“Department to Combat the Misappropriation of Socialist Property,” Tamara said. “They’ve never dared to come near here before … They’re the income people, the accountants, the nastiest little cops there are. Once they get their teeth in you, it’s all over!”
Starlitz drove past the convoy. The brown cars, with their packed, burr-headed Russian accountants, sped on without a pause.
“They’re not trying to stop this bus,” he said. “They didn’t recognize it.”
“They’re not from Azerbaijan. We bribed all the locals. They’re outside people,” Tamara said. “These cops are Gorbachev’s!” She slammed her fist against the window. “He’s betrayed us! Stabbed us in the back! That hypocrite bastard! Where does his wife get those fancy furs and shoes, I wonder!”
“Earned ’em with her salary as an art historian,” Starlitz said.
Tamara wiped bitterly at her kohl-smeared eyes. “It’s so unfair! All we wanted was a decent life here! Those stupid Russians: they have a system that would make a donkey laugh, and now they want to purify it! God, I hate them!”
“What do you wanna do now?” Starlitz said. “Go back and stand ’em off on your doorstep?”
“No,” she said grimly. “We’ll have to bend to the almighty wind from Moscow. We’ll wait, though, and we’ll be back, as soon as they give up trying. It won’t take long. The new god will fail.”
“Okay, good,” Starlitz said. “In the meantime, I’ll just keep driving. I love this bus. It’s great.”
“Gorbachev won’t dare try us publicly,” Tamara said, gnawing one nail. “I’ll bet they simply retire my husband. Maybe even promote him. Some post that’s safe and completely meaningless. Like Environment, or Consumer Affairs.”
“Yeah,” Starlitz said. “This is the new era, right? They won’t shoot Party bosses. Makes the Politburo nervous.”
“That’s right,” Tamara said.
“But it’s gonna be tough on your underlings. The people with no big-time strings to pull.”
Tamara arched her brows. “Oh well … most of them are lousy Armenians anyway. Born thieves … we were always careful to hire Armenians whenever we could.”
Starlitz nodded. “Well, I held up my end of the system,” he said. “Got the plane launched. Got the job done. The rest of it’s not my lookout.” He pulled over to the side of the road with a gentle hiss of airbrakes. “Looks like we part company here. So long, Tamara. It’s been real.”
She stared at him. “This is my bus!”
“Not any more. Sorry.”
She was stunned for a moment. Then her face went bleak. “You can’t get away with this, you know. The police will stop you. There will be roadblocks.”
“It’s gonna be chaos,” Starlitz said. “The cops will have their hands full, or I miss my guess. But the cops won’t stop the chairman’s bus—old habits don’t die that quick. So I’ll just wing it. Improvise.” Starlitz rubbed his stubbled chin. “I’ll dress up as a paramedic, I guess. Get a Red Cross armband. Nobody stops rescue workers, not when there’s really big trouble.”
“I’m not leaving my bus!” Tamara said, grabbing the armrest. “You can’t do this to me!”
Starlitz reached behind his back and produced the Afghan pistol. “Just a technicality,” he said, not bothering to point it at her. “Open the door and get out, okay?”
Tamara got out. She stood at the muddy side of the road in her high heels. The bus drove off.
Seconds ticked by.
A brutal tide of shock coursed through the landscape. Trees whipped at the air; the earth rippled. Tamara was knocked from her feet. She clutched at the roadside as a deep, subterranean rumble seeped up through her hands and knees.
The bus stopped dead, fishtailing. She saw it sway and rattle on its shocks, until the tremor slowed, and, finally, came to a grinding end.
Then the bus turned and raced back toward her. Tamara got to her feet, trembling, wiping mechanically at the mud on her hands.
Starlitz pulled over. He opened the door and leaned out. “I forgot the jacket,” he said.
ARE YOU
FOR 86?
Leggy Starlitz emerged from behind cool smoked glass to the raucous screeching of seagulls. Hot summer sun glinted fiercely off the Pacific. The harbor smelled of tar, and of poorly processed animal fats from an urban sewage-treatment outlet.
“Hell of a place for a dope deal,” Starlitz observed.
