by David Cole
“Yeah.”
Brittles held the weapon carefully.
“M600 Special Light Anti-Matériel Rifle,” Wong said, as though he were quoting from a gun manual. “Put one of these in the hands of a super marksman, you’ve got a .50-caliber single-shot system capable of delivering exceptionally accurate fire on targets in excess of fifteen hundred yards. I’ve personally sighted this one in for twelve hundred yards. I can light a kitchen match at that distance.”
“Night vision optics?”
“Raptor Night Vision. Barrel length from the factory is twenty-eight inches. I added another three inches, rebalanced the weapon to give me another five hundred yards for an extreme shot.”
“Whatever happened to Kyle Callaghan?” I asked.
“He’s in South America. I always thought…you two…”
“Nathan.” I tugged at his sleeve. “Let’s go.”
“Right.” He handed the rifle back to Wong. “We ever need to shoot somebody at two thousand yards, we’ll give you a call.”
“No problem. Good to see you again, Laura. Sorry I mentioned Kyle.”
“Who’s Kyle?” Brittles asked.
“Just somebody we once knew,” I said. “C’mon, let’s go.”
“What was that all about?” Brittles asked when we got onto the street.
“I worked with Wong earlier this year. Wong was part of a kidnap rescue team, headed by a guy from New Zealand. Kyle Callaghan. A sweet man, with a very sweet daughter. During the final rescue assault, Wong took two bullets in his arm and shoulder. I’d not heard from him until today.”
“So. What now?” Brittles asked.
“I’m a wreck, Nathan. Part of me doesn’t want to do anything. Part of me wants to do everything if it helps get my daughter back.”
“So I want you to hang with me,” he said finally. “Where I go, you go. That’s the only way I’m going to know that you’re safe. Come on. It’s getting dark. I’ve still got those extra bedrooms. You just go in there, I won’t bother you at all.”
23
“That’s Hopi pottery,” I said, pointing to an old brownish pot on a bookshelf, with faded lightning bolts and frogs painted on the sides. “Do you know who made it?”
“I was over on First Mesa once,” he said. “Went to meet a guy who might have been taking some of my father’s sheep. Or maybe not. But the guy wasn’t there, or he didn’t want to talk to me. His kid came out. I had this wool cap. You know, the kind that pulls down over your head, over your ears if you want. The kid eyed the cap, so I gave it to him. He looked around that old stone house, wanting to give me a young eagle feather. But he couldn’t find it, so he gave me this beautiful Hopi pot. Some months later, when I was seeing a woman who worked as a curator at the museum in Flagstaff, she told me it was a rare fifteenth century pot.”
I picked up his TV remote, punched some buttons, but only got on-screen messages for different video inputs. Several channels had flickering pictures, the sound very buzzy and the video streaked by interference.
“How do I get the news?” I said. “How do I switch to your antenna?”
“You can’t.”
“Nobody has a TV that doesn’t get the news.”
“I’m not hooked up to an antenna,” he said. “Or cable. Or dish. I just watch movies. When I’m here, I don’t want to be bothered with news or any other junk on those five hundred cable channels.”
“No live TV,” I said to myself in wonder, since I was the only other person I knew at that time who didn’t get live TV.
“The spare bedrooms are along the hallway. Pick either one, settle in. I’m going out to strip down the engine on my ’31 Henderson.”
Later, as I sat at the window and watched the sunset, Brittles emerged from inside the workshop. Standing in the doorway, backlit by a dull yellow glow from some lamps. He leaned sideways, flicked a switch, and the lights went out. I watched his shadow move across the caliche drive, headed toward the house. He went directly into the kitchen, and I watched in silence as he took off his wristwatch and the silver bracelet on his left arm.
Removing his work clothes, folding them carefully as though they were dress clothes, he laid them out neatly on top of a wicker laundry basket. He seemed unfazed by his nakedness in front of me, but didn’t even look in my direction.
