William Gibson - Spook Country

“The man who tried to run you over, the one who came after the iPod in the park, was in charge of trying to find us in New York.”

“He put the bug in my room?”

Garreth glanced over at him. “Didn’t know you knew about that.”

“My cousin told me.”

“You have a lot of cousins, don’t you?” Garreth smiled.

“He wanted to kill me,” Tito said.

“Not the steadiest tool in the drawer, our man. We imagine he got so frustrated, in New York, trying to grab you, or us, that when he saw you here, he lost it. Worked up about the box arriving, too. We’ve seen him lose it a few times, over the past year or so, and someone always gets hurt. Tonight it was him. The police report says not so badly, though. A few stitches. Big bruise on his ankle. He can drive.”

“A helicopter came,” Tito said. “I rode a train to where I could see streetlights, an apartment building, beyond a fence. I may have set off motion detectors.”

“Your man called that helicopter in, we think. Some kind of general alert. He’d have done it as soon as he got out of custody. Had them raise security on the port. Because he’d seen you.”

“My protocol was poor,” said Tito.

“Your protocol, Tito,” said Garreth, pulling over in the middle of a featureless block, behind a black car, “is fucking genius.” He pointed at the black car. “Cousin for you.”

“Here?”

“Nowhere else,” said Garreth. “I’ll collect you tomorrow. There’s something himself wants you to see.”

Tito nodded. He got out of the van and walked forward, finding Alejandro behind the wheel of the black Mercedes.

“Cousin,” said Alejandro, as Tito got in.

“I wasn’t expecting you,” said Tito.

“Carlito wants to make certain you’re settled,” said Alejandro, starting the Mercedes and pulling away. “So do I.”

“Settled?”

“Here,” said Alejandro. “Unless you prefer Mexico City.”

“No.”

“It isn’t because they think you’d be so hot in Manhattan,” said Alejandro.

“Protocol,” said Tito.

“Yes, but also real estate.”

“How is that?”

“Carlito bought several apartments here, when it was less expensive. He wants you to live in one, while he explores possibilities here.”

“Possibilities?”

“China,” said Alejandro. “Carlito is interested in China. China, here, is very close.”

“Close?”

“You’ll see,” said Alejandro, turning at an intersection.

“Where are we going?”

“The apartment. We’ll need to furnish it. Something a little less basic than your last place.”

“Okay,” said Tito.

“Your things are there,” said Alejandro. “Computer, television, that piano.”

Tito looked over at him, smiled. “Gracias.”

“De nada,” said Alejandro.

T he unfamiliar ring tone of Garreth’s cell woke her. She lay on Bigend’s maglev bed, wondering what was ringing. “Damn,” she said, realizing what it must be. She scrambled off the strangeness, hearing one of the black cables thrum as it was depressed, then released. She found the phone in a front pocket of yesterday’s jeans.

“Hello?”

“Good morning,” said Garreth. “How are you?”

“Well,” she said, surprised to note that it seemed literally true. “And you?”

“Very well, though I hope you’ve had more sleep. How do you feel about a traditional Canadian workingman’s breakfast? You’d need to be here in an hour. There’s something we’d like you see, assuming everything’s gone as planned.”

“Has it?”

“A complication or two. We’ll know soon enough. But signs are good, generally.”

What would that mean, she wondered. Would the turquoise box be emitting money-colored clouds of radioactivity? But he didn’t sound like a worried man. “Where is it? I’ll get a cab. I don’t know whether my car’s been returned yet, and I don’t feel like driving.”

“It’s called Beenie’s,” he said. “Three e’s. Got a pen?”

She wrote down the address.

Downstairs, after she’d dressed, she found a Blue Ant envelope on top of her laptop. Across it, in a very beautiful cursive, in fountain pen, was written: “Your purse, or in any case the unit, are currently inside a Canada Post box at the corner of Gore and Keefer streets. Enclosed to cover incidentals in the meantime. Best, OS.” It contained two hundred dollars, Canadian, in fives, tens, and twenties, fastened with a very nice paper clip.

Pocketing this, she went spelunking for Odile’s room. When she found it, it was twice the size of her semi-suite at the Mondrian, though lacking in Aztec-temple pretensions. Odile, however, was snoring so loudly that she hadn’t the heart to wake her. As she was leaving, she noticed the ax-handle, still wrapped, on the floor beside the bed.

The street, when she’d found her way outside, was still very quiet. She looked up at Bigend’s building, but it was too tall to show her anything of his flat. Its footprint was smaller than its full perimeter, its lower floors tapering outward as they rose. In one of these were the slanted greenish glass windows of a gym, where residents in trim outfits were exercising on uniformly white machines. Like a detail in a Hugh Ferris drawing of some idealized urban future, she thought, but one that Ferris might never have come up with. Gain the glass-walled gymnasia and the benign white ghosts of factory machinery, but lose the high curvilinear glass bridges connecting adjacent towers.

There seemed, however, to be no cabs at all. After ten minutes, though, she did spot one, yellow, and a Prius. It stopped for her, its driver an impeccably courteous Sikh.

Why, she wondered, as he followed a route she guessed was a more practiced and efficient version of the one she’d taken before, was Bigend’s scrambler, and perhaps her purse, in a mailbox? Someone had put it there, she supposed, either the person who’d taken it, or someone who’d found it later.

Without the rush-hour traffic, it was a quick trip. They were heading down Clark already, and there, through the Prius’s windshield, were the orange Constructivist arms of the port, differently arranged now, and, after last night, quite differently resonant.

They passed the corner leading to Bobby’s. Was he still in there, she wondered. How was he? She felt a pang of sympathy for Alberto. She didn’t like to see him lose his River.

They crossed a major intersection. Clark, opposite, split on either side of a fully elevated roadway topped with illuminated signs demanding picture ID. This must be the entrance to the port.

Her driver pulled over, in front of a strangely displaced-looking little white concrete-block diner. BEENIE’S CAFÉ BREAKFAST ALL DAY COFFEE, painted very simply, long ago, on lengths of peeling, white-painted plywood. It had a screen door with a red wooden frame, something that made it look vaguely foreign here.

She paid and tipped her driver, walked over, and looked through the single plate-glass window. It was very small, two tables and a counter with stools. Garreth waved from his stool at the counter, nearest the window.

She went in.

Garreth, the old man, and Tito were seated at the counter. There were four stools, and the one between Garreth and the old man was empty. She took it.

“Hello,” she said.

“Good morning, Miss Henry,” said the old man, nodding in her direction.

Past him, Tito leaned forward, smiling shyly.

“Hello, Tito,” she said.

“You’ll want the poached,” said Garreth. “Unless you don’t like poached.”

“Poached is fine.”

“And the bacon,” said the old man. “Incredible.”

“Really?” Beenie’s was as basic an eating establishment as she’d been in in a while. Unless you counted Mr. Sippee. But Beenie’s was indoor sit-down, she reminded herself.