HE SAW LUCAS for the last time in front of a big old department store on Madison Avenue. That was how he remembered him, after that, a big black man in a sharp black suit, about to step into his long black car, one black, softly polished shoe already on the lush carpet of Ahmeds interior, the other still on the crumbling concrete of the curb.
Jackie stood beside Bobby, her face shadowed by the wide brim of her gold-hung fedora, an orange silk headscarf knotted at the back of her neck.
"You take care of our young friend, now," Lucas said, pointing the knob of his cane at her. "Hes not without his enemies, our Count."
"Who is?" Jackie asked.
"Ill take care of myself," Bobby said, resenting the idea of Jackie being seen as more capable, yet at the same time knowing that she almost certainly was.
"You do that," Lucas said, the knob swinging, lined up now with Bobbys eyes. "Sprawltowns a twisty place, my man Things are seldom what they seem." To illustrate his point, he did something to the cane that caused the long brass splines below the ball to open smoothly. for an instant, silently, extended like the ribs of an umbrella, each one glinting sharp as a razor, pointed like needles. Then they were gone, and Ahmeds wide door swung shut with an armor-plated thud.
Jackie laughed. "Shee-it. Lucas still carryin that killin stick. Bigtime lawyer now, but the street leaves a mark on you. Guess its a good thing . . ."
"Lawyer?"
She looked at him. "You never mind, honey. You just come with me, do like I tell you, you be okay."
Ahmed merged with the sparse traffic, a pedicab jockey blaring pointlessly at the receding brass bumper with a hand-held air horn.
Then, one manicured, gold-ringed hand on his shoulder, she led him across the sidewalk, past a sleeping huddle of rag-bundled transients, and into the slowly waking world of Hypermart.
Fourteen floors, Jackie said, and Bobby whistled. "All like this?" She nodded, spooning brown crystals of rock sugar into the tan foam atop her coffee glass. They sat on scrolly castiron stools at a marble counter in a little booth, where a girl Bobbys age, her hair dyed and lacquered into a kind of dorsal fin, worked the knobs and levers of a big old machine with brass tanks and domes and burners and eagles with spread chrome wings. The countertop had been something else, originally; Bobby saw where one end was bashed off in a long crooked jag to allow it to fit between two green-painted steel pillars.
"You like it, huh?" She sprinkled the foam with powdered cinnamon from a heavy old glass shaker. " Bout as far from Barrytown as you been, some ways."
Bobby nodded, his eyes confused by the thousand colors and textures of the things in the stalls, the stalls themselves. There seemed to be no regularity to anything, no hint of any central planning agency. Crooked corridors twisted off from the area in front of the espresso booth. There seemed to be no central source of lighting either. Red and blue neon glowed beyond the white hiss of a Primus lantern, and one stall, just being opened by a bearded man with leather pants, seemed to be lit with candles, the soft light reflecting off hundreds of polished brass buckles hung against the reds and blacks of old rugs. There was a morning rattle to the place, a coughing and a clearing of throats. A blue Toshiba custodial unit whirred out of a corridor, dragging a battered plastic cart stacked with green plastic bales of garbage. Someone had glued a big plastic doll head to the Toshibas upper body segment, above the clustered camera eyes and sensors, a grinning blue-eyed thing once intended to approximate the features of a leading stimstar without violating Sense/Net copyrights. The pink head, its platinum hair bound up in a length of pale blue plastic pearls, bobbed absurdly as the robot rolled past. Bobby laughed.
"This place is okay," he said, and gestured to the girl to refill his cup.
"Wait a sec, asshole," the countergirl said, amiably enough. She was measuring ground coffee into a dented steel hopper on one end of an antique balance. "You get any sleep last night, Jackie, after the show?"
"Sure," Jackie said, and sipped at her coffee "I danced their second set, then I slept at Jammers. Hit the couch, you know?"
"Wish Id got some. Every time Henry sees you dance, he wont let me alone . . ." She laughed, and refilled Bobbys cup from a black plastic thermos.
"Well," Bobby said, when the girl was busy again with the espresso machine, "whats next?"
