“Randy, he was teaching Buell one earlier, called ‘There Was Whiskey and Blood on the Highway, but I Didn't Hear Nobody Pray.’ That's a hymn, honey. Very traditional. Give me goosebumps to hear it. I think it's called that, anyway. But tonight's set is going to be ‘more upbeat, electric.’”
“Cheers,” Tessa said, “ta for the lager.”
The woman looked puzzled. “Oh. You're welcome, honey. Please do stick around for the set. It's Buell's Northern California debut, and the first time he's actually sung with his Lower Companions.”
“His what?” Chevette asked.
“‘Buell Creedmore and his Lower Companions.’ I think it's a biblical reference, though I can't quote you chapter and verse.” The woman pointed her straining bosom toward the stage and resolutely followed it in that direction.
Chevette didn't really want another beer. “She bought us these because she thought we were A&R.” She knew about that because of Carson. A&R were the people in the music business who found and developed talent.
Tessa took a pull on her beer and watched the woman, who'd stopped to talk to one of the boys from the pool table, one of the ones who was actually wearing a meshbacked cap. “Do people like her live here?”
“No,” Chevette said, “there's clubs in the city for this kind of thing, or sort of like it, but I've never seen a crowd like this out here before.”
The sound check consisted of the man with the squashed cowboy hat playing guitar and the man with the belt buckle singing. They stopped and started a few times, on the one song they did, for various twiddlings of knobs, but the guitarist could really play (Chevette got the feeling he wasn't really letting it out yet, what he could do) and the singer could sing. It was a song about being sad and being tired of being sad.
The bar, meanwhile, was starting to fill up, with what looked to be a bunch of locals, regulars, and a bunch who weren't, who were here to hear the band. The locals tended to tattoos, facial piercings, and asymmetrical haircuts, while the visitors tended to hats (meshback and cowboy, mostly), jeans, and (on the men, anyway) guts. The guts tended to be the kind that looked as though they had moved in while their owners were unaware and had taken up residence on otherwise fat-free frames. The kind of gut that hangs over the top of a pair of jeans with a reasonably small waistband, swelling the front of a flannel shirt but cinched back in, below, with one of those big buckles.
She'd started on Creedmore's Redback out of boredom, when she spotted the singer himself headed their way. He had borrowed someone's meshbacked cap and pulled it on backward, over his weirdly wet-looking bleach-blonde hair. He was wearing an electric-blue cowboy shirt with the store creases still in it, horizontal across the chest, and the white pearlized snaps open halfway down the front, revealing a pale, white, decidedly concave chest that wasn't at all the color of his face, which she figured was painted on. He had what looked like tomato juice in each hand, in a tall glass with ice. “How do,” he said. “Saw that Maryalice over here. Thought I'd bring the old girl a drink. I'm Buell Creedmore. You ladies enjoyin' your beer?”
“Yes, thanks,” said Tessa and looked in the opposite direction. Creedmore did a quick, and to Chevette very obvious, piece of mental calculation, Chevette coming up as the one more likely to be profitably hit on. “You hear about us in the city here or over in Oakland?”
“We're just here for the hot wings,” Chevette said, indicating the plate of chicken bones in front of her.
“They any good?”
“They're okay,” Chevette said. “But we're just leaving.”
“Leaving?” Creedmore took a big swig of his tomato juice. “Hell, we're on in ten. You oughta stay ‘n' hear us.” There was some weird-looking, greenish-sandy stuff, Chevette saw, around the rims of the glasses, and now some of this was stuck on Creedmore's upper lip.
“What you doin' with those Caesar's, Buell?” It was the big guitarist. “Now you promised me you wouldn't drink before the set.”
“For Maryalice,” Creedmore said, gesturing with a glass, “and this here's for the pretty lady.” He put the one he'd had the swig from down in front of Chevette.
“So how come you got that garlic salt on your mouth?” the big man asked.
Creedmore grinned and wiped the back of his hand across his mouth. “Nerves, Randy. Big night. Gonna be okay…”
“It better be, Buell. I don't see some evidence you can hold your liquor, be the last gig you ever play with me.” The guitarist took the drink out of Creedmore's hand, took a sip, made a face, and walked off, taking the drink with him.
“Sons of bitches,” Creedmore said.
And it was at this point that Chevette saw Carson enter the bar.
Recognition, on her part, was instantaneous and one-hundred-percent positive. It was not Carson as dressed for lounges that smelled like aromatherapy, but Carson dressed for the knowing exploration of the lower reaches.
Chevette had actually been with him when he bought this outfit, so she'd had to hear about how the jacket was Alaskan steerhide (Alaskan steers having thicker hides, due to the cold winters), and a museum-grade reproduction of a 1940s original. The jeans were nearly as expensive, and more complicated in their sourcing, the denim woven in Japan on ancient, lovingly maintained American looms and then finished in Tunisia to the specifications of a team of Dutch designers and garment historians. This was the kind of stuff that Carson cared deeply about, this absolutely authentic fake stuff, and when Chevette saw him step through that entrance, she had absolutely no doubt that it was him.
