Virtual Light

“That’s them” Rydell said. “You got ’em now.”

The hand put them back in their case, closed it. “Yes.”

“Now what?”

The smile went away. When it did, it looked like he didn’t have any lips. Then it came back, wider and steeper.

“You think you could get me a Coke out of the fridge? All the windows, the door back there, are sealed.”

“You want a Coke?” Like she didn’t believe him. “You’re go

“No” he said, “not necessarily. Because I want a Coke. My throat’s a little dry.”

She turned her head to look at Rydell, eyes big with fear.

“Get him his Coke” Rydell said.

She got off the console and edged through, into the back, there, but just by the door, where the fridge was.

“Look out the front” he reminded Rydell. Rydell saw the fridge-light come on, reflected there, caught a glimpse of her squatting down.

“D-diet or regular?” she said.

“Diet” he said, “please.”

“Classic or decaf?”

“Classic.” He made a little sound that Rydell thought might be a laugh.

“There’s no glasses.”

He made the sound again. “Can.”

“K-kinda messy” she said, “m-my hand’s shakin’—” Rydell looked sideways, saw him take the red can, some brown cola dripping off the side. “Thank you. You can take your pants off now.”

“What?”

“Those black ones you’re wearing. Just peel them down, slow. But I like the socks. Say we’ll keep the socks.”

Rydell caught the expression on her face, reflected in the black windshield, then saw how it went sort of blank. She bent, working the tight pants down.

“Now get back on the console. That’s right. Just like you were. Let me look at you. You want to look too, Rydell?”

Rydell turned, saw her squatting there, her bare legs smooth and muscular, dead white in the glow of the dome-light. The man took a long swallow of Coke, watching Rydell around the rim. He put the can down on the dash-panel and wiped his mouth with the back of his gloved hand. “Not bad, huh, Rydell?” with a nod toward Chevette Washington. “Some potential there, I’d say.”

Rydell looked at him.

“Is this bothering you, Rydell?”

Rydell didn’t answer.

The man made the sound that might’ve been a laugh. Drank some Coke. “You think I enjoyed having to mess that shitbag up the way I did, Rydell?”

“I don’t know.”

“But you think I did. I know you think I enjoyed it. And I did, I did enjoy it. But you know what the difference is?”

“The difference?”

“I didn’t have a hard on when I did it. That’s the difference.”

“Did you know him?”

“What?”

“I mean like was it personal, why you did that?”

“Oh, I guess you could say I knew him. I knew him. I knew him like you shouldn’t have to know anyone, Rydell. I knew everything he did. I’d go to sleep, nights, listening to the sound of him breathing. It got so I could judge how many he’d had, just by his breathing.”

“He’d had?”

“He drank. Serbian. You were a policeman, weren’t you?”

“Yeah.”

“Ever have to watch anybody, Rydell?”

“I never got that far.”

“It’s a fu

Rydell saw a shiver go through Chevette Washington’s tensed white thigh.

“But then, after a few more months, twenty flights, two dozen hotels, well, it starts to turn itself around..

“You don’t love them?”

“No. You don’t. You start to wait for them to fuck up, Rydell. You start to wait for them to betray the trust. Because a courier’s trust is a terrible thing. A terrible thing.”

“Courier?”

“Look at her, Rydell. She knows. Even if she’s just riding confidential papers around San Francisco, she’s a courier. She’s entrusted, Rydell. The data becomes a physical thing. She carries it. Don’t you carry it, baby?”

She was still as some sphinx, white fingers deep in the gray fabric of the center bucket.

“That’s what I do, Rydell. I watch them carry it. I watch them. Sometimes people try to take it from them.” He finished the Coke. “I kill those people. Actually that’s the best part of the job. Ever been to San Jose, Rydell?”

“Costa Rica?”

“That’s right.”

“Never have.”

“People know how to live, there.”

“You work for those data havens” Rydell said.

“I didn’t say that. Somebody else must’ve said that.”

“So did he” Rydell said. “He was carrying those glasses to somebody, up from Costa Rica, and she took ’em.”

“And I was glad she did. So glad. I was in the room next to his. I let myself in through the co

“Loveless?”

“My nom. Nom de thing.” Then a long rattle of what Rydell took to be Spanish, but he only caught nombre de something. “Think she’s tight, Rydell? I like it tight, myself.”

“You American?”

His head sort of whipped sideways, a little, when Rydell said that, and his eyes unfocused for a second, but then they came back, clear as the chromed rim around the muzzle of his gun. “You know who started the havens, Rydell?”

“Cartels” Rydell said, “the Colombians.”

“That’s right. They brought the first expert systems into Central America, nineteen-eighties, to coordinate their shipping. Somebody had to go down there and install those systems. War on drugs, Rydell. Lot of Americans on either side, down there.”

“Well” Rydell said, “now we just make our own drugs up here, don’t we?”

“But they’ve got the havens, down there. They don’t even need that drug business. They’ve got what Switzerland used to have. They’ve got the one place in the world to keep what people can’t afford to keep anywhere else.”

“You look a little young to have helped put that together.”

“My father. You know your father, Rydell?”

“Sure.” Sort of, anyway.

“I never did. I had to have a lot of therapy, over that.”

Sure glad it worked, Rydell thought. “Warbaby, he work for the havens?”

A sweat had broken out on the man’s forehead. Now he wiped it with the back of the hand that held the gun, but Rydell saw the gun click back into position like it was held by a magnet.

“Turn on the headlights, Rydell. It’s okay. Left hand off the wheel.”

“Why?”

“Cause you’re dead if you don’t.”

“Well, why?”

“Just do it, okay?” Sweat ru

Rydell took his left hand off the wheel, clicked the lights, double-clicked them to high beams. Two cones of light hit into a wall of dead shops, dead signs, dust on plastic. The one in front of the left beam said THE GAP.

“Why’d anybody ever call a store that?” Rydell said.

“Trying to fuck with my head, Rydell?”

“No” Rydell said, “it’s just a weird name. Like all those places look like gaps, now…”

“Warbaby’s just hired help, Rydell. IntenSecure brings him in when things get too sloppy. And they do, they always do.”

They were parked in a sort of plaza, in a mall, the stores all boarded or their windows whitewashed. Either underground or else it was roofed over. “So she stole the glasses out of a hotel had IntenSecure security, they brought in Warbaby?” Rydell looked at Chevette Washington. She looked like one of those chrome things on the nose of an antique car, except she was getting goosebumps down her thigh. Not exactly warm in here, which made Rydell think it might be underground after all.

“Know what, Rydell?”