"Busy man, huh?" Jackie regarded him coolly from beneath the gold-pinned hat brim. "Got places you need to go, people to see?"
"Well, no. Shit. I just mean, well, is this it?"
"Is what it?"
"This place. Were staying here?"
"Top floor. Friend of mine named Jammer runs a club up there. Very unlikely anyone could find you there, and even if they do, its a hard place to sneak up on. Fourteen floors of mostly stalls, and a whole lot of these people sell stuff they dont have out in plain view, right? So theyre all very sensitive to strangers turning up, anyone asking questions. And most of them are friends of ours, one way or another Anyway, youll like it here. Good place for you. Lots to learn, if you remember to keep your mouth shut."
"How am I gonna learn if I dont ask questions?"
"Well, I mean keep your ears open, more like it. And be polite. Some tough people in here, but you mind your biz, theyll mind theirs. Beauvoirs probably coming by here late this afternoon. Lucas has gone out to the Projects to tell him whatever you learned from the Finn. What did you learn from the Finn, hon?"
"That hes got these three dead guys stretched out on his floor. Says theyre ninjas." Bobby looked at her. "Hes pretty weird . . ."
"Dead guys arent part of his usual line of goods. But, yeah, hes weird all right. Why dont you tell me about it? Calmly, and in low, measured tones. Think you can do that?"
Bobby told her what he could remember of his visit to the Finn. Several times she stopped him, asked questions he usually wasnt able to answer. She nodded when he first mentioned Wigan Ludgate. "Yeah," she said, "Jammer talks about him, when he gets going on the old days. Have to ask him . . ." At the end of his recitation, she was lounging back against one of the green pillars, the hat very low over her dark eyes.
"Well?" he asked
"Interesting," she said, but that was all shed say.
"Right," Jackie said, taking in the tight black jeans, the heavy leather boots with spacesuit-style accordion folds at the ankles, the black leather garrison belt trimmed with twin lines of pyramidal chrome studs. "Well, I guess you look more like the Count Come on, Count, I got a couch for you to sleep on, up in Jammers place."
He leered at her, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of the black Levis.
"Alone," she added, "no fear."
"I want some new clothes," Bobby said when theyd climbed the immobile escalator to the second floor.
"You got any money?" she asked.
"Shit," he said, his hands in the pockets of the baggy, pleated jeans. "I dont have any fucking money, but I want some clothes. You and Lucas and Beauvoir are keeping my ass on ice for something, arent you? Well, Im tired of this God-awful shirt Rhea palmed off on me, and these pants always feel like theyre about to fall off my ass. And Im here because Two-a-Day, whos a lowlife fuck, wanted to risk my butt so Lucas and Beauvoir could test their fucking software. So you can fucking well buy me some clothes, okay?"
"Okay," she said, after a pause. "Ill tell you what." She pointed to where a Chinese girl in faded denim was furling the sheets of plastic that had fenced a dozen steel-pipe garment racks hung with clothing. "You see Lin, there? Shes a friend of mine. You pick out what you want, Ill straighten it out between Lucas and her."
Half an hour later, he emerged from a blanket-draped fitting room and put on a pair of Indo-Javanese mirrored aviator glasses. He grinned at Jackie. "Real sharp," he said.
"Oh, yeah." She did a thing with her hand, a fanning movement, as though something nearby were too hot to touch. "You didnt like that shirt Rhea loaned you?"
He looked down at the black T-shirt hed chosen, at the square holodecal of cyberspace on his chest. It was done so you seemed to be punching fast-forward through the matrix, grid lines blurring at the edges of the decal. "Yeah. It was too tacky."
"Right," Jackie said, taking in the tight black jeans, the heavy leather boots with spacesuit-style accordion folds at the ankles, the black leather garrison belt trimmed with twin lines of pyramidal chrome studs. "Well, I guess you look more like the Count. Com on, Count, I got a couch for you to sleep on, up in Jammers place."
He leered at her, thumbs hooked in the front pockets of the black Levis.
"Alone," she added, "no fear."