various cool liquids and tightly bound with micropore. He took the hypnotic the doctor had offered, showered at great length, climbed into bed, and was suggesting the light turn itself off when a fax was delivered.
It was addressed to C. LANEY, GUEST:
DAY MA
NAGER GAVE ME MY WALKING PAPERS. “FRATERNIZING.” ANYWAY, I'M SECURITY HERE AT THE LUCKY DRAGON, MIDNITE ON, YOU CAN GET ME FAX, E-MAIL, PHONE'S BIZ ONLY BUT THE PEOPLE ARE OKAY. HOPE YOU'RE OKAY. FEEL RESPONSIBLE. HOPE YOU'RE ENJOYING JAPAN, WHATEVER. RYDELL
“Good night,” Laney said, putting the fax on the bedside module, and fell instantly and very deeply asleep.
And stayed that way until Arleigh phoned from the lobby to suggest a drink. Nine in the evening, by the blue clock in the corner of the module-screen. Laney put on freshly ironed underwear and his other blue Malaysian button-down. He discovered that White Leather Tuxedo had sprung a few seams in his only jacket, but then the boss Russian, Starkov, hadn't let the man come with them in the van, so Laney figured they were even.
Crossing the lobby, he encountered a frantic-looking Rice Daniels, so tense that he'd reverted to the black head-clamp of his Out of Control days. “Laney! Jesus! Have you seen Kathy?”
“No. I've been asleep.”
Daniels did a strange little jig of anxiety, rising on the toes of his brown calfskin loafers. “Look, this is too fucking weird, but I swear— I think she's been abducted.”
“Have you called the police?”
“We did, we did, but it's all fucking Martian, all these forms they tick through on their notebooks, and what blood type was she…. You don't know what blood type she is, do you, Laney?”
“Thin,” Laney said. “Sort of straw-colored.”
But Daniels didn't seem to hear. He seized Laney's shoulder and showed him teeth, a rictus intended somehow to indicate friendship. “I have real respect for you, man. How you don't have any issues.”
Laney saw Arleigh wave to him from the entrance to the lounge. She was wearing something short and black.
“You take care, Rice.” Shaking the man's cold hand. “She'll turn up. I'm sure of it.”