The Gold Coast

74

So Jim turns around and tracks back up the freeway. Somewhere over Costa Mesa he decides what to do. “Oh, man.” He picks up his car’s phone, calls Arthur. His heart stutters at the same frequency as the ringing phone: Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring! Br-r-r-r-r-r-r-ring!

“Hello?”

“Arthur. It’s Jim. I can’t make it to your house in time to leave for the rendezvous. I’ll meet you there at the parking lot where we get the boxes.”

Silence. Curtly Arthur says, “Okay. You know the time.”

“Yeah. I’ll be there then.”

Back onto Newport Freeway, north to Garden Grove Freeway (typing instructions into his carbrain), out west and off at Haster, under the City Mall’s upper level.

Dim world of old streets, gutters matted with trash.

Dead trees. Garbage Grove.

Old suburban houses, boarding a family per room.

The streetlights not broken are old halogen: orange gloom,

An orange glaze on it all.

A roofed world. The basement of California.

You’ve never lived here, have you.

Hyperventilating, Jim looks around him for once. Parking lots, laundromats, thrift shops: “You had to go to Cairo to see this!” he shouts, and for a moment his resolve is confused; he feels like invisible giants are aiming invisible giant firehoses at him, battering him this way and that in a game he knows nothing of; he can only hold to his plan, try not to think anymore. Stop thinking, stop thinking! It’s time to act! Still his stomach twists, his heart stutters as he is buffeted about by contrary ideas, contrary certainties about what is right.…

Lewis Street is the same as always, a kind of tunnel alley behind the west side of the City Mall, both sides floor to ceiling with warehouses, truck-sized metal doors shut and padlocked for the night.

He reaches Greentree, which dead-ends into Lewis like one sewer pouring into another. The concrete roof overhead holds a few halogen bulbs, a few mercury vapor bulbs. No plan to it. Jim tracks forward slowly, enters the small parking lot set between warehouses, twenty slots set around two massive concrete pylons that support the upper levels of the mall. There’s the same car as always, a blue station wagon, on a parking track at the back of the lot.

Jim turns into the lot, flicks his headlights on and off three times. He stops his car beside the station wagon, gets out.

Four men surround him, pinning him against his car. He’s seen all of the faces before, and they recognize him too. “Where’s Arthur?” the tallest black guy says.

“He’ll be here in a few minutes,” Jim says. “Meanwhile let’s get the equipment into my car. We can’t use Arthur’s tonight, and as soon as he shows up he wants us out of here.”

The man nods, and Jim swallows. No turning back.

He follows the four men to the back of the station wagon, and the hatchback is pulled up with an airy hiss. In the dark orange shadows Jim can just make out the six plastic boxes. He picks up one in his turn; it’s heavier than he remembered. Steps awkwardly to his car. “Backseat,” he says, and onto the shabby cracking vinyl they go, five in the backseat, one on the passenger seat.

Jim shuts the door of his car, checks his watch. It’s ten till eleven. Arthur will be here soon. He leans in the driver’s window and pushes the button that activates the program he typed in on the way up the freeway. The four men don’t notice. Jim returns to the station wagon.

“Big load tonight,” says the man who spoke before.

“Big job to do.”

“Yeah?”

“You’ll see it in the papers.”

“I’m sure.”

Jim paces around the two cars nervously. Twice he walks out to Lewis and looks up and down the long tunnel street. Several warehouses down, in a gap between buildings, there is an infrequently used entrance to the mall; Jim noticed it on one of their earlier runs. It looks almost like a service entrance, but it’s not.

The four men are standing around the station wagon, watching him with boredom, amusement, whatever. Jim is thankful it makes sense to act nervously, because he’s not sure he could stop it. In fact he feels like throwing up, his whole body is hammering with his pulse, he can’t even breathe without a great effort. Still time to—

Headlights, approaching. Jim looks at his watch. It’s time, it’s time, adrenaline spikes up through him: “Hey!” he calls to the men. “Police coming!”

And his car jerks forward on its own, out of the parking lot and down Lewis to the south, accelerating as fast as it can. Jim takes off running north, toward the little back entrance to the mall.

Up the entrance steps, almost tripping; he’s scared out of his mind! Into the mall maze, up to concourse level, then up a broad, gentle staircase to mezzanine; once there there are ten directions he can run in, and he takes off with only a single glance back.

Two of the men are chasing him.

Jim runs full speed through the crowd of shoppers, skipping and dodging desperately to avoid knots of people, open airshafts, planters, fountains, hall displays and food stands. Up a short escalator three steps at a time, around the big open space filled by the laser fountain. Looking down and across he can see his pursuers, already lost. Then one spots him and they’re off running again. They’re in a tough position, trying to chase someone in a mall; if Jim had more mall experience he’d lose them in a second. As it is he’s lost himself. Floors and half floors, escalators and staircases extending everywhere in the broken, refracted space… shops are going out of business every day because shoppers can’t ever find the same place twice; what chance for two men pursuing a panic-stricken, very mobile individual? It’s a three-D maze, and Jim has only to run a random pattern, trending westward, and he’s lost them.

