“Thanks,” Laney said. The bartender ducked his shaven eyebrows.
In spite of the modest decor, there were dozens of bottles of expensive-looking whiskey arranged behind the bar, each one with a hand-written brown paper sticker: the owner's name in Japanese. Yamazaki had explained that you bought one and they kept it there for you. Blackwell was on his second tumbler of the local vodka-analog, on the rocks. Yamazaki was sticking to Coke Lite. Laney had an untouched shot of surrealistically expensive Kentucky straight bourbon whiskey in front of him, and wondered vaguely what it would do to his jet lag if he were actually to drink it.
“So,” Blackwell said, draining the tumbler, ice clinking against his prosthetic, “they get you out so they can have a go at these other bastards.”
“That was it, basically,” Laney said. “They had their own legal team waiting, to do that, and another team to work on the nondisclosure agreement I'd signed with Slitscan.”
“And the second team had the bigger job,” Blackwell said, shoving his empty glass toward the bartender, who swept it smoothly out of sight, producing a fresh replacement just as smoothly, as if from nowhere.
“That's true,” Laney said. He'd had no idea, really, of what he'd be getting into when he'd found himself agreeing to the general outlines of Rice Daniels' offer. But there was something in him that didn't want to see Slitscan walk away from the sound of that one single shot from Alison Shires' kitchen. (Produced, the cops had pointed out, by a Russian-made device that was hardly more than a cartridge, a tube to contain it, and the simplest possible firing mechanism; these were designed with suicide almost exclusively in mind; there was no way to aim them at anything more than two inches away. Laney had heard of them, but had never seen one before; for some reason, they were called Wednesday Night Specials.)
And Slitscan would walk away, he knew; they'd drop the sequence on Alison's actor, if they felt they had to, and the whole thing would settle to the sea floor, silting over almost instantly with the world's steady accretion of data.
And Alison Shires' life, as he'd known it in all that terrible, banal intimacy, would lie there forever, forgotten and finally unknowable.
But if he went with Out of Control, her life might retrospectively become something else, and he wasn't sure, exactly, sitting there on the hard little chair in Visitors, what that might be.
He thought of coral, of the reefs that grew around sunken aircraft carriers; perhaps she'd become something like that, the buried mystery beneath some exfoliating superstructure of supposition, or even of myth.
It seemed to him, in Visitors, that that might be a slightly less dead way of being dead. And he wished her that.
“Get me out of here,” he said to Daniels, who smiled beneath his surgical clamp, whipping the card triumphantly away from the plastic.
“Steady,” said Blackwell, laying his huge hand, with its silvery-pink fretwork of scars, over Laney's wrist. “You haven't even had your drink yet.”
Laney had met Rydell when the Out of Control team installed him in a suite at the Chateau, that ancient simulacrum of a still more ancient original, its quaint concrete eccentricities pinched between the twin brutalities of a particularly nasty pair of office buildings dating from the final year of the previous century. These reflected all the Millennial anxiety of the year of their creation, while refracting it through some other, more mysterious, weirdly muted hysteria that seemed somehow more personal and even less attractive.
Laney's suite, much larger than his apartment in Santa Monica, was like an elongated 1920s apartment following the long, shallow concrete balcony that faced Sunset, this in turn overlooking a deeper balcony on the floor below and the tiny circular lawn that was all that remained of the original gardens.
Laney thought it was a strange choice, considering his situation. He would have imagined they'd choose something more corporate, more fortified, more heavily wired, but Rice Daniels had explained that the Chateau had advantages all its own. It was a good choice in terms of image, because it humanized Laney; it looked like a habitation, basically, something with walls and doors and windows, in which a guest could be imagined to be living something akin to a life—not at all the case with the geometric solids that were serious business hotels. It also had deeply rooted associations with the Hollywood star system, and with human tragedy as well. Stars had lived here, in the heyday of old Hollywood, and, later, certain stars had died here. Out of Control planned to frame the death of Alison Shires as a tragedy in a venerable Hollywood tradition, but one that had been brought on by Slitscan, a very contemporary entity. Besides, Daniels explained, the Chateau was far more secure than it might at first look. And at this point Laney had been introduced to Berry Rydell, the night security man.