Filling the sink basin with cold water, he stuck his face underwater and used his hands to thoroughly wet his hair. Finding the bar of soap, he raised his head, splashed water on his arms and chest, and lathered himself from his chest to the top of his head. He rinsed his head in the sink, let the water out, turned on the cold water faucet, and carefully removed all the soap from his body before toweling himself dry. He wrapped the towel around his waist and went to his bedroom for clean clothes.
Returning, he stood in shadow, staring out the living room window, his face hidden from me. But I found enormous assurance in the way he stood erect, working out some inner problem. Watching him, not even seeing his face, I understood the complexity of my conflicted attraction to him. He turned, his face dimly lit by the reflected light from the bedside lamp. A slow smile blossomed on his face, but he said nothing. There was nothing he needed to say to me. I went to him and he folded me in his arms, turning both of us back to the window.
“Sorry about no news channel,” he said.
“Sometimes I wish my life was like video on demand. Hit Pause if something ugly happens. Hit Rewind if I think I can edit the tape.”
“Hey, let’s try this. If your life was movie theme music, what would it be?”
“That’s a stupid Baba Wawa question,” I snorted.
“I’ve got a lot of that kind of music in my head.”
“So? What is your theme?”
“Lawrence of Arabia. No. Once Upon a Time in the West. Listen to this.” He threw his head back like a wolf. “Wah wah wah. If you know the movie, you know the sound track. And this.”
He whistled another part of the theme music.
“So let me ask you one,” he said. “What music would you choose for this very specific moment?”
“I can’t handle this, Nathan. You’re coming on to me, and…and…I feel so like a wimp, for being so scared.”
“I’ve got your back, Laura,” he said. “That’s all you need to know.”
My cell rang. I held it between our ears.
“I just wheeled into the data center,” Don shouted. I could hear at least three different voices in the background and several sets of hands dancing on keyboards. “We’ve located some wi-fi nodes in Florence. Nathan, I think you’d better go up there, since you’ve got federal authority as a U.S. Marshal. My man will meet you at the L&B Mexican Restaurant.”
revelations
“Abbe. Are you one of us?” the Chinese girl said.
“Us?” Spider said, thinking she was completely alone. Also thinking that she wasn’t so quick anymore in responding to the name Abbe.
“The Rapture girls.”
“Uh…” Spider edged away, not wanting any religion. “Jesus and all?”
“No, silly.” She giggled, one hand over her mouth. “One of the girls. You know, the Rapture girls.”
Spider thought carefully for several minutes, the Chinese girl content to look beyond the low-planked fencing, across the road to a field ripe with thick bolls of Pima cotton.
“I think so,” Spider said finally. “But I’m, like, so new here. Nobody’s really said anything to me except to tell me where to sleep, where the bathrooms are, what the rules are, plus all that Jesus Raptures stuff I can’t quite relate to.”
“Ahhh,” the Chinese girl said. “I am Jennifer Mao.”
“Abbe Dominguez.”
“Welcome,” Jennifer said, embracing Spider.
“I guess,” Spider said, wondering where the conversation was going. “So, like, how do I find out about, what did you call them? The Rapture girls? If it’s some prayer meeting group, or bible study, I’m not much interested.”
&
nbsp; “Bible study.” Jennifer giggled again. “In a way. We are told about the Circuit book, but until we leave here we don’t see it.”
“Oh, yeah,” Spider said, “the Circuit book. I’ve heard about it.”
“And where are you from?”
“All over.”
“Where did you get that beautiful hair color?”
Spider brushed her hand across the top of her head, surprised for a moment to find it so short, cropped almost against her scalp on the sides and the back of her neck. Brittles had run her through the hair salon so fast that Spider hardly knew what happened after her shoulder-length dark brown hair lay on the floor, expertly scissored off.
“I changed it. Before I came here. I wanted to be a different person, inside here. I thought, like, you know, I look different, maybe I can be different.”
