Night would fall by the time Terrence Rabeneck reached downtown. A prolonged discussion with the clerk at Ol' Federal—a conversation that spanned two disconnects and three callbacks—consumed most of his afternoon. It turned out that the man he was looking for, one Raph Singh, was on watchtower duty at the downtown headquarters. Terrence groaned at that news. He didn't relish the prospect of crossing back through the city in the gathering dark. He toyed with idea of asking the clerk to put Singh on the line to save him a trip but that wasn't secure; no telling who could be listening in. He also thought about spending the night at the Tombstone and leave at first light, but by the time he arrived Singh would be off duty, tired, and likely less willing to talk. In the end Terrence knew he had no decision to make--he needed to head south without delay.
Terrence made it a point to travel light so he could travel fast. He carried only his semi-automatic pistol in holster at the small of his back next to a knife, both invisible beneath his ragged, deep-hooded cloak. Often he kept a quart of clean water in a bladder and some emergency rations, but nothing other than his body armor. He kept to the shadows, crossed quickly through open areas, and avoided contact with scavengers. He had his share of accidental run-ins but managed to talk his way out of all of them. In five years he had yet to draw a weapon, even in self-defense. It was a streak he meant to keep alive.
Recently the streets had been more crowded than he'd ever seen them. He couldn't go three blocks without catching a glimpse of movement and, nervous he might blunder into someone, he slowed his pace even further. Gunfire erupted blocks away and he froze. Another volley of shots and then nothing, save the echoes reverberating in the streets. Terrence backed into an alley on alert and resolved to wait for the shadows to lengthen. In an hour it would be darker and he could travel faster.
He scanned the alley and saw a pair of bare legs sticking out from behind a dumpster not twenty yards away. He watched the legs for several minutes looking for any movement. Cautiously, he inched torward them.
As he guessed, they belonged to a male corpse, but the luckless man wasn't alone. Keeping him company were another man, a woman, and a child, all lying facedown beneath corresponding red splotches on the brick wall above them. They'd been beaten, stripped, and executed; that much was clear. Had they been newcomers to the city, caught off guard by the swift brutality they would face? He began searching for clues to better paint the scene in his mind but then stopped. Did it really matter? This wasn't a crime to be investigated and solved, just another nightmare image of life in the streets of Rivetown. Better to let it go. Try to forget their stringy, unwashed hair, clumped with brain matter. Their twisted limbs. The contrast of dirt and blood against their pale, emaciated, naked flesh.
Let it go. Forget it. Forget it.
He reached Ol' Federal in the dark. He strode across the street with his hands raised and announcing his presence, just as he had said he would on the phone. It would be darkly ironic, he thought, if the man in the tower who he was coming to see shot him dead. He uttered the pass phrase to the humorless guard manning the gate, who instructed him to proceed directly to the tower.
Gas lamps lit the path through the atrium, their feeble yellow light swallowed by the blackness of the vast dome overhead. The tops of stout marble columns disappeared from view. Badly damaged during the peak of the riots, Ol' Federal had been restored wtih functiol, not aesthetics, in mind. The scorched plywood tacked up beside marble mosaics depressed him. It was a reminder of the richness of the past and their present-day squalor, side-by-side. His footsteps echoed ominously on the stairs as he ascended.
He knocked on the great oak door to the watchtower and announced himself. The door opened silently on well-oiled hinges and Terrence stepped through.
The stir of air off the lake felt icier two hundred feet up. Singh was a slightly built man with a baby face and bad acne. His gap-toothed smile did nothing to hide his anxiety. Terrence cupped his hands and breathed on them. Singh watched him cautiously and they exchanged a short greeting.
Terrence produced a new pack of cigarettes and made a show of unwrapping it from its plastic. He tapped a couple cigarettes out of the pack and wordlessly offered one to the private. Singh grinned as he took it. Terrence leaned forward and tucked the pack in the younger man's breast pocket, then patted it reassuringly. That made Singh relax, but only a little. Terrence lit their cigarettes. They enjoyed their smokes in a moment of silence.
"You've been to Concord," Terrence said at last, not an accusation as a statement of fact. Singh licked his lips, his eyes darting as he thought how to respond. Not the quickest draw, this one, Terrence thought with disappointment.
"Don't bother denying it, Raph. I'm not here to bust you. I just want some information."
"What do you want to know?" He said it so fast it sounded like a single word.
"I haven't been there myself—against regulations, you know," Terrence said and watched him squirm. "They deal in weapons and women, right?"
Singh's nodded. "I went for the whores. One time. One time only. Please don't report me."
"Cooperate and I won't have a reason. Tell me more about it. What did you see, besides the Bazaar?"
Terrence withstood two minutes of a rambling torrent of irrelevance before interrupting. "Did they know you were MPD?"
Singh thought about that. "Sure," he said. "We were wearing our uniforms." He said a lot more without saying anything at all, but Terrence did receive a very accurate account of the services the ladies of Barnum's offered. Weapons? Yes, Singh supposed they had weapons, but that wasn't what he'd gone for. Couldn't say how many or what type. Hadn't interested him.
Dispirited, Terrence gave up trying to get any useful information. Asking this young man if he saw signs of paramilitary operations would have been like asking him to name the old fifty states. Cold and frustrated, Terrence finally cut Singh off mid-ramble and thanked him for his time. Though the shift sergeant invited him to spend the night in the basement barracks, Terrence donned his tattered cloak and slunk off into the night, hoping to make it to Summerland, and his bed, without further delay. He wished Alcy would be awake and waiting up for him but, considering how his luck had gone, he didn't hold out much hope.