Saturday, May 12, 2007

Making It Right (Part 2)

Maureen and Amanda sat side by side on the sofa, clutching one another's hands. Their faces were as expressionless as two store mannequins.

"Well, ladies?" Conway said. He leaned forward in his chair. "Do you have any...questions?"

Maureen's eyes darted to Chris's. He nodded and tried his best to look reassuring.

I should have expected this. It's like telling them that they have no one to count on, that they have to learn to look after themselves. That might frighten them even worse than the attack.

"Dad," Amanda said faintly, "this wouldn't get us in any new trouble, would it?"

"Not a chance, honey. It's just like going to a judo school, except that we won't have to pay anything for it. Mr. Conway is being very generous." He looked sideways at his new employer. "I need to find a way to thank him properly."

Conway snorted. "Having you on my payroll is thanks enough. But yes, Amanda, your dad put it exactly right. You'll be learning pretty much what you would learn at a commercial dojo, but from my staff trainer. A lady not that much older than yourself, I might add." He grinned. "Do you ever wear makeup?"

"Uh, sometimes."

Chris chuckled. "A lot of times."

"She's pretty good with that, too. You might pick up some fashion tips from her."

"Mom?" Amanda pulled Maureen's hand into her lap.

Maureen Harkness was utterly still for a long moment. Chris couldn't even see her breathe.

"Chris," she said, "this won't change anything about us, will it?"

Chris frowned. "Like what, Mo?"

A hint of pain had crept into Maureen's face, as if she were struggling to expel an unwanted thought.

"We won't be dangerous to anyone?"

A spurt of laughter escaped him with his tension. "Well, actually, you will -- but only when you want to be. If you were thinking that you might spontaneously burst into action in the supermarket, you can relax."

The creases had not left Maureen's face. "Please, Chris, don't laugh at me. I've no acquaintance with...this part of your world."

My world.

The phrase rocked him like a slap of challenge.

I brought her here telling her she'd be safe. That Onteora was a tranquil, untroubled place where she and Mandy would feel at home. She came on my assurances. Now I'm encouraging her to become a weapon for her own protection. Like me.

Welcome to my world.

"Mo," he said, "I won't lie to you. This place is not what it was. Maybe it's no better than London, now. But it's our home, and Mandy's home. I don't want us to have to run from it. I can't think where we'd be any better off, anyway."

"I think I'll add an ingredient to the casserole," Conway said. "I can get you both pistol permits, and teach you how to shoot. I'm as good a firearms instructor as Christine is a martial-arts trainer. Between the two of us, we can make each of you a match for anything on two legs. "Of course," he said, grinning, "if you're attacked by a tank, it would still be advisable to run and hide."

Chris felt the temperature in the little living room drop perceptibly.

"Mr. Conway," she said without looking at him, "I come from a place where private firearms are all but unknown, except among criminals. Before we arrived here, I'd not have expected that Chris would be allowed to have one after he separated from the Navy. What you've suggested frightens me in ways I can't express." She rose and pulled Amanda upright beside her. "It will take some time to pass. May we give you our answer on Monday?"

Conway's grin vanished. He rose and nodded.

"Of course, Miss Harkness. I look forward to hearing your decision. And really," he said as an apparent afterthought, "you needn't worry about harming anyone accidentally. Combat skills like the ones Christine will teach you are entirely under your control."

"It wasn't accidental harm I was thinking of," Maureen said.

Conway opened his mouth, closed it without speaking, and departed.

***

Chris's introduction to service at Integral Security was little like what he'd expected. He was issued a desk, uniforms, and a revolver, but Conway had no policy manual for him, nor was there any great amount of indoctrination or orientation required. Most of his morning and all of his afternoon were spent making the acquaintance of other Integral personnel and chatting with them about their jobs.

He was particularly fascinated by the monitoring room, where the remote security functions were monitored and coordinated. The large room centered on an octagonal bank of ceiling-mounted monitors, which glowed down at workstations manned by Integral uniforms wearing headsets. The place was hushed and dark; extraneous lighting would have made the banks of monitor screens more difficult to watch. Each monitor was surmounted by a legend in large block letters.

FORSLUND 1
LAKESHORE EAST
CODEVILLA NORTH

The Integral personnel that sat before them spoke rarely, always in low tones, and always into their headset microphones, never to one another. Their concentration rivaled that of a chess grandmaster deciding upon a move. Now and then, an electronic dispatch board on the far wall would indicate that patrolman X was moving from his current position to post Y in sector Z. The focus of the operators directing their movement seemed never to waver.