“Shut up,” Jennifer said, lightly punching Spider’s shoulder. “That’s too awesome that you’d think that. Did you know people on the Circuit, did you know that blondes have special status in some of the houses?”
“So where’s your dorm?” Spider asked.
“Dormitory! Shut up, girl. Rapture girls have their own private rooms. This would be the sweetest tricks you ever turned.” “One man a night. You just make him feel special. Sometimes, you’ll turn him on so much, you’ll get the same man for several days, a week, even a month’s travel somewhere exotic. Paris, I’ve been to Paris twice. Geneva, Rio, Amsterdam, Saint Barthes, especially Saint Barthes around the end of the year, when the filthy rich sail their yachts into the harbors and party twenty-four seven. And sometimes, if it’s negotiated right, one of these men will buy you from Tamár or one of the other Circuit managers.”
“Buy me?”
“Money’s nothing to them. Used to be a twenty-thousand-dollar buyout. I figure it’s gone up five or ten thousand in the past year. Then you belong to him.”
“I don’t understand,” Spider said. “I’ve got a criminal record. Lots of these girls must have records. So I guess that lets me out.”
“No way. They give you a whole new identity. Credit cards, driver’s license, Social Security number. Of course, you’ve got to take a new name. And usually you don’t have any say what name you get.”
“Who arranges that?”
Jennifer cut her eyes sharply, realizing she’d already said too much. She fiddled with the sleeves of her tee shirt, rolling them up and underneath her bra straps.
“You’ll find out,” she said finally. “If you’re chosen, you’ll get it all.”
“How do I get chosen?”
“Just be a good girl.” She smiled. “Good things come to good girls.”
“Jennifer, yo.”
Two adolescent Hispanic boys came across the yard.
“Oops,” Jennifer whispered to Spider. “Don’t tell them anything I’ve said.”
“Okay.”
“See you later, Abbe.”
“Jennifer,” one of the boys said. “You’re wanted.”
Jennifer left, no giggles this time, almost backing away to avoid the boys before turning to run into the main complex.
“I’m El Ratón,” the taller boy said. “What’s the haps, girl?”
El Ratón’s hair was buzz cut all around except at the bottom of his neck, where a half ponytail dangled. Mullet cut, Spider thought. Michael Craven told me that’s a mullet cut. Not quite a ponytail, not quite trailer-trash-biker-prison cut.
“Nothing much,” Spider said, readjusting her awareness of being careful, the boys standing one in front of her and the other in back. She turned sideways so she could see them both, but they also moved, perhaps boxing her in, perhaps just being adolescent boys. “Quien sabe.”
“Bueno,” said the shorter boy. “Yo habla Español?”
“I habla with my friends,” she said.
“We want to be your amigos,” El Raton said.
“Hey, you a regular lenguilargo,” the other boy said.
“No,” Spider said quietly. “I’m so not a tongue-wagger. Especially with kids like you. See you later.”
She started to walk boldly away, but the two got in front of her. She moved sideways, but they circled with her.
“Okay,” she said with contempt. “You can do the chicken dance. What now? Just tell me what you want. My money? I turned it all in. My jewelry, my wristwatch? I turned that in, too.”
“Chicken dance. Oh, amiga, check this out.”
El Ratón began clucking wildly, fists on his hips, elbows extended and flapping as he picked up one leg and stomped in an exaggerated gesture.
“He’s some little mouse,” Spider said to the shorter boy. “I can see why he calls himself El Ratón. And who are you?”
He slowly pulled a color xerox from his back jeans pocket, unfolding it in front of Spider’s eyes. She held her breath for one scary moment, but knew enough of role playing to keep in character. The xerox was a copy of the photograph of her and Jonathan, the same photograph that Laura had shown her at Perryville. She reached for the paper, took it from the boy’s hands, looked it over dismissively.
“Around the eyes. Maybe. But I never have long hair.”
“There are people who cut off hair.”
“Never, ever wear hoop earrings. Not those big ones, those are black girl earrings. J Lo earrings.”
