"Are you calling from a turret?"
"Yes."
"All right. I'll code you through and patch you right now, if you'd like."
"Yes, I'd like that."
"My pleasure." She hesitated a moment, then said, "By the way, I live at the same cube." She laughed with a trace of embarrassment and added, "I mean, if you decide to stay overnight."
He replied, "Okay, thanks. No promise though, Becky—I mean, don't sit up waiting for me. I told you I'm on something hot. But I'll let you know. Okay?"
"Okay. Here's your patch."
She was gone abruptly and the automated voice from central computers was making the standard announcement. Winston fed in the data request, using precise audibles, then poked a button on the turret panel to switch in the printer. Within seconds the machine was running rapid-fire tabulations and the paper was falling in perforated folds into a small box at Winston's knee. He scanned the information as it came through, jotting quick notes along the way, and he was ready with the cross-check interrogation by the time the initial data scan was completed.
Moments after he had programmed-in the interrogation, the data picture he had sought and feared began to take form on the perforated sheets as a data summary. Ten
minutes after he entered the turret, he was fumbling his way into the lobby, hands shaking slightly with the knowledge of the dynamite packed into his briefcase. He ran outside and hailed a hovering air-taxi, and within another few minutes was feeding his AMS card into the plastic box at the entrance to the national capital's most exclusive federally-subsidized sex club.
The dining room was an endless sea of tables and chatter and drifting smoke from a thousand burning cigarettes, all superimposed into the unvarying hum of the electronic waiter service. Winston stepped up to the automated maitre d', punched a button, and spoke into the machine. "Zot-spot Urban Bureau Chief Charles Waring. Commissioner Mike Winston requesting."
There was a brief pause, then a buzzing which was swiftly replaced by a rasping voice announcing, "Waring here."
"Mike Winston, Chief. Hot stuff. Where can I find
you?"
"Where are you now, Mike?" came the cool reply.
"I'm right here in the dining room."
"Oh." A pause, then: "Okay. Come on over. A-22."
"Be right there," Winston assured him. He made his way across the numbered aisleways to the A for Availability section, and quickly located his target.
Waring sat there alone, a large hulk with white hair and a perpetually distressed face. These were eyes which Winston had always found it difficult to gaze into .. . there was too much misery there, too much betrayal—self-betrayal, perhaps—and entirely too much bitterness for any one human being to contain. He pulled out a chair and silently sat down, fished the summary sheet from his briefcase, glanced at his boss, then lay the sheet face up on the table.
"I'm sober," Waring said, without preliminaries, "If that's what you're wondering."
Winston doubted that. But he replied, "I wasn't wondering anything of the kind." He glanced at the tray alongside Waring's chair, noted the level mark of the
bourbon bottle, smiled, and tapped the tab summary with a finger. "Something here I want you to look at," he said.
"You eat yet?" Waring wanted to know.
Winston shook his head. "It can wait. Just look at these figures, Chuck."
The nation's head nigger-tender, as he liked to call himself, sighed and reached for the paper. His eyes traveled about in a random inspection. Then he speared ; Winston with a puzzled glance. "What's all this computed yuck about?" he asked unemotionally.
"It's a demographic read-out on landflow and urban I shift, keyed specifically to the Tom count. And a cross- I read on the status of retired military surplus arms, the I mothball arsenal. Look at the flow of the past three years." 1
Waring grunted and said, "So what?"
"So there's some damned significant stuff there. Something is brewing in Black America."
Waring sighed heavily and returned once again to the sheet of data. Presently he said, "Well it still looks like a lot of computed yuck to me."
"Cross-relate, Chuck," Winston urged. "The picture is downright scarey. Most of the Toms are fractos, many of them could easily pass for white if you don't look at them too closely. And look at their flow. God, they're clustering in an entirely new trend of their own, moving in on all the vital spots of the nation. State capitals, major economic centers, mothballed military installations, the whole shmear."
"How'd you get this stuff?"
"AMS demographics. I've been wondering for several months now over the towns' inability to keep up with the demand for Toms."
"Some hot stuff," Waring said disgustedly. "You track me down here to talk about labor problems?"
