Which had left Rydell facing a blank plywood partition plastered with rain-stained handbills, in a European language he didn't recognize, for a concert by someone named Ottoman Badchair. He described this to Laney.
“That isn't it,” Laney said, “but you're really close.”
There was a shop next door, closed, and he couldn't figure out what it sold when it was open, and then a gap. Rolls of plastic back in there. Lumber. Someone was building another shop, he thought. If this was it, the crime scene, there ought to be a yellow plastic ribbon with SFPD stapled up, but then he remembered that the police didn't come out here all that much, and he wondered what they did when they had a body to dispose of. Flipping them over the side wouldn't make the city too happy, although of course there was no way the city could prove a particular corpse had come off the bridge. Still, it bothered Rydell that there wasn't any yellow ribbon. He guessed he thought of it as a mark of respect.
He moved in, edging past the rolls of plastic, climbing over a low stack of plywood, and spotted, in the harsh light slung from the scavenged fluorescents closer to the pedestrian stroll, two frosty-looking white marks, something aerosoled over two darker stains, and he knew what that was. Kil'Z, this stuff you sprayed where bodily fluids had gotten out, in case the person who'd lost them was seropositive. He knew what Kil‘Z looked like over blood, and this was that.
Not much of a crime scene. He stood there staring down at it and wondering how Laney expected him to look like he was conducting an investigation. He put the duffel with Rei Toei's projector down on the rolls of plastic.
Kil'Z residue was fairly waterproof, so the rain hadn't washed it away. But then he knew that the victims, whoever they had been, had died the night before.
He felt like an idiot. He really had wanted to be a cop once, and he'd dreamed of crossing the yellow line and looking at the scene. And being able to do something. And now here he was.
He took out the glasses and called Laney. But now Laney, in whatever fine hotel he might be in, in Tokyo, wouldn't answer.
“No shit, Sherlock,” Rydell said to himself, listening to a phone ring in Tokyo.
41. TRANSAM
“HIS name is Rydell,” Harwood says. “Image matching gave us that immediately. He was briefly associated with Cops in Trouble.”
“Associated with whom?” The knife, with its sheath and harness, was secured in a twilit alcove off the central elevator stack, approximately eight hundred feet below.
“Cops in Trouble,” Harwood says. “A cultural treasure. Don't you watch television?”
“No.” He is looking east, from the forty-eighth and ultimate floor of the city's tallest building, toward the shadow of the ruined Embarcadero, the gypsy glow of the bridge, the feral darkness of Treasure Island.
Stepping closer to the window, he touches his belt. Stitched between two layers of black calf is concealed a ribbon of a very particular, very expensive material. Under certain circumstances, it ceases to behave as though it were some loosely woven, tissue-thin fabric, something a child might accidentally pull to pieces, and becomes instead thirty inches of something limber, double-edged, and very sharp. Its texture, in that state, its sleek translucency, has reminded him of fresh cuttlebone.
“You do have a sense of humor,” Harwood says, behind him. “I know it.”
Leaning closer to the window, looking down. Foreshortened perspective up the side of this obelisk, this pyramid so-called, and midway the dark bulge of that Japanese material, placed to counter old quake damage. This is new, replacing earlier splines of polycarbon, and the subject of architectural and aesthetic scandal. Briefly fascinated, he watches as reflections of the lights of surrounding buildings shudder slightly, the thing's glossy surface tensing in response to winds he cannot feel. The truss is alive.
Turning to face Harwood, who is seated behind a broad dark plain of nonreflective wood, across which an accumulation of architectural models and hillocks of documents suggest the courses of imaginary rivers: a topography in which might be read change in the world beyond the window, if meanings were known, and one were sufficiently concerned with outcomes.
