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graphic in the cop car. Raven turns to look at Hiro, just as he is blowing
out of there. He's right under a streetlight, so Hiro gets a clear look at
his face for the first time. He is Asian. He has a wispy mustache that
trails down past his chin.
Another Crip comes running out into the street half a second after
Hiro, as Raven is pulling away. He slows for a moment to take stock of the
situation, then charges the motorcycle, like a linebacker. He is crying out
as he does so, a war cry.
Squeaky emerges about the same time as the Crip, starts chasing both of
them down the street.
Raven seems to be unaware of the Crip running behind him, but in
hindsight it seems apparent that he has been watching his approach in the
rearview mirror of the motorcycle. As the Crip comes in range, Raven's hand
lets go of the throttle for a moment, snaps back as if he is throwing away a
piece of litter. His fist strikes the middle of the Crip's face like a
frozen ham shot out of a cannon. The Crip's head snaps back, his feet are
lifted off the ground, he does most of a backflip, and strikes the pavement,
hitting first with the nape of his neck, both arms slamming out straight
onto the road as he does so. It looks a lot like a controlled fall, though
if so, it has to be more reflex than anything.
Squeaky decelerates, turns, and kneels down next to the fallen Crip,
ignoring Raven.
Hiro watches the large, radioactive, spear-throwing killer drug lord
ride his motorcycle into Chinatown. Which is the same as riding it into
China, as far as chasing him down is concerned.
He runs up to the Crip, who is lying crucified in the center of the
street. The lower half of the Crip's face is pretty hard to make out. His
eyes are half open, and he looks quite relaxed. He speaks quietly. "He's a
fucking Indian or something."
Interesting idea. But Hiro still thinks he's Asian.
"What the fuck did you think you were doing, asshole?" Squeaky says. He
sounds so pissed that Hiro steps away from him.
"That fucker ripped us off - the suitcase burned," the Crip mumbles
through a mashed jaw.
"So why didn't you just write it off? Are you crazy, fucking with Raven
like that?"
"He ripped us off. Nobody does that and lives."
"Well, Raven just did," Squeaky says. Finally, he's calming down a
little. He rocks back on his heels, looks up at Hiro.
"T-Bone and your driver are not likely to be alive," Hiro says. "This
guy better not move - he could have a neck fracture."
"He's lucky I don't fracture his fucking neck," Squeaky says.
The ambulance people get there fast enough to slap an inflatable
cervical collar around the Crip's neck before he gets ambitious enough. to
stand up. They haul him away within a few minutes.
Hiro goes back into the hops and finds T-Bone. T-Bone is dead, slumped
in a kneeling position against a trellis. The stab wound through his
bulletproof vest probably would have been fatal, but Raven wasn't satisfied
with that. He went down low and slashed up and down the insides of T-Bone's
thighs, which are now laid open all the way to the bone. In doing so, he put
great lengthwise rents into both of T-Bone's femoral arteries, and his
entire blood supply dropped out of him. Like slicing the bottom off a
styrofoam cup.
The Enforcers turn the entire block into a mobile cop headquarters with
cars and paddy wagons and satellite links on flatbed trucks. Dudes with
white coats are walking up and down through the hop field with Geiger
counters. Squeaky is wandering around with his headset, staring into space,
carrying on conversations with people who aren't there. A tow truck shows
up, towing T-Bone's black BMW behind it.
"Yo, pod." Hiro turns around and looks. It's Y.T. She's just come out
of a Hunan place across the street. She hands Hiro a little white box and a
pair of chopsticks. "Spicy chicken with black bean sauce, no MSG. You know
how to use chopsticks?"
Hiro shrugs off this insult.
"I got a double order," Y.T. continues, "cause I figure we got some
good intel tonight."
"Are you aware of what happened here?"
"No. I mean, some people obviously got hurt."
"But you weren't an eyewitness."
"No, I couldn't keep up with them."
"That's good," Hiro says.
"What did happen?"
Hiro just shakes his head. The spicy chicken is glistening darkly under
the lights; he has never been less hungry in his life. "If I had known, I
wouldn't have gotten you involved. I just thought it was a surveillance
job."
"What happened?"
"I don't want to get into it. Look. Stay away from Raven, okay?"
"Sure," she says. She says it in the chirpy tone of voice that she uses
when she's lying and she wants to make sure you know it.
Squeaky hauls open the back door of the BMW and looks into the back
seat. Hiro steps a little closer, gets a nasty whiff of cold smoke. It is
the smell of burnt plastic.
The aluminum briefcase that Raven earlier gave to T-Bone is sitting in
the middle of the seat. It looks like it has been thrown into a fire; it has
black smoke stains splaying out around the locks, and its plastic handle is
partially melted. The buttery leather that covers the BMW's seats has burn
marks on it. No wonder T-Bone was pissed.
Squeaky pulls on a pair of latex gloves. He hauls the briefcase out,
sets it on the trunk lid, and rips the latches open with a small prybar.
Whatever it is, it is complicated and highly designed. The top half of
the case has several rows of the small red-capped tubes that Hiro saw at the
U-Stor-It. There are five rows with maybe twenty tubes in each row.
The bottom half of the case appears to be some kind of miniaturized,
old-fashioned computer terminal . Most of it is occupied by a keyboard.
There is a small liquid-crystal display screen that can probably handle
about five lines of text at a time. There is a penlike object attached to
the case by a cable, maybe three feet long uncoiled. It looks like it might
be a light pen or a bar-code scanner. Above the keyboard is a lens, set at
an angle so that it is aimed at whoever is typing on the keyboard. There are
other features whose purpose is not so obvious: a slot, which might be a
place to insert a credit or ID card, and a cylindrical socket that is about
the size of one of those little tubes.
This is Hiro's reconstruction of how the thing looked at one time. When
Hiro sees it, it is melted together. Judging from the pattern of smoke marks
on the outside of the case - which appear to be jetting outward from the
crack between the top and bottom - the source of the flame was inside, not
outside.
Squeaky reaches down and unsnaps one of the tubes from the bracket,
holds it up in front of the bright lights of Chinatown. It had been
transparent but was now smirched by heat and smoke. From a distance, it
looks like a simple vial, but stepping up to look at it more closely Hiro
can see at least half a dozen tiny individual compartments inside the thing,
all connected to each other by capillary tubes. It has a red plastic cap on
one end of it. The cap has a black rectangular window, and as Squeaky
rotates it, Hiro can see the dark red glint of an inactive LED display
inside, like looking at the display on a turned-off calculator. Underneath
this is a small perforation. It isn't just a simple drilled hole. It is wide
at the surface, rapidly narrowing to a nearly invisible pinpoint opening,
like the bell of a trumpet.
The compartments inside the vial are all partially filled with liquids.
Some of them are transparent and some are blackish brown. The brown ones
have to be organics of some kind, now reduced by the heat into chicken soup.
The transparent ones could be anything.
"He got out to go into a bar and have a drink," Squeaky mumbles. "What
an asshole."
"Who did?"
"T-Bone. See, T-Bone was, like, the registered owner of this unit. The
suitcase. And as soon as he got more than about ten feet away from it -
foosh - it self-destructed."
"Why?"
Squeaky looks at Hiro like he's stupid. "Well, it's not like I work for
Central Intelligence or anything. But I would guess that whoever makes this
drug - they call it Countdown, or Redcap, or Snow Crash - has a real thing
about trade secrets. So if the pusher abandons the suitcase, or loses it, or
tries to transfer ownership to someone else - foosh."
"You think the Crips are going to catch up with Raven?"
"Not in Chinatown. Shit," Squeaky says, getting pissed again in
retrospect, "I can't believe that guy. I could have killed him.''
"Raven?"
"No. That Crip. Chasing Raven. He's lucky Raven got to him first, not
me."
"You were chasing the Crip?"
"Yeah, I was chasing the Crip. What, did you think I was trying to
catch Raven?"
"Sort of, yeah. I mean, he's the bad guy, right?"
"Definitely. So I'd be chasing Raven if I was a cop and it was my job
to catch bad guys. But I'm an Enforcer, and it's my job to enforce order. So
I'm doing everything I can - and so is every other Enforcer in town - to
protect Raven. And if you have any ideas about trying to go and find Raven
yourself and get revenge for that colleague of yours that he offed, you can
forget it."
"Offed? What colleague?" Y.T. breaks in. She didn't see what happened
with Lagos.
Hiro is mortified by this idea. "Is that why everyone was telling me
not to fuck with Raven? They were afraid I was going to attack him?"
Squeaky eyes the swords. "You got the means."
"Why should anyone protect Raven?"
Squeaky smiles, as though we have just crossed the border into the
realm of kidding around. "He's a Sovereign."
"So declare war on him."
"It's not a good idea to declare war on a nuclear power."
"Huh?"
"Christ," Squeaky says, shaking his head, "if I had any idea how little
you knew about this shit, I never would have let you into my car. I thought
you we're some kind of a serious CIC wet-operations guy. Are you telling me
you really didn't know about Raven?"
"Yes, that's what I'm telling you."
"Okay. I'm gonna tell you this so you don't go out and cause any more
trouble. Raven's packing a torpedo warhead that he boosted from an old
Soviet nuke sub. It was a torpedo that was designed to take out a carrier
battle group with one shot. A nuclear torpedo. You know that funny-looking
sidecar that Raven has on his Harley? Well, it's a hydrogen bomb, man. Armed
and ready. The trigger's hooked up to EEG trodes embedded in his skull. If
Raven dies, the bomb goes off. So when Raven comes into town, we do
everything in our power to make the man feel welcome."
Hiro's just gaping. Y.T. has to step in on his behalf. "Okay," she
says. "Speaking for my partner and myself, we'll stay away from him."
