Triptych

by David Castlewitz

  Jamerson waited for a number five tram. When it arrived, and when the two car train slowed at the platform, he stepped on, joining a jostling frenzy of travelers. At six, the height of the rush hour, these platforms and those elsewhere in the city, would be mobbed with commuters. Shoving and pushing would be worse than what he experienced now. Everyone who normally spent extra on a taxi or a bike-rickshaw would be filling these platforms.

  Bad day for riding to the city's northwest corner along the Fox River, near the Elgin Works, a vast complex of houses and mansions and apartment buildings where Oliver Griffin lived. He wanted to meet, but he made it convenient for himself and no one else. Typical Griffin, Jamerson mused.

  He sat back in the hard-backed plastic seat at the back of the carriage. Two police at the front of the car eyed him. He stared back, trying to judge from their lightweight leather jackets and red-striped black pants which of the various municipal agencies they represented. Bright silver badges at the center front of their plastic helmets didn't tell him much. He guessed they served one of the dozens of private security firms to which the city outsourced the workload.

  The taller of the police walked towards Jamerson, deliberately brushing the elbows of people sitting in aisle seats. Jamerson watched, blinked, curious about what the cop wanted. They locked eyes.

  "You know me?" the cop said, stopping in front of Jamerson and pulling his short wooden club from the ring in his belt.

  Jamerson shook his head. He focused on the badge in the middle of the helmet. No number there. No way to identify him.

  "Why're you looking so hard at me?" the cop asked.

  "Just looking. In that direction." Jamerson kept his voice soft, his gaze directed up at the cop. He tried not to stare. If a confrontation erupted, he'd use his office credentials to get out of trouble, but he didn't want to chance things. He'd packed a three-shot pistol, a small handheld rail gun that fit in his jacket's inside pocket, because the neighborhood he'd pass through on the way to meeting Griffin always struck him as seedy, one of the "despairing" blocks, as described in simulations he'd run in the past.

  "Stop looking," the cop said.

  "Sure. Sorry." Jamerson glanced at the floor, at the round toe of the cop's black boots. Brogan style. The tops went just above the ankles, not all the way up the calf.

  The cop grinned, his off-white teeth suddenly blooming behind thin lips, a whiff of garlic or some other offensive odor spewing from his wide mouth. His boot heel squeaked when he turned, his baggy pants piling around his knees. He stomped back to the front of the car.

  Jamerson kept his gaze aimed at the floor, but he allowed himself a quick upwards glance at the police laughing quietly, joking with one another, and he wondered if it was at his expense. Not one of his fellow passengers reacted. No one looked at him. No sympathetic grunts or nods. People peered out the window at the passing scene of apartment buildings set side-by-side, all of them seven stories high, like children's blocks, equal and unadorned.

  The tram took him to the northwestern sector of the wall. Only a few passengers remained, all of them looking like common laborers, some with dust in their hair and on their clothes, others with grease on their hands, the knees of their clothing.

  Jamerson scrambled off the car. He followed a squat woman with a younger one in tow, both of whom carried fishnet shopping bags half full of wrapped packages.

  He strode to the nearby monorail station. Police presence in this neighborhood appeared normal, without the extra patrols he expected. In simulations he'd run in the past, localized strikes produced roving bands of riot control squadrons to keep sympathizers at bay.

  The station stood fifty feet up, halfway to the top of the city wall. A handful of commuters stood waiting. A distant white light heralded the train's arrival

  #

  "Found your way again," Griffin said, sitting back in a wire-frame chair, his long legs stretched, his feet taking up space on Jamerson's side of the table. Behind him, waiters and waitresses in billowing trousers and white shirts hanging outside their waists, hurried from the kitchen, its swinging door bouncing back and forth, to serve the patrons spread across the parquet floor. A theme restaurant, the establishment eschewed service-bots in favor of young and attractive people, banter between employees and diners, and a noisy atmosphere of clattering dishes, flatware and loud voices coming from wherever people gathered.