"Daunting, isn't it?"

Chris started at hearing Conway's voice. "Yeah, a bit. How long are their shifts?"

"Two hours." Conway nodded toward the octagon of screens and operators. "I'm thinking of shortening it."

"I can see why. How often do they...?"

Conway grinned. "Since our first couple of years on the job? Not very. But they're my insurance. I have four major customers, and to lose any one of them would put this place into the red. So I make sure they're continuously watched, from here, and from...a bit closer in. If the patrols on the ground miss a developing threat, these guys are odds-on to catch it."

"You're balanced that finely?" Chris asked.

A nod. "This is a service business. A new customer means new hires and fresh trainees. I never let a trained man go. The capital expense would ruin me."

That was meant to reassure me.

"I see. So you concentrate on potential large clients?"

"I have to. I do take smaller businesses, if their situations are suitable, but mostly they're a break-even or lose-a-little proposition. Integral's profits come almost exclusively from the four big apartment complexes those operators are standing watch over." A shadow passed over Conway's eyes. "Twenty-four hundred units, nearly ten thousand people, concentrated into just over a hundred acres. Mostly middle class or better. They make a pretty juicy target."

Chris nodded and said nothing more. Presently Conway said, "You know, it might be a good thing for you to spend a few shifts on-site at those customers, as local supervisor. It would give you a better idea of the work, at least."

Chris smirked. "You hired me as a watch commander after two hours of casual conversation, but you think I need to learn about security work?"

Conway looked him levelly in the eyes. "Every security situation is unique, Chris. No two of mine are at all alike, anyway." He reached into a pocket and pulled out a PDA. "You're going to Amherst Estates tomorrow. You'll be standing in for Sylvia Wang, who can use the rest anyway. I'll notify the watch commander. Your shift will begin at eight AM. Be here at seven. In uniform."

***

Chris didn't expect his stint as a shift supervisor to be exciting. It wasn't. A day went by, then another and another, without any development more stirring than a dropped bag of groceries registering on the monitors in the Amherst Estates gatehouse. Training and long habit kept him alert; the openness of the Amherst residents and the surprisingly easy camaraderie of his new coworkers made it pleasant.

Late in the afternoon of his third day at the Amherst post, a Mercedes stopped at the gate and a tall, gaunt man in a navy-blue suit emerged from behind the wheel. The man went directly to the window from which Chris peered and offered a hand. Chris shook it.

"New man?"

Chris nodded. "Yes, sir. Temporary shift supervisor. My name's Chris Chase. I expect Sylvia will be back Monday after next."

The man smiled. "Welcome to Amherst, Chris. I'm Jack Schilling. Seen anything untoward lately?"

The owner! "Nothing but a small mess in the lobby of Thirty-Five Kettle Knoll, sir." He glanced over at the monitors. "Looks like your maintenance staff have dealt with it already."

Schilling nodded. "They're good. But nothing else? No scuffles along the perimeter, say?"

Chris shook his head. "Why do you ask?"

Schilling looked away, toward Fifteen Forslund Avenue. The lines around his mouth writhed as if he'd tasted something unpleasant.

"Two of my tenants have reported missing kids. Teenaged sons they haven't seen in two days. It's a police matter now, but I had to ask if you've seen them in the area, in trouble or otherwise."

Chris swiftly reviewed the three days past. He shook his head. "The only traffic in or out of Amherst has been vehicular, sir. Of course, they could have been on a school bus, but I wouldn't have known about it. Do you have pictures of them?"

Schilling dipped a hand into a jacket pocket, brought out two photos, and passed them to Chris. Each one depicted a scowling, swarthy teenager in a T-shirt and the baggy jeans that were the current adolescent affectation.

"The one holding the soccer ball is Heshayem Mohamed. The other one is Riyadh ibn Sharif."

***

"Mandy?"

Chris had caught Amanda with a mouthful of dinner. She held up a hand while she chewed and swallowed.

"What, Dad?"

Chris forked up a bite of beef. "Have you been enjoying the training sessions with Christine?"

She nodded vigorously. "She's great. It's a lot of fun." Her eyes darted to Maureen. "You really should try it, Mom."