Daniels and Rydell, it seemed to Laney, had known one another prior to Rydell working at the Chateau, though how, exactly, remained unclear. Rydell seemed oddly at home with the workings of the infotainment industry, and at one point, when they'd found themselves alone together, he'd asked Laney who was representing him.
“How do you mean?” Laney had said.
“You've got an agent, don't you?”
Laney said he didn't.
“You better get one,” Rydell had said. “Not that it'll necessarily come out the way you'd wanted, but, hey, it's show business, right?”
It was indeed show business, to an extent that very quickly made Laney wonder if he'd made the right decision. There had been sixteen people in his suite, for a four-hour meeting, and he'd only been out of the lock-up for six hours. When they'd finally gone, Laney had staggered the length of the place, mistakenly trying several closet doors in his search for the bedroom. Finding it, he'd crawled onto the bed and fallen asleep in the clothes they'd sent Rydell to the Beverly Center to buy for him.
Which he thought he might well do right here, now, in this Golden Street bar, thereby answering the question of what the bourbon was doing to his jet lag. But now, finishing the remainder of the shot, he felt one of those tidal reversals begin, perhaps less to do with the drink than with some in-built chemistry of fatigue and displacement.
“Was Rydell happy?” Yamazaki asked.
It seemed a strange question, to Laney, but then he'd remembered Rydell mentioning someone Japanese, someone he'd known in San Francisco, and that, of course, had been Yamazaki.
“Well,” Laney said, “he didn't strike me as desperately unhappy, but there was something sort of down about him. You could say that. I mean, I don't really know him well at all.”
“It is too bad,” Yamazaki said. “Rydell is a brave man.”
“How about you, Laney,” Blackwell said, “you think of yourself as a brave man?” The wormlike scar that bisected his eyebrow writhed into a new degree of concentration.
“No,” Laney said, “I don't.”
“But you went up against Slitscan, didn't you, because of what they did to the girl? You had a job, you had food, you had a place to sleep. You got all that from Slitscan, but they did the girl, so you opted to do 'em back. Is that right?”
“Nothing's ever that simple,” Laney said.
When Blackwell spoke, Laney was unexpectedly aware of another sort of intelligence, something the man must ordinarily conceal, “No,” Blackwell said, almost gently, “it fucking well isn't, is it?” One large, pinkly jigsawed hand, like some clumsy animal in its own right, began to root in the taut breast pocket of Blackwell's micropore. Producing a small, gray, metallic object that he placed on the bar.
“Now that's a nail,” Blackwell said, “galvanized, one-and-a-half-inch, roofing. I've nailed men's hands to bars like this, with nails like that. And some of them were right bastards.” There was nothing at all of threat in Blackwell's voice. “And some of those, you nail their one hand, their other comes up with a razor, or a pair of needle-nose pliers.” Blackwell's forefinger absently found an angry-looking scar beneath his right eye, as though something had entered there and been deflected along the cheekbone. “To h
ave a go, right?”
“Pliers?”
“Bastards,” Blackwell said. “You have to kill 'em, then. Now that's one kind of ‘brave,’ Laney. What I mean is, how's that so different from what you tried to do to Slitscan?”
“I just didn't want them to let it drop. To let her… settle to the bottom. Be forgotten. I didn't really care how badly Slitscan got hurt, or even if they were damaged or not. I wasn't thinking of revenge, as much as of a way of… keeping her alive?”
“There's other men, you nail their hand to a table, they'll sit there and look at you. That's your true hard man, Laney. Do you think you're one of those?”
Laney looked from Blackwell to the empty bourbon glass, back to Blackwell; the bartender moved, as if to refill it, but Laney covered it with his hand. “If you nail my hand to the bar, Blackwell,” and here he spread his other hand, flat, palm down, on the dark wood, the drink-ringed varnish, “I'll scream, okay? I don't know what any of this is about. You might be crazy. But what I most definitely am not is anybody's idea of a hero. I'm not now, and I wasn't back there in L.A.”
