Spook Country

“I wouldn’t say that that’s any indication of lesbianism, particularly.”

“No?”

“Heidi constitutes a sort of a gender preference unto herself. For some people. And lots of them are male.”

He smiled. “That’s true. I’d forgotten.”

A chord sounded.

“The mothership,” said Inchmale.

Hollis watched as Ollie Sleight wheeled a tinkling, cloth-covered cart in. He was back in his expensive chimney-sweep outfit, she saw, but now was clean-shaven. “We weren’t sure you’d have eaten,” he said. And then, to Hollis, “Hubertus would like you to call him.”

“I’m still processing,” she told him. “Tomorrow.”

“You’re serving breakfast,” said Inchmale, hand coming down on Ollie’s shoulder, cutting off any response to Hollis. “If you’re going to make a go of this, and move up from being a Civil War reenactor”—he flipped the lapel of the chimney-sweep suit—“you’re going to have to learn to stay on task.”

“I’m exhausted,” she said. “I have to sleep now. I’ll call him tomorrow, Ollie.”

She went upstairs. Dawn was well under way, lots of it, and there was nothing in sight that resembled a blind or drape. She got out of her jeans, climbed up on Bigend’s maglev bed, pulled the covers over her head, and fell asleep.

81. IN BETWEEN EVERYTHING

Y ou can’t give me a number? E-mail?” The man from Igor’s label looked desperate.

“I’m moving,” Tito said, watching for Garreth’s van from the second-floor window of the rehearsal space. “I’m in between everything.” He saw the white van.

“You have my card,” the man said, as Tito ran for the door.

“Ramone!” whooped Igor, in farewell, crashing a chord on his guitar. The others cheered.

Downstairs and out the door, he ran across the wet sidewalk and opened the van’s passenger door, climbing in.

“Party?” Garreth asked, pulling away from the curb.

“A band. Rehearsing.”

“You’re in a band already?”

“Sitting in.”

“What do you play?”

“Keyboards. The man from Union Square, he tried to kill me. With a car.”

“I know. We had to call in a local favor to make sure he got out of custody.”

“Out?”

“They only had him for an hour or so. He won’t be charged.” They stopped for a light. Garreth turned to look at him. “His car’s steering failed. An accident. Lucky nobody was hurt.”

“There was another man, a passenger,” Tito said, as the light changed.

“Did you recognize him?”

“No. I saw him walking away.”

“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.

82. BEENIE’S

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 pla

“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 co