‘Bearliunt. Brack Rab from.’
And Carl felt understanding pour down the back of his neck like cold water, like Elena Aguirre’s touch. The man nodded. Saw the recognition.
‘Yes. Brack Rab from. Bairliunt. Rike you.’
Chilled out of nowhere, fucked up in some indefinable way, Carl reached into his pocket and fished out a wafer at random. He dumped it into the bowl without checking for denomination. Then he shouldered past the man and headed away fast, towards the rising slope of Telegraph Hill. When he got out of the park, he looked back and the man was staring after him, standing awkwardly with one arm raised stiffly like some kind of scarecrow brought barely to life. Carl shook his head, not knowing what he was denying, and fled for the tower.
He got to the top, out of breath from the speed he’d climbed.
The tower was closed up and he had the place to himself apart from a young couple propped against the seaward viewing wall in each other’s arms. He stood and watched them balefully for a while, wondering how much he might also look like a living scarecrow in their eyes. Finally, they grew uncomfortable and the girl tugged her boyfriend away towards the exit stair. He was a muscular boy, tall and handsome in a pale Nordic fashion, and at first he wasn’t going to go. He stared back at Carl, blue eyes marbled wet with tension. Carl concentrated on not killing him.
Then the girl leaned up and murmured in the blond boy’s ear, and he contented himself with a snort, and they left.
Somewhere inside Carl, something clicked and broke, like ice in a glass.
He went to the wall and looked out across the water. Watched the lights glimmer on the Alcatraz station, out along the bridge, over at the shoreline on the Marin side. Sevgi was there in all of it, a thousand memories he didn’t need or want. He blew hard breath through his nose, pulled one of the phones loose from the pack and dialled a number he’d never expected to need.
‘Sigma Frat House,’ said a jeering voice. ‘This ain’t the time to be calling neither, so you leave a message and it better be a fucking good one.’
‘Danny? Let me speak to the Guatemalan.’
The voice scaled upward, derisive. ‘Guatemalan’s sleeping, motherfucker. You call back in office hours, you hear?’
‘Danny, you listen to me very carefully. If you don’t go and wake the Guatemalan up right fucking now, I’m going to hang up. And when he hears that you took some fucked-up decision about what he did and didn’t need to hear, all on your own pointed little head, he’ll have you bunking with the Aryans for a reward, I fucking guarantee you.’
Incredulous silence.
‘Who the fuck is this?’
‘This is Marsalis. The thirteen. Couple of weeks back I carried one of your shanks into the chapel after Dudeck, remember? Then I walked out the front gate. I’ve got something out here for the Guatemalan he’s going to like. So you go wake him up and tell him that.’
The voice at the other end went away. Soft prison-wall static sang in the space it left. Carl stared across the hazed evening air in the bay, screwed up his eyes and rubbed a tear out of one corner with his thumb. Grumbling voices in the background, then the bang of someone grabbing the phone. The Guatemalan rumbled down the line, amused and maybe slightly stoned.
‘Eurotrash? That you?’
‘Like I told Danny, yeah.’ Carl picked his angle of entry with care. ‘Dudeck out of the infirmary yet?’
‘Yeah, he is. Moving a little slow right now, though. You do good work, Eurotrash, I gotta give you that much. Dudeck what this is about? You feelin’ nostalgic, calling to talk about old times?’
‘Not exactly. I thought we could do a little business, though. Trade a little data. They say you’re a good man to see for that. So, I’ve got something I need to know, you can maybe help me with it.’
‘Data?’ The other man chuckled. ‘Seems to me, you told me you’d hooked up with the Colony Initiative. You telling me I got data that COLIN don’t?’
‘That’s what I’m telling you, yeah.’
There was a long pause.
‘Want to tell me what my end of this is, Eurotrash?’
‘Let’s see what you’ve got first. You remember a low-grade familia gangbanger came through SFS on a three spot, got out a couple of years ago.’
Another rumbling chortle. ‘Niggah, I remember a whole graveyard of those andino boys. They bounce in and out of this place like they tied to it on a rubber line. Muscle up sooooo proud to the brothers and the Aryans and every other fucker that’ll look them in the eye, and mostly they get stretchered out again. So which particular skull you picking over?’
‘Name of Ferrer, Suerte Ferrer. Likes to call himself Maldicion. He went out walking, so he’s either tougher or smarter than average. That ought to ring some bells.’
‘Yeah, Maldicion. Smart, I’m not convinced on, but he certainly fit tough. Sure. Think I could be induced to remember that boy.’
‘Good. You think you could be induced to tell me where he is now?’
‘You talking about where he is outside population?’
‘Yeah, it looks that way.’
A thoughtful, spreading pool of quiet on the line again. Carl could smell the reek of mistrust it gave off. The Guatemalan’s voice came back slow and careful.
‘I been in here nine long years, Eurotrash. Terror and organised crime, they slammed me away for both. What makes you think I’m in any position to know anything about what goes on outside?’
Carl let his tone sharpen. ‘Don’t get stupid on me, I’m not in the mood. I cut a deal with COLIN, not drug enforcement or the morals committee. This isn’t some hick Jesusland entrapment number. I want Ferrer found, and if possible delivered over the fenceline to the Rim. I’m willing to pay COLIN prices for the service. Now can we do each other some good, or not?’
The Guatemalan missed a beat, but only just. ‘I heard… COLIN prices?’
‘Yes, you did.’
Another pause, but this time it thrummed with purpose. He could almost hear the whirr as the Guatemalan made calculations and guesses.
‘Moves on the outside come a lot higher priced than in population,’ the other man said finally, and softly.
‘I imagined they would.’
‘And cross-border delivery, well.’ The Guatemalan made a noise with indrawn breath that sounded like spit steaming off a hot griddle. ‘That’s topping out the favours list, Eurotrash. Big risks, very high stakes.’
‘Unreleased Marstech.’ Carl dropped the words into the pool of quiet expectation at the other end of the line. ‘You hear what I’m saying?’
‘Not a lot of use to me in here.’ But now you could hear the excitement cabled beneath the Guatemalan’s casual tone.
‘Then I guess you’ll have to spend it outside somehow. Maybe buy yourself some big favours at legislature level. Maybe just lay down a little future growth here and there. Man like you, I’m sure you’d know better than me how to find the best investment options for your capital. Now, you going to find Maldicion for me, or not?’
Silence again, tight with the promise of its own brevity. Carl twitched a sudden look over his shoulder, tingle of alarm. Gloom across the space behind him back to the steps up to the tower. Dark, bordering shrubs and foliage. Nothing there. He worked his shoulders and felt the unreleased tension of days locked up there. The Guatemalan came back.
‘Call me in two days,’ he said calmly. ‘And think of a very big number.’
He hung up.
Carl folded the phone and listened to the faint crackle as the internal circuitry fired and melted. He let out a long breath and leaned on the wall, shoulders hunched. The tension gripped his neck like muscled fingers. The soft mounds of the Marin coast rose on the other side of the bay. He stared at the final orange leavings of dayglow on their flanks, filled with an obscure desire he couldn’t pin down. The phone casing was warm in his hand from the meltdown, the air around him felt suddenly chilled in contrast.