“And you’re going to use the Hounds as weapons.”
She shrugged, as if somehow they didn’t involve her. “They’re a loose cannon, a wild card. I don’t know what they plan or who they are, but even if I knew, I wouldn’t try to stop them.” She paused. “We breed them like you breed pit bulls. They’re dangerous, Artie. But you know that.”
He would give a lot for the old Mary, Artie thought. The former lover whom he could talk to about his problems at work, his problems with raising Mark. How did a Muslim and a Serb, who might have been lifelong friends, talk to each other now?
“Why did you join the Club, Mary?”
She took another small sip from her glass.
“You sweated testosterone, you and the others. And you were courageous, adventurous. More than any military academy, the Club was a natural breeding ground for your own Hounds. You proved it when all of you went to ’Nam and came back decorated. You were brave, you were resourceful—we knew you would be and we were curious about you, about what made you tick. So several of us joined to find out.”
“I didn’t enjoy ’Nam,” Artie said somberly. “I didn’t enjoy war.”
She shook her head. “I don’t say you enjoyed killing people. But you enjoyed war, you enjoyed the hunt. You’re ashamed of that now.”
She sounded like Mitch, Artie thought with sudden anger. He knew what he was ashamed of and he knew what he was proud of.
“You could have talked me out of what I suspected when I came here, Mary. I thought it was going to be a wild goose chase.”
She looked surprised.
“Does it really make any difference what I say? You have no proof of anything; all you have are fantasies. We claimed Talbot’s body, your printout of Shea’s diskette is gone, so is the diskette itself. And everybody who’s read Shea’s research is dead.”
He remembered Shea and Paschelke and Hall, and for the first time he accepted Mary as a complete stranger—one who would probably consider it a victory when he was dead as well.
“Except me.”
“Except you.” She shook her head. “But nobody in authority is going to believe you. For everything that’s happened, there’s a reasonable answer.”
“You’ve told me too much, Mary. You’ve played the traitor. Your own Hounds will be after you now.”
She raised an eyebrow. “Traitor? Hardly. Call it a favor for a friend. Someday you might have to make a judgment based on what I’ve told you. And that’s … important. But in any event, we don’t kill each other like your species does. Incidentally, don’t bother coming over here again. Jenny and I will be away on vacation.”
Artie paused by the stairwell. It would probably be his last chance to ask a question that had bothered him for years. “Why you and Jenny, Mary?”
There was a flicker of tenderness on her face. “I mated outside of gender and outside of species, Artie. Jenny needed somebody to take care of her and I needed somebody to take care of. She was beautiful and I was lucky. It worked out.”
Mark had been in the back of his mind ever since coming over. He had nothing to lose by asking about him now.
“Mark disappeared three days ago. You know he’s handicapped, he has to use a wheelchair to get around. He couldn’t have gone anyplace without help. I’m worried your people might have taken him.”
He was pleading with her, gambling on any feelings that might still exist between them, and for a moment he thought she looked concerned.
“I’m sure none of us have him but I don’t really know.”
Artie heard a car drive up outside and started up the steps. It was time to leave; more than time.
Behind him, Mary said softly, “Artie?”
He turned.
“I’d like to help you but I can’t.” She hesitated. “I probably wouldn’t, even if I could.”
What surprised him was the sorrow in her voice when she said it.
“I thought I was
going to have to ask Accounting to mail you your check,” Connie said. “Anything more on Mark?”
“I made a few phone calls trying to track down a possible girlfriend he might have left with. Either everybody’s keeping silent out of loyalty or, more likely, nobody wants to get involved. He’s underage and if she was over eighteen, then she probably broke the law and goddammit—”
Connie held up her hand. “Not being cruel, Artie, but the cops aren’t going to get their water hot about a seventeen-year-old boy and a nineteen-year-old girl running off to Palm Springs or wherever for a little fun in the sun. If she were older, they might look into it, but only for a snicker or two.”
Artie sagged into his chair and watched the bustle outside in the newsroom. “When do you stop being a parent, Connie? When do you decide to let them go out on their own?”
She looked sympathetic. “One, you never stop. And two, you don’t do the deciding—they do. And please don’t ask me how I handle Elizabeth and John. I don’t. And it’s not because they’re adopted.”
“I don’t understand Mark,” Artie said, his voice close to despair.
“You only think you don’t. Wait a few years and when you talk to him, you’ll be talking to a duplicate of yourself.”
Artie glanced at the clock. Late afternoon. He’d spent more time at Mary’s than he’d thought. She’d scared the crap out of him and he’d called Levin right after he had left. Mitch had been out of the office but he’d try him at home that night, tell him what Mary had said and scare the crap out of him, too.
The desk was still piled high with printouts and books and half a dozen tape cassettes. Artie thumbed through a stack: the Grub must be spending all his time searching the Internet and Nexis,
“You’re going to have to bring me up to speed, Connie.”
