The Bridge Trilogy Part 7

Its steel bones, its stranded tendons, were lost within an accretion of dreams: tattoo parlors, gaming arcades, dimly lit stalls stacked with decaying magazines, sellers of fireworks, of cut bait, betting shops, sus.h.i.+ bars, unlicensed p.a.w.nbrokers, herbalists, barbers, bars. Dreams of commerce, their locations generally corresponding with the decks that had once carried vehicular traffic; while above them, rising to the very peaks of

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6 The bridge the cable towers, lifted the intrica:ely suspended barrio, with its unnumbered population and its zones of more private fantasy.

He'd first seen it by night, three weeks before. He'd stood in fog, amid sellers of fruit and ve:~etables, their goods spread out on blankets. He'd stared back into the cavern-mouth, heart pounding. Steam was rising from the pots of soup-vendors, beneath a jagged arc of ;cavenged neon.

Everything ran together, blurring, melting in the fog. Telepresence had only hinted at the magic and singularity of the thing, and he'd walked slowly forward, into tha neon maw and all that patchwork carnival of scavenged surfaces, in perfect awe. Fairyland. Rain-silvered plywood, broken marble from the walls of forgotten banks, corrugated plastic, polished bra.s.s, sequins, painted canvas, mirrors, chrome gone dull and peeling in the salt air. So many things, too much for his reeling eye, and he'd known that his journey had not been in vain.

In all the world, surely, there was no more magnificent a Thoma.s.son.

He entered it now, Tuesday morning, amid a now-familiar stir-the carts of ice and fish, t~e clatter of a machine that made tortillas-and found his ~ay to a coffee shop whose interior had the texture of an ancient ferry, dark dented varnish over plain heavy wood, as if someone had sawn it, entire, from some tired public vessel. Which was entirely possible, he thought, seating himself at the long counter; toward Oakland, past the haunted island, the wingless carca.s.s of a 747 housed the kitchens of nine Thai restaurants.

The young woman behind the counter wore tattooed bracelets in the form of stylized indigo lizards.

He asked for coffee. It arrived in thick heavy porcelain. No two cups here were alike. He took his notebook from his bag, flicked it on, and jotted down a brief descriptiDn of the cup, of the minute pattern of cracks iii its glazed surface, like a white tile mosaic in miniature. Sipping his coffee, he scrolled hack to the

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previous day's notes. The man Skinner's mind was remarkably like the bridge. Things had acc.u.mulated there, around some armature of original purpose, until a point of crisis had been attained and a new program had emerged. But what was that program?

He had asked Skinner to explain the mode of accretion resulting in the current state of the secondary structure. What were the motivations of a given builder, an individual builder? His notebook had recorded the man's rambling, oblique response, transcribing and translating it.

There was this man, fis.h.i.+ng. Snagged his tackle. Hauled up a bicycle. All covered in barnacles.

Everybody laughed. Took that bike and he built a place to eat. Clam broth, cold cooked mussels, Mexican beer. Hung that bike over the counter. Just three stools in there and he slung his box out about eight feet, used Super Glue and shackles. Covered the walls inside with postcards. Like s.h.i.+ngles. Nights, he'd curl up behind the counter. Just gone, one morning. Broken shackle, some splinters still stuck to the wall of a barber shop. You could look down, see the water between your toes. See, he slung it out too far.

Yamazaki watched steam rise from his coffee, imagining a bicycle covered in barnacles, itself a Thoma.s.son of considerable potency. Skinner had seemed curious about the term, and the notebook had recorded Yamazaki's attempt to explain its origin and the meaning of its current usage.

Thoma.s.son was an American baseball player, very handsome, very powerful. He went to the Yomiyuri Giants in 1981, for a large sum of money. Then it was discovered that he could not hit the ball.

The writer and artisan Gempei Akasegawa appropriated his liame to describe certain useless and inexplicable monuments, pointless yet 6o curiously art-like features of the urban landscape. But the term has subsequently taken on other shades of meaning. If you wish, I can access and translate today's definitions in our Gendai Yogo Kisochis.h.i.+ki, that is, The Basic Knowledge of Modern Terms.

