The Bridge Trilogy Part 25

Yamazaki closed his mouth.

'Now we need a bunch of water. Hot. First for coffee, then some so I can wash off. You know how to work a Coleman stove?'

'A what?'

'Green thing over there, red tank on the front. You go jiggle that tank off, I'll tell you how to pump it up.'

2.09.

27 After the storm Yamazaki stood up, wincing at the pain in his back, and stumbled toward the green-painted metal box Skinner was pointing at.

'Gone off f.u.c.king that no-a.s.s greaseball boyfriend of hers again. Useless, Scooter.. .'

He stood on Skinner's roof, pantlegs flapping in a breeze that gave no hint of last night's storm, looking out at the city washed in a strange iron light, shreds of his dream still circling dimly ... Shapely had spoken to him, his voice the voice of the young Elvis Presley. He said that he had forgiven his killers.

Yamazaki stared at Transamerica's upright thorn, bandaged with the brace they'd applied after the Little Grande, half-hearing the dreamed voice. They just didn't know any better, Scooter.

Skinner cursing, below, as he sponged himself with water Yamazaki had warmed on the Coleman stove.

Yamazaki thought of his thesis advisor in Osaka.

'I don't care,' Yamasaki said, in English, San Francisco his witness.

The whole city was a Thoma.s.son. Perhaps America itself was a Thoma.s.son.

How could they understand this in Osaka, in Tokyo?

'Yo! On the roof!' someone called.

Yamazaki turned, saw a thin black man atop the tangle of girders that braced the upper end of Skinner's lift. He wore a thick tweed overcoat and a crocheted cap.

'You okay up there? How 'bout Skinner?'

Yamazaki hesitated, remembering Loveless. If Skinner or the girl had enemies, how could he recognize them?

'Name's Fontaine,' the man said. 'Chevette called me, told me to get over here and see if Skinner got through the blow all right. I take care of the wiring tip here, make sure his lift's running and all.'

'He's bathing now,' Yamazaki said. 'In the storm, he became.. . confused. He doesn't seem to remember.'

'Have some power for you in about another half an hour,' the man said. 'Wish I could say the same for over my end. Lost four transformers. Got us five dead bodies, twenty injured that I know of.

Skinner got coffee on?'

'Yes,' Yamazaki said.

'Do with a cup about now.'

'Yes, please,' Yamazaki said, and bowed. The black man smiled. Yamazaki scrambled down through the hatch. 'Skinner-san! A man named Fontaine, he is your friend?'

Skinner was struggling into yellowed thermal underwear. 'Useless b.a.s.t.a.r.d. Still don't have any power...'

Yamazaki unlatched the hatch in the floor and hauled it open. Fontaine eventually appeared at the bottom of the ladder, a battered canvas tool-bag in either hand. Putting one down and slinging the other over his shoulder, he began to climb.

Yamazaki poured the remaining coffee into the cleanest cup.

'Fuel-cell's b.u.g.g.e.red,' Skinner said, as Fontaine pushed his bag ahead of him, through the opening. Skinner was layered now in at least three threadbare flannel s.h.i.+rts, their tails pushed unevenly into the waistband of an ancient pair of woolen Army trousers.

'We're working on it, boss,' Fontaine said, standing up and smoothing his overcoat. 'Had us a big old storm here.'

'What Scooter says,' Skinner said.

'Well, he's not s.h.i.+ttin' you, Skinner. Thanks.' Fontaine accepted the steaming cup of black coffee and blew on it. He looked at Yamazaki. 'Chevette said she might not get back here for a while.

Know anything about that?'

Yamazaki looked at Skinner.

'Useless,' Skinner said. 'Gone off with that s.h.i.+thead again.'

211.

'Didn't say anything about that,' Fontaine said. 'Didn't say much at all. But if she's not going to be around, you're going to need somebody take care of things for you.'

'Take care of myself,' Skinner said.

'I know that, boss,' Fontaine a.s.sured, 'but we got a couple of fried servos in your lift down there. Take a few days get that going for you, the kind of backlog we're looking at. Need you somebody go up and down the rungs. Bring you food and all.'

'Scooter can do it,' Skinner said.

Yamazaki blinked.

'That right?' Fontaine raised his eyebrows at Yamazaki. 'You stay up here and take care of Mr.

Skinner?'

Yamazaki thought of his borrowed flat in the tall Victorian house, its black marble bathroom larger than his bachelor apartment in Osaka. He looked from Fontaine to Skinner, then back. 'I would be honored, to stay with Skinner-san, if he wishes.'

'Do what you like,' Skinner said, and began laboriously stripping the sheets from his mattress.

'Chevette told me you might be up here,' Fontaine said. 'Some kind of university guy ...' He put his cup down on the table, bent to swing his tool-bag up beside it. 'Said maybe you people worried about uninvited guests.' He undid the bag's two buckles and opened it. Tools gleamed there, rolls of insulated wire. He took out something wrapped in an oily rag, looked to see that Skinner wasn't observing him, and tucked the thing behind the gla.s.s jars on the shelf above the table.

