The Bridge Trilogy Part 135

But it was no good sitting here, this close to chicken crates, because that was a good way to catch lice, and just the thought of it made her scalp itch. She stood up, stretched, smelling the faint ammonia tang of chicken s.h.i.+t, and set off through the upper level toward the city, keeping an eye out for Carson.

Not many people out now, and none of them tourists. The rain could do that, she remembered. Once again she got that feeling that she loved this place but wasn't really a part of it anymore. Kind of twisted 180.

in, like a hook, not a big feeling but sharp and deep. She sighed, remembering foggy mornings when she'd come down from the cable tower with her bike over her shoulder and pumped it over to Allied, wondering if Bunny'd have a scratch for her right off, a good ticket to pull, or if he'd give her a deadhead, what they called a pickup outside the city core. She'd liked a deadhead sometimes, because she got to see parts of town she might not have ridden before. And sometimes she'd wind up clean, what they called it when you didn't have any deliveries, and that could be great too, just go over to the Alcoholocaust or one of the other messenger bars and drink espresso until Bunny paged her. It had been pretty good, riding for Allied. She'd never even eaten it, wiped out bad, and the cops weren't as book-happy if you were a girl; you could get away with doing sidewalks and

stuff. Not that she could imagine going back to it now, riding, and that brought her mood back, because she didn't know what else she could do. Whatever, she wasn't going to star in any new versions of Tessa's docu.

She remembered this skinny tech named Tara-May, somebody Cops in Trouble had sent over to grab footage of poor Rydell, who'd only ever wanted to feature in a segment of that thing. No, she corrected herself, that wasn't fair, because she knew that what Rydell had really wanted was to be a cop, which was what he'd started out to be in Tennessee. But it hadn't worked out, and then his episode hadn't worked out, let alone the mini-series they'd talked about spinning off. Mainly, she supposed, because what Tara-May had shot had convinced the Cops in Trouble people that Rydell looked a little on the heavy side on TV. Not that there was any fat on him, he was all muscle and long legs, but when they shot him he didn't look like that. And that had driven him sort of crazy, that and Tara-May always going on about how Chevette should take speech and acting cla.s.ses, learn all these martial arts, and give up drugs. When Chevette had made it clear she didn't do drugs, Tara-May had said that that would make networking a little harder, not having anything to quit, but that there were groups for everything and that was probably the best way to meet people who could help you with your Career.

But Chevette hadn't wanted a career, or not the way Tara-May

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meant it, and Tara-May just hadn't been able to get that. Actually there were a lot of people like Tara-May in Hollywood, maybe even most people were; everybody had something they "really" did.

Drivers wrote, bartenders acted; she'd had ma.s.sages from a girl who was really a stunt double for some actress Chevette had never heard of yet, except she hadn't really ever been called, but they had her number. Somebody had everybody's number, but it looked to Chevette like the game had all their numbers, every one, and n.o.body really was winning, but n.o.body wanted to hear that, or talk to you much if you didn't buy into what they "really" did.

Now she thought about it, that was part of what had gotten between her and Rydell, because he'd always buy into that, whatever anybody told him they really were. And then he'd tell them how he really wanted to do an episode of Cops in Trouble, and how it looked like he actually would, because Cops in Trouble was paying his rent now. Which n.o.body wanted to hear really, because it was a little too real, but Rydell never got that. And then they'd hit on him for phone numbers, names, intros, and start slipping him disks and lists of credits, hoping he was dumb enough to go back and try to show them to producers. Which he was, or anyway good-hearted enough, and that hadn't helped him any with the people at Cops in Trouble either.

And that, somehow, was how she'd wound up with Carson. Rydell sitting on the couch in that apartment with the lights off, watching one old Cops in Trouble after another, looking lost, and she just hadn't been able to handle it. It had been fine when they'd had things to do together, but when it came to just being together, that hadn't seemed to work, and Rydell going into that sad thing when it had started to look like it wasn't going to work out with the show...

But here was the bar, a small crowd around the door now and the sound of music she'd been hearing but not really listening to, which died as she got up close to the crowd.

Place was packed. She slid in sideways between a couple of Mexicans looked like truck drivers, had those steel chisel-toe things tacked to the front of their black cowboy boots. Inside, over the heads of the people packed on the floor, she could see Creedmore with a 182.

microphone in his hand, grinning out over the crowd. It was a dancer grin, ten thousand watts of bad electricity, and she saw he had the start of that thing that dancer did to your gums.

People were clapping and whistling for more, and Creedmore, his face running with sweat, looked like he was intending to give it to them.

"Thank you, thank you kindly," she heard Creedmore's amplified voice say. "Now this next number's one I wrote myself, and it's going out soon as our first single, Buell Creedmore and his Lower Companions, and it's called 'Just When You Think You've Got It d.i.c.ked..

Or anyway that was what she thought she heard him say, but then the band kicked in, loud, with the guitarist choking steely serpentine chords out of a big, s.h.i.+ny, old red electric, and she couldn't make out any of the words. Although she had to admit it sounded like Creedmore could sing.

They were jammed in here so tight, it made it hard to keep a lookout for Carson, but on the other hand it wasn't too likely he'd be able to see her either.

She kept moving, as best she could, trying to find Tessa.

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45. JACK MOVE.

RYDELL had taken a surveillance course, back at the academy, and his favorite part had been going out and following people. It wasn't something you did alone, but with at least one partner, and the more partners the better. You learned how to trade off, somebody taking your place, and how to deak up ahead of the subject so you'd be ready when the next guy needed to trade off. That way the subject never had the same person behind him for too long. There was a definite art to it, and when you got it down it was sort of like a dance.