  "What's it this time?" Jamerson said, suddenly annoyed with himself for following Griffin's lead and meeting him here. "What couldn't we talk about after the meeting?"

  Griffin smiled, his light blue eyes shining. He played with a paper napkin, a metal fork, took a sip of water from his glass. He started to speak, started to lean forward, but then a pert waitress with long yellow hair -- obviously a wig -- intervened.

  "Scotch and water," Griffin said to her. "And a serving of those mini-burgs. Enough for both of us." He waved a hand at Jamerson.

  "Double mini. You gots." The girl turned to Jamerson, a handheld slate in her hand. She'd used her fingernail to write Griffin's order.

  "Ice tea."

  "You gots!"

  When the waitress left, Griffin again leaned in to close the gap between them. "I told you about the new project, didn't I? Didn't I predict it?"

  Jamerson nodded. They'd met in this same venue weeks earlier. Other times, at other meetings, Griffin shared the rumors he'd heard. Some panned out. Some, like the discovery of a flaw in the simulation software, didn't. Either the mistake was covered up or Griffin had his facts wrong.

  The waitress brought their drinks, a frosty glass of light colored tea topped with a slice of orange and a short glass filled to the brim with a cameral colored liquid. Griffin's eyes rose and settled on her face. They moved across her white blouse, which outlined the upper half of her body. When she left, with a smart flick of a smile in Griffin's direction, Jamerson tried to make a comment he thought the older man would appreciate.

  "Too bad."

  Griffin pursed his lips. "About what?"

  "Too young for either one of us," Jamerson said. "What is she, 18?"

  "Don't be fooled. These kids aren't kids, not the ones who work here. She could be forty-five and we'd never know it." Griffin pointed to the overhead lights, as though the multicolored spots and floods had something to do with not only the decor, but also the look of the help.

  Jamerson shrugged. He assumed Griffin knew more about this place than he. It was a favorite meeting spot.

  "How'd you get here?" Jamerson asked. "With the strike, I mean."

  "Private car," Griffin said.

  "You found a driver? What about .." Jamerson's voice trailed off, but the last few words dribbled from his lips. "The strike?"

  Griffin snorted. He sipped his Scotch and water. People like Griffin easily found other people to work for them, no matter what. Jamerson winced, as though he'd just stung himself. He didn't like sounding naive with this man.

  "Tell me what you want to talk about," Jamerson said, discomforted by the look of victory in Griffin's blue eyes.

  "The new project."

  "What about it?"

  Griffin sat back. The waitress brought a paper plate with the snack-sized burger-and-buns arranged in a circle around a center mound of pickle bits and ketchup. Jamerson counted twelve mini-burgs and decided he'd let Griffin eat more than his share. Let him gorge himself. Let him drink another Scotch. Griffin would loosen his belt and his tongue.

  "It's one of the major's pet schemes," Griffin continued, and grabbed a burger. He slapped the mix of relish and ketchup onto the inside of the bun and then stuffed the snack into his mouth. He chewed, with bits of bread and relish popping from a corner of his mouth. He drank. He talked between sips, between ingesting the burgers.

  The idea of cleaning up the lake front using the military had floated around the city legislature for more than a year. A stray remark by the mayor, something on the order of, "We'll knock them out with jackups." A condescending term, "jac
kup" referred both to a customized pickup truck with rail guns affixed to the top of the cab and the heavily armored foot soldiers.

  In time, the mayor's remark gained traction. Studies were made as to the impact of deploying federal troops across the city's outskirts. Washington weighed in. Military and Homeland Security advisors met with city security. Reports mounted concerning the criminal domains, the gambling and smuggling and grand theft that was rife across the lakefront, from the eastern gate, south as far as the Indiana Line, and north to the outskirts of Highland, an enclave of private homes and apartment complexes protected by walls and private police, and linked to Chicago by an enclosed roadway with a center strip reserved for a maglev train to be built in the future.

