David Mitchell - Cloud Atlas

“Don’t know!” gasps Luisa.

Napier looks back for guidance from the Mexican, but the street door shudders under one blow, splinters under the next, and flies open with the third. Napier pulls Luisa through the left exit.

63

Bisco and Roper, Bill Smoke’s sidemen, body-charge the door. In the courtroom of his head, Bill Smoke finds William Wiley and Lloyd Hooks guilty of gross negligence. I told you! Joe Napier couldn’t be trusted to pack up his conscience and pick up his fishing rods .

The door is in pieces.

A spidery Mexican woman inside is having hysterics. A placid child and a bedecked poodle sit on an office desk. “FBI!” Bisco yells, flourishing his driver’s license. “Which way did they go?”

The Mexican woman screeches: “We care our workers! Very good! Very much pay! No need union!”

Bisco takes out his gun and blasts the poodle against the wall. “Which way did they fucking go?”

Jesus Muhammad Christ, this is why I work alone .

The Mexican woman bites her fist, shudders, and launches a rising wail.

“Brilliant, Bisco, like the FBI kills poodles.” Roper leans over the child, who hasn’t responded in any way to the death of the dog. “Which exit did the man and the woman take?”

She gazes back as if he is nothing but a pleasant sunset.

“You speak English?”

A hysteric, a mute, a dead dog —Bill Smoke walks to the three exits— and a pair of fuckups royale . “We’re losing time! Roper, right door. Bisco, left. I’m the middle.”

64

Rows, aisles, and ten-box-high walls of cardboard conceal the true dimensions of the storeroom. Napier wedges the door shut with a cart. “Tell me you’ve gotten over your gun allergy since yesterday,” he hisses.

Luisa shakes her head. “You?”

“Only a popgun. Six shots. C’mon.”

Even as they run, she hears the door being forced. Napier blocks the line of vision with a tower of boxes. Then again, a few yards down. A third tower topples ahead of them, however, and dozens of Big Birds—Luisa recognizes the dimwit yellow emu from the children’s program Hal used to watch between jobs—spill free. Napier gestures: Run with your head down .

Five seconds later a bullet rips through cardboard three inches shy of Luisa’s head, and Big Bird stuffing poofs into her face. She trips and collides with Napier; a rod of noise sears the air above them. Napier draws his gun and fires twice around Luisa. The noise makes her curl into a ball. “Run!” barks Napier, grabbing her upright. Luisa obeys—Napier starts knocking down walls of boxes to impede their pursuer.

Ten yards later Luisa gets to a corner. A plywood door is marked EMERGENCY EXIT.

Locked. Breathless, Joe Napier reaches her. He fails to force the door.

“Give it up, Napier!” they hear. “It’s not you we’re after!”

Napier fires point-blank at the lock.

The door still won’t open. He empties three more bullets into the lock: each bang makes Luisa flinch. The fourth bang is an empty click. Napier kicks the door with the sole of his boot.

An underworld sweatshop clattering with five hundred sewing machines. Flakes of textile are suspended in the viscous heat, haloing the naked bulbs hanging over each machinist. Luisa and Napier skirt the outer walkway in a rapid semicrouch. Limp Donald Ducks and crucified Scooby-Doos have their innards stitched, one by one, row by row, pallet by pallet. Each woman keeps her eyes fixed on the needle plates, so Luisa and Napier cause little commotion.

But how do we get out of here?

Napier runs, literally, into the Mexican woman from the makeshift reception. She beckons them down a semiblocked unlit side passage. Napier turns to Luisa, yelling over the metallic din, his face saying, Do we trust her?

Luisa’s face replies, Any better ideas? They follow the woman between reams of fabric and wire, split boxes of teddy-bear eyes and assorted sewing-machine body shells and innards. The passage corners right and stops at an iron door. Day filters in through a grimy grille. The Mexican fumbles with her key ring. It’s 1875 down here , thinks Luisa, not 1975 . One key won’t fit. The next fits but won’t turn. Even thirty seconds on the factory floor has affected her hearing.

A war cry from six yards away: “Hands in the air!” Luisa spins around. “I said, Hands in the fuckin’ air!” Luisa’s hands obey. The gunman keeps his pistol trained on Napier. “Turn around, Napier! Slow! Drop your gun!”

The señora shrills: “No shoot I! No shoot I, Señor! They force I show door! They say they kill—”

“Shuddup, you crazy fuckin’ wetback! Scram! Outa my way!”

The woman creeps around him, pressing herself against the wall, shrieking, “¡No dispares! ¡No dispares! ¡No quiero morir!”

Napier shouts, through the funneled factory noise, “Easy now, Bisco, how much you being paid?”

Bisco hollers back, “Don’t bother, Napier. Last words.”

“I can’t hear you! What did you say?”

“What—are—your—last—words?”

“Last words? Who are you? Dirty Harry?”

Bisco’s mouth twitches. “I got a book of last words, and those were yours. You?” He looks at Luisa, keeping the gun trained on Napier.

A pistol shot punches a hole in the din, and Luisa’s eyes clench shut. A hard thing touches her toe. She forces her eyes open. It is a handgun, skidded to a stop. Bisco’s face is contorted into inexplicable agony. The señora’s monkey wrench flashes and crumples the gunman’s lower jaw. Ten or more blows of extreme ferocity follow, each one making Luisa flinch, punctuated by the words, “Yo! Amaba! A! Ese! Jodido! Perro!”

Luisa checks Joe Napier. He looks on, unhurt, thunderstruck.

The señora wipes her mouth and leans over the motionless, pulp-faced Bisco. “And don’t call me ‘wetback’!” She steps over his clotted head and unlocks the exit.

“You might want to tell the other two I did that to him,” Napier says to her, retrieving Bisco’s gun.

The señora addresses Luisa. “Quítatelo de encima, cariño. Anda con gentuza y ¡Dios mío! ese viejo podría ser tu padre.”

65

Napier sits on the graffiti-frescoed subway train, watching Lester Rey’s daughter. She is dazed, disheveled, shaky, and her clothes are still damp from the bank’s sprinkler. “How did you find me?” she asks, finally.

“Big fat guy at your office. Nosboomer, or something.”

“Nussbaum.”

“That’s it. Took a heap of persuading.”

A silence lasts from Reunion Square subway to Seventeenth Avenue. Luisa picks at a hole in her jeans. “I guess you don’t work at Seaboard any longer.”

“I was put out to pasture yesterday.”

“Fired?”

“No. Early retirement. Yes. I was put out to pasture.”

“And you came back from the pasture this morning?”

“That’s about the size of it.”

The next silence lasts from Seventeenth Avenue to McKnight Park.

“I feel,” Luisa hesitates, “that I—no, that you —broke some sort of decree back there. As if Buenas Yerbas had decided I was to die today. But here I am.”

Napier considers this. “No. The city doesn’t care. And you could say it was your father who just saved your life, when he kicked away that grenade rolling my way, thirty years ago.” Their compartment groans and shudders. “We’ve got to go via a gun store. Empty guns make me nervous.”

The subway emerges into the sunlight.

Luisa squints. “Where are we going?”

“To see somebody.” Napier checks his watch. “She’s flown in specially.”