A cold feeling was traveling slowly up Winston's backbone. He told his boss, "Demographics is only a part of it. Department of Army has been suspiciously busy for several years also. Those guys are planning an uprising—I'll stake my job on it—and the government
niggers are backing them up. Listen, I saw Bogan and Abe Williams together this morning. And, of all places, in a back room of Oakland Town Hall."
Waring emitted a dry cackle. He reached for the bourbon, poured a hefty slug into his glass, squirted in some seltzer, and said, "You don't drink, do you."
Winston shook his head. "But I might learn to."
"At your age, Winston, it's hopeless. You have to get an early start if you want to practice this art with total dedication.
"Aren't you going to discuss this situation with me, Chuck?" Winston asked stiffly.
"Nothing to discuss. You can't wait 'til middle-age to start drinking and expect to get anything out of it"
"You know what I'm talking about. Now Chuck, I'm disturbed as hell over this data. Let's—"
"Then go be disturbed someplace else," Waring growled. "This isn't the place for it. I can tell you where you went wrong, Winston."
"For God's sake, Chuck, this is—"
"Shut up! I was just looking at your dossier the other day. There's a lot of dangerous stuff in there, Michael my boy. A lot of it. How come you're not in prison?"
Winston sighed and retrieved the print-out. "Well, I'd better go find somebody sober to talk this over with."
"You talk to nobody!" Waring rasped. He finished the drink, wiped Ms lips on the back of his hand, and hunched his shoulders into an aggressive posturing. "Every word you say, you hang your ass a little Mgher. Now I'm not going to answer for your sophomoric flag waving. No sir. You talk to nobody but me. Understand?"
"Chuck, there are something like fifty thousand Toms in tMs country who are almost certainly organized into some wild 6ort of espionage ring—God, maybe even trained assassins and saboteurs. There are tons upon uncountable tons of war munitions and heavy weapons of every description being stockpiled about the country in either direct control of black army forces or minimally protected by skeleton crews of wMte state-guardsmen."
Waring poured himself another drink. "Do tell. Who gives a shit?"
"The Toms are into everything. I talked to one awhile ago who is an aide to the Chairman of the Senate Armed Forces Committee, such as it is. And two of them were tailing me all over Washington today."
Waring chuckled. "And they may be servicing the President's niece. You gotta learn to mind your own business in this city, Mike. That's something you still have to learn."
"Oh, hell," Winston commented miserably. "You haven't the merest grasp of what I'm telling you, do you?"
"Watch it, sonny. Just watch it. This is the head nigger- 1 tender who's doing all the talking. Don't forget that. Don't ever forget that. Baby sitters to a bunch of damn town niggers. God damn! Lot of useless effort if I ever heard it!"
"Don't drink any more, Chuck. Let's go get some air. j The air in here is enough to—we simply have to talk about this."
"I'll tell you where you went wrong, Winston. You're too ambitious. You think too much. You're a
lways pushing, making waves, always running around waving a flag over somebody's head. You fucking-near got your ass hung back there at UC. It's in the dossier. Hell, it's all in there. Did you know the Attorney General backtracked you through five generations?" Waring laughed raucously. "You didn't know it! They thought sure as hell they'd bought themselves a fracto for the country's top cop. Scared the abundant society right out of them. You never knew that, huh?"
"I'll be going," Winston said. He scraped back his chair, but did not quite get out of it.
Waring lunged across the table and captured him with a heavy hand, roaring, "YouH go when I tell you to!" He gazed about to see if anyone was noticing the ruckus, then showed Winston a crafty smile. "You think you're bucking for my job, don't you? Even got my personal secretary making googy eyes at you. You wanta be head nigger-tender, don't you? Listen, sonny boy, forget it. Arlington would never have it. Never. It satisfies his weird sense of justice to let you sweat your ass off over nigger problems, but he'll never see you in a bureau chief's spot. Never."
"I don't want your job, Chuck," Winston, wearily replied.