Y.T. reckons she is going to spend all afternoon being a ramp turd. The
surf is always up on the Harbor Freeway, which gets her from Downtown into
Compton, but the off-ramps into that neighborhood are so rarely used that
three-foot tumbleweeds grow in their potholes. And she's definitely not
going to travel into Compton under her own power. She wants to poon
something big and fast.
She can't use the standard trick of ordering a pizza to her destination
and then pooning the delivery boy as he roars past, because none of the
pizza chains deliver to this neighborhood. So she'll have to stop at the
off-ramp and wait hours and hours for a ride. A ramp turd.
She does not want to do this delivery at all. But the franchisee wants
her to do it bad. Really bad. The amount of money he has offered her is so
high, it's stupid. The package must be full of some kind of intense new
drug.
But that's not as weird as what happens next. She is cruising down the
Harbor Freeway, approaching the desired off-ramp, having pooned a southbound
semi. A quarter-mile from the off-ramp, a bullet-pocked black Oldsmobile
cruises past her, right-turn signal flashing. He's going to exit. It's too
good to be true. She poons the Oldsmobile.
As she cruises down the ramp behind this flatulent sedan, she checks
out the driver in his rearview mirror. It is the franchisee himself, the one
who is paying her a totally stupid amount of money to do this job.
By this point, she's more afraid of him than she is of Compton. He must
be a psycho. He must be in love with her. This is all a twisted psycho love
plot.
But it's a little late now. She stays with him, looking for a way out
of this burning and rotting neighborhood.
They are approaching a big, nasty-looking Mafia roadblock. He guns the
gas pedal, headed straight for death. She can see the destination franchise
ahead. At the last second, he whips the car around and squeals sideways to a
halt.
He couldn't have been more helpful. She unpoons as he's giving her this
last little kick of energy and sails through the checkpoint at a safe and
sane speed. The guards keep their guns pointed at the sky, swivel their
heads to look at her butt as she rolls past them.
The Compton Nova Sicilia franchise is a grisly scene. It is a jamboree
of Young Mafia. These youths are even duller than the ones from the
all-Mormon Deseret Burbclave. The boys are wearing tedious black suits. The
girls are encrusted with pointless femininity. Girls can't even be in the
Young Mafia; they have to be in the Girls' Auxiliary and serve macaroons on
silver plates. "Girls" is too fine a word for these organisms, too high up
the evolutionary scale. They aren't even chicks.
She's going way too fast, so she kicks the board around sideways,
plants pads, leans into it, skids to a halt, roiling up a wave of dust and
grit that dulls the glossy shoes of several Young Mafia who are milling out
front, nibbling dinky Italo-treats and playing grown-up. It condenses on the
white lace stockings of the Young Mafia proto-chicks. She falls off the
board, appearing to catch her balance at the last moment. She stomps on the
edge of the plank with one foot, and it bounces four feet into the air,
spinning rapidly around its long axis, up into her armpit, where she clamps
it tight under one arm. The spokes of the smartwheels all retract so that
the wheels are barely larger than their hubs. She slaps the MagnaPoon into a
handy socket on the bottom of the plank so that her gear is all in one handy
package.
"Y.T.," she says. "Young, fast, and female. Where the fuck's Enzo?"
The boys decide to get all "mature" on Y.T. Males of this age are
preoccupied with snapping each other's underwear and drinking until they are
in a coma. But around a female, they do the "mature" thing. It is hilarious.
One of them steps forward slightly, interposing himself between Y.T. and the
nearest proto-chick. "Welcome to Nova Sicilia," he says. "Can I assist you
in some way?"
Y.T. sighs deeply. She is a fully independent businessperson, and these
people are trying to do a peer thing on her.
"Delivery for one Enzo? Y'know, I can't wait to get out of this
neighborhood."
"It's a good neighborhood, now," the YoMa says. "You should stick
around for a few minutes. Maybe you could learn some manners."
"You should try surfing the Ventura at rush hour. Maybe you could learn
your limitations."
The YoMa laughs like, okay, if that's how you want it. He gestures
toward the door. "The man you want to talk to is in there. Whether he wants
to talk to you or not, I'm not sure."
"He fucking asked for me," Y.T. says.
"He came across the country to be with us," the guy says, "and he seems
pretty happy with us."
All the other YoMas mumble and nod supportively.
"Then why are you standing outside?" Y.T. asks, going inside.
Inside the franchise, things are startlingly relaxed. Uncle Enzo is in
there, looking just like he does in the pictures, except bigger than Y.T.
expected. He is sitting at a desk playing cards with some other guys in
funeral garb. He is smoking a cigar and nursing an espresso. Can't get too
much stimulation, apparently.
There's a whole Uncle Enzo portable support system in here. A traveling
espresso machine has been set up on another desk. A cabinet sits next to it,
doors open to reveal a big foil bag of Italian Roast Water-Process Decaf and
a box of Havana cigars. There's also a gargoyle in one comer, patched into a
bigger-than-normal laptop, mumbling to himself.
Y.T. lifts her arm, allows the plank to fall into her hand. She slaps
it down on top of an empty desk and approaches Uncle Enzo, unslinging the
delivery from her shoulder.
"Gino, please," Uncle Enzo says, nodding at the delivery. Gino steps
forward to take it from her.
"Need your signature on that," Y.T. says. For some reason she does not
refer to him as "pal" or "bub."
She's momentarily distracted by Gino. Suddenly, Uncle Enzo has come
rather close to her, caught her right hand in his left hand. Her Kourier
gloves have an opening on the back of the hand just big enough for his lips.
He plants a kiss on Y.T.'s hand. It's warm and wet. Not slobbery and gross,
not antiseptic and dry either. Interesting. The guy has confidence going for
him. Christ, he's slick. Nice lips. Sort of firm muscular lips, not
gelatinous and blubbery like fifteen-year-old lips can be. Uncle Enzo has a
very faint citrus-and-aged-tobacco smell to him. Fully smelling it would
involve standing pretty close to him. He is towering over her, standing at a
respectable distance now, glinting at her through crinkly old-guy eyes.
Seems pretty nice.
"I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to meeting you,
Y.T.," he says.
"Hi," she says. Her voice sounds chirpier than she likes it to be. So
she adds, "What's in that bag that's so fucking valuable, anyway.
"Absolutely nothing," Uncle Enzo says. His smile is not exactly smug.
More embarrassed, like what an awkward way to meet someone. "It all has to
do with imageering," he says, spreading one hand dismissively. "There are
not many ways for a man like me to meet with a young girl that do not
generate incorrect images in the media. It's stupid. But we pay attention to
these things."
"So, what did you want to meet with me about? Got a delivery for me to
make?"
All the guys in the room laugh.
The sound startles Y.T. a little, reminds her that she is performing in
front of a crowd. Her eyes flick away from Uncle Enzo for a moment.
Uncle Enzo notices this. His smile gets infinitesimally narrower, and
he hesitates for a moment. In that moment, all the other guys in the room
stand up and head for the exit.
"You may not believe me," he says, "but I simply wanted to thank you
for delivering that pizza a few weeks ago."
"Why shouldn't I believe you?" she asks. She is amazed to hear nice,
sweet things coming out of her mouth.
So is Uncle Enzo. "I'm sure you of all people can come up with a
reason."
"So," she says, "you having a nice day with all the Young Mafia?"
Uncle Enzo gives her a look that says, watch it, child. A second after
she gets scared, she starts laughing, because it's a put-on, he's just
giving her a hard time. He smiles, indicating that it's okay for her to
laugh.
Y.T. can't remember when she's been so involved in a conversation. Why
can't all people be like Uncle Enzo?
"Let me see," Uncle Enzo says, looking at the ceiling, scanning his
memory banks. "I know a few things about you. That you are fifteen years
old, you live in a Burbclave in the Valley with your mother."
"I know a few things about you, too," Y.T. hazards.
Uncle Enzo laughs. "Not nearly as much as you think, I promise. Tell
me, what does your mother think of your career?"
Nice of him to use the word "career." "She's not totally aware of it -
or doesn't want to know."
"You're probably wrong," Uncle Enzo says. He says it cheerfully enough,
not trying to cut her down or anything. "You might be shocked at how
well-informed she is. This is my experience, anyway. What does your mother
do for a living?"
"She works for the Feds."
Uncle Enzo finds that richly amusing. "And her daughter is delivering
pizzas for Nova Sicilia. What does she do for the Feds?"
"Some kind of thing where she can't really tell me in case I blab it.
She has to take a lot of polygraph tests."
Uncle Enzo seems to understand this very well. "Yes, a lot of Fed jobs
are that way."
There is an opportune silence.
"It kind of freaks me out," Y.T. says.
"The fact that she works for the Feds?"
"The polygraph tests. They put a thing around her arm - to measure the
blood pressure."
"A sphygmomanometer," Uncle Enzo says crisply.
"It leaves a bruise around her arm. For some reason, that kind of
bothers me."
"It should bother you."
"And the house is bugged. So when I'm home - no matter what I'm doing -
someone else is probably listening."
"Well, I can certainly relate to that," Uncle Enzo says.
They both laugh.
"I'm going to ask you a question that I've always wanted to ask a
Kourier," Uncle Enzo says. "I always watch you people through the windows of
my limousine. In fact, when a Kourier poons me, I always tell Peter, my
driver, not to give them a hard time. My question is, you are covered from
head to toe in protective padding. So why don't you wear a helmet?"
"The suit's got a cervical airbag that blows up when you fall off the
board, so you can bounce on your head. Besides, helmets feel weird. They say
it doesn't affect your hearing, but it does."
"You use your hearing quite a bit in your line of work?"
"Definitely, yeah."
Uncle Enzo is nodding. "That's what I suspected. We felt the same way,
the boys in my unit in Vietnam."
"I heard you went to Vietnam, but - " She stops, sensing danger.
"You thought it was hype. No, I went there. Could have stayed out, if
I'd wanted. But I volunteered."