Mr. Judy hopped lithely out of the van. Mr. Judy was a petite blonde with long pale schoolgirl braids; the top of her well-scrubbed scalp, which smelled strongly of peppermint and wintergreen, barely came to Starlitz’s shoulder. Starlitz nevertheless took a cautious half-step out of her way.
Vanna, in khaki shorts and a Hawaiian blouse, leaned placidly against the white hull of the van, which bore the large chromed logo of an extinct televangelist satellite-TV empire. She dug into a brown paper bag of trail mix and began munching.
“It’s broad daylight, too,” Starlitz grumbled. He plucked sunglasses from a velcro pocket of his cameraman’s vest, and jammed the shades onto his face. He scanned the harbor’s parking lot with paranoiac care. Not much there: a couple of yellow taxis, three big-wheeled yuppie pickups with Oregon plates, a family station wagon. “What the hell kind of connection is this guy?”
“The Wolverine’s got a very good rep,” Mr. Judy said. She wore a white college jersey, and baggy black pants with drawstrings at the waist and ankles. Tarred gravel crunched under the cloth soles of her size-four kung-fu shoes as she examined a Mexican cruise ship through a dainty pair of Nikon binoculars.
Half a dozen sun-wrinkled, tottering oldsters, accompanied by wheeled luggage trolleys, were making their way down the pier to dry land and the customs shed.
Starlitz snorted skeptically. “This place is nowhere! If Wolverine’s a no-show, are you gonna let me call the Polynesians?”
“No way,” Mr. Judy told him.
Vanna nodded. She shook the last powdery nuggets of trail mix into her pale, long-fingered palm, ate them, then folded the paper bag neatly and stuck it in the top of her hiking boot.
“C’mon,” Starlitz protested. “We can do whatever we want out here, now that we’re on the road. Let’s do it the smart way, for once. Nobody’s looking.”
Mr. Judy shook her head. “The New Caledonians are into armed struggle, they want guns. The commune doesn’t deal guns.”
“But the Polynesians have much better product,” Starlitz insisted. “It’s not Mexican homebrew crap like Wolverine’s, this is actual no-kidding RU-486 right out of legitimate French drug-labs. Got the genuine industrial logos on the ampules and everything.”
Mr. Judy lowered her Nikons in exasperation. “So what? We’re not making commercials about the stuff. Hell, we’re not even trying to clear a profit.”
“Yeah, yeah, politically correct,” Starlitz said irritably. “Well, the French are testing dirty nuke explosives in the South Pacific, in case you haven’t been reading your Greenpeace agitprop lately. And the Caledonian rebel front stole a bunch of French RU-486 and want to give these pills to us. They’re an insurgent Third-World colonial ethnic minority. Hell, all they want is a few lousy Vietnam-era M-16s and some ammo. You can’t get more politically correct than a deal like that.”
“Look, I’ve seen your Polynesians, and they’re a clique of patriarchal terrorists,” Mr. Judy said. “Let ’em put a woman on their central committee, then maybe I’ll get impressed.”
Starlitz grunted.
Mr. Judy sniffed in disdain. “You’re just pissed-off because we wouldn’t move that arsenal you bought in Las Vegas.”
Vanna broke in. “You oughta be glad we’re letting you keep guns on our property, Leggy.”
“Yeah, Vanna, thanks a lot for nothing.”
Vanna chided him with a shake of her shaggy brown head. “At least you know that your, uhm … your armament …” She searched for words. “It’s all really safe with us. Right? Okay?”
“Have a nice cold guava fizz,” Vanna offered sweetly. “There’s still two left under the ice in the cooler.”
Starlitz said nothing. He sat on the chromed bumper and deliberately lit a ginseng cigarette.
“I wonder how a heavy operator like Wolverine ended up with all these retirees,” Mr. Judy said, lowering her binocs. “You think the parabolic mike can pick up any conversation from on board?”
“Not at this range,” Starlitz said.
“How about the scanner? Ship-to-shore radio?”
“Worth a try,” Starlitz said, brightening. He slid into the driver’s seat and began fiddling with a Korean-made broadband scanner, rigged under the dashboard.
An elderly woman with a luggage trolley descended the pier to the edge of the parking lot. She took off a large woven-straw sun-hat and waved it above her head. “Yoo-hoo!”
Vanna and Mr. Judy traded looks.
“Yoo-hoo! You girls, you with the van!”