Maureen smiled wistfully. "It's a sort of fun better suited to a young woman than an old one, dear. Enjoy it. You have the talent for it. Your old Mum will stick to her crocheting and cooking classes."

"Oh, come on, you're not that old!"

The edges of Maureen's eyes crinkled. "Old enough to know better than to let my daughter toss me around like a rag doll. How would I ever get you to clean your room after that?"

Amanda giggled and looked down at her plate. Chris forebore to comment. For a few moments, the family ate in silence.

Presently Amanda said, "How's the new job going, Dad?"

Chris shrugged. "Nothing much to tell, so far. I'm on station at one of Integral's customers, learning about what we're supposed to do."

"It's weird seeing you in that uniform, though."

He laughed and reached across the table to tweak his stepdaughter's nose. She squealed and bounced in her chair.

She looks so perfect. Beautiful and happy and secure. As if the rape never happened.

"Don't get used to it, honey. Mr. Conway will have me back inside at the end of next week. Speaking of next week..." He halted at the edge of his question.

Amanda's face turned serious in an instant. "What, Dad?"

"Do you...think you might be ready to go back to school on Monday?"

Chris had expected Amanda to react in some fashion, but her furtive, almost shameful expression came as a surprise.

Maureen said, "Chris."

"Hm? What, love?"

"Perhaps another week for Amanda to...heal would be a good idea."

The gravity of Maureen's eyes forbade him to differ. Amanda said nothing.

Chris exhaled and nodded. "All right. I'll tell the school. If they have a problem with it, they can take it up with me."

"Thank you, Dad," Amanda murmured. Her gaze flicked over to her mother.

Maureen nodded.

***

By the end of Chris's second week with Integral, the entire county was abuzz with speculation and fear. Not only had neither Heshayem Mohamed nor Riyadh ibn Sharif returned from wherever, but Tariq al-Malim, Farooq ibn Azzam, and Maroun Mazaram had vanished as well. Deputy Chief Khaldoun had promised their families, and the general public, that "the vile kidnapper who's targeted the innocent children of five of Onteora's leading families" would be pursued with all the resources of the department. Chief of Police Raymond Lawrence did not trouble to qualify Khaldoun's statement.

Chris had been trained not to believe in coincidences. He'd already suspected private action when Jack Schilling told him of the disappearance of the first two teens. What he couldn't work out were the agency and the motivation.

Unless the rapists had bragged about their exploit, which struck Chris as unlikely, only three persons knew with certainty who had participated in the assault: Amanda, Kevin Conway, and Chris himself. Hassan Khaldoun might know; Chris suspected that he did. But it was next to inconceivable that the deputy chief would have taken any action against the other five, when they could so easily have implicated his own, as yet unvanished son.

Any action, that is, short of killing them.

He suppressed the urge to raise the subject with Conway. If the security chief was acting against Amanda's rapists for him, no doubt he'd be told in due course. Anyway. he wasn't sure he wanted to know.

***

Sunday dawned bright and clear, a perfect, sunny and gently breezy spring morning. Chris and his family rose early, showered, dressed, and headed for the seven o'clock Mass at Our Lady of the Pines, the better to clear the day for whatever recreations Maureen and Amanda might have in mind.

Amanda seemed unusually jumpy, far more agitated than usual even for a teenaged girl. She could hardly sit still in church, fidgeting, shuffling, and frequently glancing over at her stepfather as if she were awaiting some kind of signal. Chris did his best to ignore it and concentrate on the service, but made a mental note to speak to the girl afterward about proper behavior in church.

At the end of Mass, they found Kevin Conway awaiting them at the door. Chris's eyebrows rose at the sight of his boss.

"Are you a parishioner?"

Conway shook his head. "No, I'm here for you. We're needed over at the First Precinct." His expression gave no clue as to the need. He turned to Maureen. "I'll need Mrs. Chase and Amanda as well."

Only one possible reason. I hope I can account for my whereabouts for every minute of the past two weeks.

The group was silent on the drive to the precinct headquarters. Chris concentrated on reviewing his own movements. There were several periods for which he couldn't name a witness to his location or conduct. He tried not to worry over them.

Hell of it is, whoever's been at work has done a damned thorough job. Unless he's been caught and we're going to meet him, he's done it without leaving any hint of his existence. I couldn't have done as well myself.

The desk sergeant sent them deep into the precinct's inner sanctum, in the company of two uniforms Chris had never met. Conway led the way in silence.

