The Bridge Trilogy Part 105

Zooms in on one of the figures, lean and male, as all are. Mouth obscured by a dark scarf. Stiff black hair above a high white forehead. "No evidence of that. Opportunistic. He waits for them to come to him. Then he takes them. These," and the camera swings smoothly to frame the face and bare chest of a dead man, eyes staring, "are jackers. This one had dancer in his pocket." There is a dark comma on the dead man's pale chest, just below the sternum. "The other one was stabbed through the throat, but somehow he managed to miss the arteries."

"He would," says the unseen man.

'We have profiles," the man with the scarf says, off-camera, the face of the corpse thrown across Laney's cardboard wall, the melon blanket. 'We have a full forensic psych run-up. But you ignore them!~ "Of course I do."

'You re in denial Two pairs of hands in latex gloves grasp the dead man flip him over There is a second smaller wound visible beneath one shoulder blade blood has pooled within the body darkened He poses as real a danger to you as to anyone else."

But hes interesting isn t he~ The wound in close up is a small unsmiling mouth The blood reads black. "Not to me."

But you aren t interesting are you~

No and the camera pans up light catching a sharp cheekbone above the black scarf, "and you don't want me to be, do you?"

There is a faint chime as the transmission is terminated. Laney throws back his head the image of the man with the scarf in freeze frame across the ceiling of the carton too bnght distorted and Yamazaki sees that the cardboard there is s.h.i.+ngled with tiny self

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adhesive printouts, dozens of different images of a bland-looking man, oddly familiar. Yamazaki blinks, his contacts s.h.i.+fting, and misses his gla.s.ses. He feels incomplete without them. "Who was that man, Laney?"

"The help," Laney says.

"'Help'?"

"Hard to get good help these days." Laney kills the projector and removes the ma.s.sive eyephones.

In the sudden gloom, his face is reduced to a child's drawing, smudged black eyeholes against a pallid smear. "The man who was taking that call-"

"The one who spoke?"

"He owns the world. Near as anyone does."

Yamazaki frowns. "I have brought medicine-"

"That was from the bridge, Yamazaki."

"San Francisco?"

"They followed my other man there. They followed him, last night, but they lost him. They always do. This morning they found those bodies.

"Followed who?"

"The man who isn't there. The one I'm having to infer."

"These are pictures of Harwood? Of Harwood Levine?" Yamazaki has recognized the face replicated on the stickers.

"Spooks are his. Best money can buy, probably, but they can't get close to the man who isn't there."

"What man?"

"I think he's someone Harwood ... collected. Collects people. Interesting people. I think he might've worked for Harwood, taken commissions. He doesn't leave a trace, none at all. When he crosses someone's path, they're just gone. Then he erases himself."

Yamazaki fumbles the antibiotics from his bag. "Will you take these, Laney? Your cough-"

"Where's Rydell, Yamazaki? He's supposed to be up there now. It's all coming together."

"What is?"

"I don't know," Laney says, leaning forward to dig through the con-

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tents of the bag. He finds a coffee and activates it, tossing it from hand to hand as it heats.

Yamazaki hears the pop, the vacuum hiss, as Laney opens it. Smell of coffee. Laney sips from the steaming can.

"Something's happening," Laney says and coughs into his hand, slopping hot creamed coffee on Yamazaki's wrist. Yamazaki flinches.

"Everything's changing. Or it's not, really. How I see it is changing. But since I've been able to see it the new way, something else has started. There's something building up. Big. Bigger than big. It'll happen soon, then there'll be a cascade effect.

"What will happen?"

"I don't know." Another fit of coughing requires that he set aside the coffee. Yamazaki has opened the antibiotics and tries to offer them. Laney waves them aside. "Have you been back to the island? Do they have any idea where she is?"

Yamazaki blinks. "No. She is simply not present."

Laney smiles, faint gleam of teeth against the darkness of his mouth. "That's good. She's in it too, Yamazaki." He reaches for the coffee. "She's in it too."

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14. BREAKFAST, COOKING.

RYDELL found a place in one of those buildings that had clearly been a bank, when banks had needed to have buildings. Thick walls. Someone had turned it into an all-day breakfast-special place, and that was what Rydell was after. Actually it looked like it had been some kind of discount store before that, and who knew what else before, but it had that eggs.and-grease smell, and he was hungry.

There were a couple of size-large construction types, covered with white drywall dust, waiting for a table, but Rydell saw that the counter was empty, so he went over there and took a stool. The waitress was a distracted-looking woman of indeterminate ancestry, acne scars sprinkled across her cheekbones, and she poured his coffee and took his order without actually indicating she

understood English. Like the whole operation could be basically phonetic, he thought, and she'd have learned the sound of "two eggs over easy" and the rest. Hear it, translate it into whatever she wrote in, then give it to the cook.

Rydell got the Brazilian gla.s.ses out, put them on, and scrolled for the number Yamazaki had given him in Tokyo. Someone picked up on the third ring, but the gla.s.ses didn't map a location for the answering phone. Probably meant another mobile.

Silence on the line, but it had a texture.

'Hey," Rydell said, "Yamazaki?"

'Rydell? Laney-" Cut off by a burst of coughing and then dead silence as someone hit mute.

When Laney came back on, he sounded strangled. "Sorry. Where are you?"

'San Francisco," Rydell said.

"I know that," Laney said.

'In a diner on, on. . ." Rydell was scrolling the GPS menu, trying to get in, but he kept getting

what looked like Rio transit maps.

"Never mind," Laney said. Sounded tired. What time would it be in

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