And also, though she couldn't have said exactly how, she knew that she was in trouble. Maybe, she'd think later, it had been because he hadn't known she was looking, so he hadn't really been bothering to be the guy he had always pretended to be when he was with her, when he'd known she was looking.
It was like seeing a different guy, a very scary, very cold, very angry guy, and knowing it was Carson. Carson turning to scan the bar—
What she did next surprised her. It must have surprised Creedmore even more. The top of the huge silver buckle made a convenient handle. She grabbed it, pulled, and brought him down, loose-kneed, to kiss his mouth, throwing her arms around his neck and hoping the back of his head, in the backward meshback hat, was between her face and Carson's.
Creedmore's ready enthusiasm was, unfortunately, about what she'd have expected, had she had the time to think.
33. DURIUS
RYDELL was midway back, through that lower-level crunch, when his sunglasses rang. He got his back, to the nearest wall, took them out, opened them, put them on.
“Rydell?”
“Yeah?”
“Durius, man. How are you?”
“Fine,” Rydell said. The glasses were acting up; weirdly elongated segments of Rio street maps were scrolling down his field of vision. “How are you?” He heard the whine of a drill or power driver, somewhere in LA. “You at the Dragon?”
“Yeah,” Durius said, “we got major construction under way here.”
“What for?”
“Don't know,” Durius said. “They're putting in a new node, back by the ATM. Where they had the baby food and child care products before, you know? Park won't say what it is; don't think he knows. All the branches gettin' 'em, whatever they are. How's your ride up? How's that Creedmore?”
“I think he's an alcoholic, Durius.”
“No shit,” Durius said. “How's the new job?”
“Well,” Rydell said, “I don't think I've figured out much about it yet, but it's getting interesting.”
“That's good,” Durius said. “Well, just wanted to see how you're doing. Praisegod, she says hi. Wants to know if you like the glasses.”
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.
&nb
sp; Rydell removed the glasses 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 he'd better check on the thermos first.
34. MARKET DISCONTINUITIES
“WHAT'S this look like to you, Martial?” Fontaine asked his lawyer, Martial Matitse, of Matitse 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. Antiterrorist 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 documents?”
“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 documents. 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 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 documents nobody else can, you might want to talk about it with someone who'd have an idea of exactly which documents 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.
35. ON AUTOMATIC
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, 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 hit 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.
“I thought you were gone,” Heron said, displaying broken teeth. Maybe something broken in his head too, it struck her. Or maybe just some substance, tonight.
“I was,” Chevette said.
“Where?”
“SoCal.”
“You ride down there? Messenger?”
“No,” she said.
“I can't ride now,” Heron said and swung his left leg, rigid, forward, catching his weight on it, something wrong there with his knee. “Tangled with a ca
ge.” A car, and she thought how long it had been since she'd heard that.
“You get insurance?”
“Shit no, cage from DoJ City.” The Department of Justice. “I got lawyers on it, but…” Crooked shrug. “One of my lawyers, Njembo, you know those three guys? Refugees from the African Union, right? Njembo, he knows that Fontaine. You know Fontaine, right?”
“Yeah,” Chevette said, glancing back over her shoulder. “He still out by Oakland, wives and kids?”
“No,” Heron said, “no, he's got a shop, just up there.” He pointed. “Sleeps there. Sells stuff to tourists. Njembo says his wives are after his ass.” He squinted at her, the scar on his cheek catching the light. “You look good. Hair's different.”
Something in that flash of scar catching in the edge of Creedmore's spit-high; she shivered, the dancer dealing her cards of Carson walking this way, that same expression on his face, hands in the pockets of his leather jacket.
“Good to see you, Heron.”
“Yeah,” he said, something sullen and untrusting, maybe longing, evident there, and again the crooked shrug, maybe just to shake some pain from his shoulders. He looked down and set off back the way she'd come, and she saw how twisted the accident had left him, hobbling, swinging his stiff leg as he went.
She zipped up Skinner's jacket and went looking for Fontaine's shop, wondering if she'd know it if she found it.
36. FAMOUS ASPECT
RYDELL bought a white foam take-out beef bowl from Ghetto Chef, then had to figure out how to get up the ladder one-handed, without spilling it.
Climbing a ladder with something hot in one hand was one of those things that you never ordinarily thought about, but that turned out to be difficult. You can't safely tuck a hot beef bowl under your arm, and when you climb with only one hand, you've got to move that hand fast, keep catching those rungs.
But he got up there, didn't spill any, and then he put it down while he unlocked the two-by-four and chicken-wire security grid. This had a chrome-plated Nepalese padlock on either side, and he'd found the keys, earlier, hanging on a nail. It was one of those deeply pointless arrangements, in terms of security, because anyone who wanted in could boltcut the padlocks, pry their hasps out of the wood, or just yank the chicken wire until the staples pulled out. On the other hand, if you went out, left it unlocked, and somebody took your stuff with no effort at all, he guessed you'd feel even stupider.