“Mother of God,” Mr. Judy muttered. She flung her braids back, climbed into the passenger seat. “We gotta roll, Leggy!”
Starlitz looked up sharply from the scanner’s elliptical green readouts and square yellow buttons. “You drive,” he said. He worked his way back, between the cryptic ranks of electronic equipment lining both walls of the van, then crouched warily behind the driver’s seat. He yanked a semi-automatic pistol from within his vest, and slid a round into the chamber.
Mr. Judy drove carefully across the gravel and pulled up beside the woman from the cruise ship. The stranger had blue hair, orthopedic hose, a flowered sundress. Her trolley sported a baby-blue Samsonite case, a handbag, and a menagerie of Mexican stuffed animals: neon-green and fuchsia poodles, a pair of giant toddler-sized stuffed pandas.
Mr. Judy rolled the tinted window down. “Yes ma’am?” she said politely.
“Can you take me to a hotel?” the woman said. She lowered her voice. “I need—a room of my own.”
“We can take you to the lighthouse,” Mr. Judy countersigned.
“Wonderful!” the woman said, nodding. “So very nice to make this rendezvous … Well, it’s all here, ladies.” She waved triumphantly at her trolley.
“You’re ‘Wolverine’?” Vanna said.
“Yes I am. Sort of.” Wolverine smiled. “You see, three of the women in my study-group have children attending Michigan University …”
“Maybe we better pat her down anyway, Jude,” Starlitz said. “She’s got room for a couple of frag grenades in that handbag.”
Wolverine lifted a pair of horn-rimmed bifocals on a neck chain and peered through the driver’s window. She seemed surprised to see Starlitz. “Hello, young man.”
“Que tal?” Starlitz said in resignation, putting his pistol away.
“Muy bien, señor, y usted?”
“Get her luggage, Leggy,” Mr. Judy said. “Vanna, you better let Sister Wolverine sit in the passenger seat.”
Vanna got out and helped Wolverine into the front of the van. Starlitz, his mouth set in a line of grim distaste, hurled the stuffed animals into the back.
“Be careful,” Wolverine protested, “those are for my grandchildren! The pills are in the middle, hidden in the stuffing.”
Vanna deftly ripped a seam open and burrowed into the puffed-polyester guts of a panda. She pulled out a shining wad of contraband and gazed at it with interest. “Where’d you find Saran Wrap in Cancún?”
“Oh, I always carry Saran Wrap, dear,” said Wolverine, fastening her shoulder harness. “That, and nylon net.”
“Lemme drive,” Starlitz demanded, at the door. Mr. Judy nodded and crept lithely into the back, where she sat cross-legged on the rubber-matted aisle between the bolted-down racks of equipment. Vanna slammed the van’s back door from the inside, locked it, and sat on Wolverine’s Samsonite suitcase.
Starlitz threw the van into gear. “Where you wanna go?” he said.
“Bus station, please,” Wolverine said.
“Great. No problem.” Starlitz began humming. He loved driving.
Mr. Judy broke the sutures on a lime-green poodle and removed another neatly wrapped bundle of abortifacient pills. “Great work, Wolverine. You been doing this long?”
“Not long enough to get caught,” Wolverine said. She removed her bifocals, and patted her powdered chin and forehead with a neatly folded linen handkerchief. “ ‘Wolverine’ will be somebody else, next time. Don’t expect to see me again, thank you very much.”
“We appreciate your brave action, sister,” Mr. Judy said formally. “Please convey our very best regards to your study-group.” She rose to her knees and extended her hand. Wolverine turned clumsily in her seat and shook Mr. Judy’s hand warmly.
“This certainly is an odd vehicle,” Wolverine said, peering at the blinking lights and racks of switches. “You’re not really Christian evangelists, are you?”
“Oh no, we’re Goddess pagans,” Mr. Judy declared, carefully disemboweling another poodle. “Our associate Leggy here bought this van at an auction. After Six Flags Over Jesus went bust in the rape scandal. We just use it for cover.”
“It rather worried me,” Wolverine confessed. “My friends told me to watch out carefully for any church groups. They might be right-to-lifers.” She glanced warily at Starlitz. “They also said that if I met any tough-looking male hippies, they were probably drug enforcement people.”
“Not me,” Starlitz demurred. “All D.E.A. guys have pony-tails and earrings.”