Harwood's eyes are the most present thing about him, the rest giving an impression of existing at one remove, in some other and unspecific dimension. A tall man, he seems to occupy relatively little space, communicating from elsewhere via deliberately constricted channels. He is slender, with that agelessness of the aging rich, his long face free of tension. His eyes, enlarged by archaic lenses, are seldom still. “Why do you pretend to not be interested in this former policeman visiting the site of your recent activities?” On his wrist, gold and titanium catches the light; some multitasking bauble with intricate displays.
“I don't pretend.” On the large flatscreen that stands to the left of the desk, four cameras present angles on a tall, sturdy-looking man who stands, chin down, as if brooding. The cameras would be no larger than roaches, but the four images, in spite of inadequate light, offer excellent resolution. “Who placed these cameras?”
“My bright young things.”
“Why?”
“Against exactly this eventuality: that someone might visit the site of these two utterly forgettable deaths and stand there, thinking. Look at him. He's thinking.”
“He looks unhappy.”
“He's trying to imagine you.”
“You imagine he is.”
“The fact that he's found his way to that spot at all is indicative of knowledge and motive. He knows that two men died there.”
Amid the various models on Harwood's desk stands one in glossy red and white, rendered with functioning miniature video screens on the trademark pylon. Tiny images move and change there, in liquid crystal.
“Do you own the company that built this thing?” indicating the model with his index finger.
The eyes behind Hardwood's glasses register surprise, from their peculiar distance. Then interest. “No. We advise them. We are a public relations firm. We did, I believe, advise on impact. We advised the city as well.”
“It's horrible.”
“Yes,” says Harwood, “aesthetically, I agree. And that was an expressed concern of the municipal authorities. But our studies indicated that positioning it there would encourage walk-on tourism, and that is a crucial aspect of normalization.”
“Normalization?”
“There is an ongoing initiative to bring the bridge community back into the fold, as it were. But the issue is sensitive. A matter of image really, and that of course is where we come in.” Harwood smiles. “A number of major cities have these autonomous zones, and how a given city chooses to deal with the situation can impact drastically on that city's image. Copenhagen, for instance, was one of the first, and has done very well. Atlanta, I suppose, would be the classic example of what not to do.” Harwood blinks. “It's what we do now instead of bohemias,” he says.
“Instead of what?”
“Bohemias. Alternative subcultures. They were a crucial aspect of industrial civilization in the two previous centuries. They were where industrial civilization went to dream. A sort of unconscious R&D, exploring alternate societal strategies. Each one would have a dress code, characteristic forms of artistic expression, a substance or substances of choice, and a set of sexual values at odds with those of the culture at large. And they did, frequently, have locales with which they became associated. But they became extinct.”
“Extinct?”
“We started picking them before they could ripen. A certain crucial growing period was lost, as marketing evolved and the mechanisms of recommodification became quicker, more rapacious. Authentic subcultures required backwaters, and time, and there are no more backwaters. They went the way of geography in general. Autonomous zones do offer a certain insulation from the monoculture, but they seem not to lend themselves to recommodification, not in the same way. We don't know why exactly.” The little images shift, flickering.
“They shouldn't have put it there.”
Harwood's eyes come in from their private distance. “I don't believe I've ever heard you express so specific an opinion.”
No reply.
“You'll have a second chance to see it. I want you to find out what our pensive friend here is thinking about.”
“Is this concerned with what you implied when we spoke earlier, that something is on the verge of happening?”
“Yes.”
“And what would that be?”
Harwood considers him from the distance behind his glasses. “Do you believe in forces of history?”
“I believe in what brings us to the moment.”
“I seem to have come to believe in the moment myself. I believe we are approaching one, drawn to it by the gravity of its strangeness. It is a moment in which everything and nothing will change. I am seeking an outcome in which I will retain viability. I am seeking an outcome in which Harwood Levine will not have become four meaningless syllables. If the world is to be reborn, I wish to be reborn in it, as something akin to what I am today.”
