The Bridge Trilogy Part 21

It seemed to Rydell like the Russian just might be about to haul out and shoot her. Sure looked like it, but what kind of cop would do that?

Now Orlovsky stopped in front of their table, just the right distance, too far for them to reach him and far enough to allow room to pull that big gun if he was going to.

The Boyfriend, Rydell was somehow pleased to see, looked fit to s.h.i.+t himself. Baldhead looked like he'd been cast in plastic, just frozen there, hands on the table. Between his hands, Rydell saw a pocket phone.

Orlovsky locked the girl with his full current of Eye-thing, his face lined, gray in this light, unsmiling. He jerked the brim of the plastic fedora, just this precise little fraction, and said 'Get up.'

Rydell looked at her and saw her trembling. There was never any question the Russian meant her and not her friends-Boyfriend looking like he might faint any second and Baldhead playing statue.

Chevette Was.h.i.+ngton stood up, shaky, the rickety little wooden chair going over behind her.

'Out.' The hat-brim indicated the stairs. The hairy back of Orlovsky's hand covered the b.u.t.t of the H&K.

Rydell heard his own knees creak with tension. He was leaning forward, gripping the edges of the table. He could feel old dried pads of gum under there.

The lights went out.

Much later, trying to explain to Sublett what it had been like when Josie whipped her hologram on Orlovsky, Rydell said it looked sort of like the special effect at the end of Raiders of 175.

the Lost Ark, that part where those angels or whatever they were came swirling out of that box and got all over those n.a.z.is.

But it had all been happening at once, for Rydell. When the lights went, they all went, all those signs on the wall, everything, and Rydell just tossed that table sideways, without even thinking about it, and Went For where she'd been standing. And this ball of light had shot down, expanding, from a point on the wall that must've marked the upper edge of that NEC sign. It was the color of the hologram's skin, kind of honey and ivory, all marbled through with the dark of her hair and eyes, like a fast-forward of a satellite storm-system. All around that Russian, a three-foot sphere around his head and shoulders, and as it spun, her eyes and mouth, open in some silent scream, blinked by, all magnified. Each eye, for a fraction of a second, the size of the ball itself, and the white teeth big, too, each one long as a man's hand.

Orlovsky swatted at it, and that kept him, for some very little while, from getting his gun out.

But it also gave off enough light to let Rydell see he was grabbing the girl and not Boyfriend.

Just sort of picking her up, forgetting everything he'd ever been taught about comealongs and restraints, and running, best he could, for the stairs.

Orlovsky yelled something, but it must've been in Russian.

His uncle, the one who'd gone off to Africa in the Army, used to say, if he liked how a woman's a.s.s moved when she walked, that it looked like two baby bobcats in a croker sack. And that was the expression that popped into Rydell's mind as he ran up those stairs with Chevette Was.h.i.+ngton held out in front of him like a big bunch of groceries. But it didn't have anything to do with s.e.xy.

He was just lucky she didn't get an eye or break any of his ribs.

22 Rub-a-dub

Whoever had grabbed her, she just kept kicking and punching, right up the stairs, backward. But he had her held out so far in front of him that he almost fell on top of her.

Then she was out on the deck, in what light there was, and looking at some kind of plastic machine gun, the color of a kid's army toy, in the hands of another one of these big ugly raincoat guys, this one with no hat and his wet hair slicked back from a face with the skin on too tight.

'You drop her now, f.u.c.khead,' this one with the gun said. Had an accent out of an old monster movie. She barely kept to her feet when the one who was holding her let go.

'f.u.c.khead,' the gun-guy said, like Pock Ed, 'you try to make move or what?'

'War,' the one who'd grabbed her said, then doubled over, coughing. 'Baby,' he said, straightening, then winced, hugging his ribs, looking at he-. 'Jesus f.u.c.k, you got a kick on you.'

Sounded American, but not West Coast. In a cheap nylon jacket with one sleeve half ripped off at the shoulder, white fuzzy stuff hanging out~

'You try to make a move ...' And the plastic gun was pointing right at the guy's face.

'War-baby, war-baby,' the guy said, or anyway it sounded like that, 'war-baby seilt me to get her.

He's parked back out there past those tank-ttap things, waiting for me to bring her Out.'

'Arkady ...' It was the ofle in the plastic hat, coming up '77.

the stairs behind the guy who'd grabbed her. He had a pair of night-vision gla.s.ses on, that funny- looking center-tube poking out from beneath the brim of his hat. He was holding up something that looked like a miniature aerosol can. He said something in this language. Russian? He gestured with the little can, back down the stairs.

'You use capsic.u.m in an enclosed s.p.a.ce like that,' said the one who'd grabbed her, 'people'll get hurt. Get you some permanent sinus problems.'

The tight-faced man looked at him like he was something crawled out from under a rock. 'You drive, yes?' he said, gesturing for the hat-man to put the thing away, whatever it was.