“What do you do with all these machines? Are those computers?”
“It’s telephone equipment,” Mr. Judy said cheerfully. “You may have heard of us—I mean, besides our health-and-reproductive services. People call us the Pheminist Phone Phreaks.”
“No,” Wolverine said thoughtfully, “I hadn’t heard.”
“We’re do-it-yourself telephone operators. My hacker handle is ‘Mr. Judy,’ and this is ‘Vanna.’ ”
“How do you do?” Wolverine said. “So you young ladies really know how to operate all this machinery? That certainly is impressive.”
“Oh, it’s real simple,” Mr. Judy assured her. “This is our fax machine … That big noisy thing is the battery power unit. This one, with the fake mahogany console, is our voice-mail system … And this one, the off-white gizmo with the peach trim, runs our satellite dish.”
“It’s the uplink,” Starlitz said, deeply pained. “Don’t call it ‘the gizmo with peach trim.’ ”
“And these are home computers with modem phone-links,” Mr. Judy said, ignoring him. “This one is running our underground bulletin board service. We run a 900 dial-up service with this one: it has the voice generator, and a big hard worm.”
“Hard disk. WORM drive,” Starlitz groaned.
“You know what a bridge is?” Vanna said. “That’s a conference call, when sisters from out-of-state can all relate together.” She smiled sweetly. “And you bill it to, like, a really big stupid corporation. Or a U.S. Army base!”
Mr. Judy nodded vigorously. “We do a lot of that! Maybe you’d like to join us on a phone-conference, sometime soon.”
“Isn’t that illegal?” Wolverine asked.
“We think of it as ‘long-distance liberation,’ ” Mr. Judy said.
“We certainly do use plenty of long-distance phone service in my group,” Wolverine said, intrigued. “Mostly we charge it to the foundation’s SPRINT card, though …”
“You’re nonprofit? 501(c)(3)?”
Wolverine nodded.
“That’s really good activist tactics, getting foundation backing,” Mr. Judy said politely. “But we can hack all the SPRINT codes you want, right off our Commodore.”
“Really?”
“It’s easy, if you’re not afraid to experiment,” Vanna said brightly. “I mean, they’re just phones. Phones can’t hurt you.”
“And this is a cellular power-booster,” Mr. Judy said, affectionately patting an oblong box of
putty-colored high-impact plastic. “It’s wonderful! The phone companies install them in places like tunnels, where you can’t get good phone reception from your earphone. But if you know where to find one of these for yourself, then you can liberate it, and re-wire it. So now, this is our own little portable cellular phone-station. It patches right into the phone network, but it doesn’t show up on their computers at all, so there’s never any bills!”
“How do you afford all these things?” Wolverine asked.
“Oh, that’s the best part,” Mr. Judy said, “the whole operation pays for itself! I’ll show you. Just listen to this!”
Mr. Judy typed briefly on the keyboard of a Commodore, pausing as Starlitz forded a pothole. Then she hit a return key, and twisted an audio dial. A fist-sized audio speaker, trailing a flat rainbow-striped cord, emitted a twittering screech. Then a hesitant male voice, lightly scratched with static, filled the van.
“… just don’t like men anymore,” the voice complained.
“Why don’t you think they like you?” a silky, breathy voice responded. “Does it have something to do with the money?”
“It’s not the money, I tell you,” the man whined. “It’s AIDS. Men are poisonous now.” His voice shook. “It’s all so different nowadays.”
“Why is it all so different?”
“It’s because cum is poisonous. That’s the real truth, isn’t it?” The man was bitter suddenly, demanding. “You can die just from touching cum! I mean, every chick I ever knew in my life was kind of scared of that stuff … But now it’s a hundred times worse.”
“I’m not afraid of you,” the voice soothed. “You can tell me anything.”
“Well, that’s what’s so different about you,” the man told the voice unconvincingly. “But goddamn Linda—remember I was telling you about Linda? She acted like it was napalm or something …”
Mr. Judy turned the dial down. “This guy’s a customer of ours; he’s talking on one of our 900 lines, and he’s paying a buck per minute on his credit card.”
Vanna examined another console. “It’s a VISA card. On a savings-and-loan from Colorado. Equifax checkout says it’s good.”
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