"Then why're you running around making waves all the time, huh? A youth center for Detroit Heights! A new hospital for Cleveland! Housing developments for this place and that, town roads, higher relief credits, better work offers! Where do you come off with all this dream stuff, boy? You know the old man hasn't bought a thing for a nigger in all the years he's been here! And now look at you! A conspiracy, for God's sake, an uprising."
The bureau chief threw back his head and howled. "Those dumb shits can't hardly keep themselves alive even. And you sitting here all wild eyed and calling me drunk. You're the guy that's drunk, Winston. Drunk with ambitionl You're the drunkest bastard I ever knew, Winston, and you ain't even smelled the cork. You wanta know why they ran your ass outta the Justice Department?"
"Not particularly," Winston replied, gritting his teeth in a growing rage.
Waring underwent a sudden change of mood. Tears sprang to his eyes. He released his subordinate and gently patted his shoulder. "Mike, don't listen to this shit. Don't listen to it. You're right, and I'm drunk. I got no right raving at you like this. Listen, little buddy. You and me. Right? We got the stinkingest job in government today."
Winston was beginning to see a new glimmer of hope. He said, "Chuck, let's get out of here. The air's bad and the whiskey is worse. Let's go find—"
"Well now, wait a minute, Mike, wait a minute. Let me tell you this." Waring stopped talking, his attention diverted by the approach of a woman. She looked about thirty, medium height, rather pretty in an overtly suggestive manner. The hair was blonde, she wore a nice smile and one of the new knit fabrics styled into a peek-a-boo shrug-dress, so called because the entire thing was of wide mesh and fell away with a shrug of the shoulders.
"Hi, honey," Waring said thickly. "You looking for me?"
"I was just wondering," she said in a high-pitched voice.
"What were you wondering, honey?" Waring asked, winking at Winston.
"Well ... if the boys were enjoying each other's company. I mean, if you're satisfied with each other or if you'd like some feminine presence."
"Oh we like feminine presence," Waring assured her. "Don't we, Mike?"
Winston grunted and looked around for a way out.
The woman stood with one hand on the back of an empty chair, her eyes moving uncertainly from Waring to Winston.
"Which one of us you like the most, honey?" Waring asked, winking once again at his companion.
"Well... I already reserved a cube upstairs. Anything wrong with all three of us going up?"
Waring reached across the table to slap Winston on the shoulder. "Hey, that sounds like just the ticket for a couple of old nigger-tenders, huh Mike?"
"I guess not," Winston said. "I have a lot to do, Chuck. We both do."
"Hell, it don't take no credits, sonny. It's a social club, you know, just for the convenience of us Washington I slaves. He laughed boisterously. "Seriously now. Don't you want to make friends with this little lady?"
Winston looked at the woman and felt miserable for her. He smiled uncertainly and mouthed the words to her, "He is drunk."
She returned the smile and told him, "That's okay. I, uh, I don't have to come here, you know. I mean, there are other places to go. But he's right. It is nice to make new friends. Isn't it?"
"Two at a time?" Winston asked quietly.
"It could be interesting," she replied. "I mean, three doesn't have to be a crowd. If you know what I mean."
"By God that sounds great, just great," Waring declared loudly. "What d'ya say, Michael son? You want to share a
bed with your boss?" He broke up completely. pounding
the table with a hammy fist, and choking over laughter.
Winston was already halfway to the door, and nobody heard his angered, rasping reply but the automated maitre'd
CHAPTER 8
Winston, stood in agony before the door to the office of the Chief, Federal Police Bureau. He'd rather talk to almost any man in Washington, but ... to hell with personalities. So the guy had knifed him once and he would undoubtedly do so again if a similar profit-motive should arise. So maybe the guy had grown a little. Winston squared his shoulders and pushed on into the reception room.
It hadn't changed much. Same pictures on the walls, same mottled carpeting. New girl, though, and a beaut. He presented his identification and stated his business.
She examined him from beneath partly-lowered lashes and eyes that told him she'd heard of him, oh yes, I've heard of you, Mike Winston. "The Chief cannot be disturbed right now, Commissioner," she told him. "H you'd like to have a seat, I'll see if I can get you in shortly."