“You’ve got the holes here, amiga.”
He touched both of her earlobes.
“Studs. Took them all out before I came here. Diamond studs. One and a half carats, both sides. In the left ear, I also had a ruby and a fire opal.”
“Where’d you get such fine things?” El Ratón asked. “Cluck, cluck, the chicken wants to know. Luis wants to know, don’t you, Luis?”
But Luis was carefully studying Spider’s face, cutting his eyes from her face to the photograph. He finally folded the paper and stuck it back in his pocket.
“So. Can I go now?”
“Sure,” Luis said.
“As soon as you apologize for dissing me, I’m on my way.”
“Dissing you?” El Ratón said with a wide grin. “You don’t like chickens?”
“Not you, mouse. Luis, why’d you front me like that? Why are you checking me out? Pretending I’m somebody else.”
“We check out all the new people,” Luis said.
“So you made a mistake.”
“Maybe,” he said.
A bell rang over the sound system, a heavy clang like a cook beating a dinner triangle. Luis took hold of both of Spider’s hands, turned them over, rubbed her palms and fingertips.
“You gonna pick some cotton now, girl. Better wear gloves. Don’t ruin those pretty white hands. You are a white woman, aren’t you?”
“My father was from Medellín,” she said, a calculated guess.
“Hey, Luis—”
“Shut up, dude,” Luis said to El Ratón.
“That’s where you boys are from, right?” Spider said.
“Maybe.”
“Somewhere down there. Some country where they let young punks be sicarios. They do all the things that grown men avoid, because the young punks rarely get prison time for things like drugs and murder of bazuqueros.”
Luis looked at her with eyelids half shut, nodding slowly.
“Maybe I’m wrong about you. You’re a beautiful thing, amiga. You ever been a working girl?”
Ahhhh, Spider thought. That’s what the Rapture girls do.
“I never had any use for a pimp,” she said. “Especially a snot-nosed young punk like you.”
“I’m no pimp,” Luis said. “How old are you?”
Spider had a brief moment of panic. Her fake ID showed her a few years younger, but she couldn’t remember if she was twenty or still a teenager.
“Old enough to turn two or three thousand a night,” she finally said.
The bell clanged again and people started gathering around some wide-body staked trucks, piling empty sacks in the back.
“All right,” Luis said. �
��Now we gotta pick dat cotton.”
“Tote dat bale,” El Ratón said. “And all the nigger jive field hand stuff.”
laura
24
I located the first node in a small complex of single-story stucco homes, arranged in a cul-de-sac on a dead-end street. All of the houses gleamed with new white paint, the intense glare so painful I put on my sunglasses. Tired, so tired, I wanted to let the sun heat my face, lay my head back, and sleep. Brittles nudged me as my head bobbled, offered to pour me more coffee from the thermos.
“Nobody there,” he said. “Nothing inside at all. House has been totally emptied. Everything. Right down to the kitchen cupboards.”
“No computers?”
“Nothing.”
“Okay. See that thing on the roof that looks like a big coffee can?”
“Yeah.”
“Well, it probably is a coffee can. I’ve heard that some people have experimented with extending wireless range with homemade antennas like that. So we’re going to have to follow the coffee cans until we find the end of the line.”
I studied the red X marks on my street map of Florence, gave Brittles directions as we drove slowly out of town. We followed the coffee can wi-fi antennas along State Road 287, moving steadily west to the junction of 87 in Coolidge. Every few hundred yards the signal would fade, my Mac laptop losing Internet connection. When this happened, we’d backtrack to the point where connection picked up again, until I found another coffee-can antenna high on a power pole.
Eventually, we covered the entire road from Florence to Casa Grande National Monument, where connectivity died out completely. Going back through Coolidge, we turned South on 87, the antennas hard to spot in the town, but luckily nobody in the small town used a wi-fi connection node in their homes so we drove steadily into Randolph, a smaller town less prosperous than Coolidge. South of Randolph I lost connectivity again.
