Down below them, the taxicab with the Arab in the back slows down to sublight speed and winds its way down a twisting slalom course of Jersey barriers with .50-caliber machine gun nests strategically placed here and there. It comes to a stop in front of an STD device, straddling an open pit where EBGOC boys stand with dogs and high-powered spotlights to look up its skirt for bombs or NBCI (nuclear-biological-chemical-informational) agents in the undercarriage. Meanwhile, the driver gets out and pops the hood and trunk so that more Feds can inspect them; another Fed leans against the window next to the Arab and grills him through the window.
They say that in D.C., all the museums and the monuments have been concessioned out and turned into a tourist park that now generates about 10 percent of the Government’s revenue. The Feds could run the concession themselves and probably keep more of the gross, but that’s not the point. It’s a philosophical thing. A back-to-basics thing. Government should govern. It’s not in the entertainment industry, is it? Leave entertaining to Industry weirdos—people who majored in tap dancing. Feds aren’t like that. Feds are serious people. Poli sci majors. Student council presidents. Debate club chairpersons. The kinds of people who have the grit to wear a dark wool suit and a tightly buttoned collar even when the temperature has greenhoused up to a hundred and ten degrees and the humidity is thick enough to stall a jumbo jet. The kinds of people who feel most at home on the dark side of a one-way mirror.
Chapter Twenty-Three
Sometimes, to prove their manhood, boys of about Y.T.’s age will drive to the eastern end of the Hollywood Hills, into Griffith Park, pick the road of their choosing, and simply drive through it. Making it through there unscathed is a lot like counting coup on a High Plains battlefield; simply having come that close to danger makes you more of a man.
By definition, all they ever see are the through streets. If you are driving into Griffith Park for some highjinks and you see a NO OUTLET sign, you know that it is time to shift your dad’s Accord into reverse and drive it backward all the way back home, revving the engine way past the end of the tachometer.
Naturally, as soon as Y.T. enters the park, following the road she was told to follow, she sees a NO OUTLET sign.
Y.T.’s not the first Kourier to take a job like this, and so she has heard about the place she is going. It is a narrow canyon, accessed only by this one road, and down in the bottom of the canyon a new gang lives. Everyone calls them the Falabalas, because that’s how they talk to each other. They have their own language and it sounds like babble.
Right now, the important thing is not to think about how stupid this is. Making the right decision is, priority-wise, down there along with getting enough niacin and writing a thank-you letter to grandma for the nice pearl earrings. The only important thing is not to back down.
A row of machine-gun nests marks the border of Falabala territory. It seems like overkill to Y.T. But then she’s never been in a conflict with the Mafia, either. She plays it cool, idles toward the barrier at maybe ten miles an hour. This is where she’ll freak out and get scared if she’s going to. She is holding aloft a color-faxed RadiKS document, featuring the cybernetic radish logo, proclaiming that she really is here to pick up an important delivery, honest. It’ll never work with these guys.
But it does. A big gnarled-up coil of razor ribbon is pulled out of her way, just like that, and she glides through without slowing down. And that’s when she knows that it’s going to be fine. These people are just doing business here, just like anyone else.
She doesn’t have to skate far into the canyon. Thank God. She goes around a few turns, into kind of an open flat area surrounded by trees, and finds herself in what looks like an openair insane asylum.
Or a Moonie festival or something.
A couple of dozen people are here. None of them have been taking care of themselves at all. They are all wearing the ragged remains of what used to be pretty decent clothing. Half a dozen of them are kneeling on the pavement with their hands clenched tightly together, mumbling to unseen entities.
On the trunk lid of a dead car, they’ve set up an old junked computer terminal, just a dark monitor screen with a big spiderweb crack in it, like someone bounced a coffee mug off the glass. A fat man with red suspenders dangling around his knees is sliding his hands up and down the keyboard, whacking the keys randomly, talking out loud in a meaningless babble. A couple of the others stand behind him, peeking over his shoulder and around his body, and sometimes they try to horn in on it, but he shoves them out of the way.
There’s also a crowd of people clapping their hands, swaying their bodies, and singing “The Happy Wanderer.” They’re really into it, too. Y.T. hasn’t seen such childlike glee on anyone’s face since the first time she let Roadkill take her clothes off. But this is a different kind of childlike glee that does not look right on a bunch of thirty-something people with dirty hair.
And finally, there is a guy that Y.T. dubs the High Priest. He’s wearing a formerly white lab coat, bearing the logo of some company in the Bay Area. He’s sacked out in the back of a dead station wagon, but when Y.T. enters the area he jumps up and runs toward her in a way that she can’t help but find a little threatening. But compared to these others, he seems almost like a regular, healthy, fit, demented bush-dwelling psychotic.
“You’re here to pick up a suitcase, right?”
“I’m here to pick up something. I don’t know what it is,” she says.
He goes over to one of the dead cars, unlocks the hood, pulls out an aluminum briefcase. It looks exactly like the one that Squeaky took out of the BMW last night. “Here’s your delivery,” he says, striding toward her. She backs away from him instinctively.
“I understand, I understand,” he says. “I’m a scary creep.”
He puts it on the ground, puts his foot on it, gives it a shove. It slides across the pavement to Y.T., bouncing off the occasional rock.
“There’s no big hurry on this delivery,” he says. “Would you like to stay and have a drink? We’ve got Kool-Aid.”
“I’d love to,” Y.T. says, “but my diabetes is acting up real bad.”