Thinking of the possible number and variety of crosshairs that must be trained on him now, hidden telepresent weapons platforms. He is fairly certain, nonetheless, that he could kill Harwood, if the moment required, though he also knows that he would almost certainly predecease him, if only by some fraction of a second. “I think you have become more complicated, since we last met.”
“Complex,” Harwood says, and smiles.
42. RED GHOSTS OF EUROPEAN TIME
FONTAINE makes himself a cup of instant miso on the hotplate. This is what he drinks before bed, a soothing saltiness and bits of seaweed at the bottom. Thinking of Skinner's girl and seeing her again. Usually when people leave the bridge they don't come back. Weirdness around her departure but he forgets what exactly. Not good for the old man but his time nearly done then anyway.
Tick tick of the silent boy under the eyephones, hunting watches. Fontaine pours his miso into a cup missing its handle, savoring the aromatic steam. Tired now, he wonders where the boy can sleep here or if indeed he will. Maybe sit up all night hunting watches. Fontaine shakes his head. The ticking stops.
Carrying his soup, he turns to see what's arrested the ceaseless hunt.
There on the screen of the notebook, in the boy's lap, is a scan of a battered Rolex “Victory,” an inexpensive wartime model for the Canadian market, worth a fair bit now but not in this condition. The steel case looks rough and the dial has faded unevenly. Black Arabics from one to twelve are crisp, but the inner chapter, red, European time, is almost gone.
Fontaine sips his miso, looking down, wondering what it is this boy sees to hold him, in the red ghosts of European time.
Then the boy's head sags under the weight of the eyephones, and Fontaine hears him start to snore.
43. LIBIA & PACO
LANEY finds himself on an island in that mind-wide flow he ceaselessly cruises.
It is not a construct, this place, an environment proper, so much as a knotting, a folding-in of information rooted in the substrates of the oldest codes. It is something like a makeshift raft, random pieces thrown together, but it is anchored, unmoving. He knows that it is no accident, that it has been put in his path for a reason.
The reason, he soon finds, is that Libia and Paco wish to speak with him.
They are associates of the Rooster, junior denizens of the Walled City, and present here as a sphere of mercury in zero gravity and a black, three-legged cat, respectively. The sphere of mercury (Libia) has a lovely voice, a girl's, and the three-legged cat, who is also missing one eye and one ear (Paco) has a cunningly modulated growl Laney thinks he remembers from a Mexican cartoon. They are almost certainly from Mexico City, these two, if geography needs to be taken into consideration, and very likely belong to that faction of flaming youth currently opting for the re-flooding of the Federal District's drained lakes, a radical urban reconfiguration that for some reason had obsessed Rei Toei in her final month in Tokyo. She had developed a fascination with large human settlements in general, and Laney had been her guide through certain of the stranger info-prospects presented by what passes, this century, for town planning.
So he hangs here, at the juncture of these old code-roots, in a place devoid of very specific shape or texture, aside from Libia and Paco, and hears them.
“The Rooster tells us you feel someone is watching you watch Cody Harwood,” says the sphere of mercury, pulsing as it speaks, its surface reflecting vehicles passing in some busy street.
“It might be an artifact,” Laney counters, not sure he should have brought it up with the Rooster, whose paranoia is legendary. “Something the 5-SB generates.”
“We think not,” says the cat, its one-eyed filthy head propped atop an arrested drift of data. It yawns, revealing grayish-white gums, the color of boiled pork, and a single orange canine. Its one eye is yellow and hate-filled, unblinking. “We have determined that you are, in fact, being observed in your observation.”
“But not at the moment,” says Libia.
“Because we have constructed this blind,” says the cat.
“Do you know who it is?” Laney asks.
“It is Harwood,” says Libia, the sphere quivering delicately.
“Harwood? Harwood is watching me watch him?”
“Harwood,” says the cat, “dosed himself with 5-SB. Three years after you were released from the orphanage in Gainesville.”