'We can pretty much make sure n.o.body you don't know will get up here for the next couple days,' he said to Yamazaki, lowering his voice. 'But that's a .38 Special, six rounds of hollow-point. You use it, do me a big favor and toss it off the side, okay? It's of, uh,' Fontaine grinned, "dubious provenance."

2.11.

Yamazaki thought of Loveless. Swallowed. 'You gonna be okay up here?' Fontaine asked. 'Yes,'

Yamazaki said, 'yes, thank you.'

28 Rv It was ten-thirty before they finally had to hit the street, and then only because Laurie, who Chevette knew from that first day she'd ever come in here, said that the manager, Benny Singh, was going to be showing up and they couldn't stay in there anymore, particularly not with her friend asleep like that, like he was pa.s.sed out or something. Chevette said she understood, and thanked her.

'You see Sammy Sal,' Laurie said, 'you say hi for me.'

Chevette nodded, sad, and started shaking the guy's shoulder. He grunted and tried to brush her hand away. 'Wake up. We gotta go.'

She couldn't believe she'd told him all that stuff, but she'd just had to tell somebody or she'd go crazy. Not that telling it had made it make any more sense than it did before, and with this Rydell's side of it added on, it sort of made even less. The news that somebody had gone and murdered the a.s.shole just didn't seem real, but if it was, she supposed, she was in deeper s.h.i.+t than ever.

'Wake up!'

'Jesus.. .' He sat up, knuckling his eyes.

'We gotta go. Manager'll be in soon. My friend let you sleep a while.'

'Go where?'

Chevette had been thinking about that. 'Cole, over by the Panhandle, there's places rent rooms by the hour.'

'Hotels?'

214.

'Not exactly,' she said. 'For people just need the bed for a little while.'

He dug behind the couch for his jacket. 'Look at that,' he said, sticking his fingers into the rip in the shoulder. 'Brand new last night.'

Neighborhoods that mainly operated at night had a way of looking a lot worse in the morning. Even the beggars looked worse off this time of day, like that guy there with those sores, the one trying to sell half a can of spaghetti sauce. She stepped around him. Another block or two and they'd start to hit the early crowd of day-trippers headed for Skywalker Park; more cover in the crowd but more cops, too. She tried to remember if Skywalker's rentacops were IntenSecure, that company Rydell talked about.

She wondered if Fontaine had gone to Skinner's like he'd said he would. She hadn't wanted to say too much over the phone, so at first she'd just said she was going away for a while, and would Fontaine go over and see how Skinner was doing, and maybe this j.a.panese student guy who'd been hanging around lately. But Fontaine could tell she sounded worried, so he'd sort of pushed her about it, and she'd told him she was worried about Skinner, how maybe there were some people gonna go up there and ha.s.sle him.

'You don't mean bridge people,' he'd said, and she'd said rio, she didn't, but that was all she could say about it. The line went quiet for a few seconds and she could hear one of Fontaine's kids singing in the background, one of those African songs with the weird throat-clicks. 'Okay,'

Fontaine finally said, 'I'll look into that for you.' And Chevette said thanks, fast, and clicked off. Fontaine did a lot of favors for Skinner. He'd never talked to Chevette about it, but he seemed to have known Skinner all his life, or anyway as long as he'd been on the bridge. There were a lot of people like that, and Chevette knew Fontaine could fix it so people would watch the tower 215.

there, and the lift. Watch for strangers. People did that for each other, on the bridge, and Fontaine was always owed a lot of favors, because he was one of the main electricity men.

Now they were walking past this bagel place had a sort of iron cage outside, welded out of junk, where you could sit in there at little tables and have coffee and eat bagels, and the smell of the morning's baking about made her faint from hunger. She was thinking maybe they'd better go in there and get a dozen in a bag, maybe some cream cheese, take it with them, when Rydell put his hand on her shoulder.

She turned her head and saw this big s.h.i.+ny white RV had just turned onto Haight in front of them, headed their way. Like you'd see rich old people driving back in Oregon, whole convoys of them, pulling boats on trailers, little jeeps, motorcycles hanging off the backs like lifeboats. They'd stop for the night in these special camps had razor-wire around them, dogs, NO TRESSPa.s.sING signs that really meant it.

Rydell was staring at this RV like he couldn't believe it, and now it was pulling up right beside them, this gray-haired old lady powering down the window and leaning out the driver's side, saying 'Young man! Excuse me, but I'm Danica Elliott and I believe we met yesterday on the plane from Burbank.'

Danica Elliott was this retired lady from Altadena, that was down in SoCal, and she'd flown up to San Francisco, she said on the same plane as Rydell, to get her husband moved to a different cryogenic facility. Well, not her husband, exactly, but his brain, which he'd had frozen when he died.

