After talking to Paco, I needed some way to kill ninety minutes without killing myself in the process. If I was paranoid before, I’m doubly so now. Seattle’s a big fragging sprawl, but the Cutters—in one form or another—are spread across the whole fragging city. The odds are low of running into someone who knows me or who’s been sent out gunning for me, but the possibility is definitely there, no matter where I go in the sprawl. So I just cruise randomly, eventually end-ing up in the Pier 42 area, near where we blew the drek out of the Eighty-Eights’ warehouse. Safe as anywhere, I suppose, and safer than most. The Eighty-Eights could well be out in force, expecting more trouble. Sure, I might come to grief at their hands, but this is one place members of the Cutters aren’t likely to show up. Anyway, there’s a phone booth near the Pier 42 gate, a bus shelter with a (surprisingly) unvandalized soykaf machine—nice and dark inside, now that I’ve smashed the lights with the grip of my H & K—and a disused mobile office for me to stash my bike behind. I chew some more gum for the optical pickup, and find that makes me feel even more hyper.