"You volunteered to go to Vietnam?"
Uncle Enzo laughs. "Yes, I did. The only boy in my family to do so."
"Why?"
"I thought it would be safer than Brooklyn."
Y.T. laughs.
"A bad joke," he says. "I volunteered because my father didn't want me
to. And I wanted to piss him off."
"Really?"
"Definitely. I spent years and years finding ways to piss him off.
Dated black girls. Grew my hair long. Smoked marijuana. But the capstone, my
ultimate achievement - even better than having my ear pierced - was
volunteering for service in Vietnam. But I had to take extreme measures even
then."
Y.T.'s eyes dart back and forth between Uncle Enzo's creased and
leathery earlobes. In the left one she just barely sees a tiny diamond stud.
"What do you mean, extreme measures?"
"Everyone knew who I was. Word gets around, you know. If I had
volunteered for the regular Army, I would have ended up stateside, filling
out forms - maybe even at Fort Hamilton, right there in Bensonhurst. To
prevent that, I volunteered for Special Forces, did everything I could to
get into a front-line unit." He laughs. "And it worked. Anyway, I'm rambling
like an old man. I was trying to make a point about helmets."
"Oh, yeah."
"Our job was to go through the jungle making trouble for some slippery
gentlemen carrying guns bigger than they were. Stealthy guys. And we
depended on our hearing, too -just like you do. And you know what? We never
wore helmets."
"Same reason."
"Exactly. Even though they didn't cover the ears, really, they did
something to your sense of hearing. I still think I owe my life to going
bareheaded."
"That's really cool. That's really interesting."
"You'd think they would have solved the problem by now."
"Yeah," Y.T., volunteers, "some things never change, I guess."
Uncle Enzo throws back his head and belly laughs. Usually, Y.T. finds
this kind of thing pretty annoying, but Uncle Enzo just seems like he's
having a good time, not putting her down.
Y.T. wants to ask him how he went from the ultimate rebellion to
running the family beeswax. She doesn't. But Uncle Enzo senses that it is
the next, natural subject of the conversation.
"Sometimes I wonder who'll come after me," he says. "Oh, we have plenty
of excellent people in the next generation. But after that - well, I don't
know. I guess all old people feel like the world is coming to an end."
"You got millions of those Young Mafia types," Y.T. says.
"All destined to wear blazers and shuffle papers in suburbia. You don't
respect those people very much, Y.T., because you're young and arrogant. But
I don't respect them much either, because I'm old and wise."
This is a fairly shocking thing for Uncle Enzo to be saying, but Y.T.
doesn't feel shocked. It just seems like a reasonable statement coming from
her reasonable pal, Uncle Enzo.
"None of them would ever volunteer to go get his legs shot off in the
jungle, just to piss off his old man. They lack a certain fiber. They are
lifeless and beaten down."
"That's sad," Y.T. says. It feels better to say this than to trash
them, which was her first inclination.
"Well," says Uncle Enzo. It is the "well" that begins the end of a
conversation. "I was going to send you some roses, but you wouldn't really
be interested in that, would you?"
"Oh, I wouldn't mind," she says, sounding pathetically weak to herself.
"Here's something better, since we are comrades in arms," he says. He
loosens his tie and collar, reaches down into his shirt, pulls out an
amazingly cheap steel chain with a couple of stamped silver tags dangling
from it. "These are my old dog tags," he says. "Been carrying them around
for years, just for the hell of it. I would be amused if you would wear
them."
Trying to keep her knees steady, she puts the dog tags on. They dangle
down onto her coverall.
"Better put them inside," Uncle Enzo says.
She drops them down into the secret place between her breasts. They are
still warm from Uncle Enzo.
"Thanks."
"It's just for fun," he says, "but if you ever get into trouble, and
you show those dog tags to whoever it is that's giving you a bad time, then
things will probably change very quickly."
"Thanks, Uncle Enzo."
"Take care of yourself. Be good to your mother. She loves you."
As she steps out of the Nova Sicilia franchulate, a guy is waiting for
her. He smiles, not without irony, and makes just a hint of a bow, sort of
to get her attention. It's pretty ridiculous, but after being with Uncle
Enzo for a while, she's definitely into it. So she doesn't laugh in his face
or anything, just looks the other way and blows him off.
"Y.T. Got a job for ya," he says.
"I'm busy," she says, "got other deliveries to make."
"You lie like a mattress," he says appreciatively. "Y'know that
gargoyle in there? He's patched in to the RadiKS computer even as we speak.
So we all know for a fact you don't got no jobs to do."
"Well, I can't take jobs from a customer," Y.T. says. "We're centrally
dispatched. You have to go through the 1-800 number."
"Jeez, what kind of a fucking dickhead do you think I am?" the guy
says.
Y.T. stops walking, turns, finally looks at the guy. He's tall, lean.
Black suit, black hair. And he's got a gnarly-looking glass eye.
"What happened to your eye?" she says.
"Ice pick, Bayonne, 1985," he says. "Any other questions?"
"Sorry, man, I was just asking."
"Now back to business. Because I don't have my head totally up my
asshole, like you seem to assume, I am aware that all Kouriers are centrally
dispatched through the 1-800 number. Now, we don't like 1-800 numbers and
central dispatching. It's just a thing with us. We like to go
person-to-person, the old-fashioned way. Like, on my momma's birthday, I
don't pick up the phone and dial 1-800-CALL-MOM. I go there in person and
give her a kiss on the cheek, okay? Now in this case, we want you in
particular."
"How come?"
"Because we just love to deal with difficult little chicks who ask too
many fucking questions. So our gargoyle has already patched himself in to
the computer that RadiKS uses to dispatch Kouriers."
The man with the glass eye turns, rotating his head way, way around
like an owl, and nods in the direction of the gargoyle. A second later,
Y.T.'s personal phone rings.
"Fucking pick it up," he says.
"What?" she says into the phone.
A computer voice tells her that she is supposed to make a pickup in
Griffith Park and deliver it to a Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise in
Van Nuys.
"If you want something delivered from point A to point B, why don't you
just drive it down there yourselves?" Y.T. asks. "Put it in one of those
black Lincoln Town Cars and just get it done."
"Because in this case, the something doesn't exactly belong to us, and
the people at point A and point B, well, we aren't necessarily on the best
of terms, mutually speaking."
"You want me to steal something," Y.T. says.
The man with the glass eye is pained, wounded. "No, no, no. Kid,
listen. We're the fucking Mafia. We want to steal something, we already know
how to do that, okay? We don't need a fifteen-year-old girl's help to get
something stolen. What we are doing here is more of a covert operation."
"A spy thing." Intel.
"Yeah. A spy thing," the man says, his tone of voice suggesting that he
is trying to humor someone. "And the only way to get this operation to work
is if we have a Kourier who can cooperate with us a little bit."
"So all that stuff with Uncle Enzo was fake," Y.T. says. "You're just
trying to get all friendly with a Kourier."
"Oh, ho, listen to this," says the man with the glass eye, genuinely
amused. "Yeah, like we have to go all the way to the top to impress a
fifteen-year-old. Look, kid, there's a million Kouriers out there we could
bribe to do this. We're going with you, again, because you have a personal
relationship with our outfit."
"Well, what do you want me to do?"
"Exactly what you would normally do at this juncture," the man says.
"Go to Griffith Park and make the pickup."
"That's it?"
"Yeah. Then make the delivery. But do us a favor and take I-5, okay?"
"That's not the best way to do it - "
"Do it anyway."
"Okay."
"Now come on, we'll give you an escort out of this hellhole."
Sometimes, if the wind is going the right way, and you get into the
pocket of air behind a speeding eighteen-wheeler, you don't even have to
poon it. The vacuum, like a mighty hoover, sucks you in. You can stay there
all day. But if you screw up, you suddenly find yourself alone and powerless
in the left lane of a highway with a convoy of semis right behind you. Just
as bad, if you give in to its power, it will suck you right into its
mudflaps, you will become axle dressing, and no one will ever know. This is
called the Magic Hoover Poon. It reminds Y.T. of the way her life has been
since the fateful night of the Hiro Protagonist pizza adventure.
Her poon cannot miss as she slingshots her way up the San Diego
Freeway. She can get a solid yank off even the lightest, trashiest
plastic-and-aluminum Chinese econobox. People don't fuck with her. She has
established her space on the pavement.
She is going to get so much business now. She will have to sub a lot of
work out to Roadkill. And sometimes, just to make important business
arrangements, they will have to check into a motel somewhere - which is
exactly what real business people do. Lately, Y.T. has been trying to teach
Roadkill how to give her a massage. But Roadkill can never get past her
shoulder blades before he loses it and starts being Mr. Macho. Which anyway
is kind of sweet. And anyway, you take what you can get.
This is not the most direct route to Griffith Park by a longshot, but
this is what the Mafia wants her to do: Take 405 all the way up into the
Valley, and then approach from that direction, which is the direction she'd
normally come from. They're so paranoid. So professional.
LAX goes by on her left. On her right, she gets a glimpse of the
U-Stor-It where that dweeb, her partner, is probably goggled into his
computer. She weaves through complex traffic flows around Hughes Airport,
which is now a private outpost of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Continues
past the Santa Monica Airport, which just got bought out by Admiral Bob's
Global Security. Cuts through the middle of Fedland, where her mother goes
to work every day.
Fedland used to be the VA Hospital and a bunch of other Federal
buildings; now it has condensed into a kidney-shaped lozenge that wraps
around 405. It has a barrier around it, a perimeter fence put up by
stringing chain link fabric, concertina wire, heaps of rubble, and Jersey
barriers from one building to the next. All of the buildings in Fedland are
big and ugly. Human beings mill around their plinths, wearing wool clothing
the color of damp granite. They are scrawny and dark underneath the white
majesty of the buildings.