Laney is suddenly and terribly aware of his physical being, the condition of his body. His lungs failing in a cardboard carton in the concrete bowels of Shinjuku Station.
Harwood. It is Harwood whom he has sometimes imagined as the presence of God.
Harwood, who is…
Like him.
Harwood who sees, Laney now sees, the nodal points. Who sees the shapes from which history emerges. And that is why he is at the very heart of the emergent cusp, this newness Laney cannot quite glimpse. Of course Harwood is there.
Because Harwood, in a sense, is causing it.
“How do you know?” he hears himself ask, and wills himself beyond the failing strictures of his body. “Can you be sure?”
“We've found a way in,” Libia chimes, the sphere distorting like a topographic learning aid, turning reflections of moving traffic into animated Escher-fragments that fly together, mirroring one another. “The Rooster set us to it, and we did.”
“And does he know?” Laney asks. “Does Harwood know?”
“We don't think he's noticed,” growls the cat, purple-brown scabs caked on the absence of its ear.
“Watch this,” says Libia, making no effort to conceal her pride. The intricately lobed surface of the mirrored shape flows and ripples, and Laney is looking into the gray eyes of a young and very serious-looking man.
“You want us to kill him,” the young man says. “Or do I misunderstand you?”
“You understand me,” says Harwood, his voice familiar, unmistakable, though he sounds tired.
“You know I think it's a very good idea,” says the young man, “but it could be done with greater surety if you gave us time for preparation. I prefer to choose the time and the terrain, if possible.”
“Not possible,” Harwood says. “Do it when you can.”
“You don't have to give me a reason, of course,” the young man says, “but you must realize I'm curious. We've suggested his removal since you contracted with us.”
“It's time,” Harwood replies. “The moment.”
Wind catches the young man's dark scarf. It flutters, strobing the image. “What about the other one, the rent-a-cop?”
“Kill him if it seems he's likely to escape. Otherwise, it might be useful if he could be questioned. He's in this too, but I don't see exactly how.”
Libia becomes a sphere again, rotating.
Laney closes his eyes and gropes in the close electric dark for the blue cough syrup. He feels the hate-filled yellow eye watching him, but he imagines it as Harwood's. r />
Harwood knows.
Harwood took the 5-SB.
Harwood is like him.
But Harwood has an agenda of his own, and it is from this agenda, in part, that the situation is emerging.
Laney cracks the seal. Drinks the blue syrup. He must think now.
44. JUST WHEN YOU THINK…
THE rain wasn't coming back, Chevette decided, shrugging her shoulders against the weight of Skinner's jacket.
She was sitting on a bench, behind a stack of empty poultry crates, and she knew she should be going somewhere but she just couldn't. Thinking about Skinner dying here, about what Fontaine had said. The knife in the inside pocket, its handle digging into her left collarbone, the way she was slouched. She straightened her back against the plywood behind her and tried to pull herself together.
She had to find Tessa and get back to the van, and she had to do that, if she could, without running into Carson. It was possible, she figured, that he hadn't even seen her run out, even though she was sure somehow that when she'd seen him, he'd been looking for nobody but her. But if he hadn't seen her, and he wouldn't have found her there, then probably that bar would be the last place she should expect to find him now. And if he had seen her, then he wouldn't think she'd go back there either. Which would also put him somewhere else. And it was possible that Tessa, who liked her beers, would be there still, because she sure hadn't been keen on bedding down in the van. Probably Tessa thought that the bar was way interstitial, so it might just be that Chevette, if she was careful about it, could slip in there and get her, and get her back to the van. Carson wasn't too likely to come sniffing around the foot of Folsom, and if he did he was liable to run into the kind of people who'd take him for easy meat.
But it was no good sitting here, this close to chicken crates, because that was a good way to catch lice, and just the thought of it made her scalp itch. She stood up, stretched, smelling the faint ammonia tang of chicken shit, and set off through the upper level toward the city, keeping an eye out for Carson.