Presently they stood before a large, tinted glass partition. On the other side of the partition were four impassive-looking uniforms and six swarthy young men, writhing and clutching their groins as if in agony. When Chris laid eyes on them, he came to full alert. He glanced at his stepdaughter, but she showed no reaction.

"Recognize them?" Hassan Khaldoun's deep bass voice caused Chris to whirl in surprise. The deputy chief was looking at Amanda, who had not turned.

"Heshayam Mohamed," she said calmly, still looking through the glass. "Tariq al-Malim. Farooq ibn Azzam. Maroun Mazaram. Riyadh ibn Sharif. And Khalid Khaldoun. The six boys who raped me two weeks ago yesterday."

"You knew their names all this time," Khaldoun said. "You hid evidence from a felony investigation. You played the innocent victim --"

Amanda turned, eyes flashing. "I was the innocent victim, Mr. Khaldoun. Yes, I knew their names. They were my schoolmates, after all. But I also knew that one of them was your son. What did you know?"

Her poise was shocking. Chris had never before seen her face down an adult of any stature, for any reason. Yet, toe to toe with the second highest cop in the county, she seemed entirely without fear.

Khaldoun fell silent and turned away.

"Chief," Chris said, "why are we here?"

"To corroborate their confessions," Khaldoun said, still looking away.

"They confessed to the rape?"

"Not just to Amanda's rape," Conway said. "These six have been very busy boys. They have seven gang rapes to their credit in Onteora alone. And Hamilton County wants to have a few words with them as well."

"But why? I mean," Chris faltered, momentarily silenced by incredulity, "why did they confess?"

"To end their pain."

Todd Iverson stepped out of the hallway behind them as naturally as if he were entering his own home. He waved casually at Conway, who grinned in response.

"You can see that they're not exactly happy little soldiers just now, Chris," Iverson said. "That's because their most recent escapades in hunting kuffar sluts to degrade didn't go quite as well as the earlier ones. They've been dosed with a compound that causes massive inflammation of the vas deferens. The pain is continuous and quite severe. They were told that they'd get the antidote only when they'd confessed to every crime they'd ever committed, in full view of police witnesses and representatives of the D.A." He held up a bottle of pills. "Would you care to do the honors, Chief Khaldoun?"

The big cop's face had gone from bone-white to mottled fury in a flash.

"You tortured them," he whispered. "You seized them and held them and tortured my firstborn son!" With a scream he launched himself at the much smaller Iverson.

Before Khaldoun could close on him, Iverson flicked the pill bottle to Conway, surged forward and delivered a knife-hand strike to the cop's solar plexus. It was a punch of at least as much force as Chris could have put behind it, placed with exquisite precision. Khaldoun went down on the instant, curled around his agony in a perfect replication of his son, struggling to draw the tiniest breaths. Iverson dropped to a squat beside him.

"I didn't have anything to do with it, Chief. Well, except for developing the drug they were given. Your boy and his buddies followed a lure. It took three tries before we got them all. We made sure Khalid was the last, just in case you knew about his involvement."

"What lure?" Chris whispered.

"Me," Amanda said.

"And me," Maureen said.

"And me."

From the shadows in the hallway stepped Christine D'Alessandro.

***

"Todd explained it very succinctly," Maureen said, her hand warm atop his. "One must match the bait to the prey. To catch a lion, stake out a goat. To catch a rapist, tempt him with a likely looking victim."

"But did it have to be you and Amanda?" Chris said. "What if something had gone wrong?"

"Christine was always there," Maureen said. "She's quite...capable, you know."

"Yes," he said. "I do know."

What I didn't know is that I married into a family more ruthless than I am myself.

"So Kevin and Todd don't really despise one another?"

Maureen produced an uncharacteristic smirk. "Not a bit of it. How could you ever have thought so? They're two of the three best men in the county."

"Mo, I'm not certain how I feel about all this." He shook his head, went to the stove and poured himself more coffee. "I'm supposed to be the violent one." He resumed his seat beside his wife. "If you and Mandy are capable of this, what on Earth do you need me for?"

Maureen's eyes lit with affection. "My wild colonial boy has his uses. Many of them, at that. Surely you're not offended that we managed to rope and tie those savages without you?"

Chris started to answer, bit it back.

Maybe I am, a little.