But Skinner-gray, unshaven, the whites of his blue eyes yellowed, blotched with broken veins, had merely shrugged. Three of the residents who had previously agreed to be interviewed had cited Skinner as an original, one of the first on the bridge. The location of his room indicated a certain status as well, though Yamazaki wondered how many would have welcomed a chance to build atop one of the cable towers. Before the electric lift had been installed, the climb would have been daunting for anyone. Today, with his bad hip, the old man was in effect an invalid, relying on his neighbors and the girl. They brought him food, water, kept his chemical toilet in operation. The girl, Yamazaki a.s.sumed, received shelter in return, though the relations.h.i.+p struck him as deeper somehow, more complex.

But if Skinner was difficult to read because of age, personality, or both, the girl who shared his room was opaque in that ordinary, sullen way Yamazaki a.s.sociated with young Americans. Though perhaps that was only because he, Yamazaki, was a stranger, j.a.panese, and one who asked too many questions.

He looked down the counter, taking in the early-morning profiles of the other customers.

Americans. The fact that he was actually here, drinking coffee beside these people, still struck a chord of wonder. How extraordinary. He wrote in his notebook, the pen ticking against the screen.

The apartment is in a tall Victorian house, built of wood and very elaborately painted, in a district where the names of streets honor nineteenth-century American 6i politicians: Clay, Scott, Pierce, Jackson. This morning, Tuesday, leaving the apartment, I noticed, on the side of the topmost newel, indications of a vanished hinge. I suspect that this must once have supported an infant-gate. Going along Scott in search of a cab, I came upon a sodden postcard, face up on the sidewalk. The narrow features of the martyr Shapely, the AIDS saint, blistered with rain. Very melancholy.

'They shouldn't oughta said that. About G.o.dzilla, I mean.'

Yamazaki found himself blinking up at the earnest face of the girl behind the counter.

'I'm sorry?'

'They shouldn't oughta said that. About G.o.dzilla. They shouldn't oughta laughed. We had our earthquakes here, you didn't laugh at us.'

7 See you do okay Hernandez followed Rydell into the kitchen of the house in Mar Vista. He wore a sleeveless powder- blue jumpsuit and a pair of those creepy German shower-sandals, the kind with about a thousand little nubs to ma.s.sage the soles of your feet. Rydell had never seen him out of uniform before and it was kind of a shock. He had these big old tattoos on his upper arms; roman numerals; gang stuff. His feet were brown and compact and sort of bearlike.

It was Tuesday morning. There was n.o.body else in the house. Kevin was at Just Blow Me, and the others were out doing whatever it was they did. Monica might've been in her place in the garage, but you never saw too much of her anyway.

Rydell got his bag of cornflakes out of the cupboard and carefully unrolled it. About enough for a bowl. He opened the fridge and took out a plastic, snap-top, liter container with a strip of masking-tape across the side. He'd written MILK EXPERIMENT on the masking-tape with a heavy marker.

'What's that?' Hernandez asked.

'Milk.'

'Why's it say "experiment"?'

'So n.o.body'll drink it. I figured it out in the dorm at the Academy.' He dumped the cornflakes in a bowl, covered them with milk, found a spoon, and carried his breakfast to the kitchen table. The table had a trick leg, so you had to eat without putting your elbows down.

'How's the arm?'

'Fine.' Rydell forgot about not putting his elbow down. Milk and cornflakes slopped across the scarred white plastic of the tabletop.

'Here.' Hernandez went to the counter and tore off a fat wad of beige paper towels.

'Those are whatsisname's,' Rydell said, 'and he seriously doesn't like us to use them.'

'Towel experiment,' Hernandez said, tossing Rydell the wad.

Rydell blotted up the milk and most of the flakes. He couldn't imagine what Hernandez was doing here, but then he'd never have imagined that Hernandez drove a white Daihatsu Sneaker with an animated hologram of a waterfall on the hood.

'That's a nice car out there,' Rydell said, nodding in the direction of the carport and spooning cornflakes into his mouth.

'My daughter. Rosa's car. Been in the shop, man.'