Or so Jim thinks, fearfully, as he runs. But when he reaches the east side of the mall and flies through the entryway doors, damned if the two men aren’t coming up an escalator back there, at full speed!

Outside, however, on the street bordering the parking lot, he sees his car, which has made it there on its own. Good programming. He runs out to where it sits by the curb, noticing only at the last second the three policemen approaching to inspect it.

Panic on top of panic; Jim’s systems almost blow out at the sight, but his pursuers are in the parking lot now and there’s no time to lose. Without thinking he runs up to the car and shouts at the policemen, “It’s mine! They’re robbing me, they dragged me out of the car and now they’re chasing me!”

The three policemen regard him carefully, then look as he points at the two men, running across the parking lot. “That’s them!”

The two men see what’s happening, and quickly turn and run back inside. Perfect.

But there’s Arthur and the other two suppliers, tracking up in Arthur’s car, stuck in the traffic on the street. Jim says quickly, “There’s the rest of them in that car there! Quick, right there! Yeah!”

And he points. And Arthur sees him pointing.

Arthur ignores the policemen flagging him down and shifts to the fast track. This gets the cops’ attention, and two of them hustle off to their truck, parked behind Jim’s car. The third appears to be staying behind, and he’s looking into Jim’s car curiously.

Jim says, “There’s the others again, Officer!” and points at the east doors of the mall. While the policeman peers in that direction Jim yanks open his car’s door, leaps in and jams the accelerator to the floor. The car jerks away over the right track, leaving the policeman shouting behind him.

Jim makes a sharp right on Chapman, because ahead of him on the City Avenue, the police truck is in hot pursuit of Arthur and his two companions. Arthur.…

Jim tracks onto the Santa Ana Freeway south. He’s free of all pursuit, as far as he can tell. His reaction is to feel acutely sick to his stomach. He might even throw up in his car. And that look on Arthur’s face, as he saw Jim pointing him out to the police… “No, no! That isn’t what I meant!…”

Nothing for it now. Arthur will very likely be picked up, with the two suppliers. But will the police have any reason for holding them? Jim has no idea. He only knows he’s in a car with six boxes of felony-level weaponry, and the police likely have his license plate number. And he’s just betrayed a friend to the police, for no reason. No reason? My God, he can’t tell! He has the feeling that he has, in fact, betrayed everyone he knows, in one way or another.

He checks the rearview mirror nervously, looking for CHP, local police, sheriffs, state troopers—who knows what they’ll send after industrial saboteurs? He catches sight of his unshaven face, the expression of sick fear on it. And suddenly he’s furious, he slams his fist against the dash, filled with disgust for himself. “Coward. Traitor. Fucking idiot!” Unleashed at last, all the directionless angers pour out at once, in fists flailing the dash, in incoherent, sobbing curses. “You know—you know—what should—be done—and you—can’t—do it!”

All control gone, he remembers the cargo he has and tracks like a madman to South Coast Plaza. He jams to a halt in an open-air parking lot across from SCP’s administrative tower, jumps out of his car, tears open the box on the passenger seat, pulls out a Harris Mosquito missile with its Styx-90 payload. There among scattered parked cars he glues the little missile base to the concrete and aims it at the dark windows of the tower. He sets the firing mechanism, clicks it on. The missile suddenly gives out a loud whoosh of flame and disappears. Up in the administrative tower a window breaks, and there’s a tinkle of glass, a tinny little alarm sounding. Jim hoots, drives away.

Up into Santa Ana, to the office of First American Title Insurance and Real Estate. It’s dark, no one is there. Another missile set in the parking lot, aimed at the main doors; it’ll melt every computer in there, every file. He’ll be out of a job! He laughs hysterically as he sets the mechanism and turns it on. This time the missile breaks a big plate-glass window, and the alarms are howlers.

In the distance there are sirens. What else can he knock out? The Orange County Board of Supervisors, yeah, the crowd that has systematically helped real estate developers to cut OC up, in over a hundred years of mismanagement and graft. Down under the Triangle to the old Santa Ana Civic Center. It’s dark there too, he can set up his Mosquito without any danger. Click the firing mechanism over and the little skyrocketlike thing will fly in there and knock the whole corrupt administration of the county apart. So he does it and laughs like mad.

Who else? He can’t think. Something has snapped in him, and he can’t seem to think at all.

There’s a closed Fluffy Donuts; why not?

Another real estate office; why not?

One of the Irvine military microchip factories; why not?

In fact, he’s close to Laguna Space Research. And he’s crazy enough with anger now to want to punish them for his betrayals, made for their sake. They deserve a warning shot, they should know how close they came to destruction. Give them a scare.

And then they’ll know to look out, to be on guard.

As confused in his action as in his thinking, Jim gets lost in a Muddy Canyon condomundo, but when he comes out of it he’s at an elementary school on the edge of a canyon, and across the canyon is LSR. He unboxes two Mosquitos and carries them out to a soccer field overlooking the canyon. Sets them up, aims them both for the big LAGUNA SPACE RESEARCH signs at the entrance to the plant. He clicks over the firing mechanism and hustles back to the car.

