“In Cleveland?”
“Probably not.”
Valdez sniffed, like a bull inhaling. “Couple days later, I’m walking down the hall in school—I’m in junior high, seventh grade through ten are all together—and this hand comes outa nowhere and grabs my shoulder. I was gonna deck the guy. Nobody touched me—tough guy, huh? That’s when I found Mister Horse was one strong born-again Christian. One hand, he held me, I couldn’t move. ‘Come in here, young man,’ he says. Whoosh! I’m in his room. He holds me like a frigging vise! When I’m quiet, he says, ‘You are the newest member of the Computer Club. Welcome to the Club.’ I think he’s loco—I think he’s lost something up under his hair. Later, I find him and my father are in a Bible-reading thing together. My father has told him about the gun. Mister Horse sits me down in front of my first computer and puts a joystick in my hand and he turns on a simulation game.
“I’m hooked.”
He chewed on his peanuts. He shrugged. “Couple months later, I was doing simple programming.”
“How’s your father now?” she said.
“He died.” Valdez chewed. “He took my gun, he threw it in the river. I hated him. Then he was dead, I understood him a little better. Too late. Sad story, huh?”
“Well, yeah.”
“Lotsa sad stories. World is full of sad stories. Let’s change the subject.” Valdez squirmed again, shot a glance at her. “I’m not real happy with this job,” he said.
That was a surprise. A shock, in fact. “It’s a great job!” she said.
“Great for you, maybe.” He shook his head. “They’re not giving me stuff.”
“Who?”
“Them. Whoever.” He waved a hand. “In computers, what difference is who? Difference is what, Commander. Lemme put it in Navy: ‘Insufficient data are being provided to Petty Officer Valdez.’ See? No who.”
“Insufficient data about what?”
“If I knew that, I’d have the data, woul’n’t I? What I mean is, there’s too much code for the stream I’m getting.”
“How can you tell?”
“I can tell. That’s like me asking you how you can tell a chopper is loaded wrong from the way it flies. I can tell.”
She was already protective of Peacemaker. “You don’t have a need to know,” she said primly.
“Bullshit I don’t have a need to know! You think I’m gonna trust my work on a system where I’m closed out of part of the data stream? I might as well ask for a transfer right now.”
“Valdez!” She sat upright, turned on him. “What’s this ‘transfer’ crap?”
“I might do it.” He looked like a stubborn child. “I believe in freedom of information.”
“This is the goddam US military, and information is classified, not free!”
He rolled his head toward her. He had large eyes the color of dark chocolate. “You know what MP3 is?” he said.
“Are you changing the subject on me, Valdez?”
He shook his head. “MP3 is the way you download music and play it through your computer so you listen to what you want, when you want—no CDs, no albums, no nothing decided for you by somebody else. That’s freedom of information. You know what open source code is? Same kinda thing. I believe in those things. I also believe in the US Navy, but if the Navy gonna put me in a position where I got to knuckle under to somebody else’s idea of what comes through my computer—” He made a horizontal chopping motion. “Finito, man.”
She was angry—she recognized that she was getting on top of the job because she was beginning to get angry about it more often, caring—but she controlled herself and said, almost but not quite flirting with him, “Valdez—you wouldn’t desert me, would you?”
But he wouldn’t look at her. The movie had come on and he was watching it without headphones. “You find out what’s bein’ kept from me,” he said.
Rose sat back, arms folded. Problems, problems.
On the flight to Newport News two days later, it was as if settling into the seats and snapping the seatbelts put them back where they had left off. Nothing had been said in the interim; in fact, they had hardly seen each other. But clearly, the earlier conversation had been somewhere on her mind, because the first thing she said after they took off was, “Can I ask you something personal?”
“Sure, why not?” He flashed her a grin, all teeth and big brown eyes. “Maybe I won’t answer, though.”
“What’s that tattoo behind your right ear?”
“Pachuco.”
“What’s that?”
He didn’t believe it. “You don’t know pachuco?” He laughed, made the face that means, This is fucking incredible! “You know Zoot Suit.” He said it as a fact, not a question.
She was laughing now—at herself, at both of them. “What’s Zoot Suit? I’m sorry, Billie—”
“You don’ know Zoot Suit? Edward James Olmos, man! Luis Valdez!” Now, he was pleading with her to know. Then it was too much; he threw himself back in his seat and gave up. “I’ll bring you the video.” He started to take out his earphones, then turned to her again. “I saw Zoot Suit when I was a little kid. Another kid put the pachuco mark behind my ear; most guys got it on their hand, here, between the fingers so it doesn’t show. Then I did him. We weren’t gangbangers yet; we were being cool, big-time, but—It meant something to us! Zoot suits!” He shook his head. “It was a Latino thing. I kind of gave it all up when I went to Jesus, but, you know, it’s part of me, man.”
“Are you a born-again now?”
He folded his arms and stared at the seatback. “Yeah, and yeah, and finally no. I been to Jesus so many times I get frequent-flyer miles. You not laughin’? That’s one of my best lines, Commander; guys always laugh, ’cause it’s cool.” He slouched lower. He was a small man and the seat fit him. “Jesus got me out of the gangs and He got me through high school and into computers, but I couldn’t take church. Jesus, si, His people, no way, Jose. So, Jesus and me got our own church.” He looked at her, his head now lower than hers. “Okay?”
“Your mom and dad disappointed?”
“Yeah. Big-time. But after my old man died, my mom, she kind of toned it down. Maybe one day she’ll go back to the priests, I think—one of those little old ladies in a black shawl, goin’ to mass every mornin’. She believed the pentecostals because he did, I guess.”
“How did he die?” Rose asked gently.
“Fell off a scaffolding. Tired out.” That was enough of that; he wriggled upright. “Hey, did you find out what I ast you?”
“About