On the far side of the Fedland barrier, off to the right, she can see
UCLA, which is now being jointly run by the Japanese and Mr. Lee's Greater
Hong Kong and a few big American corporations.
People say that over there to the left, in Pacific Palisades, is a big
building above the ocean where the Central Intelligence Corporation has its
West Coast headquarters. Soon - like maybe tomorrow - she'll go up there,
find that building, maybe just cruise past it and wave. She has great stuff
to tell Hiro now. Great intel on Uncle Enzo. People would pay millions for
it.
But in her heart, she's already feeling the pangs of conscience. She
knows that she cannot kiss and tell on the Mafia. Not because she's afraid
of them. Because they trust her. They were nice to her. And who knows , it
might turn into something. A better career than she could get with CIC.
Not many cars are taking the off-ramp into Fedland. Her mother does it
every morning, as do a bunch of other Feds. But all Feds go to work early
and stay late. It's a loyalty thing with them. The Feds have a fetish for
loyalty - since they don't make a lot of money or get a lot of respect, you
have to prove you're personally committed and that you don't care about
those trappings.
Case in point: Y.T. has been pooned onto the same cab all the way from
LAX. It's got an Arab in the back seat. His burnous flutters in the wind
from the open window; the air conditioning doesn't work, an L.A. cabbie
doesn't make enough money to buy Chill - Freon - on the underground market.
This is typical: only the Feds would make a visitor take a dirty, un-air
conditioned cab. Sure enough, the cab puffs onto the ramp marked UNITED
STATES. Y.T. disengages and slaps her poon onto a Valley-bound delivery
truck.
On top of the huge Federal Building, a bunch of Feds with
walkie-talkies and dark glasses and FEDS windbreakers lurk, aiming long
lenses into the windshields of the vehicles coming up Wilshire Boulevard. If
this were nighttime, she'd probably see a laser scanner playing over the
bar-code license plate of the taxi as it veers onto the U.S. exit.
Y.T.'s mom has told her all about these guys. They are the Executive
Branch General Operational Command, EBGOC. The FBI, Federal Marshalls,
Secret Service, and Special Forces all claim some separate identity still,
like the Army, Navy, and Air Force used to, but they're all under the
command of EBGOC, they all do the same things, and they are more or less
interchangeable. Outside of Fedland, everyone just knows them as the Feds.
EBGOC claims the right to go anywhere, anytime, within the original borders
of the United States of America, without a warrant or even a good excuse.
But they only really feet at home here, in Fedland, staring down the barrel
of a telephoto lens, shotgun microphone, or sniper rifle. The longer the
better.
Down below them, the taxicab with the Arab in the back slows down to
sublight speed and winds its way down a twisting slalom course of Jersey
barriers with .50-caliber machine gun nests strategically placed here and
there. It comes to a stop in front of an STD device, straddling an open pit
where EBGOC boys stand with dogs and high-powered spotlights to look up its
skirt for bombs or NBCI (nuclear-biological-chemical-informational) agents
in the undercarriage. Meanwhile, the driver gets out and pops the hood and
trunk so that more Feds can inspect them; another Fed leans against the
window next to the Arab and grills him through the window.
They say that in D.C., all the museums and the monuments have been
concessioned out and turned into a tourist park that now generates about 10
percent of the Government's revenue. The Feds could run the concession
themselves and probably keep more of the gross, but that's not the point.
It's a philosophical thing. A back-to-basics thing. Government should
govern. It's not in the entertainment industry, is it? Leave entertaining to
Industry weirdos - people who majored in tap dancing. Feds aren't like that.
Feds are serious people. Poli sci majors. Student council presidents. Debate
club chairpersons. The kinds of people who have the grit to wear a dark wool
suit and a tightly buttoned collar even when the temperature has greenhoused
up to a hundred and ten degrees and the humidity is thick enough to stall a
jumbo jet. The kinds of people who feel most at home on the dark side of a
one-way mirror.
Sometimes, to prove their manhood, boys of about Y.T.'s age will drive
to the eastern end of the Hollywood Hills, into Griffith Park, pick the road
of their choosing, and simply drive through it. Making it through there
unscathed is a lot like counting coup on a High Plains battlefield; simply
having come that close to danger makes you more of a man.
By definition, all they ever see are the through streets. If you are
driving into Griffith Park for some highijnks and you see a NO OUTLET sign,
you know that it is time to shift your dad's Accord into reverse and drive
it backward all the way back home, revving the engine way past the end of
the tachometer.
Naturally, as soon as Y.T. enters the park, following the road she was
told to follow, she sees a NO OUTLET sign.
Y.T.'s not the first Kourier to take a job like this, and so she has
heard about the place she is going. It is a narrow canyon, accessed only by
this one road, and down in the bottom of the canyon a new gang lives.
Everyone calls them the Falabalas, because that's how they talk to each
other. They have their own language and it sounds like babble.
Right now, the important thing is not to think about how stupid this
is. Making the right decision is, priority-wise, down there along with
getting enough niacin and writing a thank-you letter to grandma for the nice
pearl earrings. The only important thing is not to back down.
A row of machine-gun nests marks the border of Falabala territory. It
seems like overkill to Y.T. But then she's never been in a conflict with the
Mafia, either. She plays it cool, idles toward the barrier at maybe ten
miles an hour. This is where she'll freak out and get scared if she's going
to. She is holding aloft a color-faxed RadiKS document, featuring the
cybernetic radish logo, proclaiming that she really is here to pick up an
important delivery, honest. It'll never work with these guys.
But it does. A big gnarled-up coil of razor ribbon is pulled out of her
way, just like that, and she glides through without slowing down. And that's
when she knows that it's going to be fine. These people are just doing
business here, just like anyone else.
She doesn't have to skate far into the canyon. Thank God. She goes
around a few turns, into kind of an open flat area surrounded by trees, and
finds herself in what looks like an open-air insane asylum.
Or a Moonie festival or something.
A couple of dozen people are here. None of them have been taking care
of themselves at all. They are all wearing the ragged remains of what used
to be pretty decent clothing. Half a dozen of them are kneeling on the
pavement with their hands clenched tightly together, mumbling to unseen
entities.
On the trunk lid of a dead car, they've set up an old junked computer
terminal, just a dark monitor screen with a big spider-web crack in it, like
someone bounced a coffee mug off the glass. A fat man with red suspenders
dangling around his knees is sliding his hands up and down the keyboard,
whacking the keys randomly, talking out loud in a meaningless babble. A
couple of the others stand behind him, peeking over his shoulder and around
his body, and sometimes they try to horn in on it, but he shoves them out of
the way.
There's also a crowd of people clapping their hands, swaying their
bodies, and singing "The Happy Wanderer." They're really into it, too. Y.T.
hasn't seen such childlike glee on anyone's face since the first time she
let Roadkill take her clothes off. But this is a different kind of childlike
glee that does not look right on a bunch of thirty-something people with
dirty hair.
And finally, there is a guy that Y.T. dubs the High Priest. He's
wearing a formerly white lab coat, bearing the logo of some company in the
Bay Area. He's sacked out in the back of a dead station wagon, but when Y.T.
enters the area he jumps up and runs toward her in a way that she can't help
but find a little threatening. But compared to these others, he seems almost
like a regular, healthy, fit, demented bush-dwelling psychotic.
"You're here to pick up a suitcase, right?"
"I'm here to pick up something. I don't know what it is," she says.
He goes over to one of the dead cars, unlocks the hood, pulls out an
aluminum briefcase. It looks exactly like the one that Squeaky took out of
the BMW last night. "Here's your delivery," he says, striding toward her.
She backs away from him instinctively.
"I understand, I understand," he says. "I'm a scary creep."
He puts it on the ground, puts his foot on it, gives it a shove. It
slides across the pavement to Y.T., bouncing off the occasional rock.
"There's no big hurry on this delivery," he says. "Would you like to
stay and have a drink? We've got Kool-Aid."
"I'd love to," Y.T. says, "but my diabetes is acting up real bad."
"Well, then you can just stay and be a guest of our community. We have
a lot of wonderful things to tell you about. Things that could really change
your life."
"Do you have anything in writing? Something I could take with me?"
"Gee, I'm afraid we don't. Why don't you stay. You seem like a really
nice person."
"Sorry, Jack, but you must be confusing me with a bimbo," Y.T. says.
"Thanks for the suitcase. I'm out of here."
Y.T. starts digging at the pavement with one foot, building up speed as
fast as she can. On her way out, she passes by a young woman with a shaved
head, dressed in the dirty and haggard remains of a Chanel knockoff. As Y.T.
goes by her, she smiles vacantly, sticks out her hand, and waves. "Hi," she
says. "ba ma zu na la amu pa go lu ne me a ba du."
"Yo," Y.T. says.
A couple of minutes later, she's pooning her way up I-5, headed up into
Valley-land. She's a little freaked-out, her timing is off, she's taking it
easy. A tune keeps running through her head: "The Happy Wanderer." It's
driving her crazy.
A large black blur keeps pulling alongside her. It would be a tempting
target, so large and ferrous, if it were going a little faster. But she can
make better time than this barge, even when she's taking it slow.
The driver's side window of the black car rolls down. It's the guy.
Jason. He's sticking his whole head out the window to look back at her,
driving blind. The wind at fifty miles per hour does not ruffle his firmly
gelled razor cut.
He smiles. He has an imploring look about him, the same look that
Roadkill gets. He points suggestively at his rear quarter-panel.
What the hell. The last time she pooned this guy, he took her exactly
where she was going. Y.T. detaches from the Acura she's been hitched to for
the last half mile, swings it over to Jason's fat Olds. And Jason takes her
off the freeway and onto Victory Boulevard, headed for Van Nuys, which is
exactly right.
