by Leo Champion
For a moment Reverend Garson allowed himself a moment’s fantasy of a screaming Jeff Hammer strung peeled from a cross, one of the Karsteins strung up in peeled, salted agony on each side of him. It would happen within the week, unless they fled, and then they would be pursued…
The laughter of those Jersey district bosses rankled him. How dare some traitors put him in this position! He would have their bodies peeled and salted, and that would be just the start of their agony!
“John,” Reverend Garson decided suddenly, turning to that man. “We have money – we will spend the money. Double the money on Hammer and the Karsteins – and triple bonus if brought to me alive, you understand?”
“Got it, boss.”
A young boy in a red and black hotel messenger’s uniform, double lines of brightly polished gold buttons up the centre of it, carefully placed himself inside the Reverend’s peripheral vision. He was breathing hard, as though he’d been running fast to get here, and clutching an envelope as he waited to be noticed.
“You, kid,” said the Reverend. “What d’you want?”
“Sent this for Mr. Reverend Garson,” the messenger said. “That you, sir?”
Reverend Garson nodded, reaching to take the envelope. The boy let it go but stayed where he was.
“You want a tip or something?” Daniel Garson snapped.
“Tippin’ ain’t discouraged in this establishment, guv’nor,” the kid shot back. Daniel Garson moved to swat the impudent brat, but Roger Moncreve raised his hand to gently deter the other captain; the messenger ducked back to a safe distance but didn’t leave the vicinity.
“Brats that mouth off to my sons can forget about any gratuities,” Reverend Garson frowned.
“Mr. Reverend, the man gave me your letter said for me to stick ‘ere until you’d read what’s in it,” the messenger boy insisted.
Reverend Garson tore the paper envelope open; inside was a half-page on which his eldest son had dashed off: ‘Dad, a major opportunity has come up – someone wants to meet you. Message boy will take you to meet us. CJ.’
John Moncreve glanced at the letter too, and said, “I’ll be on my way myself then, boss?”
“Dad, you need a man to watch your back?” Roger Moncreve asked.
“Both of you go with him – he’ll be carrying some real cash,” said the Reverend, then turned to the panting young messenger.
“Lead on, Macduff.”
“Huh?” the young boy asked. Then: “Ah, yer lookin’ for a gram of the duff, guv’nor? I know a man who knows a man if you know wot I mean…” He made a thumb-across-palm gesture.
The Reverend frowned sternly.
“Take us to my son. The man who gave you the letter for me.”
“Right ho, guv’nor,” said the messenger. “Foller me right alon’ here then, guv.”
Chapter Eighteen
It was further than the Reverend had expected; down the corridor, left turn into a smaller corridor that opened up on an elevator bank. The messenger pressed the Down call button, and when a half-full one arrived here at the thirtieth floor pressed the button for the twenty-second. When they arrived at that level, the boy began to lead the Reverend down another corridor when the precinct boss balked. He couldn’t keep up with this sprightly young brat’s eager scampering and it was beneath his dignity to try.
“Boy, go to my son and fetch him. Tell him to meet me here.”
“Ain’t much further, guv. Just down this hall and through a few rooms, then across the balcony and down the hall ‘til we’re there in a jiff,” the boy said.
“I. Don’t. Care,” said Reverend Garson. Every edition of the Bible had firm words to say about the power dynamic between a father and his son, between a king and his prince, between a lord and his heir. God was on the side of the older man in every case; other men’s sons might drag them on chases through hotels, but he was about to start sweating if he hurried much further.
The boy paused, then shook his head.
“Ain’t likely I’ll say that to ‘em, sorry guv.”
CJ – Carl John Garson the would-be Third – was thirty-eight, a respectable and studious understudy to his father who was often trusted to handle major precinct business on his own. Whatever this opportunity was, it would almost certainly be worth both men’s time. There would also be a good reason for them to meet wherever this boy was taking them rather than somewhere closer, but Reverend Carl Garson couldn’t imagine what that might be.
