“Don’t want to,” Kowalski replied after a moment. “But have to, I guess. And it’s better if you’re the one who talks to Commander Gresh.”
Monty sat up straighter. “Why do I need to talk to the commander of the bomb squad?”
“He and his family are among the humans Simon Wolfgard is allowing to shop in the Market Square and buy food items as well as other goods.”
“Captain Burke is also included among those humans. Is that a problem?”
Kowalski breathed out, an audible sound. “With everyone putting in extra hours since that storm in early Sumor, shopping in the Market Square has been handy, you know? You come home from work, do some chores, buy some ground meat from the Courtyard’s butcher shop and a couple of rolls from A Little Bite, and have burgers with a salad or some of the vegetables from your share of the Green Complex garden. You buy eggs there because it’s easier than standing in line in the grocery store or butcher shop in the Bird Park Plaza and finding out the person ahead of you bought the last dozen—and then having to break up a fight between the woman who bought the last dozen and a woman trying to take them in order to bake her kid a birthday cake. And broken eggs end up on the floor, along with the women, and you, being an officer of the law, have to sort it out and arrest one or both.”
“You had to do that?”
“I broke up a fight like that a couple of days ago—after the eggs hit the floor and things really got nasty—but I was off duty at the time, so Officer Hilborn made the arrest.”
“Gods,” Monty muttered. Had his preoccupation with his own family distracted him so much that he hadn’t been aware of what was going on? “Are we going to have to quell riots?”
“If we do, it’s because people aren’t using the same sense and neighborly kindness they would have shown each other a few months ago,” Kowalski replied. “Before the Humans First and Last movement got everyone thinking that any time a shop runs out of something it’s a shortage and people are going to starve if they don’t hoard whatever they can grab off the shelves, those women might have fought over a dozen eggs. People do stupid things all the time. But more likely they would have been passing acquaintances—women who didn’t know each other outside of chatting in the shops while waiting their turn, but still people who would know a bit about each other. Instead of fighting over the eggs, they would have split the dozen so that the woman could bake a birthday cake for her kid. That’s what people would have done. That’s what most are still doing.”
“New people have run to the remaining human-controlled cities, looking for work and a place to live. They’ll be trying to buy rationed goods at the shops too, so it stands to reason that supplies won’t always match the demand for a while.”
“That concern about supply and demand isn’t limited to the human shops.”
Monty considered his partner’s body language. Kowalski was circling around something. “Just say it, Karl.”
“If we’re not careful, we may not be welcome in the Market Square stores much longer, and that’s going to make it harder on all of us.”
Monty sighed. “This is about Jimmy?”
“It’s about all of us. As for family . . .” Kowalski let out a bitter laugh. “Ruthie’s mother, the woman who loudly declared that her daughter was dead and called my Ruthie trash, rang her this morning and wanted Ruthie to buy her a ham—five or six pounds would do. After all, the freaks had plenty of meat and could just catch more if they ran out. When Ruthie said she couldn’t buy that much meat even if a ham was available . . .” He drove for a minute in silence. “I could hear her screaming at Ruthie halfway across the room, so I took the phone and hung up on the bitch.”
“I’m sorry, Karl. For you and for Ruth.”
“Yeah, well. Personally, I hope that bridge is burned for good. Not sure what that says about me, but I hope it is.”
“You love your wife and don’t want to see her hurt.” Monty studied his partner, an uneasy feeling corseting his ribs. Even before the storm and the difficulty of transporting food and other goods between the regions, it was less expensive to buy food in the Courtyard than in other stores in the city. With prices going up even more, and with some food items in short supply, would there be pressure from friends and family on those who had access to the Courtyard to supply them with food as well?
Was selling food under the table one of those options Jimmy was exploring? Gods.
“I’m piecing this together from things the girls overheard or were told by Nadine, who has more information about raw food supplies than the rest of us since her bakery is now operating within A Little Bite,” Kowalski continued. “When Simon Wolfgard made the apartment residents part of the Courtyard and, therefore, among the beings who could eat the food produced within the Courtyard or brought in from the farms that supply the Courtyard, the Others figured out they would need an extra fifty pounds of meat per week to provide for their tenants. Someone figured out that amounted to twenty-four ounces of meat for each human—roughly four good-size burgers or a small roast or meat for a stew. And that means the Wolves now have to bring down two deer each week instead of one because the quantity of beef and pork being sent to the Courtyard from earth native farms hasn’t changed.”
“And a pack isn’t successful at every hunt.”
“The deer herd has been self-sustaining because the Wolves won’t kill a fawn unless it’s already injured. But how long will that be true if more deer are killed than reproduce?”
Now Monty understood why he would have to talk to Louis Gresh. Every purchase of meat from the Market Square butcher shop was putting pressure on the Wolfgard. Regardless of whether the Wolves preferred eating deer or moose over beef, some members of their pack—mainly Meg Corbyn—preferred beef and pork. The day Meg went hungry because some other human had bought the last pound of meat or the last dozen eggs was the day there would be a significant change in the relationship between the humans in Lakeside and the terra indigene—and that change would not be good.
“You have any thoughts about this?” he asked.
“Now that the mayor has implemented the fair-distribution act so that each butcher shop receives a percentage of the meat coming in from another region, twenty-four ounces is the per-person, per-week limit a registered customer can reserve at a butcher shop,” Kowalski replied. “The kind of meat doesn’t matter. That’s the total.”
“A significant change for most households—except for the few of us who can buy that amount from two sources.”
Kowalski nodded. “The girls talked it over, and they’re going to purchase what they can from the human stores because we can buy rationed goods and the Others can’t. The terra indigene can buy pizzas at Hot Crust or eat at the Saucy Plate, but they can’t go into a butcher shop and buy a roast. So the girls are thinking that if we sell half the meat ration to the Courtyard each week—and by ‘sell’ I mean receiving a credit equal to the amount we paid for the meat—we can buy a sandwich at A Little Bite or have a meal at Meat-n-Greens without putting a squeeze on the Others. Nadine is going to float the idea to Tess.”
“I’ll talk to my mother. She may have some ideas. Even during lean times, she made sure we ate pretty well.” Monty thought for a moment, then looked at Kowalski, fighting not to smile. “Or is my mama one of the girls?”
Kowalski blushed and concentrated on his driving.
“There is the creek running through the Courtyard. Maybe a few of us should try to catch some fish.” Were there places along the shore of Lake Etu where people went to fish? He’d never been interested in the activity, but it was another source of food.