Neal Stephenson - Zodiac. The Eco-Thriller

"You talking about Basco?" he said.

"Yeah, Hoa, you familiar with them?"

"This is the company that poison Harbor?"

"We think so. Hell, we know so."

Hoa took the unheard-of liberty of pulling up a chair. He looked around the room kind of melodramatically. It would be melodramatic for an American, anyway. Hoa had spent six years in a reeducation camp in Vietnam and had led three escape attempts. This wasn't melodramatic for him.

"What you going to do?" he said.

"Go to the Harbor; get evidence against Laughlin. I mean Fleshy. Fleshy and the, uh, man who works for him."

"You think Basco-Fleshy-going to be punished? He should go to jail for long time, man!"

It was a little odd to hear this from Hoa. Hoa was a right-winger and I couldn't blame him. He had no respect at all for antiwar types. He thought the U.S. should have stayed in his country.

I was remembering an old black-and-white photo of Fleshy, in Vietnam, back when he was the world's leading exponent of chemical warfare, before the Sovs and the Iraqis took over the business. In my patronizing way, I hadn't imagined that Hoa was much into politics, or that he'd be aware of who the hell Alvin Fleshy was. That idea was dispelled by the way he pronounced Pleshy's name, the look in his eyes when he asked.

"What's your problem with Fleshy? He was on your side."

If it hadn't been his own restaurant, he would have spat on the floor. "Gutless," he said. "Didn't know how to fight. Thought he could win war with chemicals. All it did was make him rich. He make those chemicals in his own company, you know."

"Yeah. Well, we think it's pretty likely that Fleshy will get in a lot of trouble for this."

"You have to make him pay!" Hoa said.

It reminded me of Hoa's brother, a couple of months ago, when he'd gotten upset about people who came into the Pearl and wasted food. Serene and cheery on the surface, but when they got pissed about something, they really got pissed. They let you know about it. They had long memories.

"We think we can trace this bad stuff through the sewers, back to a plant that's owned by Basco," I said, "and the guy who shot at Fleshy today also has evidence. I would say that Pleshy's in deep shit." But I didn't believe it for a minute. The man was a vampire. Only the light of a minicam could hurt him. Boone had winged him earlier today.

Tonight we had to drive a stake through his chest, or he'd recover. He'd appoint Laughlin his interior secretary, and use Laughlin's magic bug to bring more covalent chlorine into all of our bodies.

"I can help in any way, you will tell me," Hoa ordered. "This meal is for free. On the house."

"That's okay, Hoa, I've actually got cash tonight."

"No. Free." And he got up and went away, soundlessly as always, without displacing any air. For some reason it came into my head to wonder how many people Hoa had killed.

"Some of these immigrants were actually big honchos in South Vietnam, you know," Boone said. "I wonder if he knew Fleshy personally?"

"I don't think Pleshy's that hateful in person," I said. "To really dislike the man you have to be standing under an Agent Orange drop."

"That's right," Boone mused. "He's kind of a wimp in person."

"What did he say to you, anyway? I never got a chance to hear your conversation. I was too scared of Dolmacher."

"Well, he came right out and challenged me. He said, there's no bacteria like you describe. Go ahead and test the Harbor. Try me."

"So what do you conclude from that?"

"I conclude he was kept in the dark by his underlings. Like Reagan back during the contra thing. He didn't know what was going on."

"How charitable you are."

"Otherwise, why would he say something like that?"

I didn't figure Bart would be using his van while he was watching the concert, so we took a cab out to Boston Garden and cruised the local parking areas until we found it. I slid underneath and got his spare key. We got in and did some nitrous. Then we drove out to Debbie's place in Cambridge, a nice rent-controlled complex between Harvard and MIT. She wasn't there, so I left a note in her mailbox telling her we were going out on the water, and if she wanted to get together she should go out to Castle Island Park and build a fire or something and we'd circle back and pick her up.

We cut across Cambridge to the GEE office, where they hadn't bothered to change the locks. We loaded up on any kind of equipment that might come in handy-scuba gear, sampling jars, giant magnets, strobe lights, distress flares, radios-and threw it into the van and cruised back to the Garden. We got there just as the doors were opening up to spill a plume of black-clad Poyzen Boyzen fans onto the streets of the North End. Dustheads galore.

Bart's old space had been taken so we just cruised around and made a nuisance of ourselves until he showed up.

"Hey, ST., thanks for pistol-whipping me."

"I'm sorry about that, Bart, but-"

"You met my girlfriend, Amy?"

"Yeah, we've met."

"Hi, S.T.," Amy said, popping her gum explosively. Heavy metal, drugs and sexual passion had dissolved her brain to a certain point where she no longer distinguished between dead and living persons.

"Hop in," I said.

Boone introduced himself. They didn't take much notice of him. Amy wanted to know where we were all going.

"We're going to Spectacle Island," I said. By "we" I meant me and Boone and just possibly Bart, but Bart and Amy took it the other way.

"Alright!" he said. "That is going to be brutal tonight."

"That's what I was afraid of," I said. "A lot of Poyzen Boyzen fans out there?"

"Tonight they are, man. It's going to be an all night party. I know someone who's got a boat." "Christopher Laughlin?" "Yeah, how'd you know?" "It's okay. We have our own boat."

"ALRIGHT, MAN. A motley crew," Bart observed as we made our way across the piers to the GEE slip.

He had a point. There weren't deck shoes or yachting cap among us. We had walkie-talkies and Liquid Skin instead of Brie and baguettes. If there were any loose cops in the Boston area we'd be arrested on the spot. Fortunately they were all out in the streets training fire hoses on Poyzen Boyzen fans.

Amy found the trip down the ladder to the Zode extremely exciting. Bart had to help her down, using some holds he'd picked up as a high school wrestler in Oklahoma. Meanwhile, Boone and I were down there operating on the ten-horse. Wes had taken out the plugs. We didn't know what kind of plugs it took so we'd bought about twelve boxes of different types. Also we didn't know how to gap them. New plugs have to be gapped.

"It doesn't matter anyway because we don't have a gauge," Boone pointed out. But I was already one-upping him by whipping a set of leaf gauges out of my wallet.

"No wonder your fucking wallet's an inch thick," Boone said. We guessed thirty-five thousandths on the plug gap and bent the electrodes accordingly.

The net result is that the motor started on the first pull. By this time Amy had mounted the prow like a sadomasochistic figurehead and Bart was thudding up and down the ladder loading the Zode with our war supplies. This included a nice stack of Big Macs and pseudo-shakes we'd picked up at the McDonald's. No telling how long we were going to be out. I shifted into forward and Boone cracked open a Guinness. Bart leaned back between Amy's thighs and trailed one of his hands in the black brine. For some reason I felt formidable.

With this worthless motor, the trip from downtown to Spectacle Island took almost an hour. I was expecting Amy to get bored and petulant, or at least seasick, but I underestimated her. She actually kind of liked it out here. She'd never seen Boston from the water, few people have, so we basically spent half the time telling her where shit was. The 747s were coming down fast and thick at Logan and that was a sight. Bart had a Walkman with stereo minispeakers that you could plug into it, so we listened to an old Led Zep tape and later to a Sox game, in California, on the radio. Boone told some kind of interminable story about hand-to-hand combat with a Canadian helicopter in Labrador. I kept an eye on Castle Island Park, hoping Debbie would show up and give me a sign, but she didn't.