“Momma” Sublett said, “you know the doctor said you ought to get more sleep than you been getting.”
Mrs. Sublett sighed. “Yes, well, Joel, I know you young people want a chance to talk.” She peered at Chevette Washington. “That’s a shame about your hair, honey. You’re just as pretty as can be, though, and you know it’ll just grow in so nice. I tried to light the broiler on this gas range we had, down in Galveston, that was when Joel was just a baby, he was so sensitive, and that stove about blew up. I just had had this perm, dear and, well…”
Chevette Washington didn’t say anything.
“Momma” Sublett said, “now you know you’ve had your nice drink…”
Rydell watched Sublett lead the old woman off to bed.
“Jesus Christ” Chevette Washington said, “what’s wrong with his eyes?”
“Just light-sensitive” Rydell said.
“It’s spooky, is what it is.”
“He wouldn’t hurt a fly” Rydell said.
Sublett came back, looked at the picture on the tv, then sighed and shut it off. “You know I’m not supposed to leave the trailer, Berry?”
“How’s that?”
“It’s a condition of my apostasy. They say I might corrupt the congregation by contact.” He perched on the edge of the recliner so he wouldn’t have to actually recline in it.
“I thought you’d blown Fallon off when you came out to LA.”
Sublett looked embarrassed. “Well, she’s been sick, Berry, so when I came here I told ’em I was here to reconsider. Meditate on the box ’n’ all.” He wrung his long pale hands. “Then they caught me watching Videodrome. You ever see, uh, Deborah Harry, Rydell?” Sublett sighed and sort of quivered.
“How’d they catch you?”
“They’ve got it set up so they can monitor what you’re watching.”
“How come they’re out here anyway?”
Sublett ran his fingers back through his dry, straw-colored hair. “Hard to say, but I’d figure it’s got something to do with Reverend Fallon’s tax problems. Most of what he does, lately, it’s about that. Didn’t your job in San Francisco work out, Berry?”
“No” Rydell said, “it didn’t.”
“You want to tell me about it?” Rydell said he did.
“I think he shot through something to do with the damned heater, too” Rydell said. They were back in the RV, outside the perimeter.
“I like your friend” she said. “I do too.”
“No, I mean he really cares about what’s going to happen to you. He really does.”
“You take the bed” he said. “I’ll sleep up front.”
“There’s no windshield. You’ll freeze.”
“I’ll be okay.”
“Sleep back here. We did before. It’s okay.”
He woke in the dark and listened to the sound of her breathing, to the creak of stiff old leather from the jacket spread over her shoulder.
Sublett had listened to his story, nodding sometimes, asking a question here and there, his mirrored contacts reflecting tiny convex images of them sitting there on that loveseat. In the end he’d just whistled softly and said, “Berry, it sounds to me like you’re really in trouble now. Bad trouble.”
Really in trouble now.
Rydell slid his hand down, brushing one of hers by accident as he did it, and touched the bulge of his wallet in his back pocket. What money he had was in there, but Wellington Ma’s card was in there, too. Or what was left of it. The last time he’d looked, it had broken into three pieces.
“Big trouble” he said to the dark, and Chevette Washington lifted the edge of her jacket and sort of snuggled in closer, her breathing never changing, so he knew she was still asleep.
He lay there, thinking, and after a while he started to get this idea. About the craziest idea he’d ever had.
“That boyfriend of yours” he said to her, in the tiny kitchen of Sublett’s mother’s trailer, “that Lowell?”
“What about him?”
“Got a number we could reach him at?”
She poured milk on her cornflakes. It was the kind you mixed up from powder. Had that thin chalky look. The only kind Sublett’s mother had. Sublett was allergic to milk. “Why?”
“I think maybe I want to talk to him about something.”
“About what?”
“Something I think maybe he could help me with.”
“Lowell? Lowell’s not gonna help you. Lowell doesn’t give a rat’s ass for anybody.”
“Well” Rydell said, “why don’t you just let me talk to him.”
“If you tell him where we are, or he has it traced back through the cd-net, he’ll turn us in. Or he would if he knew anybody was after us.”
“Why?”
“He’s just like that.” But then she gave Rydell the phone and the numher.
“Hey, Lowell?”
“Who the fuck is this?”
“How you doin’?”
“Who gave you—”
“Don’t hang up.”
“Listen, motherf—”
“SFPD Homicide.”
He could hear Lowell draw on a cigarette. “what did you say?” Lowell said.
“Orlovsky. SFPD Homicide, Lowell. That big fucker with the great big fucking gun? Came in the bar there? You remember. Just before the lights went out. I was over there by the bar, talking with Eddie the Shit.”
Lowell took another drag, shallower by the sound of it. “Look, I don’t know what you—”
“You don’t have to. You can just hang up right now, Lowell. But if you do, boy, you just better kiss your ass goodbye. Because you saw Orlovsky come in there for the girl, Lowell, didn’t you? You saw him. He didn’t want you to. He wasn’t in there on any SFPD business, Lowell. He was there on his own stick. And that’s one serious bad oficer, Lowell. Serious as cancer.”
Silence. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“Then you just listen, Lowell. Listen up. You don’t listen, I’ll tell Orlovsky you saw him. I’ll give him this number. I’ll give him your description, and that skinhead’s, too. Tell him you been talking about him. And you know what he’ll do, Lowell? He’ll come out there and shoot your ass dead, that’s what he’ll do. And nobody to stop him. Homicide, Lowell. Then he can investigate it himself, he wants to. Man’s heavy, Lowell, I gotta tell ya.”
Lowell coughed, a couple of times. Cleared his throat. “This is a joke, right?”
“I don’t hear you laughing.”
“Okay” Lowell said, “say it’s for real. Then what? What’re you after?”
“I hear you know people can get things done. With computers and things.” He could hear Lowell lighting a fresh cigarette.
“Well” Lowell said, “sort of.”
“Republic of Desire” Rydell said. “I need you to get them to do me a favor.”
“No names” Lowell said, fast. “There’s scans set to pick things out of traffic—”
“Them.”
“ ‘Them’ okay? Need you to get them to do something for me.”
“It’ll cost you” Lowell said, “and it won’t be cheap.”
“No” Rydell said, “it’ll cost you.”
He pressed the button that broke the connection. Give old Lowell a little time to think about it; maybe look Orlovsky up on the Civil List, see he was there and he was Homicide. He flipped the little phone shut and went back into the trailer. Sublett’s mother kept the air-conditioning up about two clicks too high.
Sublett was sitting on the loveseat. His white clothes made him look sort of like a painter, a plasterer or something, except he was too clean. “You know, Berry, I’m thinking maybe I better get back to Los Angeles.”
“What about your mother?”
“Well, Mrs. Baker’s here now, from Galveston? They been neighbors for years. Mrs. Baker can watch out for her.”
“That apostate crap getting to you?”
“Sure is” Sublett said, turning to look at the hologram of Fallon. “I still believe in the Lord, Berry, and I know I’ve seen His face in the media, just like Reverend Fallon teaches. I have. But the rest of it, I swear, it might as well be just a flatout hustle.” Sublett almost looked like he might be about to cry. The silver eyes swung around, met Rydell’s. “And I been thinking about IntenSecure, Berry. What you told me last night. I don’t see how I can go back there and work, knowing the kinds of things they’ll condone. I thought I was at least helping to protect people from a few of the evils in this world, Berry, but now I know I’d just be working for a company with no morals at all.”