  Jamerson had always considered the city's lake front community to be little more than another economic basin, much like the city itself. According to the municipal bylaws, the dense population inhabiting the area were a source of renewed manpower for Chicago's workforce. Exiles could find their way back inside the walls, with proper permits and a living wage. That a few relied on smugglers to get back in, and then lived off-the-grid in the poorest parts of the city, taking rooms in the basements and sub-basements of apartment blocks, didn't detract from the region's overall worth. Exiles sent west or south of the city often migrated further away, lured by promises of good housing and well-paying though difficult work in the agricultural communities outside Chicago's sphere of influence. The city needed those exiles who stayed close.

  "When you work on the simulations," Griffin continued, pointing a finger at Jamerson, "you'll get a clearer picture."

  "Of what? Poor people mowed down if they march against the army?"

  Griffin smiled, mouth open, bits of food in his mouth making Jamerson glance away. "It's the criminal element they're after. The smuggling and the gambling and everything else is controlled by a small gang of thugs. They've got their fingers in the pie out there. In here as well. You'll see."

  Jamerson shrugged. Perhaps. Often, the simulations he ran wound up creating verbal reports that he didn't hear unless he tuned in during a conference. Usually, when simulating the change in a tram's schedule or the emptying of a factory employing people and replacing them with robots, Jamerson didn't want to hear the end results. His job was to create what-if scenarios, set various scales of impact, let the simulator crunch trillions of records of past data in an massive linear regression algorithm, and feed the output to the head of the department.

  Other people made the decisions about what to do with those results.

  "Here's what I want you to do," Griffin whispered, elbows on the table. He leaned forward, his silvery shirt falling open at the top. Tuffs of white hair sprouted. A gold charm sparkled, emitting light on its own.

  Jamerson waited. He let his eyes fall to the plate in the middle of the table. A single mini-burg sat at the edge. He took it.

  "They're going to want someone to coordinate with the military at Fort Sheridan," Griffin said. "You should volunteer for the job."

  "I'm not a field agent."

  "You're a senior analyst. The department doesn't have field agents."

  "But that's a -- " Jamerson stifled his protest. "Wouldn't that be something one of the security departments would handle?"

  "Usually. Maybe." Griffin tilted his head sideways in a gesture that subtracted decades from his fifty-something-year-old face. Suddenly, he looked like the rakish kid he must've been years ago.

  "You've convinced them to keep it within the department," Jamerson said, catching on to Griffin's thinking.

  "Exactly. You can run all the simulations you want, but the end result will always comes down to assessing the situation on the ground, applying the right amount of force at the right time. Somebody needs to work with the army in getting this right and they -- the federal officers -- aren't going to like what our internal security has to say about anything. There's immediate animosity. Understand?"

  Jamerson kept himself from reacting. Some general at Fort Sheridan might bristle if a high ranking cop from Chicago swaggered into his office making demands. But a jumped-up clerk from the Office for Strategic Studies?

  "Wouldn't you want this job for yourself?" Jamerson asked.

  Griffin laughed. "I've got something better planned for myself."

  Which of the many pies did he have his fingers in now? Jamerson wondered. How many balls did Griffin keep in the air?

  "I'm heading up the State Summit," Griffin said. "Assembling the reports, all of that. You know."

  Jamerson didn't know. "What Summit?"

  "Every ten years or so," Griffin said, "the downstate folk get their hackles up about Chicago taking all the resources, about the city exiling too many people, flooding the outlying communities. So we have a summit and make plans for smoothing out the flow." Again, Griffin laughed.

  "I guess you don't want to be distracted."

  "If nobody volunteers for the coordinator spot when it's announced, I will be distracted." Griffin waved a finger at Jamerson. "I don't want to be. You're right. Okay? You want to move up in the department?"

  Jamerson couldn't help but nod. Years ago, he'd let Griffin guide him and he went from junior analyst to senior level in so short a time he lost all his friends among the staff. He knew what his coworkers thought. They called him "Huckleberry" behind his back. He didn't know what the term meant, but it sounded degrading and mean-spirited.

