The Bridge Trilogy Part 116

23. RUSSIAN HILL.

THE apartment is large and has nothing in it that is not of practical use. Consequently, the dark hardwood floors are bare and quite meticulously swept.

Seated in an expensive, semi-intelligent Swedish workstation chair, he is sharpening the knife.

This is a task (he thinks of it as a function) requiring emptiness.

He sits facing a nineteenth-century reproduction of a seventeenth-century refectory table. Six inches in from its nearest edge, two triangular sockets have been laser-cut into the walnut at precise angles. Into these, he has inserted a pair of nine-inch-long rods of graphite-gray ceramic, triangular in cross section, forming an acute angle. These

hones fit the deep, laser-cut recesses perfectly, allowing for no movement whatever.

The knife lies before him on the table, its blade between the ceramic rods.

When it is time, he takes it in his left hand and places the base of the blade against the left hone. He draws it down, a single, 'smooth, sure

stroke, pulling it toward him as he does. He is listening for any indication of imperfection,

although this would only be likely if he had struck bone, and it has been many years since the knife struck bone.

Nothing.

He exhales, inhales, places the blade against the right hone.

The telephone rings.

He exhales. Places the knife on the table again, its blade between the hones. "Yes?"

The voice, emerging from several concealed speakers, is a voice he knows well, although it has been nearly a decade since he has shared physical s.p.a.ce with the speaker. He knows that the words he hears come in from a tiny, grotesquely expensive piece of dedicated real estate somewhere in the planet's swarm of satellites. It is a direct transmis 97 sion, and nothing to do with the amorphous cloud of ordinary human communication. "I saw what you did on the bridge last night," the voice says.

The man says nothing. He is wearing a s.h.i.+rt cut from very fine gray cotton flannel, its collar b.u.t.toned but tieless, French cuffs secured with plain round links of sandblasted platinum. He places his hands on his thighs and waits.

"They think you're mad," says the voice.

"Who do you employ to tell you these things?"

"Children," the voice says. "Hard and bright. The best I can find."

"Why do you bother?"

"I like to know."

"You like to know," the man says, adjusting the crease along the top of his left trouser leg, "but

why?"

"Because you interest me."

"Do you fear me?" the man asks. "No," the voice says, "I don't believe I do." The man is silent.

"Why did you kill them?" the voice asks.

"They died," the man says. "But why were you there?"

"I wished to see the bridge." - "They think you went there knowing you'd attract someone, someone who'd attack you. Someone to

kill."

"No," says the man, a note of disappointment in his voice, "they died."

"But you were the agent."

The man shrugs. His lips purse. Then: "Things happen."

"'s.h.i.+t happens,' we used to say. Is that it?"

"I am unfamiliar with that expression," the man says.

"It's been a long time since I've asked for your help."

"That is the result of maturation, I would think," the man says. "You are less inclined now to

move counter to the momentum of things."

A.

Now the voice falls silent. The silence lengthens. "You taught me that," it says finally.

When he is positive that the conversation has ended, the man picks up the knife and places the base of its blade against the top of the right hone.

He draws it, smoothly, down and back.

99.

24, TWO LIGHTS ON BEHIND.

THEY found a dark place that felt as though it hung out beyond where the bridge's handrails would've been. Not a very deep s.p.a.ce, but long, the bar along the bridge side and the opposite all mismatched windows, looking south, past the piers, to China Basin. The panes were filthy, patched into their mulhions with yellowing translucent gobs of silicone.

Creedmore in the meantime had become startlingly lucid, reaiy positively cordial, introducing his companion, the fleshy man, as Randall James Branch Cabell Shoats, from Mobile, Alabama. Shoats was a session guitarist, Creedmore said, in Nashville and elsewhere.

"Pleased to meet you," said Rydell. Shoats'grip was cool and dry arid very soft but studded with concise, rock-hard calluses, so that his hand felt to Rydell like a kid glove set with rough garnets.

'"Any friend of Buell's," Shoats said, with no apparent irony.

Rydell looked at Creedmore and wondered what trough or plateau of brain chemistry the man was currently traversing and how long it would be until he decided to alter it.

"I have to thank you for what you did back there, Buell," Rydell said, because it was true. It was also true that Rydell wasn't sure you could say Creedmore had done it so much as been it, but the way things had worked out, it looked as though Creedmore and Shoats had happened along at exactly the right time, although Rydell's own Lucky Dragon experience suggested to him that it was far from over.

"Sons of b.i.t.c.hes," Creedmore said, as if commenting generally on the texture of things.

Rydell ordered a round of beer. "Listen, Buell," Rydell said, "it's possible they'll come looking for us, 'cause of what happened."

"Why the f.u.c.k? We're here, them sons of b.i.t.c.hes back there."

"Well, Buell," Rydell said, pretending to himself he was having to explain this to a stubborn and willfully obtuse six-year-old, "I'd just picked up this package here, before we had us our little argument, and then you poked the security man in the gut. He won't be too happy about ~1~WILLIAMGI~O~.

' it, and chances are he'll recall that I was carrying this package. Big GhobEx logo here see? So he can look in the GIobEx records and get

video of me, voiceprint, whatever, and give it to the police."

The police? Sumb.i.t.c.h wants to make trouble we give it to im

~, right?"

"No," said Rydelh, "that won't help."

"Well, then," said Creedmore, resting his hand on RydeIl's shoulder, ~" "we'll come see you till you're out."

"Well, no, Buell," Rydell said, shrugging off the hand. "I don't think he'll bother much about the police. More he'll want to find out who we work for and if he could sue us and win.