He could imagine an imminent situation, however, where he made a bad impression on someone important – any chance encounter in this place might be that – by appearing breathless and sweaty, which he would be if he kept this pace up much longer. CJ, who in early middle age was still an enthusiastic sport fencer and casual duellist, hadn’t considered his old man’s stamina.
“You seem impudent enough to me,” the Reverend observed. “What’s your problem with telling my son to come meet me.”
The boy rolled his eyes and motioned again along the corridor with his head.
“Not yer son, guv. The spiff he’s cartin’. Ain’t a rover’s bell that spiff’s jack right up, guv’nor!”
The Reverend frowned sternly down at the young messenger.
“I’ll thank you to speak in proper English, boy.”
“Guv, I’m takin’ yer to ‘em. Come right along ricky-dicky dai-dan!” the boy urged.
Reluctantly – the pause of about a minute had at least given him time to catch his breath – Reverend Garson followed, the boy effortlessly staying eight or ten feet ahead of him. A check of his watch showed that it was about quarter to seven o’clock.
At eight this evening, he and CJ, and their wives, had been invited to the private dining room of a Midtown associate the Reverend understood to be one of Roman Kalashov’s personal vory v zakone, his diplomats and troubleshooters. He would absolutely have to change for that honour, and a fresh tuxedo was ready in his room. Which meant that in the thirty-five to forty minutes maximum before that, he could afford to get a little sweaty.
There is an extremely good reason for this, CJ, he thought as he broke into a labouring run along the corridor, the boy effortlessly keeping the lead as they passed a cleaners’ cart loaded with fresh towels. You – puff – would not – puff – send this boy – puff – to lead me on – puff, stumble – this run for nothing.
* * *
It was a little more than five minutes later, by the Reverend’s watch, when the messenger boy finally stopped outside a slightly-open door, marked ‘22CC535A’ in raised golden letters on a shiny brass plaque. The décor of this wing of the hotel was oak and fluffy carpet; the corridor walls were intermittently decorated with postcard-sized oil paintings surrounded by elaborate gold frames that dwarfed them.
His chest heaving and sweaty, the puffed-out Reverend glared at the boy.
“CJ’s in here, eh?”
“Ay, guv’nor. Quid me out, eh?” The kid’s thumb across his palm made the meaning of that phrase clear.
“See my valet for it,” the Reverend snapped. As though a precinct boss would carry cash himself!
“Righty-ho, guv. Acca-dacey!” the young messenger grinned, and began to jog off down the corridor.
Reverend Garson pushed the oak door open, expecting two people. Instead there was just his son, CJ, sitting on the small room’s bed checking his watch. He was a tall, well-built and fit man of thirty-eight, with a tonsured head of starting-to-thin-slightly blond hair; he wore a modest tan suit with a stylized metallic pink representation of a flower pinned to the lapel, and got up when his dad came in.
“There you are, Dad. About time.”
“What’s the meaning of this goose chase?” Reverend Garson demanded. It was just the two of them in this room, so the dignity of a tenement boss was beside the point; he staggered over to the room’s other piece of furniture, a small wooden chair next to a writing desk, and sank down. His jacket was unbuttoned; reflexively he started fixing that up.
>
“You wouldn’t believe it, Dad. Just a sec.”
On the nearer of the bedtables was a hand-held touchpad phone, a plastic model of a design whose basic model hadn’t changed appreciably in two centuries. CJ picked the handset up and dialled a short code – beep beep beep beep beep, five digits. That meant a line interior to the building.
It seemed to ring a couple of times before CJ said, “Hello? Yes ma’am, he just got here. No, I can remember it. Four nine five B, got it. Thank you ma’—thank you Lady Under-Intendant, I’m sorry. Yes Lady Under-Intendant, four nine five B.”
Reverend Garson raised an eyebrow sharply. ‘Lady Under-Intendant’ meant arkie of the Intendancy, and not just any Intendancy member: you said that to pay grades US-10 through -14, the ones with circles on their shoulders.
“I thought she’d meet us here, I’m sorry,” said CJ, getting up from the bed. He went over to Reverend Garson and extended a hand, helping his father up from the chair.
