The intercom on his desk buzzed. “Mr. Stuyvesant, Mr. and Mrs. Garrett are here to see you.”
“Send them up.”
“Grimnoir business, I presume?” Chandler asked.
“No earthly idea.”
“Then I’d better be going,” Chandler polished off his drink and got off the couch. “Dan doesn’t like when I ogle his rather lovely wife, which is remarkably difficult not to do even when sober. Tonight? He’d probably suggest I take a stroll off your balcony and I’d probably find that a brilliant idea. I think I’ve had a touch much.”
That was a lie. Chandler could outdrink a sponge, though he had been dealing with auditors all day, and if anything was an excuse to drink to excess, it was auditors. “You don’t have to leave. It isn’t like that whole secret society thing is particularly secret anymore.”
“Ha! You think I want to know? Please. Once Roosevelt has his way with you all, I’ve got to try to figure out how to include this job on my resume without mentioning our association, Mr. Blacklist… Either that or I’ll just embezzle a bunch of your money before Roosevelt steals it all and then retire to a beach in Cuba.”
“Night, Ray.”
“Night, Francis.”
Francis passed the time waiting for his associates to arrive by coming up with inventive new curse words. They entered a few minutes after Chandler had left. Jane immediately came over and gave him a hug, because that’s just how Jane was, and she could probably tell he was having a bad day. Chandler was right: Jane was a beauty. Francis had always thought she looked and even sounded a little bit like Marlene Dietrich. Also, Jane really was a sweet heart, just an all-around nice person to the core of her being. “I saw the papers.”
“Hard to miss that big cartoon of me on the front page, holding up the sacks labeled blood money while standing on a pile of corpses titled equality and prosperity.”
“They were never one for nuance,” Dan agreed.
“I thought the cartoon made you look cute,” Jane said. “I’ve never been famous enough to warrant a caricature. You and Dan are in the comics all the time now.”
“They don’t use you because they don’t want to put a pretty face on the Active menace. They always make me look like a troll,” Dan complained. “And fat, too.”
“I prefer to think of you as attractively plump,” Jane said as she patted her much shorter husband on the stomach. Dan did look a bit troll-like to her in Jane’s company, but in comparison, so would most men. Not that it mattered to Jane, since, as a Healer, everybody looked like see-through meat bags filled with pumping organs and blood. But she always said that one simply got used to it. “Now hurry, Francis, fetch your hat. We must be going.”
“Why? You guys taking me out for a night on the town?”
“Sadly, no.” Dan spread his hands apologetically. “I just received word from Browning. His contact inside the government gave him a heads-up. There’s been a new development on the registration front.”
“Oh, what now?” Francis grabbed his shoulder holster, threw it on, and then tossed his coat over it. The .45 sitting on top of his desk went into the holster. There had been talk about a new executive order, but he’d been too busy trying to keep his business holdings in one piece to pay much attention to the rumors. “They rounding people up already?”
“It is a special holding area for Actives, all right,” Jane answered, “but it isn’t a roundup, Actives are supposedly volunteering for this.”
“What? That’s got to be a lie. The propaganda machine isn’t even trying hard.”
“We need to head over to New Jersey to check it out.”
“New Jersey?” Francis thought about it for a second. He went back to his desk, grabbed another .45 auto and several extra loaded magazines. Jane raised an eyebrow. “Hey, don’t give me that look. It’s Jersey.”
Drew Town, New Jersey
It wasn’t at all what he’d expected. It wasn’t a prison camp. It was a town, and a rather cozy one at that, nestled in the forest, next to a serene lake, all within commuting distance from the city. The signs even said that they’d be putting in a bus line, the lake was stocked with fish, and the forest even had hiking trails. There were signs every-where, all talking about how wonderful Drew Town was and would be, and every sign had happy families on it doing happy family things. Some of the art had been stolen from the Saturday Evening Post.
The houses were nice. Most of them were still under construction, but the first two hundred were already finished in their neat orderly rows, on perfectly level streets laid out in a grid. Numbers north and south, letters east and west. Lawns were still going in, but every finished house already had a white picket fence around it.
There was no barbed-wire fence around the perimeter. No spotlights or guard towers. Sure, there was a gatehouse on the road with a couple of bored security men inside, but that was it. They’d simply gone around the gatehouse and followed a dump truck up a dirt side road. Even in the middle of the night the construction crews were working at a feverish pace, with hundreds of workers toiling away beneath the spotlights. More signs proclaimed that these men were employed because of Roosevelt’s Works Project Administration.
“WPA?” Dan asked as they drove past dozens of homes under construction.
“It stands for We Poke Along,” Francis answered. “It’s a new billion-dollar agency that pays the unemployed tax money to dig holes and then fill them back in.”
“Why, Francis, I’d never known you to be so political,” Jane said.
“I’ve got a right to complain. When I get mugged, I’m not expected to thank the mugger.” There were electric lights on every corner. They’d already broken ground for several large buildings. The signs around those sites said that those would be schools, hospitals, churches, and even factories. It was like a massive, planned-out company town, only far nicer. “What the hell are they up to?”
“I’ve not heard a word from the news about this place,” Jane said. “According to Browning’s government informant, this place is supposed to hold Actives.”
“They’re expecting thousands of people to live here, that’s for certain.” Dan pulled the Packard to a stop in front of one of the finished houses. The lights were on inside. “Hang on. I’ll get us some answers.” Dan got out, and Francis and Jane followed him.
Their Mouth went up the steps and rang the doorbell. Insects were buzzing around the porch lights. Jane paused to admire the flower beds. Francis noted that there was a bronze plaque on the door. It was a floating anvil. “You see that?”
Dan scowled at the plaque. “That’s the sign they want Heavies to wear on their armbands.” He rang the bell again.
There was noise from the other side, and then the door opened to reveal a tall, extremely broad-shouldered, thick-necked man. The fellow towered over them and had callused worker’s hands that looked like they could entirely engulf Dan’s head. He certainly looked like a Heavy. “It’s late. What do you want?”
“Are you the resident?” Dan asked.
The Heavy’s beady eyes narrowed. “Huh?”