But after a couple of miles, he swings the wheel sharply right and
screeches into the parking lot of a ghost mall, which is wrong. Right now,
out of there. He's right under a streetlight, so Hiro gets a clear look at
his face for the first time. He is Asian. He has a wispy mustache that
trails down past his chin.
Another Crip comes running out into the street half a second after
Hiro, as Raven is pulling away. He slows for a moment to take stock of the
situation, then charges the motorcycle, like a linebacker. He is crying out
as he does so, a war cry.
Squeaky emerges about the same time as the Crip, starts chasing both of
them down the street.
Raven seems to be unaware of the Crip running behind him, but in
hindsight it seems apparent that he has been watching his approach in the
rearview mirror of the motorcycle. As the Crip comes in range, Raven's hand
lets go of the throttle for a moment, snaps back as if he is throwing away a
piece of litter. His fist strikes the middle of the Crip's face like a
frozen ham shot out of a cannon. The Crip's head snaps back, his feet are
lifted off the ground, he does most of a backflip, and strikes the pavement,
hitting first with the nape of his neck, both arms slamming out straight
onto the road as he does so. It looks a lot like a controlled fall, though
if so, it has to be more reflex than anything.
Squeaky decelerates, turns, and kneels down next to the fallen Crip,
ignoring Raven.
Hiro watches the large, radioactive, spear-throwing killer drug lord
ride his motorcycle into Chinatown. Which is the same as riding it into
China, as far as chasing him down is concerned.
He runs up to the Crip, who is lying crucified in the center of the
street. The lower half of the Crip's face is pretty hard to make out. His
eyes are half open, and he looks quite relaxed. He speaks quietly. "He's a
fucking Indian or something."
Interesting idea. But Hiro still thinks he's Asian.
"What the fuck did you think you were doing, asshole?" Squeaky says. He
sounds so pissed that Hiro steps away from him.
"That fucker ripped us off - the suitcase burned," the Crip mumbles
through a mashed jaw.
"So why didn't you just write it off? Are you crazy, fucking with Raven
like that?"
"He ripped us off. Nobody does that and lives."
"Well, Raven just did," Squeaky says. Finally, he's calming down a
little. He rocks back on his heels, looks up at Hiro.
"T-Bone and your driver are not likely to be alive," Hiro says. "This
guy better not move - he could have a neck fracture."
"He's lucky I don't fracture his fucking neck," Squeaky says.
The ambulance people get there fast enough to slap an inflatable
cervical collar around the Crip's neck before he gets ambitious enough. to
stand up. They haul him away within a few minutes.
Hiro goes back into the hops and finds T-Bone. T-Bone is dead, slumped
in a kneeling position against a trellis. The stab wound through his
bulletproof vest probably would have been fatal, but Raven wasn't satisfied
with that. He went down low and slashed up and down the insides of T-Bone's
thighs, which are now laid open all the way to the bone. In doing so, he put
great lengthwise rents into both of T-Bone's femoral arteries, and his
entire blood supply dropped out of him. Like slicing the bottom off a
styrofoam cup.
The Enforcers turn the entire block into a mobile cop headquarters with
cars and paddy wagons and satellite links on flatbed trucks. Dudes with
white coats are walking up and down through the hop field with Geiger
counters. Squeaky is wandering around with his headset, staring into space,
carrying on conversations with people who aren't there. A tow truck shows
up, towing T-Bone's black BMW behind it.
"Yo, pod." Hiro turns around and looks. It's Y.T. She's just come out
of a Hunan place across the street. She hands Hiro a little white box and a
pair of chopsticks. "Spicy chicken with black bean sauce, no MSG. You know
how to use chopsticks?"
Hiro shrugs off this insult.
"I got a double order," Y.T. continues, "cause I figure we got some
good intel tonight."
"Are you aware of what happened here?"
"No. I mean, some people obviously got hurt."
"But you weren't an eyewitness."
"No, I couldn't keep up with them."
"That's good," Hiro says.
"What did happen?"
Hiro just shakes his head. The spicy chicken is glistening darkly under
the lights; he has never been less hungry in his life. "If I had known, I
wouldn't have gotten you involved. I just thought it was a surveillance
job."
"What happened?"
"I don't want to get into it. Look. Stay away from Raven, okay?"
"Sure," she says. She says it in the chirpy tone of voice that she uses
when she's lying and she wants to make sure you know it.
Squeaky hauls open the back door of the BMW and looks into the back
seat. Hiro steps a little closer, gets a nasty whiff of cold smoke. It is
the smell of burnt plastic.
The aluminum briefcase that Raven earlier gave to T-Bone is sitting in
the middle of the seat. It looks like it has been thrown into a fire; it has
black smoke stains splaying out around the locks, and its plastic handle is
partially melted. The buttery leather that covers the BMW's seats has burn
marks on it. No wonder T-Bone was pissed.
Squeaky pulls on a pair of latex gloves. He hauls the briefcase out,
sets it on the trunk lid, and rips the latches open with a small prybar.
Whatever it is, it is complicated and highly designed. The top half of
the case has several rows of the small red-capped tubes that Hiro saw at the
U-Stor-It. There are five rows with maybe twenty tubes in each row.
The bottom half of the case appears to be some kind of miniaturized,
old-fashioned computer terminal . Most of it is occupied by a keyboard.
There is a small liquid-crystal display screen that can probably handle
about five lines of text at a time. There is a penlike object attached to
the case by a cable, maybe three feet long uncoiled. It looks like it might
be a light pen or a bar-code scanner. Above the keyboard is a lens, set at
an angle so that it is aimed at whoever is typing on the keyboard. There are
other features whose purpose is not so obvious: a slot, which might be a
place to insert a credit or ID card, and a cylindrical socket that is about
the size of one of those little tubes.
This is Hiro's reconstruction of how the thing looked at one time. When
Hiro sees it, it is melted together. Judging from the pattern of smoke marks
on the outside of the case - which appear to be jetting outward from the
crack between the top and bottom - the source of the flame was inside, not
outside.
Squeaky reaches down and unsnaps one of the tubes from the bracket,
holds it up in front of the bright lights of Chinatown. It had been
transparent but was now smirched by heat and smoke. From a distance, it
looks like a simple vial, but stepping up to look at it more closely Hiro
can see at least half a dozen tiny individual compartments inside the thing,
all connected to each other by capillary tubes. It has a red plastic cap on
one end of it. The cap has a black rectangular window, and as Squeaky
rotates it, Hiro can see the dark red glint of an inactive LED display
inside, like looking at the display on a turned-off calculator. Underneath
this is a small perforation. It isn't just a simple drilled hole. It is wide
at the surface, rapidly narrowing to a nearly invisible pinpoint opening,
like the bell of a trumpet.
The compartments inside the vial are all partially filled with liquids.
Some of them are transparent and some are blackish brown. The brown ones
have to be organics of some kind, now reduced by the heat into chicken soup.
The transparent ones could be anything.
"He got out to go into a bar and have a drink," Squeaky mumbles. "What
an asshole."
"Who did?"
"T-Bone. See, T-Bone was, like, the registered owner of this unit. The
suitcase. And as soon as he got more than about ten feet away from it -
foosh - it self-destructed."
"Why?"
Squeaky looks at Hiro like he's stupid. "Well, it's not like I work for
Central Intelligence or anything. But I would guess that whoever makes this
drug - they call it Countdown, or Redcap, or Snow Crash - has a real thing
about trade secrets. So if the pusher abandons the suitcase, or loses it, or
tries to transfer ownership to someone else - foosh."
"You think the Crips are going to catch up with Raven?"
"Not in Chinatown. Shit," Squeaky says, getting pissed again in
retrospect, "I can't believe that guy. I could have killed him.''
"Raven?"
"No. That Crip. Chasing Raven. He's lucky Raven got to him first, not
me."
"You were chasing the Crip?"
"Yeah, I was chasing the Crip. What, did you think I was trying to
catch Raven?"
"Sort of, yeah. I mean, he's the bad guy, right?"
"Definitely. So I'd be chasing Raven if I was a cop and it was my job
to catch bad guys. But I'm an Enforcer, and it's my job to enforce order. So
I'm doing everything I can - and so is every other Enforcer in town - to
protect Raven. And if you have any ideas about trying to go and find Raven
yourself and get revenge for that colleague of yours that he offed, you can
forget it."
"Offed? What colleague?" Y.T. breaks in. She didn't see what happened
with Lagos.
Hiro is mortified by this idea. "Is that why everyone was telling me
not to fuck with Raven? They were afraid I was going to attack him?"
Squeaky eyes the swords. "You got the means."
"Why should anyone protect Raven?"
Squeaky smiles, as though we have just crossed the border into the
realm of kidding around. "He's a Sovereign."
"So declare war on him."
"It's not a good idea to declare war on a nuclear power."
"Huh?"
"Christ," Squeaky says, shaking his head, "if I had any idea how little
you knew about this shit, I never would have let you into my car. I thought
you we're some kind of a serious CIC wet-operations guy. Are you telling me
you really didn't know about Raven?"
"Yes, that's what I'm telling you."
"Okay. I'm gonna tell you this so you don't go out and cause any more
trouble. Raven's packing a torpedo warhead that he boosted from an old
Soviet nuke sub. It was a torpedo that was designed to take out a carrier
battle group with one shot. A nuclear torpedo. You know that funny-looking
sidecar that Raven has on his Harley? Well, it's a hydrogen bomb, man. Armed
and ready. The trigger's hooked up to EEG trodes embedded in his skull. If
Raven dies, the bomb goes off. So when Raven comes into town, we do
everything in our power to make the man feel welcome."
Hiro's just gaping. Y.T. has to step in on his behalf. "Okay," she
says. "Speaking for my partner and myself, we'll stay away from him."
Y.T. reckons she is going to spend all afternoon being a ramp turd. The
surf is always up on the Harbor Freeway, which gets her from Downtown into
Compton, but the off-ramps into that neighborhood are so rarely used that
three-foot tumbleweeds grow in their potholes. And she's definitely not
going to travel into Compton under her own power. She wants to poon
something big and fast.