'We had a coffee. Well, you had tea. Svobodov, right?'

Chevette caught the tight-faced man's glance at her, like he hadn't liked her hearing his name.

She wanted to tell him she'd heard it Rub-a-Dub, how this other guy talked, so that couldn't really be it, could it?

'Why you grab her?' asked the tight-faced man, Rub-a-Dub.

'She coulda got away in the dark, couldn't she? Didn't know your partner here had night vision.

Besides, he sent me to get her. Didn't mention you. In fact, they said you didn't come out here.'

The one with the hat was behind her now, jerking her arm up in a hold. 'Lemme go-'

'Hey,' the one who'd grabbed her said, like it made things okay, 'these men are police officers.

SFPD Homicide, right?'

Rub-a-Dub whistled softly. 'f.u.c.khead.'

'Cops?' she asked.

'Sure are.'

Which produced a little snort of exasperation from Rub-aDub.

'Arkady, now we go. These dirthags try to spy us from below . . .' The hat-man pulling off his night-gla.s.ses and dancing like he had to pee.

178.

'Hey,' she said, 'somebody's killed Sammy. If you're cops, listen, he killed Sammy Sal!'

'Who's Sammy?' the one in the torn jacket said.

'I work with him! At Allied. Sammy DuPree. Sammy. He got shot.'

'Who shot him?'

'Ry-dell. Shut f.u.c.k up.' Shot, Pock, Op. 'She's tellin' us she's got-information-regarding-a- possiblehomicide, and you're telling me to shut up?'

'Yes, I tell you shut f.u.c.k up. War-baby. He will explain.'

And her arm twisted up so she'd go with them.

Svobodov had insisted on cuffing him to Chevette Was.h.i.+ngton. They were Beretta cuffs, just like he'd carried on patrol in Knoxville. Svobodov said he and Orlovsky needed their hands free in case any of these bridge people caught on they were taking the girl off.

But if they were taking her in, how come they hadn't read her any Miranda, or even told her she was under arrest? Rydell had already decided that if it got to court and he was called to witness, no way was he going to perjure himself and say he'd heard any f.u.c.king Miranda. These Russians were b.a.l.l.s-out cowboys as far as he could see, just exactly the kind of officers the Academy had tried hard to train Rydell not to be.

In a way, though, what they were reflected what a lot of people more or less unconsciously expected cops to be and do, and that, this one lecturer at the Academy had said, was because of mythology. Like what they called the Father Mulcahy Syndrome, in barricaded hostage situations.

Where somebody took a hostage and the cops tried to decide what to do. And they'd all seen this movie about Father Mulcahy once, so'd they'd say, yeah, I got it, I'll get a priest, I'll get the guy's parents, I'll lay down my gun and I'll go in there and talk him out. And he'd go in there and get his a.s.s drilled out real good. Because he forgot, and let himself think a movie was how you really did it. And it could work the other way, too, SO you gradually became how you saw cops were in 8o 23 Gone and done it movies and on television. They'd all been warned about that. But people like Svobodov and Orlovsky, people who'd come here from other countries, maybe that media stuff worked even stronger

on them. Check how they dressed, for one thing.

Man, he was going to have him a shower. Hot shower. He was going to stay in there until he couldn't stand it anymore, or until the hot ran out. Then he was going to get out and towel off and put on all brand-new, totally dry clothes, in whatever hotel room Warbaby had got for him. He was going to send down for a couple of club sandwiches and an ice-bucket with about four-five of those long-neck Mexican beers like they drank in L.A. And he'd sit there with a remote and watch some television. Maybe see Cops in Trouble. Maybe he'd even call up Sublett, shoot the s.h.i.+t, tell him about this wild-a.s.s time up in Northern California. Sublett always worked deep graveyard because he was light-sensitive, so if it happened to be his night off, he'd be up watching his movies.

'Watch where you're walking-' Yanking his cuffed hand so hard he nearly fell over. He'd been about to go one side of an upright as she was about to go the other. 'Hey. Sorry,' he said.

She wouldn't look at him. But she just didn't look to Rydell like she'd sit down on some guy's chest with a razor and haul his tongue out the hard way. Well, she did have that ceramic knife, when Svobodov shook her down, plus a pocket phone and the d.a.m.n gla.s.ses everybody was after. Those looked just like Warbaby's, and had this case. The Russians were real happy about that, and now they were tucked away safe in the inside pocket of Svobodov's flak vest.

She wasn't the right kind of scared, either, something kept telling him. She wasn't giving off that vibe of perp fear that you got to know by about your third day on the job. It was like victim fear, what it was, even though she'd already flatout admitted to Orlovsky that she'd stolen those gla.s.ses. Said she'd done that up at a party in that hotel, the night before.

i8i But neither of the Russians had said s.h.i.+t about any homicide beef, or any Blix or whatever the victim's name had been. Or even larceny. And she'd said that about somebody killing Sammy, whoever Sammy was. Maybe Sammy was the German. But the Russians had just dropped it, and shut Etydell up, and now she'd clammed up except to b.i.t.c.h at him if he started to fall asleep on his feet.

