Virtual Light

17. The trap

Costs people five hundred bucks just to get in here?”

“Why people call it the Trap. But that’s just how they make sure the overhead’s covered. You don’t come in here unless you know you’re gonna drop that much. Gives ’em a guaranteed per-cap.”

Container City turned out to be the biggest semi-roofed mall Rydell had ever seen, if you could call something a mall that had ships parked in it, big ones. And the five-hundred-dollar guaranteed purchase didn’t seem to have put anybody off; there were more people in here than out on the street, it looked like. “Hong Kong money” Freddie said. “Bought ’em a hunk of the Embarcadero.”

“Hey” Rydell said, pointing at a dim, irregular outline that rose beyond gantries and towers of floodlights, “that’s that bridge, the one people live on.”

“Yeah” Freddie said, giving him a funny look, “crazy-ass people.” Steering Rydell onto an escalator that ran up the white-painted flank of a container ship.

Rydell looked around at Container City as they rose. “Crazier than anything in L.A.” he said, admiringly.

“No way” Freddie said, “I’m from L.A. This just a mall, man.”

Rydell bought a burgundy nylon bomber, two pairs of black jeans, socks, underwear, and three black t-shirts. That came out to just over five hundred. He used the debit-card to make up the difference.

“Hey” he told Freddie, his purchases in a big yellow Container City bag, “that’s a pretty good deal. Thanks.”

Freddie shrugged. “Where they say those jeans made?” Rydell checked the tag. “African Union.”

“Slave labor” Freddie said, “you shouldn’t buy that shit.”

“I didn’t think about it. They got any food in here?”

“Food Fair, yeah…”

“You ever try this Korean pickled shit? It’s hot, man…”

“I got an ulcer.” Freddie was methodically spooning plain white frozen yogurt into his mouth with a marked lack of enthusiasm.

“Stress. That’s stress-related, Freddie.”

Freddie looked at Rydell over the rim of the pink plastic yogurt cup. “You trying to be funny?”

“No” Rydell said. “I just know about ulcers because they thought my daddy had them.”

“Well, didn’t he? Your ‘daddy’? Did he have ’em or not?”

“No” Rydell said. “He had stomach cancer.”

Freddie winced, put his yogurt down, rattled the ice in his paper cup of Evian and drank some. “Hernandez” he said, “he told us you were trainin’ to be a cop, some redneck place…”

“Knoxville” Rydell said. “I was a cop. Just not for very long.”

“I hear you, I hear you” Freddie said, like he wanted Rydell to relax, maybe even to like him. “You got trained and all? Cop stuff?”

“Well, they try to give you a little bit of everything” Rydell said. “Crime scene investigation… Like up in that room today. I could tell they hadn’t done the Super Glue thing.”

“No?”

“No. There’s this chemical in Super Glue sticks to the water in a print, see, and about ninety-eight percent of a print is water. So you’ve got this little heater, for the glue? Screws into a regular light socket? So you tape up the doors and windows with garbage bags and stuff and you leave that little heater turned on. Leave it twenty-four hours, then you come back and purge the room.”

“How you do that?”

“Open up the doors, windows. Then you dust. But they hadn’t done that, over at the hotel. It leaves this film all over. And a smell…”

Freddie raised his eyebrows. “Shit. You almost kinda technical, aren’t you, Rydell?”

“Mostly it’s just common sense” he said. “Like not going to the bathroom.”

“Not going?”

“At a crime scene. Don’t ever use the toilet. Don’t flush it. You drop something in a toilet, the way the water goes. You ever notice how it goes up, underneath there?” Freddie nodded.

“Well, maybe your perp flushed it after he dropped something in there. But it doesn’t always work like it’s meant to, and it might be just floating back there… You come in and flush it again, then it’s gone for sure.”

“Damn” Freddie said, “I never knew that.”

“Common sense” Rydell said, wiping his lips with a paper napkin.

“I think Mr. Warbaby’s right about you, Rydell.”

“How’s that?”

“He says we’re wasting you, just letting you drive that four-by-four. Bein’ straight with you, man, I wasn’t sure, myself.” Freddie waited, like he figured Rydell might take offense.

“Well?”

“You know that brace on Mr. Warbaby’s leg?”

“Yeah.”

“You know that bridge, the one you noticed when we were coming up here?”

“Yeah.”

“And Warbaby, he showed you that picture of that tough-ass messenger kid?”

“Yeah.”

“Well” Freddy said, “She’s the one Mr. Warbaby figures took that man’s property. And she lives out on that bridge, Rydell. And that bridge, man, that’s one evil motherfucking place. Those people anarchists, antichrists, cannibal motherfuckers out there, man…”

“I heard it was just a bunch of homeless people” Rydell said, vaguely recollecting some documentary he’d seen in Knoxville, “just sort of making do.”