She can't use the standard trick of ordering a pizza to her destination
and then pooning the delivery boy as he roars past, because none of the
pizza chains deliver to this neighborhood. So she'll have to stop at the
off-ramp and wait hours and hours for a ride. A ramp turd.
She does not want to do this delivery at all. But the franchisee wants
her to do it bad. Really bad. The amount of money he has offered her is so
high, it's stupid. The package must be full of some kind of intense new
drug.
But that's not as weird as what happens next. She is cruising down the
Harbor Freeway, approaching the desired off-ramp, having pooned a southbound
semi. A quarter-mile from the off-ramp, a bullet-pocked black Oldsmobile
cruises past her, right-turn signal flashing. He's going to exit. It's too
good to be true. She poons the Oldsmobile.
As she cruises down the ramp behind this flatulent sedan, she checks
out the driver in his rearview mirror. It is the franchisee himself, the one
who is paying her a totally stupid amount of money to do this job.
By this point, she's more afraid of him than she is of Compton. He must
be a psycho. He must be in love with her. This is all a twisted psycho love
plot.
But it's a little late now. She stays with him, looking for a way out
of this burning and rotting neighborhood.
They are approaching a big, nasty-looking Mafia roadblock. He guns the
gas pedal, headed straight for death. She can see the destination franchise
ahead. At the last second, he whips the car around and squeals sideways to a
halt.
He couldn't have been more helpful. She unpoons as he's giving her this
last little kick of energy and sails through the checkpoint at a safe and
sane speed. The guards keep their guns pointed at the sky, swivel their
heads to look at her butt as she rolls past them.
The Compton Nova Sicilia franchise is a grisly scene. It is a jamboree
of Young Mafia. These youths are even duller than the ones from the
all-Mormon Deseret Burbclave. The boys are wearing tedious black suits. The
girls are encrusted with pointless femininity. Girls can't even be in the
Young Mafia; they have to be in the Girls' Auxiliary and serve macaroons on
silver plates. "Girls" is too fine a word for these organisms, too high up
the evolutionary scale. They aren't even chicks.
She's going way too fast, so she kicks the board around sideways,
plants pads, leans into it, skids to a halt, roiling up a wave of dust and
grit that dulls the glossy shoes of several Young Mafia who are milling out
front, nibbling dinky Italo-treats and playing grown-up. It condenses on the
white lace stockings of the Young Mafia proto-chicks. She falls off the
board, appearing to catch her balance at the last moment. She stomps on the
edge of the plank with one foot, and it bounces four feet into the air,
spinning rapidly around its long axis, up into her armpit, where she clamps
it tight under one arm. The spokes of the smartwheels all retract so that
the wheels are barely larger than their hubs. She slaps the MagnaPoon into a
handy socket on the bottom of the plank so that her gear is all in one handy
package.
"Y.T.," she says. "Young, fast, and female. Where the fuck's Enzo?"
The boys decide to get all "mature" on Y.T. Males of this age are
preoccupied with snapping each other's underwear and drinking until they are
in a coma. But around a female, they do the "mature" thing. It is hilarious.
One of them steps forward slightly, interposing himself between Y.T. and the
nearest proto-chick. "Welcome to Nova Sicilia," he says. "Can I assist you
in some way?"
Y.T. sighs deeply. She is a fully independent businessperson, and these
people are trying to do a peer thing on her.
"Delivery for one Enzo? Y'know, I can't wait to get out of this
neighborhood."
"It's a good neighborhood, now," the YoMa says. "You should stick
around for a few minutes. Maybe you could learn some manners."
"You should try surfing the Ventura at rush hour. Maybe you could learn
your limitations."
The YoMa laughs like, okay, if that's how you want it. He gestures
toward the door. "The man you want to talk to is in there. Whether he wants
to talk to you or not, I'm not sure."
"He fucking asked for me," Y.T. says.
"He came across the country to be with us," the guy says, "and he seems
pretty happy with us."
All the other YoMas mumble and nod supportively.
"Then why are you standing outside?" Y.T. asks, going inside.
Inside the franchise, things are startlingly relaxed. Uncle Enzo is in
there, looking just like he does in the pictures, except bigger than Y.T.
expected. He is sitting at a desk playing cards with some other guys in
funeral garb. He is smoking a cigar and nursing an espresso. Can't get too
much stimulation, apparently.
There's a whole Uncle Enzo portable support system in here. A traveling
espresso machine has been set up on another desk. A cabinet sits next to it,
doors open to reveal a big foil bag of Italian Roast Water-Process Decaf and
a box of Havana cigars. There's also a gargoyle in one comer, patched into a
bigger-than-normal laptop, mumbling to himself.
Y.T. lifts her arm, allows the plank to fall into her hand. She slaps
it down on top of an empty desk and approaches Uncle Enzo, unslinging the
delivery from her shoulder.
"Gino, please," Uncle Enzo says, nodding at the delivery. Gino steps
forward to take it from her.
"Need your signature on that," Y.T. says. For some reason she does not
refer to him as "pal" or "bub."
She's momentarily distracted by Gino. Suddenly, Uncle Enzo has come
rather close to her, caught her right hand in his left hand. Her Kourier
gloves have an opening on the back of the hand just big enough for his lips.
He plants a kiss on Y.T.'s hand. It's warm and wet. Not slobbery and gross,
not antiseptic and dry either. Interesting. The guy has confidence going for
him. Christ, he's slick. Nice lips. Sort of firm muscular lips, not
gelatinous and blubbery like fifteen-year-old lips can be. Uncle Enzo has a
very faint citrus-and-aged-tobacco smell to him. Fully smelling it would
involve standing pretty close to him. He is towering over her, standing at a
respectable distance now, glinting at her through crinkly old-guy eyes.
Seems pretty nice.
"I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to meeting you,
Y.T.," he says.
"Hi," she says. Her voice sounds chirpier than she likes it to be. So
she adds, "What's in that bag that's so fucking valuable, anyway.
"Absolutely nothing," Uncle Enzo says. His smile is not exactly smug.
More embarrassed, like what an awkward way to meet someone. "It all has to
do with imageering," he says, spreading one hand dismissively. "There are
not many ways for a man like me to meet with a young girl that do not
generate incorrect images in the media. It's stupid. But we pay attention to
these things."
"So, what did you want to meet with me about? Got a delivery for me to
make?"
All the guys in the room laugh.
The sound startles Y.T. a little, reminds her that she is performing in
front of a crowd. Her eyes flick away from Uncle Enzo for a moment.
Uncle Enzo notices this. His smile gets infinitesimally narrower, and
he hesitates for a moment. In that moment, all the other guys in the room
stand up and head for the exit.
"You may not believe me," he says, "but I simply wanted to thank you
for delivering that pizza a few weeks ago."
"Why shouldn't I believe you?" she asks. She is amazed to hear nice,
sweet things coming out of her mouth.
So is Uncle Enzo. "I'm sure you of all people can come up with a
reason."
"So," she says, "you having a nice day with all the Young Mafia?"
Uncle Enzo gives her a look that says, watch it, child. A second after
she gets scared, she starts laughing, because it's a put-on, he's just
giving her a hard time. He smiles, indicating that it's okay for her to
laugh.
Y.T. can't remember when she's been so involved in a conversation. Why
can't all people be like Uncle Enzo?
"Let me see," Uncle Enzo says, looking at the ceiling, scanning his
memory banks. "I know a few things about you. That you are fifteen years
old, you live in a Burbclave in the Valley with your mother."
"I know a few things about you, too," Y.T. hazards.
Uncle Enzo laughs. "Not nearly as much as you think, I promise. Tell
me, what does your mother think of your career?"
Nice of him to use the word "career." "She's not totally aware of it -
or doesn't want to know."
"You're probably wrong," Uncle Enzo says. He says it cheerfully enough,
not trying to cut her down or anything. "You might be shocked at how
well-informed she is. This is my experience, anyway. What does your mother
do for a living?"
"She works for the Feds."
Uncle Enzo finds that richly amusing. "And her daughter is delivering
pizzas for Nova Sicilia. What does she do for the Feds?"
"Some kind of thing where she can't really tell me in case I blab it.
She has to take a lot of polygraph tests."
Uncle Enzo seems to understand this very well. "Yes, a lot of Fed jobs
are that way."
There is an opportune silence.
"It kind of freaks me out," Y.T. says.
"The fact that she works for the Feds?"
"The polygraph tests. They put a thing around her arm - to measure the
blood pressure."
"A sphygmomanometer," Uncle Enzo says crisply.
"It leaves a bruise around her arm. For some reason, that kind of
bothers me."
"It should bother you."
"And the house is bugged. So when I'm home - no matter what I'm doing -
someone else is probably listening."
"Well, I can certainly relate to that," Uncle Enzo says.
They both laugh.
"I'm going to ask you a question that I've always wanted to ask a
Kourier," Uncle Enzo says. "I always watch you people through the windows of
my limousine. In fact, when a Kourier poons me, I always tell Peter, my
driver, not to give them a hard time. My question is, you are covered from
head to toe in protective padding. So why don't you wear a helmet?"
"The suit's got a cervical airbag that blows up when you fall off the
board, so you can bounce on your head. Besides, helmets feel weird. They say
it doesn't affect your hearing, but it does."
"You use your hearing quite a bit in your line of work?"
"Definitely, yeah."
Uncle Enzo is nodding. "That's what I suspected. We felt the same way,
the boys in my unit in Vietnam."
"I heard you went to Vietnam, but - " She stops, sensing danger.
"You thought it was hype. No, I went there. Could have stayed out, if
I'd wanted. But I volunteered."
"You volunteered to go to Vietnam?"
