Then a really angry man in a shiny white tuxedo burst through the pink plastic strips that hung down across the entrance. He had a smaller man by the collar of his jacket, and the smaller man was trying to get away. Then the smaller man saw them there and shouted “Blackwell!” and actually managed to slip right out of his jacket, but the man in the white tuxedo reached out with the other hand and caught him by the belt.
The Russian was yelling in Russian now and the man in the white tuxedo seemed to see him for the first time. He let go of the other man’s belt.
“We’ve got the van,” the other man said.
The big man with the missing ear stepped up really close to the man in the white tuxedo, glared at him, and took the other man’s jacket. “Okay, Rozzer,” he said, turning to Rez. “You know the drill this one. Old hat. Same as leaving that house in St. Kilda with the bastard Melbourne tabs outside, right?” He draped the jacket over Rez’s head and shoulders, slapped him encouragingly on the upper arm. He walked over to the pink strips and drew one aside, looking out. “Fucking hell,” he said. “Right then, all of you. It’s move fast, stay together, Rez in the center, and into the van. On my count of three.”
43. Toecutters Breakfast
You aren’t eating,” Blackwell said, after he’d cleared his second plate of links and eggs. He’d appropriated this dining room on one of the Elf Hat’s executive floors, and insisted Laney join him. The view was similar to the one from Laney’s room, six floors below, and sunlight was glinting from the distant parapets of the new buildings.
“Who put out the word that Rez was dead, Blackwell? The idoru?”
“Her? Why d’you think she would?” He was using the edge of a triangle of toast to squeegee his plate.“
“I don’t know,” Laney said, “but she seems to like to do things. And they aren’t necessarily that easy to understand.”
“It wasn’t her,” Blackwell said. “We’re checking it out. Looks as though some fan of his in Mexico went berserk; used some fairly drastic sort of ’ware-weapon on the Tokyo club’s central site. Took that over from a converted corporate website in the States and issued the bulletin. Called on every fan local to Tokyo to get up immediately and go to that love hotel.” He popped the toast into his mouth, swallowed, and wiped his lips with a thick white napkin.
“But Rez was there,” Laney said.
Blackwell shrugged. “We’re looking into it. We have more than enough on our hands, now. Have to dissociate Lo/Rez from this death hoax, reassure his audience. Legal’s flying in from London and New York for talks with Starkov and his people. Her people too,” he added. “Going to be busy.”
“Who were those kids?” Laney asked. “The little redhead and the Japanese hippie?”
“Rez says they’re okay. Have ’em here in the hotel. Arleigh’s sorting it out.”
“Where’s the nanotech unit?”
“You didn’t say that,” Blackwell said. “Now don’t say it again. The official truth of the night’s events is currently being formulated, and that will never be a part of it. Am I understood?”
Laney nodded. He looked out at the new buildings again. Either the angle of light had changed or that parapet had shifted slightly. He looked at Blackwell. “Is it my imagination, or has your attitude on all this undergone some kind of change? I thought you were adamantly opposed to Rez and the idoru getting together.”
Blackwell sighed. “I was. But it’s starting to look like something of a done deal now, isn’t it? De facto relationship, really. I suppose I’m old-fashioned, but I’d hoped that he might eventually wind up with a bit of the ordinary. Someone to polish his gun, pick up his socks, have a baby or two. But it isn’t going to happen, is it?”
“I guess not.”
“In which case,” Blackwell said, “I have two options. Either I leave the silly bastard to his own resources, or I stay and I do my job and try to adjust to whatever it is this is going to become. And at the end of the bloody day, Laney, regardless, I have to remember where I’d be if he hadn’t come behind the walls at Pentridge to give that solo concert. Aren’t you going to eat that?” Looking at the scrambled eggs going cold on Laney’s plate.
“My job’s done,” Laney said. “It didn’t work out the way you wanted it to, but I did it. Agreed?”
“No question.”
“Then I’d better go. Get me paid off, I’m out of here today.”
Blackwell looked at him with new interest. “That fast, eh? What’s your hurry? Don’t find us agreeable?”
“No,” Laney said. “It’s just that that way’s better all ’round.
“Not what Yama’s saying. Rez either. Not to mention her otherness, who no doubt will voice an opinion in that regard. I’d say you were set to become the court prognosticator, Laney. Unless, of course, that whole business with the Kombinat turns out to be absolute bollocks, and it’s discovered that you simply make that nodal nonsense up—which I for one would actually find quite amusing. But no, your services are very much desired now, you might even say required, and none of us would currently be happy to see you go.”
“I have to,” Laney said. “I’m being blackmailed.”
This brought Blackwell’s lids to half-mast. He leaned slightly forward. The pink worm of scar tissue squirmed in his eyebrow. “Are you?” he said softly, as though Laney had just ventured to confess some unusual sexual complication. “And may I ask who by?”
“Slitscan. Kathy Torrance. It’s sort of personal, for her.”
“Tell me about it. Tell me all about it. Do.”
And Laney did, including the 5-SB trials and their record for eventually turning the participants into homicidal stalkers of celebrities. “I didn’t want to bring that up, before,” Laney said, “because I was afraid you might think I was at risk. That I might go that way.”
“Not that I haven’t had experience with the type,” Blackwell said. “We have a young man in Tokyo right now who is the author of all of the songs Lo and Rez have ever written, not to mention Blue Ahmed’s complete output for Chrome Koran. And he’s an explosives expert. Watch him closely. But we have that capacity, you see. So the safest place for you, Laney, in the event you go werewolf on us, would be right here, at the watchful heart of our security apparatus.”
Laney thought about it. It almost made sense. “But you won’t want me around if Slitscan runs that footage. I won’t want myselfaround. I don’t have any family, nobody else for it to damage, but I’m still going to have to live with it.”
“And how do you propose to do that?”
“I’ll go somewhere where people don’t watch that shit.”
“Well,” said Blackwell, “when you find that fair land, I will go there with you myself. We’ll live on fruit and nuts, commune with all that’s left of bloody nature. But ’til then, Laney, I’m going to have a conversation with your Kathy Torrance. I will explain certain things to her. Nothing complicated. Simple, simpleprotocols of cause and effect. And she will neverallow Slitscan to run that footage of your doppelgänger.”
“Blackwell,” Laney said, “she dislikesme, she has her motive for revenge, but she wants, she needs, to destroy Rez. She’s a very powerful woman in a very powerful, fully global organization. Some simple threat of violenceon your part isn’t going to stop her. It’ll only up the ante; she’ll go to hersecurity people—”
“No,” said Blackwell, “she won’t, because that would be a violation of the very personalterms I will have established in our conversation. That’s the key word here, Laney, ‘personal.’ ‘Up close, and.’ We will not meet, we will not carve out this deep and meaningful and bloody unforgettable episode of mutual face-time as representatives of our respective faceless corporations. Not at all. It’s one-on-one time for your Kathy and I, and it may well prove to be as intimate, and I may hope enlightening, as any she ever had. Because I will bring a new certainty into her life, and we allneed certainties. They help build character. And I will leave your Kathy with the deepest possible conviction that if she crosses me, she willdie—but only after she’s been made to desire that, absolutely.” And Black-well’s smile, then, giving Laney the full benefit of his dental prosthesis, was hideous. “Now how was it exactly you were supposed to contact her, to give her your decision?”