“Van,” I said. “Van, I’m so sorry.”
“Forget it,” she said, looking away. “I know it can’t be. I just wanted to do that once, just in case I never —” She bit down on the words.
“Van, I need you to do something for me. Something important. I need you to meet with the journalist from the Bay Guardian, Barbara Stratford, the one who wrote the article. I need you to give her something.” I explained about Masha’s phone, told her about the video that Masha had sent me.
“What good will this do, Marcus? What’s the point?”
“Van, you were right, at least partly. We can’t fix the world by putting other people at risk. I need to solve the problem by telling what I know. I should have done that from the start. Should have walked straight out of their custody and to Darryl’s father’s house and told him what I knew. Now, though, I have evidence. This stuff — it could change the world. This is my last hope. The only hope for getting Darryl out, for getting a life that I don’t spend underground, hiding from the cops. And you’re the only person I can trust to do this.”
“Why me?”
“You’re kidding, right? Look at how well you handled getting here. You’re a pro. You’re the best at this of any of us. You’re the only one I can trust. That’s why you.”
“Why not your friend Angie?” She said the name without any inflection at all, like it was a block of cement.
I looked down. “I thought you knew. They arrested her. She’s in Gitmo — on Treasure Island. She’s been there for days now.” I had been trying not to think about this, not to think about what might be happening to her. Now I couldn’t stop myself and I started to sob. I felt a pain in my stomach, like I’d been kicked, and I pushed my hands into my middle to hold myself in. I folded there, and the next thing I knew, I was on my side in the rubble under the freeway, holding myself and crying.
Van knelt down by my side. “Give me the phone,” she said, her voice an angry hiss. I fished it out of my pocket and passed it to her.
Embarrassed, I stopped crying and sat up. I knew that snot was running down my face. Van was giving me a look of pure revulsion. “You need to keep it from going to sleep,” I said. “I have a charger here.” I rummaged in my pack. I hadn’t slept all the way through the night since I acquired it. I set the phone’s alarm to go off every 90 minutes and wake me up so that I could keep it from going to sleep. “Don’t fold it shut, either.”
“And the video?”
“That’s harder,” I said. “I emailed a copy to myself, but I can’t get onto the Xnet anymore.” In a pinch, I could have gone back to Nate and Liam and used their Xbox again, but I didn’t want to risk it. “Look, I’m going to give you my login and password for the Pirate Party’s mail-server. You’ll have to use Tor to access it — Homeland Security is bound to be scanning for people logging into p-party mail.”
“Your login and password,” she said, looking a little surprised.
“I trust you, Van. I know I can trust you.”
She shook her head. “You never give out your passwords, Marcus.”
“I don’t think it matters anymore. Either you succeed or I — or it’s the end of Marcus Yallow. Maybe I’ll get a new identity, but I don’t think so. I think they’ll catch me. I guess I’ve known all along that they’d catch me, some day.”
She looked at me, furious now. “What a waste. What was it all for, anyway?”
Of all the things she could have said, nothing could have hurt me more. It was like another kick in the stomach. What a waste, all of it, futile. Darryl and Ange, gone. I might never see my family again. And still, Homeland Security had my city and my country caught in a massive, irrational shrieking freak-out where anything could be done in the name of stopping terrorism.
Van looked like she was waiting for me to say something, but I had nothing to say to that. She left me there.
Zeb had a pizza for me when I got back “home” — to the tent under a freeway overpass in the Mission that he’d staked out for the night. He had a pup tent, military surplus, stenciled with SAN FRANCISCO LOCAL HOMELESS COORDINATING BOARD.
The pizza was a Dominos, cold and clabbered, but delicious for all that. “You like pineapple on your pizza?”
Zeb smiled condescendingly at me. “Freegans can’t be choosy,” he said.
“Freegans?”
“Like vegans, but we only eat free food.”
“Free food?”
He grinned again. “You know — free food. From the free food store?”
“You stole this?”
“No, dummy. It’s from the other store. The little one out behind the store? Made of blue steel? Kind of funky smelling?”
“You got this out of the garbage?”
He flung his head back and cackled. “Yes indeedy. You should see your face. Dude, it’s OK. It’s not like it was rotten. It was fresh — just a screwed up order. They threw it out in the box. They sprinkle rat poison over everything at closing-time, but if you get there quick, you’re OK. You should see what grocery stores throw out! Wait until breakfast. I’m going to make you a fruit salad you won’t believe. As soon as one strawberry in the box goes a little green and fuzzy, the whole thing is out —”
I tuned him out. The pizza was fine. It wasn’t as if sitting in the dumpster would infect it or something. If it was gross, that was only because it came from Domino’s — the worst pizza in town. I’d never liked their food, and I’d given it up altogether when I found out that they bankrolled a bunch of ultra-crazy politicians who thought that global warming and evolution were satanic plots.
It was hard to shake the feeling of grossness, though.
But there was another way to look at it. Zeb had showed me a secret, something I hadn’t anticipated: there was a whole hidden world out there, a way of getting by without participating in the system.
“Freegans, huh?”
“Yogurt, too,” he said, nodding vigorously. “For the fruit salad. They throw it out the day after the best-before date, but it’s not as if it goes green at midnight. It’s yogurt, I mean, it’s basically just rotten milk to begin with.”
I swallowed. The pizza tasted funny. Rat poison. Spoiled yogurt. Furry strawberries. This would take some getting used to.
I ate another bite. Actually, Domino’s pizza sucked a little less when you got it for free.
Liam’s sleeping bag was warm and welcoming after a long, emotionally exhausting day. Van would have made contact with Barbara by now. She’d have the video and the picture. I’d call her in the morning and find out what she thought I should do next. I’d have to come in once she published, to back it all up.
I thought about that as I closed my eyes, thought about what it would be like to turn myself in, the cameras all rolling, following the infamous M1k3y into one of those big, columnated buildings in Civic Center.
The sound of the cars screaming by overhead turned into a kind of ocean sound as I drifted away. There were other tents nearby, homeless people. I’d met a few of them that afternoon, before it got dark and we all retreated to huddle near our own tents. They were all older than me, rough looking and gruff. None of them looked crazy or violent, though. Just like people who’d had bad luck, or made bad decisions, or both.
I must have fallen asleep, because I don’t remember anything else until a bright light was shined into my face, so bright it was blinding.
“That’s him,” said a voice behind the light.
“Bag him,” said another voice, one I’d heard before, one I’d heard over and over again in my dreams, lecturing to me, demanding my passwords. Severe-haircut-woman.
The bag went over my head quickly and was cinched so tight at the throat that I choked and threw up my freegan pizza. As I spasmed and choked, hard hands bound my wrists, then my ankles. I was rolled onto a stretcher and hoisted, then carried into a vehicle, up a couple of clanging metal steps. They dropped me into a padded floor. There was no sound at all in the back of the vehicle once they closed the doors. The padding deadened everything except my own choking.