Chevette had heard about people doing that, but she hadn't ever understood why they did it, and evidently Danica Elliott didn't understand it either. But she'd come up here to throw good money after bad, she said, and get her husband David's brain moved to this more expensive place that would keep it on ice in its Own private little tank, and not just tumbling around in a big tank with a hunch of other people's frozen zi6 brains, which was where it had been before. She seemed like a really nice lady to Chevette, but she sure could go on about this stuff, so that after a while Rydell was just driving and nodding his head like he was listening, and Chevette, who was navigating, was mostly paying attention to the map-display on the RV's dash, plus keeping a lookout for police cars.

Mrs. Elliott had taken care of getting her husband's brain relocated the night before, and she said it had made her kind of emotional, so she'd decided to rent this RV and drive it back to Altadena, just take her time and enjoy the trip. Trouble was, she didn't know San Francisco, and she'd picked it up that morning at this rental place on sixth and gotten lost looking for a freeway. Wound up driving around in the Haight, which she said did not look at all like a safe neighborhood but was certainly very interesting.

The loose handcuff kept falling out of the sleeve of Skinner's jacket, but Mrs. Elliott was too busy talking to notice. Rydell was driving, Chevette was in the middle, and Mrs. Elliot was on the

pa.s.senger side. The RV was j.a.panese, and had these three power-adjustable buckets up front, with headrests with speakers built in.

Mrs. Elliot had told Rydell she was lost and did he know the city and could he drive her to where she could get on the highway to Los Angeles? Rydell had sort of gawked at her for a minute, then shook himself and said he'd be glad to, and this was his friend Chevette, who knew the city, and

he was Berry Rydell.

Mrs. Elliot said Chevette was a pretty name.

So here they were, headed out of San Francisco, and Chevette had a pretty good idea that Rydell was going to try to talk Mrs. Elliott into letting them go along with her. That was all she could think of to do, herself, and here they were off the street and headed away from the guy who'd shot Sammy and from that Warbaby and those Russian cops, which seemed like a good idea to her, and aside from her 217.

stomach feeling like it was starting to eat itself, she felt a little better.

Rydell drove past an In-and-Out Burger place and she remembered how this boy she knew called Franklin, up in Oregon, had taken a pellet-gun over to an In-and-Out and shot out the B and the R, so it just said IN-AND-OUT URGE. She'd told Lowell about that, but he hadn't thought it was funny.

Now she thought about how she'd told Rydell stuff about Lowell that Lowell would go ballistic if he ever found out about, and here Rydell was the next thing to a cop. But it bothered her how Lowell had been, the night before. There he was, all cool and heavy with his connections and everything, and she tells him she's in trouble and somebody's just shot Sammy Sal and they're gonna be after her for sure, and him and Codes just sit there, giving each other these looks, like they like this story less by the minute, and then the big motherf.u.c.ker cop in the raincoat walks in and they're about to s.h.i.+t themselves.

Served her right. She hadn't had a single friend liked Lowell much, and Skinner had hated him on sight. Said Lowell had his head so far up his a.s.s, he might as well just climb in after it and disappear. But she just hadn't ever really had a boyfriend before, not like that, and he'd been so nice to her at first. If he just hadn't started in doing that dancer, because that brought the a.s.shole out in him real fast, and then Codes, who hadn't ever liked her, could get him going about how she was just a country girl. f.u.c.k that.

'You know,' she said, 'I don't get something to eat soon, I think I'll die.'

And Mrs. Elliott started making a fuss about how Rydell should stop immediately and get something for Chevette, and how sorry she was she hadn't thought to ask if they'd had breakfast.

'Well,' Rydell said, frowning mto the rear-view, 'I really would like to miss the, uh, lunch-hour traffic here. .

zi8 'Oh,' Mrs. Elliott said. Then she brightened. 'Chevette, dear, if you'll just go in the back, you'll find a fridge there. I'm sure the rental people have put a snack basket in there. They almost always do.'

Sounded fine to Chevette. She undid her harness and edged back between her seat and Mrs.

Elliott's. There was a little door there and when she went through it the lights came on. 'Hey,'

she said, 'it's a whole little house back here...'

'Enjoy!' said Mrs. Elliott.

The light stayed on when she closed the door behind her. She hadn't ever seen the inside of one of these things before, and the first thing she thought of was that it had nearly as much s.p.a.ce as Skinner's room, plus it was about ten times more comfortable. Everything was gray, gray carpet and gray plastic and gray imitation leather. And the fridge turned out to be this cute little thing built into a counter, with this basket in there, wrapped up in plastic with a ribbon on it. She got the plastic off and there was some wine, little cheeses, an apple, a pear, crackers, and a couple of chocolate bars. There was c.o.ke in the fridge, too, and bottled water. She sat on the bed and ate a cheese, a bunch of crackers, a chocolate bar that was made in France, and drank a bottle of water. Then she tried out the tv, which had twenty-three channels on downlink.