Rydell chewed, swallowed. 'Brakes or something?'

'The f.u.c.king waterfall. Supposed to be these little animals, they come out of the bushes and sort of look at it, the waterfall, you know?' Hernandez leaned back against the counter, flexing his toes into the nubby sandals. 'Some kind of, like, Costa Rican animals, you know? Ecology theme.

She's real green. Made us take out what was left of the lawn, put in all these ground-cover things look like gray spiders. But the shop can't get those f.u.c.king animals to show, man. We got a warranty and everything, but it's, you know, been a pain in the a.s.s.' He shook his head.

Rydell finished his cornflakes.

'You ever been to Costa Rica, Rydell?'

'No.'

'It's f.u.c.king beautiful, mali. Like Switzerland.'

'Never been there.'

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'No, I mean wh2t they do with data. Like the Swiss, what they did with money.'

'You mean the kvens?'

'You got it. Tho~e people smart. No army, navy, air force, just neutral. And they take care of everybody's data.'

'Regardless what.i.t is.'

'Hey, f.u.c.king "A" Smart people. And spend that money on ecology, man.'

Rydell carried the bowl, the spoon, the damp wad of towels, to the sini. He rinsed the bowl and spoon, wiped them with the towels, then stuck the towels as far down as possible behind th rest of the garbage in the bag under the sink. Straightening up, he looked at Hernandez. 'Something I can do for you, sup~r?'

'Other way arou~d.' Hernandez smiled. Somehow it wasn't rea.s.suring. 'I been thinking about you.

Your situation. Not good. Not good, nan. You never get to be a cop now. Now you resign, I can't even hire you back on IntenSecure to work gated residential. l4aybe you get on with a regular square-badge outfit, sit it that little pillbox in a liquor store. You wanna do that?'

'No.'

'That's good, 'cause you get your a.s.s killed, doing that. Somebody come inthere, take your little pilibox out, man.'

'Right now I'm l)oking at something in retail sales.'

'No s.h.i.+t? Sales? 'What you sell?'

'Bedsteads made out of cast-iron jockey-boys. These pictures made out of hundred-year-old human hair.'

Hernandez narrwed his eyes and shoved off the counter, headed for the hung room. Rydell thought he might be leaving, hut he wa~ only starting to pace. Rydell had seen him do this a couple ol times in his office at IntenSecure. Now he turned, just as he was about to enter the living room, and paced hack to Rydill.

'You got this had-a.s.sed att.i.tude sometimes, man, I dunno.

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You oughta stop and think maybe I'm trying to help you a little, right?' Back toward the living room again.

'Just tell me what you want, okay?'

Hernandez stopped, turned, sighed. 'Never been up to NoCal, right? San Francisco? Anybody know you up there?'

'No.'

'IntenSecure's licensed in NoCal, too, right? Different state, different laws, whole different att.i.tude, they might as well be a different f.u.c.king country, but we've got our s.h.i.+t up there. More office buildings, lot of hotels. Gated residential's not so big up there, not 'til you get out to the edge-cities. Concord, Hacienda Business Center, like that. We got a good piece of that, too.'

'But it's the same company. They won't hire me here, they won't hire me there.'

'f.u.c.king "A." n.o.body talking about hiring you. What this is, there's maybe something there for you with a guy. Works freelance. Company has certain kinds of problems, sometime they bring in somebody. But the guy, he's not IntenSecure. Freelance. Office up there, they got that kind of situation now.'

'Wait a second. What are we talking about here? We're talking about freelance armed-response?'

'Guy's a skip-tracer. You know what that is?'

'Finds people when they try to get out from under debt, blow off the rent, like that?'

'Or take off with your kid in a custody case, whatever. But, you know, those kinds of skips, they can mostly be handled through the net, these days. Just keep plugging their stats into DatAmerica, eventually you gonna find 'em. Or even,' he shrugged, 'you can go to the cops.'

'So what a skip-tracer mostly does-' Rydell suggested, remembering one particular episode of Cops in Trouble he'd seen with his father.

'Is keep you from having to go to the cops.'