Uncle Enzo laughs. "Yes, I did. The only boy in my family to do so."
"Why?"
"I thought it would be safer than Brooklyn."
Y.T. laughs.
"A bad joke," he says. "I volunteered because my father didn't want me
to. And I wanted to piss him off."
"Really?"
"Definitely. I spent years and years finding ways to piss him off.
Dated black girls. Grew my hair long. Smoked marijuana. But the capstone, my
ultimate achievement - even better than having my ear pierced - was
volunteering for service in Vietnam. But I had to take extreme measures even
then."
Y.T.'s eyes dart back and forth between Uncle Enzo's creased and
leathery earlobes. In the left one she just barely sees a tiny diamond stud.
"What do you mean, extreme measures?"
"Everyone knew who I was. Word gets around, you know. If I had
volunteered for the regular Army, I would have ended up stateside, filling
out forms - maybe even at Fort Hamilton, right there in Bensonhurst. To
prevent that, I volunteered for Special Forces, did everything I could to
get into a front-line unit." He laughs. "And it worked. Anyway, I'm rambling
like an old man. I was trying to make a point about helmets."
"Oh, yeah."
"Our job was to go through the jungle making trouble for some slippery
gentlemen carrying guns bigger than they were. Stealthy guys. And we
depended on our hearing, too -just like you do. And you know what? We never
wore helmets."
"Same reason."
"Exactly. Even though they didn't cover the ears, really, they did
something to your sense of hearing. I still think I owe my life to going
bareheaded."
"That's really cool. That's really interesting."
"You'd think they would have solved the problem by now."
"Yeah," Y.T., volunteers, "some things never change, I guess."
Uncle Enzo throws back his head and belly laughs. Usually, Y.T. finds
this kind of thing pretty annoying, but Uncle Enzo just seems like he's
having a good time, not putting her down.
Y.T. wants to ask him how he went from the ultimate rebellion to
running the family beeswax. She doesn't. But Uncle Enzo senses that it is
the next, natural subject of the conversation.
"Sometimes I wonder who'll come after me," he says. "Oh, we have plenty
of excellent people in the next generation. But after that - well, I don't
know. I guess all old people feel like the world is coming to an end."
"You got millions of those Young Mafia types," Y.T. says.
"All destined to wear blazers and shuffle papers in suburbia. You don't
respect those people very much, Y.T., because you're young and arrogant. But
I don't respect them much either, because I'm old and wise."
This is a fairly shocking thing for Uncle Enzo to be saying, but Y.T.
doesn't feel shocked. It just seems like a reasonable statement coming from
her reasonable pal, Uncle Enzo.
"None of them would ever volunteer to go get his legs shot off in the
jungle, just to piss off his old man. They lack a certain fiber. They are
lifeless and beaten down."
"That's sad," Y.T. says. It feels better to say this than to trash
them, which was her first inclination.
"Well," says Uncle Enzo. It is the "well" that begins the end of a
conversation. "I was going to send you some roses, but you wouldn't really
be interested in that, would you?"
"Oh, I wouldn't mind," she says, sounding pathetically weak to herself.
"Here's something better, since we are comrades in arms," he says. He
loosens his tie and collar, reaches down into his shirt, pulls out an
amazingly cheap steel chain with a couple of stamped silver tags dangling
from it. "These are my old dog tags," he says. "Been carrying them around
for years, just for the hell of it. I would be amused if you would wear
them."
Trying to keep her knees steady, she puts the dog tags on. They dangle
down onto her coverall.
"Better put them inside," Uncle Enzo says.
She drops them down into the secret place between her breasts. They are
still warm from Uncle Enzo.
"Thanks."
"It's just for fun," he says, "but if you ever get into trouble, and
you show those dog tags to whoever it is that's giving you a bad time, then
things will probably change very quickly."
"Thanks, Uncle Enzo."
"Take care of yourself. Be good to your mother. She loves you."
As she steps out of the Nova Sicilia franchulate, a guy is waiting for
her. He smiles, not without irony, and makes just a hint of a bow, sort of
to get her attention. It's pretty ridiculous, but after being with Uncle
Enzo for a while, she's definitely into it. So she doesn't laugh in his face
or anything, just looks the other way and blows him off.
"Y.T. Got a job for ya," he says.
"I'm busy," she says, "got other deliveries to make."
"You lie like a mattress," he says appreciatively. "Y'know that
gargoyle in there? He's patched in to the RadiKS computer even as we speak.
So we all know for a fact you don't got no jobs to do."
"Well, I can't take jobs from a customer," Y.T. says. "We're centrally
dispatched. You have to go through the 1-800 number."
"Jeez, what kind of a fucking dickhead do you think I am?" the guy
says.
Y.T. stops walking, turns, finally looks at the guy. He's tall, lean.
Black suit, black hair. And he's got a gnarly-looking glass eye.
"What happened to your eye?" she says.
"Ice pick, Bayonne, 1985," he says. "Any other questions?"
"Sorry, man, I was just asking."
"Now back to business. Because I don't have my head totally up my
asshole, like you seem to assume, I am aware that all Kouriers are centrally
dispatched through the 1-800 number. Now, we don't like 1-800 numbers and
central dispatching. It's just a thing with us. We like to go
person-to-person, the old-fashioned way. Like, on my momma's birthday, I
don't pick up the phone and dial 1-800-CALL-MOM. I go there in person and
give her a kiss on the cheek, okay? Now in this case, we want you in
particular."
"How come?"
"Because we just love to deal with difficult little chicks who ask too
many fucking questions. So our gargoyle has already patched himself in to
the computer that RadiKS uses to dispatch Kouriers."
The man with the glass eye turns, rotating his head way, way around
like an owl, and nods in the direction of the gargoyle. A second later,
Y.T.'s personal phone rings.
"Fucking pick it up," he says.
"What?" she says into the phone.
A computer voice tells her that she is supposed to make a pickup in
Griffith Park and deliver it to a Reverend Wayne's Pearly Gates franchise in
Van Nuys.
"If you want something delivered from point A to point B, why don't you
just drive it down there yourselves?" Y.T. asks. "Put it in one of those
black Lincoln Town Cars and just get it done."
"Because in this case, the something doesn't exactly belong to us, and
the people at point A and point B, well, we aren't necessarily on the best
of terms, mutually speaking."
"You want me to steal something," Y.T. says.
The man with the glass eye is pained, wounded. "No, no, no. Kid,
listen. We're the fucking Mafia. We want to steal something, we already know
how to do that, okay? We don't need a fifteen-year-old girl's help to get
something stolen. What we are doing here is more of a covert operation."
"A spy thing." Intel.
"Yeah. A spy thing," the man says, his tone of voice suggesting that he
is trying to humor someone. "And the only way to get this operation to work
is if we have a Kourier who can cooperate with us a little bit."
"So all that stuff with Uncle Enzo was fake," Y.T. says. "You're just
trying to get all friendly with a Kourier."
"Oh, ho, listen to this," says the man with the glass eye, genuinely
amused. "Yeah, like we have to go all the way to the top to impress a
fifteen-year-old. Look, kid, there's a million Kouriers out there we could
bribe to do this. We're going with you, again, because you have a personal
relationship with our outfit."
"Well, what do you want me to do?"
"Exactly what you would normally do at this juncture," the man says.
"Go to Griffith Park and make the pickup."
"That's it?"
"Yeah. Then make the delivery. But do us a favor and take I-5, okay?"
"That's not the best way to do it - "
"Do it anyway."
"Okay."
"Now come on, we'll give you an escort out of this hellhole."
Sometimes, if the wind is going the right way, and you get into the
pocket of air behind a speeding eighteen-wheeler, you don't even have to
poon it. The vacuum, like a mighty hoover, sucks you in. You can stay there
all day. But if you screw up, you suddenly find yourself alone and powerless
in the left lane of a highway with a convoy of semis right behind you. Just
as bad, if you give in to its power, it will suck you right into its
mudflaps, you will become axle dressing, and no one will ever know. This is
called the Magic Hoover Poon. It reminds Y.T. of the way her life has been
since the fateful night of the Hiro Protagonist pizza adventure.
Her poon cannot miss as she slingshots her way up the San Diego
Freeway. She can get a solid yank off even the lightest, trashiest
plastic-and-aluminum Chinese econobox. People don't fuck with her. She has
established her space on the pavement.
She is going to get so much business now. She will have to sub a lot of
work out to Roadkill. And sometimes, just to make important business
arrangements, they will have to check into a motel somewhere - which is
exactly what real business people do. Lately, Y.T. has been trying to teach
Roadkill how to give her a massage. But Roadkill can never get past her
shoulder blades before he loses it and starts being Mr. Macho. Which anyway
is kind of sweet. And anyway, you take what you can get.
This is not the most direct route to Griffith Park by a longshot, but
this is what the Mafia wants her to do: Take 405 all the way up into the
Valley, and then approach from that direction, which is the direction she'd
normally come from. They're so paranoid. So professional.
LAX goes by on her left. On her right, she gets a glimpse of the
U-Stor-It where that dweeb, her partner, is probably goggled into his
computer. She weaves through complex traffic flows around Hughes Airport,
which is now a private outpost of Mr. Lee's Greater Hong Kong. Continues
past the Santa Monica Airport, which just got bought out by Admiral Bob's
Global Security. Cuts through the middle of Fedland, where her mother goes
to work every day.
Fedland used to be the VA Hospital and a bunch of other Federal
buildings; now it has condensed into a kidney-shaped lozenge that wraps
around 405. It has a barrier around it, a perimeter fence put up by
stringing chain link fabric, concertina wire, heaps of rubble, and Jersey
barriers from one building to the next. All of the buildings in Fedland are
big and ugly. Human beings mill around their plinths, wearing wool clothing
the color of damp granite. They are scrawny and dark underneath the white
majesty of the buildings.
