Spook Country by Gibson, William (2009) Mass Market Paperback by Gibson William

Author:Gibson, William [Gibson, William]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, Novel, Mystery, Science Fiction, Suspense, Fantasy, Cyberpunk
Amazon: B00POF7UK4
Goodreads: 135942908
Publisher: BerkleyBooks
Published: 2007-08-02T07:00:00+00:00

41. HOUDINI

With a click that he felt, rather than heard, the tiny ratchet at the heart of the cable-tie moved aside for Milgrim’s modified ballpoint clip. He sighed, enjoying a moment of unaccustomed triumph. Then he loosened the tie, without removing it from the bench’s armrest, and slid his wrist free. Keeping his wrist on the rest, he looked around the park as casually as possible. Brown was nowhere to be seen, but there was the matter of the other three he’d glimpsed in Brown’s room at the New Yorker, plus whoever else comprised Brown’s Red Team.

Why, he wondered, were such teams always red? Of tooth and claw, the teams of men like Brown. Seldom even blue. Never green, never black.

Past him moved a sunny afternoon’s pedestrian traffic, across the width of the park. There were people here, he knew, who were playing at being here. Playing games. Brown’s game, the game of the IF and those who worked with him. There were no police in evidence, he noted, and that struck him as odd, though in truth he hadn’t passed this way for so long that he had no idea what sort of presence they currently chose to maintain.

“It must have been defective,” he said aloud, of the cable-tie, rehearsing a line in the event of Brown’s return before he could compose himself sufficiently to move away from this bench. “So I waited for you.”

Very large hands found Milgrim’s shoulders, pressed down. “Thank you for waiting,” said a deep, measured voice, “but we aren’t detectives.” Milgrim looked over at the hand on his left shoulder. It was enormous, a black man’s hand, with pink, glossily polished nails. Milgrim rolled his eyes, craning his neck gingerly, and saw, atop a vast bluff of button-studded black horsehide, a mighty black chin, perfectly shaven.

“We aren’t detectives, Mr. Milgrim.” The second black man, rounding the far end of the bench, had unbuttoned his heavy, cuirass-like coat, exposing a double-breasted black-on-black brocade vest and an elaborately collared satin shirt the color of arterial blood. “We aren’t police at all.”

Milgrim craned around a little further, to better see the one whose hands rested on his shoulders like two-pound bags of flour. They were both wearing the tight woolen skullcaps he remembered now from the laundry on Lafayette. “That’s good,” he said, wanting to say something, anything.

Horsehide creaked as the second man settled himself on the bench, his enormous leather-clad shoulder touching Milgrim’s. “In your case, Mr. Milgrim, I wouldn’t be so sure of that.”

“No,” said Milgrim.

“We’ve been looking for you,” said the one with his hands on Milgrim’s shoulders. “Not very actively, we’d be first to admit. But once you’d borrowed that young lady’s telephone to contact your friend Fish, he had that number on call-display. Fish, being a friend of Mr. Birdwell, phoned him immediately. Mr. Birdwell phoned that number. He social engineered the lady, who anyway suspected you of having tried to steal her phone, you understand? Are you following me so far, Mr.

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