"No, I suppose I shouldn't be. And I'm not...much. Anyway, this isn't a union shop. You can do whatever you can do. But," he said, "I'd have liked to be in on it, too."

Maureen shook her head. "That was the one thing we were all against. Your methods are too drastic, Chris. You'd have turned the game into something that could never come to light. Amanda and I don't want to lose you, the way we lost Ernest."

"I killed the man who killed Ernest," he croaked. "I --"

"Yes, you did," Maureen said. "And that was the exact moment I fell in love with you, and decided that I would follow you no matter where you might go, and never, ever allow you to come to any harm. How many men -- how many blooded warriors would have charged into the scene you found that day and done justice as you did, while hundreds of my bloodless countrymen stood aside and watched?" She clutched his hand. "You are the most precious thing in my world. In Amanda's, too. We had to protect you from yourself."

Chris gaped.

"Christine wants you to start coming to our training sessions. She said your footwork wasn't everything it should be. Starting tomorrow night, all right?"

"What about my baseball games?"

"We have a DVR, don't we?"

"It's not the same!"

Maureen's eyes flashed with sudden command. "Get used to it, sailor."

"Uh, yes, ma'am!"

-- The End --

Making It Right (Part 1)

Christopher Chase clutched his wife Maureen's hand and waited with all the patience he could muster. From his first days in uniform, through his SEAL training and his baptism of fire in the Middle East, to the day he'd asked Maureen for her hand, nothing had ever been harder. After half an eternity, a short, stocky blonde woman in a nondescript blue suit came out of the examining room, looked about, and headed directly for them. Chris rose, pulling Maureen with him.

"Mr. and Mrs. Chase? I'm Detective Sonia Petievich." She extended a hand, and Chris took it mechanically. "Let's do the most important part first. Apart from some bruising that will heal in a few days, your daughter is unharmed."

Maureen sighed and slumped in relief. Chris looked the policewoman levelly in the eyes. "Apart from some bruising, the loss of her virginity, and one hell of a sense of violation."

Petievich's face tightened. "Well, yes. But as far as the doctors can tell, she suffered no physical damage. There were no traces of disease organisms in the assay, no indications of septic contamination, and no damage to her internal organs. She'll certainly be able to bear children."

Chris kept silent with an effort. The usual activity of the hospital flowed around and past them, to all appearances unconcerned with their family's agony, but to Chris it seemed that every eye was riveted to their three-person tableau, every ear cocked to drink in the details of Amanda's gang rape.

Petievich noticed. She pitched her voice as low as she could. "Dr. Floyd says there's no reason she has to stay overnight. You can take her home when she's finished dressing. How early tomorrow can you have her at the precinct to make a statement?"

"It will be a while longer," Chris said, "before we know whether she's pregnant."

"Of course," Petievich said. "But the hospital can provide her with the 'morning-after pill,' if that's a great concern to you.

Maureen stiffened. Chris chafed her hand for a moment before turning back to the policewoman and fishing under his dress shirt for the crucifix pendant he always wore. He brandished the little cross at Petievich and scowled.

"We don't do that, Detective. Thanks for your time and concern."

"Just a moment --"

"Good night, Detective."

He pulled his wife past the policewoman and through the door behind which Amanda awaited them.

***

If one didn't peer too closely, Amanda looked no different. Her face was unchanged. She moved with her usual swift, staccato efficiency as she dressed and made ready to depart. Only the fires of Hell flickering deep behind her eyes testified to the savagery that had been visited upon her.

Her narrative was heartbreakingly concise. She had to go through it twice before Chris could form a reply. Despite all the troubles they'd had with vandalism and petty theft in the three years past, he could hardly believe such a thing could happen in a neighborhood as sleepy and intimate as theirs. When he did find his voice, he had few words upon which to exercise it.

"Did you recognize them?"

Amanda nodded.

"Did you tell the policewoman? Did you give their names?"

She shook her head.

Chris closed his eyes and breathed deeply. "Good."

Maureen's eyes flared wide. She clutched at his hand. "Chris --"

He fixed her with a gaze utterly devoid of emotion, and she lapsed into silence.

"They're dead, Mo. They just haven't fallen over yet. Let it rest for tonight."

From the corner of his eye he saw Amanda's face empty of blood. He turned and looked directly into her eyes, and she flinched.