“Who is this Intendancy person? Do you know she’s legitimate?” Reverend Garson asked. There were senior Intendancy, circles and wreaths, to be seen at the Independent Hotel. Not that he’d had real cause to meet with any of them in his two days staying here, or his previous visits.
“Room 495B,” CJ repeated, moving toward the door.
“I’m – I just ran halfway across the hotel, CJ,” said Reverend Garson. “Allow us a moment to freshen up for this woman. We need to show proper respect when it comes to these people, son. You know that! There’s a lot the right Intendancy connection could do for the precinct!”
“Oh God, I know” said CJ. “And this woman – I met her in the elevator about half an hour ago. It seems… I was surprised,” he said, choosing his words very carefully, “by how focused they seem to be on loftier views than our own world.”
The two men headed back out into the corridor, CJ closing the heavy oak door carefully and respectfully behind them.
“The numbers go down in this direction - 495 is along this way,” Reverend Garson pointed, running his free hand through his hair. There really wasn’t a lot he could do to freshen up without taking a shower; he hoped this wearer of circles would be forgiving.
“Loftier views?” Reverend Garson asked his son as they briskly walked, following the falling numbers on the rooms’ door plates.
“Yes,” said CJ. “She came up to me, extremely politely, asked if I might know anyone associated with Manhattan ‘industrial enterprises’, her phrase. I asked if there was a particular kind of industry she might be interested in, and – she asked if we processed metallics.”
The tenement economy was driven by farming of food and organics, scavenging of metallics and organics from ruins, and – primarily – by gathering, purifying and recycling raw materials from the arkscrapers’ mighty trash feeds. Reverend Garson had at one point read that that there were more than ninety million arkies living in over four thousand scrapers across the NYC-Philadelphia Conurbation, with inner areas – Manhattan, for instance – primarily residential and commercial, while industrially- and agriculturally-focused arks occupied the region’s outskirts.
Different materials had different values to the arkies, when sorted and purified and sold back to them through the Exchanges; the values could change significantly from day to day or even between buildings on the same day. But the one constant was that metals, especially heavier ones, tended to be worth significantly more per ounce than any other raw materials, and anything else at all except the rare and prized early-stage manufacturing orders. There was not a tenement in the conurbation that did not handle them.
“I said to her that yes, we did in fact process metallics,” CJ continued as the two men hustled along the hotel corridor.
“508, 506,” Reverend Garson read the door plates. “Yeah, what’d she say then? We should stop for you to fill me in proper, before we meet her, really.”
“She asks if we do ferrous metals, whether we process them past the separation stage or just sell them to the Exchange as-is. Dad, I said of course that we separate our ferrous metals the cleanest she’s ever seen, if she’s interested in that kind of thing. She shakes her head and asks me if I can recommend anyone who might be interested in taking the process past separation.”
“Wait. Past full separation?” Reverend Garson asked. Fully, cleanly, refined and separated was the state you took your metallics to, the state when they were ready to be fed into the Exchange purchase machines. There was nothing past that—
Except—
“Yeah, Dad,” CJ said as they passed Room 501A, almost there now. 500A on the same side, 499A, 498A, then a half-open door with no brass plaque on it; through it Reverend Garson caught a glimpse of washing machines and linen racks.
“For processes past separation,” CJ continued to explain the obvious to his father, “you have to look at street industry – the stuff tenements manufacture for end-user consumption in their own and other tenements. We take the refined elements, we alloy them, we mould and shape them prior to manufacturing assembly.
“So I tell her, yes, Lady Under-Intendant, the Garsons would be very interested in serving your organization’s pre-manufacture parts resourcing needs.”
“Oh yes,” Reverend Garson breathed, and came to a stop outside the door whose engraved brass identification plaque was marked ‘22CC495B’.
“I said that, Dad. Then she gets cold and says she’s not going to waste her time negotiating – like giving us those capabilities and those contracts is negotiation! – with some underling, she wants the top boss.”
“I’m here,” Reverend Garson said. “Good job, CJ.”