“Sure.” She said it offhand and continued staring through the glass at the newsroom outside.
Artie watched for a second, worried, then figured Connie was herself, though it was the first time Artie had seen her in a blue funk.
“Earth to Connie Lee, Earth—”
“Sorry, Artie.” She rubbed at her face and blinked open her eyes. “What’d you want to know?”
No jokes and funny stories today, Artie thought. “You’re still you, right?”
She frowned. “Yeah,” she said uncertainly, “we had an argument or something. I’d forgotten all about that.”
Artie shrugged. “It doesn’t matter.” The Old People were keeping one step ahead of him.
Connie thumbed through a stack of reports. “To be honest, Artie, I’m sorry as shit I ever got involved in this. You read enough of these and after a while you begin to think you’ve got a ringside seat at the end of the world. It’s all around us, nobody’s doing anything about it, and you feel like you’re barreling toward the edge of the cliff at full speed. Maybe we won’t go over in my lifetime, but we sure as hell will in my kids’.”
Artie was suddenly all attention. What was it Mary had said? They didn’t stand a prayer of lasting another hundred years?
“What was such a downer?”
She waved a hand at the clutter on the desk. “For Christ’s sake—everything! What do you want to start with? The shrinking penises of alligators in Florida? Declining sperm counts and growing sterility in human males? There’s some argument about that, but in light of everything else, I wouldn’t bet against it—the optimists are probably whistling in the dark. And on top of that, we can include the vanishing glaciers in Alaska and the Alps, the shrinking Arctic ice cap, the increasing failure of antibiotics, and the sudden increase in infectious diseases … . Or maybe just man’s inhumanity to man, the social meltdown in Africa … .”
Connie was sounding like a
Homo sapiens
version of Mary Robards, but it was suddenly more involved than that. Who had thought up the series in the first place—and why? And why give him the assignment? It would have been a great research assignment for the Grub; Jerry knew all about the environment.
Artie stood up and covered the papers on the table with his arms. “We’re just reporting it, Connie, and that’s doing a lot. Go home and recycle, hope for the best, and live your life. So your kids are going to have big problems. So did you. So did your old man and his old man. Your great-granddaddy helped build the Southern Pacific and he was one of the lucky ones who lived through it. If you could ask him, he wouldn’t think we have it so bad.”
Connie sank back in her chair. “Okay, you win. But it’s hard not to take it seriously.”
“Didn’t say you shouldn’t—just keep it in perspective.”
Sweetness and light and it was all lies, Artie thought. When it came to going over the cliff, if they didn’t jump, they’d be pushed. But what the hell would an astronomer do if he spotted a comet heading right for the Earth and knew there was nothing that could be done? Put out a press release and have millions die in the resulting panic, or shut the hell up and let people enjoy whatever few months or weeks they had left?
Then there was a sudden stray thought that he knew wasn’t his, a mere nibble at his consciousness.
no …
And a sense of deep disagreement.
Artie turned away from
the glass and started pawing through the printouts. Anything to look busy to anybody watching. And to hide his lips as he talked to Connie.
Somebody had just given themselves away.
“Connie, three days ago you talked to Security about possible visitors. Do you remember what they said?”
She looked at him blankly.
“Why the hell would I talk to Security? About what?”
“Forget it.” Artie went back to fumbling with the papers on the desk, then after a few minutes picked up the phone and dialed the ad agency that did the station’s self-promotion commercials. Connie was engrossed in one of the printouts; she wasn’t listening.
The agency remembered Ms. Lee’s call. No, they had no record of any of their messengers going over to the station. It had been a busy day. Right. All their messengers were out that day. Very busy. Did they ever use a professional messenger service when they were jammed? Yes, of course. Yes, she’d check which one.
The record was in another file. Deluxe Downtown Messengers. They had sent someone over. A quick delivery and pickup. A kid named Watson, James Watson. Artie called and got a complete description, and this time the guard remembered him. A skinny kid, black hair. He’d only been there a few minutes, a hasty in-and-out.
The messenger hadn’t been there long enough, Artie thought slowly. It had to have been someone on the news floor who’d slipped into Connie’s mind so easily. But if Mary was right, Connie had to have been receptive. And there was only one person she had noticed. Adrienne Jantzen, just as she was about to fuck up reading the ’Prompter.
Artie refrained from looking out on the floor. One quick glance and he knew he’d tip somebody off. But Jantzen had already given herself away. She’d looked toward their glassed-in cubicle several times. She was nervous. Was she a friend of Mary’s? He’d seen her pick up the phone once and then look around the newsroom, her eyes lingering for just a second on the cubicle. She wasn’t a Hound; they would never have made that mistake. But ten to one she’d been to a party at Mary’s more than once.
