“You betcha,” answered the GBI agent with the blackjack. To his comrades, he said, “Bring him on in. We’ll get him processed and go out for the next bastard on the list.”
Processed Mike was, like a side of beef. Some kind of official demanded his name. He had to think twice before he could give it. They searched him. They fingerprinted him. They photographed him. He doubtless looked like hell, but they didn’t care.
They gave him a number: NY24601. Someone wrote it on a piece of cloth with an indelible pen and stapled it to his lapel. For good measure, the man yanked the jacket off him and wrote it on the lining. “Don’t forget it,” he said. “From now on, that’s you.”
Since Mike had trouble with his name just then, he wasn’t sure about stowing the number in his pounding head, but he had help with it. They hauled him up in front of a fellow with a nameplate on his desk that said MORRIS FRUMKIN and below it, in smaller letters, ADMINISTRATIVE LAW JUDGE. “Charges?” Frumkin asked in a bored voice.
“Wrecking, to wit, libel against the Administration and its enlightened policies,” replied the man with the enlightened blackjack.
“Oh. He’s that Sullivan.” Morris Frumkin made a check mark on a list held in a clipboard. “Well, we don’t need much of a hearing for him, do we? He obviously did it. Sullivan, as administrative punishment for wrecking, you are transferred to a labor encampment in the Deprived Areas”-even groggy, Mike heard the capital letters thud into place-“for a term not to be shorter than five years and not to exceed ten. Transfer to take place immediately, sentence to be counted from arrival at the encampment.” He gabbled that out by rote and nodded to the men who had charge of Mike. “Put him in the holding cells till the next paddy wagon goes to Penn Station.”
They did. Half a dozen men already waited there. They were all the worse for wear. A couple had blood on their heads and shoulders-the Jeebies who clouted them hadn’t been so smooth as Mike’s captor. And one was all bloody and bruised. He’d put up a fight before Joe Steele’s agents could subdue him. What had it got him? Fifteen to twenty instead of five to ten. He was proud of the longer term, as he was of his lumps.
Mike’s head started pounding like a steel mill. One of the other wreckers slipped him two aspirins from a little tin the GBI men had missed. That was sending a baby to do a man’s job, but every little bit helped.
Another man got tossed in. Then the Jeebies herded them into a van. They went to Penn Station, and down to a level Mike had never imagined, much less seen. The splendid imitation of the Baths of Caracalla on the ground floor might as well not have existed. This wasn’t Roman. It was all bare, angular concrete and hard metal benches without backs. Mike sank down onto one and held his poor abused noggin in his hands. Several other wreckers assumed the same pose.
A train clattered in. The noise hurt, the way it would have with a hangover. Guards chivvied them into the front two cars. Those were already crowded. Most of the guys in them talked with New England accents. The guards didn’t care that they were only making the crowding worse.
“Don’t worry about it none, you sorry shitheads,” one of them said. “Time you get where you’re goin’, whole fuckin’ train’ll be packed.” He laughed. Mike didn’t think it was funny, not that the guard gave a damn.
The whistle screamed. That hurt, too. The train pulled away from that subterranean stop. Mike was bound for. . somewhere.
* * *
The telephone rang. Charlie did his best to jump through the ceiling. When the phone goes off in the middle of the night, it means one of two things. Either some sleepy operator has made a wrong connection at the switchboard or something horrible has happened to somebody who thinks you’re important.
“Gevalt!” Esther said.
“No kidding.” Charlie rolled out of bed and headed for the living room. He hit his toe on the door frame and his shin on the coffee table before he could grab the phone. “Hello?”
“This is the long-distance operator,” said a prim female voice. “I have a call for you from Stella Sullivan in New York City. Will you accept?”
“Yeah,” Charlie answered. Something horrible had happened, all right, and he was only too sure he knew what it was.
“Go ahead, Miss Sullivan. . excuse me, Mrs. Sullivan,” the operator said. To Charlie, her voice seemed muffled-she was really talking to Stella at the other end of the connection.
“Charlie?” Stella said through pops and clicks.
“Yeah, it’s me, all right.” He wasn’t sleepy any more. Hoping against hope for a miracle, he asked, “What’s cooking?”
“Oh, my God, Charlie! They grabbed Mike! They came for him and they took him away and I don’t know what they did with him and I just stayed in the bedroom all scared and shivering till I knew they were gone and then I called you and oh my God Charlie what am I gonna do?” Stella didn’t usually talk like that. She didn’t usually have any excuse to talk like that.
Charlie let out a long, long sigh. “Oh. .” he said, and stopped right there. His father’s hard hand applied to the side of his head had taught him not to swear in front of women. On the phone with counted as in front of.
“What will you do, Charlie?” Stella said. “Can you do anything?”
“I’ll try,” Charlie said. “I don’t know what they’ll say. I don’t think trying will make it any worse for Mike. I don’t know if it’ll make things any better, either. But I’ll try. The worst they can tell me is no. I’m pretty sure that’s the worst they can tell me.”
“Thank you, Charlie. God bless you!” Stella said. “I’m gonna go light a candle in church right now.”
“Can’t hurt.” Charlie feared it was liable to do as much good as he could with Kagan or Scriabin or Mikoian.
He said his good-byes with Stella and stumped back to the bedroom. Esther had turned on the lamp on her nightstand, so he didn’t injure himself during the return trip. “Was that. .?” she began. She didn’t go on, or need to.
“Yeah, that’s what that was.” Charlie made a fist and hit the mattress as hard as he could. Then he hit it again. It didn’t accomplish anything, but it made him feel a tiny bit better. Darwin had it straight-men were only a small step from apes banging on stumps with branches. “They’ve got Mike.”
“Can you do anything about it?”
“I told Stella I’d try. I’ll go to the White House when it gets light. I’ll go hat in hand. I’ll wear dark glasses and wave a tin cup around. In the meantime, turn out the lamp again, okay?”
“Sure.” As she did, she asked, “Do you think you’ll go back to sleep?”
“No, but I’ll give it a shot.” He lay down on his back and stared up at the blackness under the ceiling. He tried to count sheep. In his mind, they all turned to mutton chops and legs of lamb. Eventually, after what seemed a long time and no doubt was, he did drop into a muddy doze that left him almost more tired than if he’d stayed awake.
When the alarm clock clattered, for a bad moment he thought it was Stella on the phone again. He’d never killed it with more relief. Esther set something on the table in front of him. He ate breakfast without noticing what it was. He did realize she kept his coffee cup full, and her own. He went on yawning in spite of all the help the java could give him.
He visited AP headquarters before heading for Pennsylvania Avenue. People were quietly sympathetic when he told them where he had to go. They knew Mike had gone after Joe Steele with brass knucks. They also knew what happened to anyone who did something so foolhardy. Talking about such things was bad manners, but everybody knew.
Even the guard outside the White House expected Charlie. “Mr. Mikoian told me you’d likely stop by this morning, Mr. Sullivan,” the Spanish-American War veteran said. “You go straight to his office. He’ll see you.”