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basic amplification system. During the concert, a riot broke out. Apparently
it was orchestrated by a group of Italian prisoners from Melbourne. Five of
them took Rez into the prison laundry, which they'd chosen because it was
windowless and easily defended. They informed
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Rez they were going to kill
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him if they couldn't negotiate their release in exchange for his. They
discussed cutting off at least one of his fingers to demonstrate that they
meant business. Or possibly some more intimate part, though that may simply
have been to make him more anxious. Which it did." She signaled the pink
angora waitress for more sake. "Black-well, who'd evidently been extremely
irritated at the interruption of the concert, which he'd been enjoying
enormously, appeared in the laundry approximately forty minutes after Rez was
taken prisoner. Neither Rez nor the Italians saw him arrive, and the Italians
definitely hadn't been expecting him." She paused.
"He killed three of them, with a tomahawk. Put the end of it into their heads:
one, two, three, Rez says, like that. No fuss whatever."
'A tomahawk?"
"Sort of narrow-bladed hatchet, with a spike opposite the blade. Extends the
reach, imparts terrific force, and with practice can be thrown with
considerable accuracy. Blackwell swears by it. The other two fled, although
they both seem to have died in the aftermath of the riot.
Personally, I'm sure Blackwell or his 'mates' killed them, because he was
never charged with the murder of the other three. The sole surviving witness
was Rez, whom Blackwell escorted to the barricade the guards had erected in
the exercise yard." Her sake arrived. "It took Rez's lawyers three months to
get Blackwell's sentence reversed on a technicality. They've been together
ever since."
"What was Blackwell in for?"
"Murder," she said. "Do you know what a standover man is?"
"No."
"It's a peculiarly Australian concept. I'm tempted to think it could only have
grown out of a culture comprised initially of convicts, but my Australian
friends don't buy that. The standover man is a loner, a predator who preys on
other, more prosperous criminals, often extremely dangerous ones. He captures
them and 'stands over' them. To extort money."
"What's that mean?"
"He tortures them until they tell him where their money is. And
150 William Gibson these are often fhirly serious operators, with people paid
to take care of them, specifically to prevent this sort of thing
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"Tortures them?"
"'Toe-cutter' is a related term. When they tell him what he needs to know, he
kills them."
And Blackwell was suddenly and noiselessly and simply there, very black, and
matte, in an enormous waxed-cotton drover's coat. Behind him the faded
American advertising and the grays and pinks of gum. Flis fretted scalp
concealed by the waxed-cotton crown of a broad black hat.
"Arleigh, dear, you wouldn't take the name in vain, would you?"
But he smiled at her.
"I'm explaining your earlier career to Mr. Laney, Blackwell. I'd only just
gotten up to the massage parlor, and now you've ruined it."
"Never mind. Dinner's been moved up, at the request of his Rozzer. I'm here to
take you. Change of venue as well. Hope you don't mind."
"Where?" Arleigh asked, as if not yet prepared to move.
"The Western World," said Blackwell.
"And me in my good shoes," she said.
22. Gomi Boy
The trains more crowded now, standing room only, everyone pressed in tight,
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and somehow the eye-
contact rules were different here, but she wasn't sure how. Her hag with the
Sandbenders was jammed up against Masahiko's back. He was looking at the
control-face again, holding it up the way a commuter woLild hold a
strategically folded newspaper.
On their way back to Mitsuko's father's restaurant, and then she didn't know
what. She'd done the thing that Hiromi hadn't wanted her to do. And gotten
nothing for it but a vaguely unpleasant idea of Rez as someone capable of
being boring. And where did it leave her? She'd gone ahead and used
Kelsey's cashcard, to pay for the train, and floW another train back. And Zona
had said somebody was looking for her; they could track her when she used the
cashcard. Maybe there was a way to cash it in, but she doubted it.
None of this had gone the way she'd tried to imagine it, back in
Seattle, hut then you couldn't be expected to imagine anyone like
Marya[ice, could you? Or Eddie, or even Hiromi.
Masahiko frowned at the control-face. Chia saw the dots and squiggles
changing.
That thing Maryalice had stuck in her bag. Right here under her arm. She
should've left it at
Mitsuko's. Or thrown it away, but then what would she say if Eddie or
Maryalice showed up? What if it was full of drugs?
In Singapore they hung people, right in the mall, for that. Her
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father didn't like it and he said that was one of the reasons he never invited
her there. They put it on television, too, so that it was really hard to avoid
seeing it, and he didn't want her to
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Now she wondered how far Singapore was from Tokyo? She wished she could go
there and keep her eyes closed until she was in her father's apartment, and
never turn the rv on, just be there with him and smell his shaving smell and
put her face against his scratchy wool shirt, except she guessed you didn't
wear those in Singapore because it was hot there. She'd keep her eyes closed
anyway, and listen to him talk about his work, about the arbitrage engines
shuttling back and forth through the world's markets like invisible dragons,
fast as light, shaving fragments of advantage for traders like her father
Masahiko turned, accidentally knocking her bag aside, as the train stopped at
a station-not theirs. A woman with a yellow shopping bag said something in
Japanese. Masahiko took Chia's wrist and pulled her toward the open door.
"This isn't where we get off-"
"Come! Come!" Out onto the platform. A different smell here; something
chemical and sharp. The walls not so clean, somehow. A broken tile in the
ceramic ceiling.
"What's the matter? Why are we getting off?"
He pulled her into the corner formed by the tiled wall and a huge vending
machine. "Someone is at the restaurant, waiting for you." He looked down at
her wrist, as if amazed to find that he was holding it, and instantly released
her.
"How do you know?"
"Walled City. There have been inquiries, in the last hour."
"Who?"
"Russians."
"Russians?"
"There are many from the Kombinat here, since the earthquake. They forge
relationships with the gumi."
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