“You haven’t been keeping me up to date on Adrienne, Connie. How’s she working out?”
Connie didn’t look up. “Fine, I guess. She covered a five-alarmer in San Bruno around lunchtime, came back and wrote it up this afternoon for the six-o’clock. She’s probably hanging around to watch it. Catch it yourself and make up your own mind.”
“She dating anyone?”
“Got me—I hear she’s a loner.”
He’d bet on it. Artie glanced at his watch. About five-thirty; the station execs, the advertising and business staffs and the dayside reporters would be leaving soon. By six-fifteen or six-thirty the parking lot should be almost deserted.
He pushed away the papers, closed his briefcase, and yawned. “Time to hit it, Connie. See you tomorrow.”
She looked at him over the top of her glasses, disapproving.
“How about making it a full day, Artie? I’m doing all the damned work here.”
“You love it, Connie.”
“Yeah, right. We’re doing a series on the end of the world and it’s a barrel of laughs. Make it in early tomorrow—we’ ll share a giggle or two.”
Artie gave her thumbs-up and headed out to the parking lot, behind the little outdoor plaza where the brown-baggers usually ate their lunch when the weather was decent. It was dark—the pole light had burned out the week before—and he felt his way across the flagstones past the little metal tables and the wire wicker chairs and the white plaster statue of Pan mottled with a year’s worth of pigeon droppings. The parking lot was just beyond, only a few cars bellying up to the yellow line that separated the lot from the small luncheon plaza.
It wasn’t hard to find Adrienne’s car. In the darkness he could just make out the bumper sticker that said I LOVE SACRAMENTO with a big heart for “Love”—the standard imitation of the “I Love New York” poster. Artie checked his watch. Six o’clock on the button. The fire would be the top of the news, which meant that Jantzen should be coming out of the back door within ten minutes if she were going to leave right afterward.
He dropped his briefcase in his own car, then stood in the shadows one car away from Adrienne’s Taurus. He concentrated on blending in with the dark, not thinking of anything at all. He had started to shiver in the chilly night air when she finally came out, pulling on her gloves as she walked. He’d always seen her sitting down; he hadn’t been around enough this week to catch her at lunch or even walking around the news floor. She was there when he arrived and was still there when he left, always sitting at her desk, always working. He’d never even seen her go to the can. Which meant that every minute he was there, she was there. He’d been under constant surveillance and she had probably “seen” every word he spoke.
Her heels made little staccato clicking noises on the flagstones and Artie caught his breath, clutching the automatic in his pocket for reassurance. He watched as she stopped by her Taurus and fished around in her bag for the keys. Attractive woman. Not too tall, not what you would call willowy. Pretty but solid.
He stepped out from behind the nearby car. She heard the slight noise and looked up, her hand going to her throat. “You scared the life out of me!” And then immediate suspicion and anger: “Strange meeting you down here, Mr. Banks—hiding in the parking lot.”
All the time her eyes were darting nervously around to see if he was alone. He couldn’t quite believe the sudden fear, the apparent relief, and then the anger. It was all appropriate, but all it meant was that she was a good actress, that she knew why he was there.
“The lily pad was your idea, wasn’t it?” he said, adding, “You’re using Connie like a puppet, aren’t you?”
She laughed.
“I haven’t the slightest idea what you’re talking about. I hardly know Miss Lee, but I have great respect for her.”,
She was still glancing nervously around the lot, which struck Artie as odd—she knew he was by himself.
She looked desperate. “I was trying to help—”
The expression on her face suddenly shifted to one of fear and then went slack. Artie guessed immediately what was wrong, but it was already too late to do anything about it. It was a setup and he’d walked right into it. They knew he’d follow her sooner or later, and tonight she had been delayed just long enough so the lot would be deserted.
She caught the look of awareness on his face and exploded. Her knee jutted through the folds of his coat and caught him in the groin and he doubled up at the same time she screamed.
He caught her foot and twisted, and she almost went down, then chopped at the back of his neck. She was strong, surprisingly so. Talbot had been strong too, according to Paschelke. Suddenly a different comparison occurred to him: the old man at the skating rink doing the impossible. But it hadn’t been him. And it wasn’t just her.
He’d gotten over his distaste for fighting women in ’Nam and now he backhanded her in the face. All he’d wanted was to ask questions, to try to start a dialogue. But Mary obviously had been the exception, not the rule. She
could
talk; Adrienne couldn’t.
Her nails left his cheek bloody and then his heart started doing double time, thumping so wildly it felt like it was going to jump out of his chest.
try and scream, monkey … .
Something else was in the lot and Adrienne had become a mere extension of it, like a hand puppet. The same something that had stage-managed the whole affair. And now it was trying to get a grip on him. For a moment his heart felt like it was going to explode and he had to remind himself that the last time he’d had a physical, the doctor had made a point of telling him he never had to worry about a heart attack—