He hadn't really gotten the chance to put it into practice, in his very brief career as a police officer, or later when he'd worked for IntenSecure, but he felt like he'd been pretty good at it, and it had given him an idea of what it would feel like if you were being followed, and particularly if you were being followed by some people who knew how to do it right.

And that was what he found himself thinking about now, as he shouldered the duffel with Rei Toei's projector in it and prepared to depart this pathetic excuse for a crime scene. If Laney had wanted him to attract someone's attention by standing here, well, he'd stood here. But maybe now, he thought, he was getting that watched feeling because Laney had told him he'd be sure to be noticed if he came here.

Could be nerves. Maybe, but actually he didn't feel nervous, just tired. He'd driven all night up the coast with Creedmore, and all the downtime he'd had today had been when he'd fallen asleep listening to Rei Toei. What he felt like now was going back to his room, checking out the projector to see if she'd come back, then hitting the bed.

But there it was, that p.r.i.c.kling at the back of his neck. He turned and looked back, but there was n.o.body, just the place where the Kil'Z had been sprayed over dried blood.

Guy going by in the direction of Oakland and Rydell's room.

Young guy with dark military-buzzed hair, black coat, black scarf up 184.

around his face. Seemed not to see Rydell, just kept walking, hands in

his pockets. Rydell fell in behind him, about fifteen feet.

He tried to imagine this place the way it had been before, when it was a regular bridge. Millions of cars had gone through here, this same s.p.a.ce where he walked now. It had all been open then, just girders and railing and deck; now it was this tunnel, everything patched together out of junk, used lumber, plastic, whatever people could find, all of it lashed up however anybody could get it to stay, it looked like, and some~- how it did stay, in spite of the winds he knew must come through here.

He'd been back in a bayou once, in Louisiana, and something about the way it looked in here reminded him of that: there was stuff hanging

k everywhere, tubing and cables and things whose function he couldn't identify, and it was like Spanish moss in a way, everything softened at

~ the outline. And the light now was dim and sort of underwater-looking,

~ just these banks of scavenged fluorescents slung every twenty feet or so, some of them

dead and others flickering.

He walked around a puddle where a vendor had dumped about ten ~ pounds of dirty shaved ice.

Up ahead, he saw the guy with the black scarf turn into a cafe, one ~ ~of these tiny little places you got in here, maybe two small tab1e~ and a counter that sat four or five Big blonde boy looked like a weight lifter was coming out as the scarf went in, and the weight lifter made just that little bit of eye contact with Rydell that told him.

They were doing him: the trade-off. He was being tailed, and by at ~Ieast three people.

~: Weight lifter started in the direction of Rydell's bed-and-breakfast, ':~Treasure Island, Oakland. Back of his neck as wide as Rydell's thigh. As ~Rydell pa.s.sed the cafe, he looked in and saw the scarf ordering a cof~: fee. Just as normal as pie. So he didn't look behind him, because he

knew that if he did that, they'd know. They would. Just like he'd known, when the weight lifter blew it by looking him in the eye.

The belt he'd slung the duffel from was cutting into his shoulder, through his nylon jacket, and he thought about Laney and Klaus and

~ the Rooster, about how they all obviously thought the projector was

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really important, or valuable. Was that what he was being followed for, or was it about this mystery man of Laney's, his man who wasn't there? Otherwise, he didn't think he had any serious long-term enemies up here, though it was hard to be sure, and he didn't think these guys were ordinary jackers, because it looked to him like they really knew what they were doing.

He reached into the jacket pocket and felt the knife. It was there, and he was glad he had it, though the thought of actually cutting somebody with it bothered him. The thing about knives was that the people who thought they wanted to use them on other people usually had no idea how much mess it made. It wasn't like in the movies; cut people bled like stuck pigs. He'd had to deal with a few cut people around the Sunset Lucky Dragon. And it could get tricky because who knew who was seropositive? He and Durius had these goggles they were supposed to put on, to keep people's blood from getting in their eyes, but usually it just happened all at once and they didn't remember the goggles until it was likely too late anyway.

But the main thing about knives, even ones that cut steel-belt radials like ripe banana, was that they weren't much good in a gunfight.

Someone had slung up an old anti-shoplifting mirror above a closed stall, and as he approached this he tried to see who might be following him, but there was enough foot traffic in here that he only got a generalized sense of people moving.

But what really bothered him now was that he was just doing what they'd probably expect him to: heading back to wherever he was going to spend the night (a.s.suming they didn't already know where that was). And once he got there, what then? He'd be trapped, up in his room, no exit but that ladder, and they'd have him. He guessed he could just keep walking, but he didn't see what that would get him either.

What he needed, he thought, was something he could do that they weren't expecting. Something that put the shoe on the other foot, or anyway he should lose them, whoever they were. Then maybe he could raise Laney and get Laney's take on who they might be.

He'd had an instructor in Knoxville who'd liked to talk about lateral thinking. Which in a way wasn't that far off what Durius meant when 186.

he talked about serious users getting lateral, out on the sidewalk outside Lucky Dragon. Just losing it. What it took, sometimes, was just your basic jack move, something n.o.body, maybe even you, was expecting.

To his right now, he saw he was pa.s.sing a stretch of wall that was actually canvas, like a sail or an old tent, stretched tight over lumber and maybe half an inch thick with however many coats of

paint it had had since it was put up here. Some kind of mural, but he wasn't noticing that.