Cloud Atlas

is trying to tell Luisa the victim something. She has grit in her mouth. Something urgent. She asks her rescuer, “How did you get on the scene so soon?”

“It’s okay,” he insists, “you have a concussion.”

A fireman? “I can make my own way now—”

“No, you’ll be safe this way—”

The door of a dusty black Chevy swings open.

“Let go of me!”

His grip is iron. “In the car now,” he mutters, “or I’ll blow your fucking brains out.”

The bomb was supposed to get me, and now—

Luisa’s abductor grunts and falls forward.

62

Joe Napier grabs Luisa Rey’s arm and swings her away from the Chevy. Christ, that was close! A baseball bat is in his other hand. “If you want to live to see the day out, you’d better come with me.”

Okay, thinks Luisa. “Okay,” she says.

Napier pulls her back into the jockeying crowd to block Bill Smoke’s line of fire, hands the baseball bat to a bewildered boy, and marches toward Eighty-first Avenue, away from the Chevy. Walk discreetly; or run for it and break your cover?

“My car’s next to the bank,” says Luisa.

“We’ll be sitting ducks in this traffic,” says Napier. “Bill Smoke’s got two more ape-men, they’ll just fire through the window. Can you walk?”

“I can run, Napier.”

They advance a third of the way down the block, but then Napier makes out Bill Smoke’s face ahead, his hand hovering around his jacket pocket. Napier checks behind him. A second goon is the second pincer. Across the road is a third. There won’t be any cops on the scene for minutes yet, and they have mere seconds. Two killings in broad daylight: risky, but the stakes are high enough for them to chance it, and there’s so much chaos here, they’ll get away with it. Napier is desperate: they are level with a windowless warehouse. “Up these steps,” he tells Luisa, praying the door opens.

It does.

A sparse reception area, shady and lit by a single tube, a tomb of flies. Napier bolts the door behind them. From behind a desk, a young girl in her Sunday best and an aged poodle in a cardboard box bed watch, unperturbed. Three exits at the far end. The noise of machinery is monolithic.

A black-eyed Mexican woman swoops from nowhere and flutters in his face: “No ’llegals here! No ’llegals here! Bossaway! Bossaway! Come back ’notherday!”

Luisa Rey addresses her in very battered Spanish. The Mexican woman glares, then jerks a savage thumb at the exits. A blow crunches the outer door. Napier and Luisa run across the echoing chamber. “Left or right?” demands Napier.

“Don’t know!” gasps Luisa.

Napier looks back for guidance from the Mexican, but the street door shudders under one blow, splinters under the next, and flies open with the third. Napier pulls Luisa through the left exit.

63

Bisco and Roper, Bill Smoke’s sidemen, body-charge the door. In the courtroom of his head, Bill Smoke finds William Wiley and Lloyd Hooks guilty of gross negligence. I told you! Joe Napier couldn’t be trusted to pack up his conscience and pick up his fishing rods.

The door is in pieces.

A spidery Mexican woman inside is having hysterics. A placid child and a bedecked poodle sit on an office desk. “FBI!” Bisco yells, flourishing his driver’s license. “Which way did they go?”

The Mexican woman screeches: “We care our workers! Very good! Very much pay! No need union!”

Bisco takes out his gun and blasts the poodle against the wall. “Which way did they fucking go?”

Jesus Muhammad Christ, this is why I work alone.

The Mexican woman bites her fist, shudders, and launches a rising wail.

“Brilliant, Bisco, like the FBI kills poodles.” Roper leans over the child, who hasn’t responded in any way to the death of the dog. “Which exit did the man and the woman take?”

She gazes back as if he is nothing but a pleasant sunset.

“You speak English?”

A hysteric, a mute, a dead dog—Bill Smoke walks to the three exits— and a pair of fuckups royale. “We’re losing time! Roper, right door. Bisco, left. I’m the middle.” 

64

Rows, aisles, and ten-box-high walls of cardboard conceal the true dimensions of the storeroom. Napier wedges the door shut with a cart. “Tell me you’ve gotten over your gun allergy since yesterday,” he hisses.

Luisa shakes her head. “You?”

“Only a popgun. Six shots. C’mon.”

Even as they run, she hears the door being forced. Napier blocks the line of vision with a tower of boxes. Then again, a few yards down. A third tower topples ahead of them, however, and dozens of Big Birds—Luisa recognizes the dimwit yellow emu from the children’s program Hal used to watch between jobs—spill free. Napier gestures: Run with your head down.

Five seconds later a bullet rips through cardboard three inches shy of Luisa’s head, and Big Bird stuffing poofs into her face. She trips and collides with Napier; a rod of noise sears the air above them. Napier draws his gun and fires twice around Luisa. The noise makes her curl into a ball. “Run!” barks Napier, grabbing her upright. Luisa obeys—Napier starts knocking down walls of boxes to impede their pursuer.

Ten yards later Luisa gets to a corner. A plywood door is marked EMERGENCY EXIT.

Locked. Breathless, Joe Napier reaches her. He fails to force the door.

“Give it up, Napier!” they hear. “It’s not you we’re after!”

Napier fires point-blank at the lock.

The door still won’t open. He empties three more bullets into the lock: each bang makes Luisa flinch. The fourth bang is an empty click. Napier kicks the door with the sole of his boot.

An underworld sweatshop clattering with five hundred sewing machines. Flakes of textile are suspended in the viscous heat, haloing the naked bulbs hanging over each machinist. Luisa and Napier skirt the outer walkway in a rapid semicrouch. Limp Donald Ducks and crucified Scooby-Doos have their innards stitched, one by one, row by row, pallet by pallet. Each woman keeps her eyes fixed on the needle plates, so Luisa and Napier cause little commotion.

But how do we get out of here?

Napier runs, literally, into the Mexican woman from the makeshift reception. She beckons them down a semiblocked unlit side passage. Napier turns to Luisa, yelling over the metallic din, his face saying, Do we trust her?

Luisa’s face replies, Any better ideas? They follow the woman between reams of