“No, man” Freddie said, “homeless fuckers, they’re on the street. Those bridge motherfuckers, they’re like king-hell satanists and shit. You think you can just move on out there yourself? No fucking way. They’ll just let their own kind, see? Like a cult. With ’nitiations and shit.”

“Nitiations?”

“Black ’nitiates” Freddie said, leaving Rydell to decide that he probably didn’t mean it racially.

“Okay” Rydell said, “but what’s it got to do with that brace on Warbaby’s knee?”

“That’s where he got that knee hassled” Freddie said. “He went out there, knowing he was takin’ his life in his hands, to try and recover this little baby. Baby girl” Freddie added, like he liked the ring of that. “Cause these bridge motherfuckers, they’ll do that.”

“Do what?” Rydell asked, flashing back to the Pooky Bear killings.

“They steal children” Freddie said. “And Mr. Warbaby and me, we can’t either of us go out there anymore, Rydell, because those motherfuckers are on to us, you followin’ me?”

“So you want me to?” Rydell asked, stuffing his folded napkin into the oily white paper box that had held his two Kim Chee WaWa’s.

“I’ll let Mr. Warbaby explain it to you” Freddie said.

They found Warbaby where they’d left him, in this dark, high-ceilinged coffee place in what Freddie said was North Beach. He was wearing those glasses again and Rydell wondered what he might be seeing.

Rydell had brought his blue Samsonite in from the Patriot, his bag from Container City. He went into the bathroom to change his clothes. There was just the one, unisex, and it really was a bathroom because it had a bathtub in it. Not like anybody used it, because there was this mermaid painted full-size on the inside, with a brown cigarette butted out on her stomach, just above where the scales started.

Rydell discovered that Kevin’s khakis were split up the ass. He wondered how long he’d been walking around like that. But he hadn’t noticed it back at Container City, so he hoped it had happened in the car. He took the IntenSecure shirt off, stuffed it into the wastebasket, put on one of the black t-shirts. Then he unlaced his trainers and tried to figure out a way to change pants, socks, and underwear without having to put his feet on the floor, which was wet. He thought about doing it in the tub, but that looked sort of scummy, too. Decided you could manage it, sort of, by standing with your feet on the top of your sneakers, and then sort of half-sitting on the toilet. He put everything he took off into the basket. Wondering how much the debit-card Freddie had given him was still good for, he transferred his wallet to the right back pocket of his new jeans. Put on his new jacket. Washed his hands and face in a gritty trickle of water. Combed his hair. Packed the rest of his new clothes into the Samsonite, saving the Container City bag to keep dirty laundry in.

He wanted a shower, but he didn’t know when he’d get one. Clean clothes were the next best thing.

Warbaby looked up when Rydell got back to his table. “Freddie’s told you a little about the bridge, has he, Rydell?”

“Says it’s all baby-eatin’ satanists.”

Warbaby glowered at Freddie. “Too colorfully put, perhaps, but all too painfully close to the truth, Mr. Rydell. Not at all a wholesome place. And effectively outside the reach of the law. You won’t find our friends Svobodov or Orlovsky out there, for instance. Not in any official capacity.”

Rydell caught Freddie start to grin at that, but saw how it was pinched off by Warbaby’s glare.

“Freddie gave me the idea you want me to go out there, Mr. Warbaby. Go out there and find that girl.”

“Yes” Warbaby said, gravely, “we do. I wish that I could tell you it won’t be dangerous, but that is not the case.”

“Well… How dangerous is it, Mr. Warbaby?”

“Very” Warbaby said.

“And that girl, she’s dangerous, too?”

“Extremely” Warbaby said, “and all the more because she doesn’t always look it. You saw what was done to that man’s throat, after all…”

“Jesus” Rydell said, “you think that little girl did that?”

Warbaby nodded, sadly. “Terrible” he said, “these people will do terrible things…”

When they got out to the car, he saw that he’d parked it right in front of this mural of J.D. Shapely wearing a black leather biker jacket and no shirt, being carried up to heaven by half a dozen extremely fruity-looking angels with long blond rocker hair. There were these blue, glowing coils of DNA or something spiraling out of Shapely’s stomach and attacking what Rydell assumed was supposed to be an AIDS virus, except it looked more like some kind of rusty armored space station with mean robot arms.

It made him think what a weird-ass thing it must’ve been to be that guy. About as weird as it had ever been to be anybody, ever, he figured. But it would be even weirder to be Shapely, and dead like that, and then have to look at that mural.

YET HE LIVES IN US NOW, it said under the painting, in foot-high white letters, AND THROUGH HIM DO WE LIVE.

Which was, strictly speaking, true, and Rydell had had a vaccination to prove it.