Cloud Atlas Part 9: Half-Lives—The First Luisa Rey Mystery (Chapters 61-70) Summary

How It All Goes Down

When Fay Li triggers the bomb, the Third Bank of California explodes—with Luisa in it.
Luisa fears her right leg has been blown off, but it turns out it's just trapped under one of Fay Li's goons.
Luisa extracts herself and is led out of the bank by a helpful plainclothes fireman. He sure got there fast...
Oh, no. It's Bill Smoke. He tries to force Luisa into his car, but someone knocks him out from behind.

Joe Napier clocked Bill Smoke in the back of the head with a baseball bat, but Smoke's lackeys have surrounded him and Luisa.
Napier and Luisa dash into a nearby building, where a panicked Mexican woman tries to get them to leave.
Luisa says something to the woman in Spanish and she points them down a back hallway.
Unsure whether to go left or right, Napier and Luisa turn around and ask the Mexican woman. Suddenly, someone shoots the front door in. Dios mio.

The Mexican woman tries to get Bill Smoke and his cronies to leave. They say they're FBI and shoot her dog.
When asked which direction Luisa and Napier went, a mute child who's been sitting nearby this whole time looks toward the back door.

Napier and Luisa run through a sweatshop that makes cartoon-character toys. Luisa can't believe the terrible working conditions.
Before Napier and Luisa can escape, Smoke's man Bisco, the one who shot the dog, corners them.
Bisco's about the shoot Luisa and Napier, but the Mexican woman wallops him on the back of the head with a wrench. Hooray. Then she beats his face to a pulpy mess. Um, ew.

On the bus, Napier says that Jerry Nussbaum told him where to find Luisa, and that's how he was able to reach her in time.
Also, Napier's found someone who might know where to find yet another copy of the Sixsmith report.

At the Buenas Yerbas Museum of Modern Art, Luisa meets Sixsmith's niece, Megan.
Megan asks Luisa if she thinks her uncle was murdered, and Luisa tells her the truth.
Just to ratchet up the tension a bit, Megan tells Luisa that Seaboard had been working with the Department of Defense to sell them leftover uranium. Aha. We knew Gerald Ford was in on this.
Megan tells Luisa that a copy of the report should be on the Starfish, Sixsmith's yacht in Marina Royale.

After briefly getting distracted by the Prophetess, Luisa and Napier board the Starfish.
Luisa and Napier find the report, and Bill Smoke finds them. He shoots Joe and gets ready to take out Luisa next.

As he dies, Joe Napier musters the last of his energy and shoots Bill Smoke dead.

At the Swannekke County Hospital, Hester Van Zandt is reading poetry to the comatose Margo Roker.
When the clock ticks over to the exact minute when Joe Napier shot Bill Smoke, Margo Roker wakes up. Talk about a karmic coincidence.

Luisa sits in the Snow White Diner reading her Seaboard exposé in Western Messenger. She made the front page.
At home, Luisa has two pieces of mail to look at.
The first is a postcard from Javier. He's moved with his mom to San Francisco.
Second includes the final eight letters from Frobisher to Sixsmith. Luisa wonders: "Are molecules […] of Robert Frobisher's hand, dormant in this paper for forty years, now swirling in my lungs, in my blood? Who is to say?" (9.70.9-9.70.10).