Arent supposed to drink coffee. That kind of teas got ephedrine in it.
Got drugs in it?
Its made from a plant with something thatll keep you awake. Like coffee.
Rydell decided it was too hot to drink now anyway. Put it down on the floor beside the couch. The girl on the wallscreen had a dragon sort of like his uncles, but on her left hip. Little tiny silver ring through the top edge of her belly button. Chevette Washington flipped it to a big sweaty biker-arm with President Milibanks face looking out from it in shades of gray.
Rydell struggled out of his damp jacket, noticing the ripped shoulder, the cheap white stuffing popping out. He dropped it behind the couch. You got any tattoos?
No she said.
So how come you know about this?
Lowell she said, flipping through half a dozen more images, hes got a Giger.
Gigger? Rydell opened his Samsonite, got out a pair of socks, and started unlacing his SWAT shoes.
This painter. Like nineteenth-century or something. Real classical. Bio-mech. Lowells got this Giger back-piece done off a painting called N.Y.C. XXIV. She said it x, x, i, v. Its like this city. Shaded black-work. But he wants sleeves to go with it, so wed come in here to look for more Gigers to match it.
Why dont you sit down Rydell said, youre making my neck hurt. She was pacing back and forth in front of the screens. He took his wet socks off, put them in the Container City bag, and put the dry ones on. Thought about leaving his shoes off for a while, but what if he had to leave in a hurry? He put them back on. He was lacing them up when she sat down beside him.
She unzipped her jacket and shrugged it off, the loose Beretta cuff rattling. The sleeves of her plain black t-shirt had been scissored off and her upper arms were smooth and pale. She reached over the end of the couch and put the jacket down, sort of propped against the wall, the leather stiff enough that it just stayed there, its arms slumped down, like it was asleep. Like Rydell wished he could be. Now she had the remote in her hand.
Hey Rydell said, that guy in the raincoat back there, the one shot He was about to say the big longhair on the bicycle, but she grabbed his wrist, the handcuff rattling.
Sammy. He shot Sammy, up at Skinners. He He was after the glasses, and Sammy had them, and
Wait. Wait a sec. The glasses. Everybody wants the glasses. That guy wants em, Warbaby wants em
Whos Warbaby?
The big black man shot the back window out of his car I was stealing. That Warbaby.
You think I know what they are?
You dont know why people are after them?
She gave him a look like you might give a dog that had just told you it was a good day to spend all your money on one particular kind of lottery ticket.
Lets start over Rydell suggested. You tell me where you got the glasses.
Why should I?
He thought about it. Because youd be dead by now if I hadnt done the kind of dirt-stupid shit I just did, back there.
She thought about that. Okay she said.
Maybe there really was something in the fat mans Mormon tea, or maybe Rydell had just crossed over into that point of tiredness where it all flipped around for a while and you started to feel like you were more awake, some ways, than you usually ever were. But he wound up sipping that tea and listening to her, and when shed get too deep into her story to remember to keep flipping the tattoo-pictures on the wallscreen, hed do it for her.
When you worked it around to sequential order, she was this girl from Oregon, didnt have any family, whod come down here and moved out on that bridge with this old man, crazy by the sound of it, had a bad hip and needed somebody around to help him. Then shed gotten her a job riding a bicycle around San Francisco, delivering messages. Rydell knew about messengers from his foot-patrol period in downtown Knoxville, because you had to keep ticketing them for riding on the sidewalk, traffic violation, and theyd give you a hard time about it. But they made pretty good money if they worked at it. This Sammy shed said was shot, murdered, he was another messenger, a black guy whod gotten her on at Allied, where she worked.
And her story of how shed taken the glasses out of the guys pocket at this big drunk party shed wandered into up in the Morrisey, that made as much sense to him as anything. And it wasnt the kind of story people made up. Not like the glasses crawled into her hand or anything, she just flat-out stole them, impulse, just because the guy was in her face and obnoxious. Nuisance crime, except theyd turned out to be valuable.
But from her description he knew her asshole up in the Morrisey had been the same one got himself the Cuban necktie, your German-born Costa Rican citizen who maybe wasnt either, star of that X-rated fax of Warbabys and the one Svobodov and Orlovsky had been investigating. If they had been.
Shit he said, in the middle of something she was trying to tell him.
What?
Nothing. Keep talking
The Russians were bent, and he knew that. They were Homicide, they were bent, and hed bet dollars to donuts they werent even investigating the case. They could talk Warbabys way onto the crime-scene, tap their departments computer, but the rest of it had just been window-dressing, for him, for Rydell, the hired help. And what was that that Freddie had said, about DatAmerica and IntenSecure being basically your same company?
But Chevette Washington was on a roll of her own now, like sometimes when people get started talking they just let it all hang out, and she was saying how Lowell, who was the one with the hair and not the skinhead, and who actually had, sort of, been her boyfriend for a while, was a guy who could (you know?) get things done with computers, if you had the money, and that sort of scared her because he was always talking about the cops and how he didnt have to worry about them.
Rydell nodded, automatically flipping through a couple more pictures of tattooslady there with these pink carnations sort of followed her bikini-linebut really he was listening to something going around in his own head. Like Hernandez was IntenSecure, the Morrisey was IntenSecure, Warbaby was IntenSecure, Freddie said DatAmerica and IntenSecure were like the same thing Desire
Rydell blinked. Skinny guy there with J.D. Shapely all mournful on his chest. But youd be mournful, too, you had chest hair growing out your eyes. What?
Republic. Republic of Desire.
What is?
Why Lowell says the cops wont ever bother him, but I told him he was full of shit.
Hackers Rydell said.
You havent heard a word I said.
No Rydell said, no, thats not true. Desire. Republic of. Run that one by again, okay?
She took the remote, blipped through a shaven head with a sun at the very top, planets orbiting down to the top of the ears, a hand with a screaming mouth on the palm, feet covered with blue-green creature-scales. I said she said, Lowell bullshits about that, how hes connected up with this Republic of Desire, how they can do anything they feel like with computers, so anybody messes with him is gonna get it.
No shit Rydell said. You ever see these guys?
You dont see them she said, not like live. You talk to them, on the phone. Or like with goggles, and thats the wildest.
Why?
Cause they look like lobsters and shit. Or some tv star. Anything. But I dont know why Im telling you.
Because Ill nod out otherwise, then howre we gonna decide if were getting the creature-feet or the crotch-carnations?
Its your turn she said, and just sat there until he started talking.
He told her how he was from Knoxville and about getting into the Academy, about how hed always watched Cops in Trouble and then when hed been a cop and gotten in trouble, it had looked like he was going to be on the show. How theyd brought him out to Los Angeles because they didnt want Adult Survivors of Satanism stealing their momentum, but then the Pookey Bear murders had come along and theyd sort of lost interest, and hed had to get on with IntenSecure and drive Gunhead. He told her about Sublett and living with Kevin Tarkovsky in the house in Mar Vista, and sort of skipped over the Republic of Desire and the night hed driven Gunhead into the Schonbrunns place in Benedict Canyon.