Wanda-Jean was still standing glowering at Brigitte with clenched fists. Brigitte managed a calm greeting.
"Good afternoon, Mr. Priest."
"Hi there, Brigitte. Do I detect some tension in the air?"
"I think Wanda-Jean is starting to feel the strain. The fan rags weren't very kind to her."
Bobby Priest was the picture of caring concern. He put a protective arm around Wanda-Jean. "You don't want to let those things get to you. They got to write something or they wouldn't stay in business."
Wanda-Jean crumpled. She sat down on the bed. "It's not just that. It's the whole thing, being shut up in here, not having any life of my own. It just gets so hard."
"You'll be the one who's laughing, when you win."
"If I win."
"You got to think positive."
"Everyone seems to want to tell me what I got to do."
Bobby Priest sat down beside her. He took hold of her hand and stroked it. "Just relax, babe. Take one thing at a time and you'll be okay."
"You don't know what it's like. It's the waiting, the not knowing what's going to happen to you."
"You think I don't have troubles?"
Wanda-Jean dropped her head into her hands. "Yeah, I suppose so. I've just got myself wound up."
Bobby Priest patted her shoulder and got up. "I think I know what you need. You need to get out of here for a while."
Wanda-Jean looked up sharply. "I've been saying that all day. I just get told that it's against the rules."
"Not if you're with me."
Wanda-Jean half smiled. She almost, but not quite, fluttered her eyelashes. "Are you asking me for a date, Mr. Priest?"
Bobby Priest hit a formal pose. "I'd be honored if you'd permit me to take you to dinner tonight, ma'am."
Wanda-Jean laughed. "I'd be honored to come."
Instantly Bobby Priest was back again being his highspeed self. "Good. I've got to move now. I'll pick you up at eight."
"I'll be ready."
"Yeah, right."
It seemed as though Wanda-Jean was dismissed already. With mixed feelings, she watched Priest hurry out of the suite.
RALPH EMERGED FROM THE RT EXPRESS station to the all-too-familiar crowding, the piled-up trash, and the relentless decay. Even the booze and the contempt that familiarity was supposed to breed didn't stop the dull fear that always nagged at his gut on the ride home. The fear started fairly soon after the monorail pulled out of Reagan Plaza. That was the last outpost of downtown civilization. After Reagan Plaza, the twilight sprawl started, the miles of urban wasteland, the seemingly endless expanse of burned-out shopping malls, twentieth-century high-rise towers that loomed like giant crumbling headstones, and the equally beat-up durafoam adobes that were the sad legacy of the Cuomo Administration's final, doomed crusade for national urban renewal. From Reagan on, only the underclass rode the rail, and they had long since been told to go and lose themselves. The cops had been pulled off the trains and it was a safe bet that there was no one watching the security monitors. The farther out one went from Reagan Plaza station, the more the fear grew. The cars became increasingly empty, and the dwindling numbers of passengers became more and more vulnerable to attacks by gangs of railjammers, bloods, and locos. Once upon a time, robbery had been the motive. Now most of the passengers who went all the way out to Lincoln Avenue, 207th Street, Southend, or the Point had very little worth stealing. That didn't, however, stop the attacks. The weirdies were on the rail, and they were so unpredictable they could do just about anything to the lone riders that were unfortunate enough to be on a train they took it into their heads to wild through.
Down on street level, the rail curved away, over the roofs of buildings that sagged against each other, apparently kept up only by encrusted grime and a miracle. Lincoln Avenue had once been a prosperous neighborhood shopping strip, but it had become a picture of desolation. The few stores that were still open were protected by steel grilles on the outside and armed guards within. Layers of graffiti covered every flat surface. Winos and derelicts shuffled on the cracked sidewalks, and groups of young men stood on street corners in immobile surly groups. Their fury at simply being alive was only temporarily damped down by Serenax, Blind Tiger, and Night Train.
As his own booze haze wore off, it left behind a nagging depression, the kind of depression where every problem, big or small, becomes insurmountable. He brooded for a minute or so on how Sam didn't like him. He meant to be pleasant to Sam, but, always, it ended up with him picking on the guy. He had even left Sam standing on the street that night. He had walked off without saying so much as "Good night" or "See you later."
Ralph's depressions had a habit of jumping from subject to subject. From Sam he moved on to the stiffs who were dying. Ralph had been brought up on the old TV late shows, the fearless private eyes who stumbled across a telltale clue to corruption in high places, or the courageous reporters who brought down governments. They had always fought their way through against all the odds; they stripped away the facade and showed the world the rotten side of the big and powerful.
Ralph's train of self-pity was interrupted by a physical annoyance. For the second time that week, the moving walkway had broken down. It was typical. The only money that got spent in this city got spent on the rich. All the poor people got was cheap shit that broke down, if it ever worked at all. Ralph started the long trek down the tunnel to the boarding point.
As he walked, his mind grasshoppered from one cause of resentment to another. Sam, the job, he couldn't help it. It wasn't his fault that he wasn't Philip Marlowe or Mike Hammer, or Bernstein and Woodward. Sure it would be great to get at Combined Media. He would like to be a hero, to smash the structure and show everyone its corrupt, disgusting inside. It wasn't his fault he didn't have friends in the police department, or work on a fearless, fact-finding TV show. He was just a drunk in a dead end, union nonjob who was frightened of the ride home at night. Nobody could expect him to overturn the system.
He turned the corner and saw the CRAC squad down the block: City Riot And Combat. There must have been a baby riot or radical wilding for them to be out. The presence of a couple of fire trucks and the smell of smoke in the air seemed to confirm that. He started cautiously down the block. The CRAC squad members were spread out over the street. It was doubtful that those paramilitary supercops would let him through to take his usual route to his building. In places like Lincoln Avenue, the regular PD behaved like an occupying army. The CRAC squads were more like alien invaders, vicious and violent, who moved in and crushed disturbance with an iron fist and not even the public relations nicety of a velvet glove. CRAC men were built for business. Every one of them was well over six feet tall, anonymous, and threatening in dark blue coveralls, full-body flak jackets, and paler blue, bone-dome helmets with built-in radios. The majority carried over-and-under M20s that were capable of firing tear gas and concussion grenades, although a few had street sweepers, heavy, rapid-fire shotguns that were more than capable of doing exactly what their name implied. The CRAC team's faces were hidden behind gas masks, which not only added to their air of invaders from space but also protected them from recognition when the inevitable charges of police brutality were raised after one of their actions. Something bad had definitely gone down. Sal's Pizza was a burned-out ruin; Ralph could see four bodies lying on the street. A teenage girl huddled on the sidewalk would not stop screaming. An officer went over to her. He hit her once, a quick jab with the butt of his weapon, and she was immediately silent. Ralph didn't even speculate how the trouble had started. Such sudden flares of violence could come out of nowhere-a word or a gesture, and the next moment there would be slaughter. Automatic weapons were common in these areas; even the kids carried them.