Just a couple left. He blasts two more dark real estate offices in Tustin.

Only the boxes left, now; he throws them out on the Santa Ana Freeway, watches traffic back up behind him. Back onto the streets in Tustin, his breath catching in his throat, in ragged, hysterical sobs. Redhill Mall mocks all his efforts, even when he gets out and throws stones at its windows. They’re shatterproof and the stones bounce away. He can’t make OC go away, not with his idiot vandalism, not even by going crazy. It’s everywhere, it fills all realities, even the insane ones. Especially those. He can’t escape.

He drives home, still mindless with rage and disgust. His ap maddens him, he rushes to the bookcase and pulls it over, watches it crunch the CD system under it. He kicks the books around, but they’re too indestructible and he moves on to his computer. A hard left and the screen is cracked, maybe a knuckle too. “Stupid asshole.” He goes and gets a frying pan to complete the job. Crack! Crack! Crack! On to the disks. Each one crunched is a couple thousand pages of his utterly useless writing gone for good—thank God! Drawers of printed copy, not that much of it, and it’s easy to rip in fourths and scatter around like confetti. What else? CDs, he can frypan all his mix-and-match symphonies to plastic smithereens, reassemble the scattered pieces and finally get the random mishmash the method deserves. What else? A sketch of Hana’s, ripped in half. Orange crate labels, smashed and torn apart. The room’s beginning to look pretty good. What else?

Into the bedroom. First the video system, he can bring those cameras down and smash them to pieces. And the maps! He leaps up, catches the upper edge of one of the big Thomas Brothers maps, rips it down. It tears with a long, dry sound. The other maps come down as well, he ends up sitting in a pile of ripped map sections, tearing them into ever-smaller fragments, blinded by tears.

Suddenly he hears a car pull up and stop on the street out front. Right in front of his ap. Police? Arthur and his friends? Panic surges into Jim’s mindless rage again, and he wiggles out the little bedroom window, across the yard filled with dumpsters. It occurs to him that Arthur and his friends might want to trash his ap in revenge for his betrayal, and at the thought he doubles over laughing. Won’t they get a surprise? Meanwhile he continues through the applex, staggering, giggling madly, bent over the hard knot of his stomach.…

No problem losing pursuit in such a warren. The boxes we live in! he thinks. The boxes! Okay, he’s out on Prospect, they’ll never find him. Police cars are cruising, heading down toward Tustin and the scene of his attacks. Busy night, hey Officer? Jim feels an urge to run out into the street and shout “I did it! I did it!” He actually finds his feet on the track when fear jumps him and he hauls ass back into the dark between streetlights, shivering uncontrollably. Are those people on foot, back there? That’s not normal, he has to run again. Can’t go back for his car, no public transport, can’t reach anywhere on foot. He laughs hard, tries hitchhiking. Turn right down Hewes. He gives up hitchhiking, no one ever picks up hitchhikers, and besides where is he going? He jogs down Hewes to 17th, gasping. Over into Tustin, onto Newport, then Redhill. A couple of times he stops to pick up good stones, and then throws them through the windows of real estate offices that he passes. He almost tries a bank but remembers all the alarms. By now he must have tripped off a score of lesser alarms, are the computers tracking his course this very moment, predicting the moves that he is helplessly jerking through?

People passing in cars stare at him: pedestrians are suspicious. He needs a car. Cut off from his car he is immobilized, helpless. Where can he go? Can he really be here, doing this? Is he really in this situation? He seizes an abandoned hubcap, frisbees it into the window of a Jack-in-the-Box. A beautiful flight, although the window only cracks. But it’s like hitting a beehive; employees and customers pour out and in a second are after him. He takes off running into the applex behind him, threads his way silently through it. He stumbles over a bicycle, picks it up with every intention of stealing it and pedaling off, gives up and drops it when he sees the Mickey Mouse face, staring at him from between the handlebars.

Back on Redhill, farther south, he sees a bus. Incredible! He jumps on it, pays, and off they go. Only one other passenger, an old woman.

He stays on all the way to Fashion Island, trying vainly to catch proper hold of his breathing. The more time he has to think, the angrier he gets at himself. So that I’ll go out and do something even stupider! he thinks. Which will make me angrier, which will make me do something even more stupid!… Hopping out at Fashion Island he goes immediately to a Japanese plastic bonsai garden with some real, and truly fine, rocks in it. Rocks like shot puts. After pulling some of the plastic trees apart he picks up these rocks, and has one big one in each hand as he approaches the Bullock’s and I. Magnin’s. Huge display windows, showing off rooms that could house a hundred poor people for five hundred years. All there to display rack after chrome rack of rainbow-colored clothes. He takes aim and is about to let fly with both of them at once, when there is a grunt of surprise from behind him, and he is grabbed up and lifted into the air.

He struggles like a berserker, swings the rocks back viciously, where they clack together and fall out of his hands; he kicks, wriggles, hisses—

“Hey, Jim, lay off! Relax!”

It’s Tashi.