Blackwell and Yamazaki exchanged glances. Blackwell pursed his lips, gave a tiny nod. “Good on you then,” he said. “I think you just might be right for the job.”
“No job,” Laney said, but let the bartender pour him a second bourbon. “I don't want to hear about any job at all, not until I know who's hiring me.”
“I'm chief of security for Lo/Rez,” Blackwell said, “and I owe that silly bastard my life. The last five of which I'd've passed in the punitive bowels of the State of fucking Victoria. If it hadn't been for him. Though I'd've topped myself first, no fear.”
“The band? You're security for them?”
“Rydell spoke well of you, Mr. Laney.” Yamazaki's neck bobbed in the collar of his plaid shirt.
“I don't know Rydell,” Laney said. “He was just the night watchman at a hotel I couldn't afford.”
“Rydell has a good sense of people, I think,” Yamazaki said.
To Blackwell: “Lo/Rez? They're in trouble?”
“Rez,” Blackwell said. “He says he's going to marry this Jap twist doesn't fucking exist! And he knows she doesn't, and says we've no fucking imagination! Now hear me,” and Blackwell produced, from some unspecific region of his clothing, a mirror-polished rectangle with a round hole through its uppermost, leading corner. Something not much larger than a cashcard, to see it in his big hand. “Someone's got to our boy, hear? Got to him. Don't know how, don't know who. Though personally myself I'd bet on the fucking Kombinat. Those Russ bastards. But you, my friend, you're going to do your nodal thing for us, on our Rez, and you are going to find fucking out. Who.” And the rectangle came down with a concise little thunk, to be left standing, crosswise to the counter's grain, and Laney saw that it was a very small meat cleaver, with round steel rivets through its tidy rosewood handle.
“And when you do,” Blackwell said, “we shall sort them well and fucking out.”
10. Whiskey Clone
Eddie's club was way up in something like an office building. Chia didn't think there were music clubs on the upper floors of buildings like that in Seattle, but she wasn't sure. She'd fallen asleep in the Graceland, and only woke up as Eddie was driving into a garage entrance, and then up into something vaguely like a Ferris wheel, or the cylinder of an old-fashioned revolver, except the bullets were cars. She watched out the windows as it swung them up and over, to stop at the top, where Eddie drove forward into a parking garage that might've been anywhere, except the cars were all big and black, though none as big as the Graceland.
“Come on up with us and freshen up, honey,” Maryalice said. “You look wrecked.”
“I have to port,” Chia said. “Find my friend I'm staying with…”
“Easy enough,” Maryalice said, sliding across the velour and opening the door. Eddie got out the driver's side, taking the bag with the Nissan County sticker with him. He still didn't look very happy. Chia took her bag with her and followed Maryalice. They all got into an elevator. Eddie pressed his palm against a hand-shaped outline on the wall and said something in Japanese. The elevator said some-thing back, then the door closed and they were going up. Fast, it felt like, but they just kept going.
Being in the elevator didn't seem to be improving Eddie's mood. He had to stand right up close to Maryalice, and Chia could see a lit-tie muscle working, in the hinge of his jaw, as he looked at her. Maryalice just looked right back at him.
“You oughta lighten up,” Maryalice said. “It's done.”
The little muscle went into overdrive. “That was not the deal,” he said, finally. “That was not the arrangement.”
Maryalice lifted an eyebrow. “You used to appreciate a little innovation.”
Eddie glanced from Maryalice to Chia, then, quick, back to Maryalice. “You call that an innovation?”
“You used to have a sense of humor, too,” Maryalice said, as the elevator stopped and the door slid open. Eddie glared, then stepped out, Chia and Maryalice following. “Never mind him,” Maryalice said. “Just how he gets, sometimes.”