Get him in? Winston was not that far down the Washington totem. He told her, "You announce me right now, young lady, and let Fairchild make that decision."
She wasn't to be bullied. The pretty lips hardened and she told him, "The Chief cannot be disturbed at this moment, Commissioner."
Winston said, "The hell he can't." He vaulted the railing and pushed into the FBI Chief's inner sanctum with a grimly struggling secretary hanging on one arm.
A handsomely graying man with surprised eyes n>v hastily from his desk and turned off a tape deck. He Nr/eil up the situation in a single glance, waved the girl out of tho office, and walked toward Winston with outstretched hand. "Damn, it's good to see you again, Mike," he said amiably. "How long has it been ... three years? Four?"
"About halfway between the two," Winston replied, smiling tightly. "This isn't a personal call, Tom. I have urgent business."
Fairchild waved him to a chair and stepped over to a sideboard bar. "Name your poison," he suggested.
Winston said, "Uncle Tom."
The police chief chuckled, somewhat nervously and said, "No, I meant liquid poison. Oh hell I forgot, you don't. Or have you started?"
"Not yet, but I'm getting closer to it every day. No, nothing for me Tom, thanks."
The Chief swirled some liquids into a glass and took it to his desk to perch there on the corner and inspect his onetime friend with a measuring gaze. "You haven't changed much," he decided. "Bit of silver at the ears, there." He laughed. "I guess it's catching up to all of us, eh. The years, I mean."
Winston nodded. "Maybe more so than we realize. That's what I want to talk about. I guess old cops never die, nor even fade away. I've stumbled onto something, Tom. My boss is in the cups again, and it's like talking to the roaring surf. I'd like to get your opinion."
Fairchild grinned and replied, "If it's cop business, I'm all ears. You know that."
'Try the eyes," Winston replied. He leaned forward and thrust the cross-check summary into the policeman's hand. "I won't talk. You draw your own conclusions."
Fairchild studied the paper for several minutes, pausing occasionally to sip at his drink, sloshing the liquid now and then, clinking the ice against the side of the glass. As he read, his face harde
ned. lines of amiability vanished. The brows began forming peaks above the eyes and the eyes themselves became murky, almost seeming to change color and to recede somewhat into the head. Winston knew the look and knew it well. Once he had even thought it a sign of the whirring cogs of an acutely tuned police mind. He had learned, though, that it was a sign of other mental activities as well.
Without looking at his visitor, Fairchild pushed a button on his desk. A door opened and a pretty young woman came in. Her glance took in Winston and flashed quickly to Fairchild. He handed her Winston's paper and told her, "Get me a copy of that, doll."
She nodded, showed Winston another curious look, and went back the way she'd come.
"Nice," Winston softly commented.
"Very," Fairchild agreed. "Well—that's a nice piece of work there, Mike. For an urban commissioner. Thanks very much for your interest. You can pick up your original in the outer office, if you want it."
Winston growled, "What the hell are you saying?"
The cop finished his drink and went around behind the desk and sat down. "I said it. Thanks. Good seeing you again, Mike. I'm busy as hell. You understand that, I'm sure. Drop in again when you have more time."
In a voice working very hard at remaining level, Winston asked him, "What will you do with that intelligence Tom?"
"We'll investigate, of course."
"Routinely."
"Naturally. You know the channels. We, uh, have the same access to classified data banks as you." He emphasized the classified in a voice becoming clearly antagonistic.
What the hell, Winston told himself. The guys thinks I'm trying to set up a competitive shop. He said, "Look, all I want to hear is that you're as upset over this thing as I am. Then I'll bow out. I stopped playing cop a long time ago. The only reason I came here was to—"
"Look, Mike, get the hell out, will you? I've got to clear up some stuff and blow this joint myself. Dinner date, big one. Get on the hell out of my hair, eh?"
"This is one hell of an urgent matter, Tom. Just tell me that you understand that."
He'd said the wrong thing and he know it immediately Fairchild's eyes blazed and he said, "I don't have to tell you a goddamned thing, Commissioner." He got to his feet, looked at the door, and told Winston goodbye.
Don Pendleton - Civil War II Page 5