  Letting Griffin guide him had turned out well. Success took him from a one-room apartment in the city to a luxurious suite of three rooms at a gated community. He traveled by jet to the West Coast at least once a year. He had a trip to Greater New York aboard the Interstate Maglev. He saw both oceans. He went to the office just two days a week while the junior levels, his former peers, still labored four days a week at Municipal Tower Number Four and enjoyed none of the privileges that came with a higher status.

  "Just remember," Griffin said. "When Bandinni retires and they fish around for a new department head..." He smiled, letting the flash of light in his blue eyes finish the sentence. Some executive in an upper level of city government would decide who to promote to take over the department. He or she would want a clean transition, some readily accepted by his or her coworkers. Griffin was thinking ahead, setting things up for himself.

  "I'll remember," Jamerson said. Not like you'd let me forget, he thought.

  "Bet I ate more of these than you," Griffin said, pointing at the empty plate. "I'll pay." He pulled an All-Pod from his shirt pocket and waved it at a reader embedded in the edge of the table.

  #

  The hover lane and the empty board floating there drew Jamerson's attention. Out of the corner of one eye, he saw other players obviously thinking the same thing as he. Get to that board and take the fast lane to the goal.

  He skated hard. For a moment, movement in the spare audience distracted him and he looked at the stands with the hope of seeing Katie Shaw. He always invited her to watch him play gerry-can, but few people ever sat in the bleachers and cheered their friends.

  He didn't see her, but he swallowed his disappointed -- the third time he'd looked during the match -- and put his head down. First to the hover lane, he leapt onto the waiting board well ahead of every other contender, including any of his six teammates.

  His skates locked onto the board. He applied pressure to the front by leaning forward and began the figure-eight sweep in the center of the rink. In gerry-can, only the board rider could score. The other players skated to get an advantage in position, either to pass the "gerry" -- the marble-filled leather bag that served as a ball -- or to intercept the other team's pass or handoff.

  The gerry flew in the air, but Jamerson couldn't get to it in time and the ball fell to the polished wooden floor, the marbles inside ringing. Someone picked it up. Jamerson watched for an opposing skater trying to dislodge him from the board. He leaned backwards to slow his progress, leaned sideways to avoid a hit.

  But then hands shoved
at his back and he sprawled on his stomach, on his knees, burning his hands on the floor, taken out of the play. Looking up, he saw Katie standing near the door at the top of the bleachers. As he rose to his feet, someone slammed the gerry into the target, right into the center opening -- the "can" -- and scored a go-ahead goal. A moment passed. The buzzer sounded.

  Jamerson skated to the base of the bleachers. Katie didn't approach. He waved to her until she started skipping down the concrete steps. Her short arms flapped at her sides and her skirt jumped up around her knees. She looked like a schoolgirl.

  "I thought you were going to show off for me," she said. Her tight white shirt outlined all her lumps and ridges. Not a compliment, Jamerson thought.

  "I scored a one-pointer before you came." He reached for her, but she pinched her nose and held back. In his mind he grappled with her, massaged her back, rubbed her arms, kissed her wide mouth. He liked the feel of her ample body against his thin frame.

  "Shower," she said, and pushed him away, not letting him touch her.

  Elsewhere in the rink, other couples sat or stood, talking in whispers, the players wiping down with moist towels. A service-bot approached, slowed its paces, and Jamerson snatched a towel from its bin.

  "Glad you came," Jamerson said, "even if I was on my ass the minute you walked in."

  "Technically, you were on your hands and knees." Katie's brown eyes sparkled. "I've seen you play before. You just never noticed."

  "Early supper?"

  Katie consulted her All-Pod. "I have an appointment in a half-hour. Afterwards. I'll message you."

  She didn't have regular work days like everyone else. As the in-house curator and interior designer for the apartment complex, she could spend one week lounging at a bar every hour of every day and the next week hurrying from one assignment to another. Jamerson didn't know how she put up with the irregular schedule, but she never complained.