The place was coming back to life, sort of, now that the storm had quit, but it was G.o.d knows when in the morning and there weren't exactly a lot of people swarming out yet to check the damage.

Lights kept coming back on, here and there, and there were a few people sweeping water off decks and things, and a few drunks, and this guy who looked like he was on dancer, talking to himself a mile a minute, who kept following them until Svobodov pulled out his H&K and spun around and said he'd grease him to f.u.c.king catfood if he didn't get his dancer a.s.s to Oakland like yesterday, f.u.c.khead, and the guy did, naturally, his eyes about to bug right out of his head, and Orlovsky laughing at him.

They came out into some more lights, about where Rydell had first laid his eyes on Chevette Was.h.i.+ngton. Looking down to keep track of his footing, Rydell saw she was wearing black SWAT trainers just like his. Lexan insoles.

'Hey,' he said, 'major footwear.'

And she just looked up at him like he was crazy, and he saw tears running down her face.

And Svobodov jammed the muzzle of that H&K, hard, into the joint of Rydell's jaw, just in front of his right ear, and said: 'f.u.c.khead. You don't talk to her.'

Rydell looked at Svobodov, edgewise, down the top of the barrel. Waited until he thought it was safe to say okay.

After that, he didn't try to say anything to her, or even look at her. When he thought he could get away with it, he looked at Svohodov. When they took that cuff off, he just might deck that SOfl of a hitch.

i8z ).

But just after the Russian had pulled the gun out of his ear, Rydell had registered something behind him. Not registered big-time, but it clicked for him later: this big bear of a longhair, blinking out at them, where they stood in the light, from this little doorway looked like it wasn't more than a foot wide.

Rydell didn't have anything special going about black people or immigrants or anything, not like a lot of people did. In fact, that had been one of the things that had gotten him into the Academy when he hadn't exactly had great grades from high school. They'd run all these tests on him and decided he wasn't racist. He wasn't, either, but not because he thought about it particularly. He just couldn't see the point. It just made for a lot of ha.s.sle, being that way, so why be that way?

n.o.body was going to go back and live where they lived before, were they, and if they did (he vaguely suspected) there wouldn't be any Mongolian barbecue and maybe we'd all be listening to Pentecostal Metal and anyway the President was black.

He had to admit, though, as he and Chevette Was.h.i.+ngton walked out between those tank-trap slabs, their cuffed wrists swinging in that stupid prom-night unison that you get with handcuffs, that currently he was feeling a little put upon by a few very specific blacks and immigrants. Warbaby's tvpreacher melancholy had worn thin on him; he thought Freddie was, as his father would have put it, a jive-a.s.s motherf.u.c.ker; Svobodov and Orlovsky, they must be what his uncle, the one who went

in the army, had meant by stone pigs.

And here he could see Freddie with his b.u.t.t propped against the front fender of the Patriot, bobbing his head to something on earphones, the lyrics or whatever sliding around the edges of his sneakers, animated in red LEDs. Must've sat out the rain in the car, because his pistol-print s.h.i.+rt and his big shorts weren't even wet.

183.

And Warbaby there in his long quilted coat, his hat jammed down level with those VL gla.s.ses.

Looked like a refrigerator, if a refrigerator could lean on a cane.

And the Russians' gray tanker of an unmarked, pulled up nose to nose with the Patriot, armored tires and that graphite mesh rhino-chaser screaming Cop Car at anybody who was interested. As indeed some were, Rydell saw, a thin crowd of bridge-people watching from various perches on the concrete slabs and battened food-wagons. Little kids, a couple of Mexican-looking women with hairnets like they worked in food-preparation, some rough-looking boys in muddy workclothes and leaning on shovels and push-brooms there. Just looking, their faces carefully neutral, the way people's faces got when they saw cops working and were curious.

And somebody in the Russians' car, hunched down knees-up in the shotgun seat.

The Russians closing in tight on either side of Rydell and the girl, walking them out. Rydell could feel them responding to the presence of the crowd. Shouldn't've left the car out there like that.

Svobodov, this close, sort of creaked when he walked, and that was the armor under his s.h.i.+rt that Rydell had noticed before, back in that greasy spoon. Svobodov was smoking one of his Marlboro cigarettes, hissing out clouds of blue smoke. Had the gun out of sight now.

And right up to Warbaby, Freddie s.h.i.+ning the whole scene on with a grin that made Rydell want to kick him, but Warbaby looking sad as ever.

'Get this f.u.c.king cuff off,' Rydell said to Warbaby, raising his wrist, Chevette Was.h.i.+ngton's coming up with it. The crowd saw the cuffs then; there was a ripple of reaction, voices.

Warbaby looked at Svobodov. 'You get it?'

'Here.' Svobodov touched the front of his London Fog.