Chia wasn't sure what she'd expected, but this definitely wasn't it. A messy room jammed with shipping cartons, and a bank of security monitors. The low ceiling was made of those fibery tiles that were hung on little metal rails; about half of them were missing, with wires and cables looping down from dusty-looking shadow. There were a couple of small desk lamps, one of them illuminating a stack of used instant-noodle containers and a black coffee mug filled with white plastic spoons. A Japanese man in a black meshback that said “Whiskey Clone” across the front was sitting in a swivel chair in front of the monitors, pouring himself a hot drink out of a big thermos with pink flowers on the side.
“Yo, Calvin,” Maryalice said, or that was what it sounded like.
“Hey,” the man said.
“Calvin's from Tacoma,” Maryalice said, as Chia watched Eddie, still carrying the suitcase, march straight through the room, through a door, and out of sight.
“Boss looks happy,” the man said, sounding no more Japanese than Maryalice. He took a sip from his thermos cup.
“Yeah,” Maryalice said. “He's so glad to see me, he's beside himself.”
“This too will pass.” Another sip. Looking at Chia from beneath the bill of the meshback. The letters in “Whiskey Clone” were the kind they'd use in a mall when they wanted you to think a place was traditional.
“This is Chia,” Maryalice said. “Met her in SeaTac,” and Chia noticed that she hadn't said she'd met her on the plane. Which made her remember that business with the DNA sampling and the hair-extensions.
“Glad to hear it's still there,” the man said. “Means there's some way back out of this batshit.”
“Now, Calvin,” Maryalice said, “you know you love Tokyo.”
“Sure. Had a place in Redmond had a bathroom the size of the whole apartment I got here, and it wasn't even a big bathroom. I mean, it had a shower. No tub or anything.”
Chia looked at the screens behind him. Lots of people there, but she couldn't tell what they were doing.
“Looks like a good night,” Maryalice said, surveying the screens.
“Just fair,” he said. “Fair to middling.”
“Quit talking like that,” Maryalice said. “You'll have me doing it.”
Calvin grinned. “But you're a good old girl, aren't you, Maryalice?”
“Please,” Chia said, “may I use a dataport?”
“There's one in Eddie's office,” Maryalice said. “But he's probably on the phone now. Why don't you go in the washroom there,” indicating another door, closed, “and have a wash. You're looking a little blurry. Then Eddie'll be done and you can call your friend.”
The washroom had an old steel sink and a very new, very complicated-looking toilet with at least a dozen buttons on top of the tank. These were labeled in Japanese. The polymer seat squirmed slightly, taking her weight, and she almost jumped up
again. It's okay, she reassured herself, just foreign technology. When she was done, she chose one of the controls at random, producing a superfine spray of warm, perfumed water that made her gasp and jump back. She wiped her eyes with the back of her hand, then stood well to the side and tried another button. This one seemed to do the trick: the toilet flushed, with a jetstream sound that reminded her of being on the plane.
As she washed her hands, and then her face, at the reassuringly ordinary sink, using pale blue liquid soap from a pump-top dispenser shaped like a one-eyed dinosaur, she heard the flushing stop and another sound begin. She looked back and saw a ring of purplish light oscillating, somewhere below the toilet seat. UV, she supposed, sterilizing it.
There was a poster of the Dukes of Nuke 'em taped on the wall, this hideous 'roidhead metal band. They were sweaty and blank-eyed, grinning, and the drummer was missing his front teeth. The lettering was in Japanese. She wondered why anyone in Japan would be into that, because groups like the Dukes were all about hating anything that wasn't their idea of American. But Kelsey, who'd been to Japan lots, with her father, had said that you couldn't tell what the Japanese would make of anything.
There wasn't anything here to dry your hands on. She got a t-shirt out of her bag and used that, although it didn't work very well. As she was kneeling to stuff the shirt back in, she noticed a corner of something she didn't recognize, but then Calvin cracked the door behind her.
“Excuse me,” he said.
“It's okay,” Chia said, zipping the bag shut.
“It's not,” he said, looking back over his shoulder, then back at her. “You really meet Maryalice at SeaTac?”
“On the plane,” Chia said.
“You're not part of it?”
Chia stood up, which made her feel kind of dizzy. “Part of what?”
He looked at her from beneath the brim of the black cap. “Then you really ought to get out of here. I mean right now.”
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