On the far side of the Fedland barrier, off to the right, she can see
UCLA, which is now being jointly run by the Japanese and Mr. Lee's Greater
Hong Kong and a few big American corporations.
People say that over there to the left, in Pacific Palisades, is a big
building above the ocean where the Central Intelligence Corporation has its
West Coast headquarters. Soon - like maybe tomorrow - she'll go up there,
find that building, maybe just cruise past it and wave. She has great stuff
to tell Hiro now. Great intel on Uncle Enzo. People would pay millions for
it.
But in her heart, she's already feeling the pangs of conscience. She
knows that she cannot kiss and tell on the Mafia. Not because she's afraid
of them. Because they trust her. They were nice to her. And who knows , it
might turn into something. A better career than she could get with CIC.
Not many cars are taking the off-ramp into Fedland. Her mother does it
every morning, as do a bunch of other Feds. But all Feds go to work early
and stay late. It's a loyalty thing with them. The Feds have a fetish for
loyalty - since they don't make a lot of money or get a lot of respect, you
have to prove you're personally committed and that you don't care about
those trappings.
Case in point: Y.T. has been pooned onto the same cab all the way from
LAX. It's got an Arab in the back seat. His burnous flutters in the wind
from the open window; the air conditioning doesn't work, an L.A. cabbie
doesn't make enough money to buy Chill - Freon - on the underground market.
This is typical: only the Feds would make a visitor take a dirty, un-air
conditioned cab. Sure enough, the cab puffs onto the ramp marked UNITED
STATES. Y.T. disengages and slaps her poon onto a Valley-bound delivery
truck.
On top of the huge Federal Building, a bunch of Feds with
walkie-talkies and dark glasses and FEDS windbreakers lurk, aiming long
lenses into the windshields of the vehicles coming up Wilshire Boulevard. If
this were nighttime, she'd probably see a laser scanner playing over the
bar-code license plate of the taxi as it veers onto the U.S. exit.
Y.T.'s mom has told her all about these guys. They are the Executive
Branch General Operational Command, EBGOC. The FBI, Federal Marshalls,
Secret Service, and Special Forces all claim some separate identity still,
like the Army, Navy, and Air Force used to, but they're all under the
command of EBGOC, they all do the same things, and they are more or less
interchangeable. Outside of Fedland, everyone just knows them as the Feds.
EBGOC claims the right to go anywhere, anytime, within the original borders
of the United States of America, without a warrant or even a good excuse.
But they only really feet at home here, in Fedland, staring down the barrel
of a telephoto lens, shotgun microphone, or sniper rifle. The longer the
better.
Down below them, the taxicab with the Arab in the back slows down to
sublight speed and winds its way down a twisting slalom course of Jersey
barriers with .50-caliber machine gun nests strategically placed here and
there. It comes to a stop in front of an STD device, straddling an open pit
where EBGOC boys stand with dogs and high-powered spotlights to look up its
skirt for bombs or NBCI (nuclear-biological-chemical-informational) agents
in the undercarriage. Meanwhile, the driver gets out and pops the hood and
trunk so that more Feds can inspect them; another Fed leans against the
window next to the Arab and grills him through the window.
They say that in D.C., all the museums and the monuments have been
concessioned out and turned into a tourist park that now generates about 10
percent of the Government's revenue. The Feds could run the concession
themselves and probably keep more of the gross, but that's not the point.
It's a philosophical thing. A back-to-basics thing. Government should
govern. It's not in the entertainment industry, is it? Leave entertaining to
Industry weirdos - people who majored in tap dancing. Feds aren't like that.
Feds are serious people. Poli sci majors. Student council presidents. Debate
club chairpersons. The kinds of people who have the grit to wear a dark wool
suit and a tightly buttoned collar even when the temperature has greenhoused
up to a hundred and ten degrees and the humidity is thick enough to stall a
jumbo jet. The kinds of people who feel most at home on the dark side of a
one-way mirror.
Sometimes, to prove their manhood, boys of about Y.T.'s age will drive
to the eastern end of the Hollywood Hills, into Griffith Park, pick the road
of their choosing, and simply drive through it. Making it through there
unscathed is a lot like counting coup on a High Plains battlefield; simply
having come that close to danger makes you more of a man.
By definition, all they ever see are the through streets. If you are
driving into Griffith Park for some highijnks and you see a NO OUTLET sign,
you know that it is time to shift your dad's Accord into reverse and drive
it backward all the way back home, revving the engine way past the end of
the tachometer.
Naturally, as soon as Y.T. enters the park, following the road she was
told to follow, she sees a NO OUTLET sign.
Y.T.'s not the first Kourier to take a job like this, and so she has
heard about the place she is going. It is a narrow canyon, accessed only by
this one road, and down in the bottom of the canyon a new gang lives.
Everyone calls them the Falabalas, because that's how they talk to each
other. They have their own language and it sounds like babble.
Right now, the important thing is not to think about how stupid this
is. Making the right decision is, priority-wise, down there along with
getting enough niacin and writing a thank-you letter to grandma for the nice
pearl earrings. The only important thing is not to back down.
A row of machine-gun nests marks the border of Falabala territory. It
seems like overkill to Y.T. But then she's never been in a conflict with the
Mafia, either. She plays it cool, idles toward the barrier at maybe ten
miles an hour. This is where she'll freak out and get scared if she's going
to. She is holding aloft a color-faxed RadiKS document, featuring the
cybernetic radish logo, proclaiming that she really is here to pick up an
important delivery, honest. It'll never work with these guys.
But it does. A big gnarled-up coil of razor ribbon is pulled out of her
way, just like that, and she glides through without slowing down. And that's
when she knows that it's going to be fine. These people are just doing
business here, just like anyone else.
She doesn't have to skate far into the canyon. Thank God. She goes
around a few turns, into kind of an open flat area surrounded by trees, and
finds herself in what looks like an open-air insane asylum.
Or a Moonie festival or something.
A couple of dozen people are here. None of them have been taking care
of themselves at all. They are all wearing the ragged remains of what used
to be pretty decent clothing. Half a dozen of them are kneeling on the
pavement with their hands clenched tightly together, mumbling to unseen
entities.
On the trunk lid of a dead car, they've set up an old junked computer
terminal, just a dark monitor screen with a big spider-web crack in it, like
someone bounced a coffee mug off the glass. A fat man with red suspenders
dangling around his knees is sliding his hands up and down the keyboard,
whacking the keys randomly, talking out loud in a meaningless babble. A
couple of the others stand behind him, peeking over his shoulder and around
his body, and sometimes they try to horn in on it, but he shoves them out of
the way.
There's also a crowd of people clapping their hands, swaying their
bodies, and singing "The Happy Wanderer." They're really into it, too. Y.T.
hasn't seen such childlike glee on anyone's face since the first time she
let Roadkill take her clothes off. But this is a different kind of childlike
glee that does not look right on a bunch of thirty-something people with
dirty hair.
And finally, there is a guy that Y.T. dubs the High Priest. He's
wearing a formerly white lab coat, bearing the logo of some company in the
Bay Area. He's sacked out in the back of a dead station wagon, but when Y.T.
enters the area he jumps up and runs toward her in a way that she can't help
but find a little threatening. But compared to these others, he seems almost
like a regular, healthy, fit, demented bush-dwelling psychotic.
"You're here to pick up a suitcase, right?"
"I'm here to pick up something. I don't know what it is," she says.
He goes over to one of the dead cars, unlocks the hood, pulls out an
aluminum briefcase. It looks exactly like the one that Squeaky took out of
the BMW last night. "Here's your delivery," he says, striding toward her.
She backs away from him instinctively.
"I understand, I understand," he says. "I'm a scary creep."
He puts it on the ground, puts his foot on it, gives it a shove. It
slides across the pavement to Y.T., bouncing off the occasional rock.
"There's no big hurry on this delivery," he says. "Would you like to
stay and have a drink? We've got Kool-Aid."
"I'd love to," Y.T. says, "but my diabetes is acting up real bad."
"Well, then you can just stay and be a guest of our community. We have
a lot of wonderful things to tell you about. Things that could really change
your life."
"Do you have anything in writing? Something I could take with me?"
"Gee, I'm afraid we don't. Why don't you stay. You seem like a really
nice person."
"Sorry, Jack, but you must be confusing me with a bimbo," Y.T. says.
"Thanks for the suitcase. I'm out of here."
Y.T. starts digging at the pavement with one foot, building up speed as
fast as she can. On her way out, she passes by a young woman with a shaved
head, dressed in the dirty and haggard remains of a Chanel knockoff. As Y.T.
goes by her, she smiles vacantly, sticks out her hand, and waves. "Hi," she
says. "ba ma zu na la amu pa go lu ne me a ba du."
"Yo," Y.T. says.
A couple of minutes later, she's pooning her way up I-5, headed up into
Valley-land. She's a little freaked-out, her timing is off, she's taking it
easy. A tune keeps running through her head: "The Happy Wanderer." It's
driving her crazy.
A large black blur keeps pulling alongside her. It would be a tempting
target, so large and ferrous, if it were going a little faster. But she can
make better time than this barge, even when she's taking it slow.
The driver's side window of the black car rolls down. It's the guy.
Jason. He's sticking his whole head out the window to look back at her,
driving blind. The wind at fifty miles per hour does not ruffle his firmly
gelled razor cut.
He smiles. He has an imploring look about him, the same look that
Roadkill gets. He points suggestively at his rear quarter-panel.
What the hell. The last time she pooned this guy, he took her exactly
where she was going. Y.T. detaches from the Acura she's been hitched to for
the last half mile, swings it over to Jason's fat Olds. And Jason takes her
off the freeway and onto Victory Boulevard, headed for Van Nuys, which is
exactly right.
But after a couple of miles, he swings the wheel sharply right and
screeches into the parking lot of a ghost mall, which is wrong. Right now,