This door was just a fraction ajar; Reverend Garson knocked hesitantly once, then twice more with increasing firmness. Then his son gently pushed it inwards.
“She said to meet her inside this room,” CJ explained.
This room was bigger and somewhat better furnished than the almost Spartan first one had been. The floor was covered wall to wall with thin, dark carpet and a couple of thick rugs, one of the rugs underneath the legs of a neatly-made queen-sized bed. A solid-looking dark wood coffee table sat by the entrance, and a large flatscreen entertainment unit was mounted on the wall. Facing the foot of the bed, as the two men cautiously pushed in from the entrance, was the half-open door of a spotless tiled bathroom. It didn’t look like anyone had been inside this room since the last cleaners had come through.
“We’re here like you said,” CJ called out in a low voice as he took a step inside.
Reverend Garson followed him in, making a couple of cautious steps inside toward the bathroom, aiming to see if this Intendancy woman might be in there.
“Lady Under-Intendant?” CJ called out again in a low tone.
“There’s a phone on the bedtable,” the Reverend pointed. “Dial that code again?”
“You don’t need to, gentlemen,” came a female voice from the doorway behind them. “Reverend Carl Garson the Second, I imagine?”
The Reverend turned as he said “Yes, Lady Under-Intendant.” In the doorway, stepping into the room as she pulled the heavy oak door shut behind her, was a tall and strikingly beautiful woman in an elegant pale-pink skirt-suit with three evenly-spaced, open, silver circles on each shoulderboard of her buttoned jacket. Blonde hair fell to her shoulders and the smile on her lips reached to her eyes as she regarded the Reverend and his son.
“An honour and a pleasure, Lady Under-Intendant First Class,” said the Reverend smoothly as he extended a hand. The executive’s fingers were unadorned by any rings – the only jewellery he could see on her was a pinprick stud in each ear lobe – and her grip was solid but respectful.
He’d met arkies before, even Intendancy of higher rank – occasionally Senior-Intendant grades, the ones with wreaths on their shoulders, came down to the Independent’s auditoriums to give incomprehensible but well-attended lectures on virtue, sometimes followed by autographs and photo opportunities – but he’d never been alone with
one in a hotel room like this.
“Dad, meet Lady Under First Laura Bourne,” said CJ. “Lady Under First Bourne, this is my father, who… whose name you already know.”
With her left hand, Lady Under First Bourne gently closed the door behind her; the latch settled into place with a soft, oiled click. She gently turned the lock, which fell into place with a softer, barely-perceptible clunk.
Reverend Carl Garson gave her a broad smile.
“What brings you down here to the Independent, my lady?”
Under First Laura Bourne gave a slight roll of her shoulders.
“Personal and business interests,” she said, her lips flickering in a slight smile. The Reverend felt her sharp green eyes flickering between himself and CJ, looking both men up and down. “But Reverend Garson, I must apologize for being a truly abysmal host. Attempting to entertain two gentlemen of the tenements in a sparse hotel room…”
“No, no,” said Carl Garson. “It’s entirely fine, Lady Under First. We street types are plain and simple folk, you know.” He gave a smile that he hoped would seem self-deprecating.
She turned slightly and stepped over to the writing desk, where next to a one-litre electric kettle there was a four-strong stack of disposable plastic coffee cups and an array of tea, sugar, powdered milk and instant coffee packets. Under half the bench – the Reverend hadn’t noticed until she reached down to open it – was a small bar fridge.
“Coffee, gentlemen?” she asked as she took a large bottle of spring water from the fridge’s inside door.
“No thank you, Lady Under First,” said the Reverend, then rapidly added, “but please, don’t let that stop you.”
The arkie executive half-turned to face him for a moment as she opened the water bottle, her long fingers deftly twisting the cap off.
“I had no intention of allowing any such thing,” she smiled at him, then turned back to empty the one-later water bottle down the open top of the electric kettle. Carl Garson found his eyes drifting to her backside, following the line of her legs down that knee-length pink-tinted skirt to end in a pair of white heels. Glug-glug-glug went the water out of its bottle and into the kettle. There was a slight click as she pressed its activation lever.