That wasn’t true farther south. Egypt preserved things from long-gone days because it was so dry. How many papyri would molder because rain fell on them, or on the ancient rubbish heaps that held them? The number wouldn’t be small, whatever it was. And nobody could do anything about it.
Susan was thinking along the same lines. “Before the eruption, we would have sent all kinds of aid if something like that happened to Egypt,” she said. “But it’s hit us harder than it’s hit the Egyptians.”
“Hasn’t it just?” Bryce finished his beer. He thought about another one, but decided not to. “It’s like the fellow on the Beeb said. We’ve got so many troubles here at home, we can’t worry about anything farther away.”
“Speaking of which,” Susan said, “when I went down to get the mail earlier this afternoon, the apartment manager told me the police finally caught that guy who was breaking into places.”
“Good,” Bryce said. The burglar had hit seven or eight houses and apartments, including one on the ground floor of this building.
“Good—I guess,” Susan said. “It was a Hispanic fellow—one of the homesteaders. ‘They should ship ’em all back to the camps,’ the manager said. ‘They’re nothin’ but a pack of thieves.’”
“Oh,” Bryce said. “No, that’s not so great.” The towns of northeastern Nebraska got on warily at best with the newcomers. It was worse in the smaller places than in Wayne. The people in those places cut no one any slack, not even their own neighbors. And it wasn’t good here. The apartment manager’s attitude was widespread. A homesteader who lived down to a stereotype wouldn’t help.
XVII
Through her father and on her own, Vanessa kept doing what she could to get some payback on Bronislav Nedic. Her family might hail from Scotland and Ireland, but she had a Balkans sense of revenge. Bronislav had wronged her. He’d stolen from her. He’d pretended to love her—and to like her story—so he could steal from her. Yes, he was long gone and most of the country away. She’d get even anyhow, one way or another.
When she had electricity, she created dummy e-mail addresses for fictional people who lived in and around Mobile. She used them to write savage reviews of his restaurant. Unity should be broken up, one of them began, and went downhill from there. The others were just as sweet. She slammed the food, the location, the service, the prices—anything she could think of. One of her fictitious alter egos agreed with another about how lousy things were. Yet another chimed in with new complaints.
She had no idea how much harm she was doing. The restaurant stayed open, so she wasn’t doing enough to suit her. She wanted Bronislav to crash and burn. If he started up again somewhere else, she wanted him to crash and burn there, too.
And she kept trying to work through the police. The cops in California were sympathetic enough. The Mobile police, though, and the state police operating out of Montgomery, just didn’t give a damn. Bronislav played nice in Alabama. That was all they cared about.
After she saw a court case on TV, she went to the FBI. That meant taking a day off and riding the bus downtown, but she did it. She explained what she wanted at the front desk. The woman there sent her to an agent named Gideon Sneed. His looks were against him—with his eyes set close together, he reminded her of Micah Husak, whom she’d seen and tasted too much of back at Camp Constitution.
Hoping against hope, she did some more explaining. “He stole my money and took it across state lines,” she said. “That’s what you people do, right? Go after bad guys in interstate commerce?”
Agent Sneed grudged a nod. “Theoretically, yes, that’s what we do,” he said. “But from what you’ve told me, there’s nothing here important enough for us to put any enforcement effort into it. We’re stretched too thin the way things are. The whole government’s been stretched too thin since the eruption.”
“Oh, fuck the eruption!” Vanessa said furiously. “Whenever people feel like sitting on their hands, they use it for an excuse.”
“We’re not sitting on our hands. That’s the point.” Agent Sneed worked hard to stay polite. If he hadn’t had a good-looking woman sitting in front of him, he probably wouldn’t have bothered. Vanessa wouldn’t be able to play that card forever—maybe not even for too much longer—but she still could. The FBI man went on, “Do you have any idea how much smuggling there is along the I-10 corridor that keeps L.A. fed?”
As a matter of fact, Vanessa did. Bronislav had told her stories about it, and laughed while he told them. Cigarettes, liquor, steaks… Anything that was either taxed or packed a lot of value into not much bulk was at least as likely to move in mysterious ways as it was to go with official blessing. More likely, if you believed his story. Of course, you were asking for trouble if you believed anything that lying fuck said. Vanessa had believed him for a while, and look at the trouble she’d wound up with.
She said none of that. She hoped not too much of it showed on her face. It must not have, because Gideon Sneed went on, “And this is just nickel-and-dime stuff next to what’s been going on in the Northeast since the lights went out there. They had the pipelines in that part of the country all set up already. They’ve been smuggling cigarettes for years and years, and they were hauling up moonshine even before that. Now?” He rolled his eyes. “Half the stuff that gets up there isn’t legit. More than half, for all we can prove. We can’t stop that traffic, but we do try to slow it down as much as we can. The Federal government and the states are in desperate need of all the tax revenue they can lay their hands on.”
Half of what went into the Northeast was smuggled? Maybe Bronislav had been telling the truth about life on the road, then. He was still a lying fuck.
He was still a crook, too. Vanessa said as much, adding, “It’s not like you’d have to call out the bloodhounds to catch him, for Christ’s sake. Whenever that restaurant is open, he’s there. For all I know, he sleeps there, too.”
“I understand that, Ms., uh, Ferguson,” Sneed said. “But he’s not what we would classify as a target of urgency. We can’t come close to going after all the people at the top of our prioritization scheme, let alone the ones who aren’t… . Is something wrong?”
“Never mind,” Vanessa said. Nick Gorczany would have been proud of coming out with a six-syllable piece of horseshit like prioritization. For Agent Sneed, plainly, it was all part of the day’s work. But you couldn’t tell people who talked like that, people who thought like that, how awful it was: they talked and thought that way because they had no idea how awful it was. The blatherers shall inherit the earth. By the available evidence, they already had.
“I am sorry. You did have a criminal offense perpetrated against you,” Sneed said. “You might be able to gain restitution through the civil courts.”
“I’ve thought about it,” Vanessa said. It would take Lord only knew how long. It would cost money up front that she didn’t have. She doubted a lawyer would take the case on a contingency basis—his share of what she stood to make even if she won wouldn’t be big enough to interest one of those mercenary bastards.
“I’m sorry I can’t be more helpful. I’m sorry the Bureau can’t be more helpful,” Sneed told her. “We are as severely impacted by the resource reductions since the eruption as any other agency. We have to pick and choose which cases to pursue with great care.”
“My tax dollars. Inaction.” Vanessa walked out. If Gideon Sneed wanted to think she’d said in action, she was stuck with it.