"Did you think I was going to leave it to the police, Mandy? The same police who can't tell us who's been breaking into our barn? That responded to three reports of cars stolen right out of our driveway by shrugging and saying 'boys will be boys?'"

"Chris," Maureen whispered, "you could land in the nick yourself."

He nodded. "That's the usual comeback to a citizen who's been abused. 'Let the police do their job,' they say. 'Stick to what you know best,' they say. 'It's safer that way.' Not this time, Mo. This time, they die."

His wife flinched and pulled away. He gripped her hand tightly and drew her back to him.

"Not tonight, Mo. But soon." He turned back to his violated stepdaughter. "Come on, Mandy. It's time to go home."

Amanda stood paralyzed, her canvas backpack dangling from her shoulder.

"Dad," she said, her words barely audible, "What if I see them at school?"

"You won't be going back to school for a few days, honey."

"But when I do...?"

Chris smiled ferally. "You can tell them that they're dead, honey. It won't matter at all."

***

As Chris turned into the driveway of their Foxwood home, his headlights revealed a large gray Ford sedan already parked in it. Instinct compelled him to reach past his wife, pop open the glove box and extract the loaded M1911 he kept with him at all times. He pulled his Suburban carefully alongside the Ford, and saw that Sonia Petievich sat behind the wheel. She emerged and strode toward the driver's side door as he killed his engine and set the parking brake.

He opened his door, forcing the detective backward, and stepped down from his truck. Before she could speak, he looked over his shoulder and said, "Go inside, ladies. I'll be in presently." Maureen's eyes opened a millimeter wider. After a moment she nodded, wrapped an arm around Amanda's shoulders and shepherded her toward the front door.

"Was there something else, Detective?" He thrust the Colt into his waistband and crossed his arms over his chest.

Petievich's eyes flicked imperceptibly toward the Colt's grip and back to Chris's face. "I assume you have a carry permit for that iron."

"No you don't," Chris returned. "You know I do. It's been more than an hour since we met at Onteora General. That's more than enough time for you to have learned everything public about me. You know I have a federal pistol permit." He smiled. "One that can't be overridden by any state or local ordinance."

Petievich nodded.

"So what more can I do for you, Detective? Or are you here to tell me something you can do for me?"

"Mr. Chase," the policewoman said haltingly, "is there any possibility your stepdaughter --"

"Her name is Amanda," Chris growled.

A spasm passed over Petievich's face. "Yes, of course. Is there any possibility Amanda might be willing to name her attackers, so that we can all see justice done?"

Chris tried to repress his wolflike grin and failed utterly. "Hmmm, let's see. Six rapists, one accuser. Just for the sake of a thought experiment, let's assume she could name them. What defense do you suppose they would mount in response?"

Petievich said nothing. The first fingers of predawn light were reaching over the eastern horizon. She looked once more at the gun he'd tucked into his pants.

On impulse, Chris pulled the weapon out of his waistband, removed the clip and offered it grip first to the policewoman. She accepted it with a grave expression, examined it with casual but professional interest, and handed it back.

"Service issue?"

Chris shook his head. "Private purchase. Custom sights and trigger. I can give you the name of the gunsmith, if you like."

"Not tonight. Do you keep a rating?"

"Why ask, Detective? It's filed at the same site as my federal permit."

Petievich scowled again. "I have to warn you about the hazards and likely consequences of vigilante action. If anything happens to those boys --"

"What boys?"

"The ones who raped your --"

Chris bared his teeth, and the detective fell silent.

"The ones who raped Amanda, Detective? Those boys? What are their names, pray tell? If you know them, why aren't they already in police custody, where nothing bad could happen to them? Apart from indictment and trial, that is."

"You must understand, Mr. Chase," Petievich said tightly, "that if anything were to happen to them outside the processes of the law, you would be the prime suspect. We'd be on your ass before you could get your dick back into your pants."

The sun poked its limb above the horizon, washing Sonia Petievich's blunt Slavic features with reddish dawnlight. Chris could see that her heart wasn't in the message she'd felt compelled to deliver. Given her evident youth, it seemed likely that she'd never faced a comparable duty before.

"I love your delicate way with imagery, Detective. But I have no more knowledge of Amanda's attackers than you. So they're about as safe from me as any worthless rape-minded scum in this county could be. I assume that if you learn who they are, you'll give us a courtesy notification that they've been captured, at least?"

Petievich closed her eyes and nodded.

Chris snorted and made for his door.

***

Chris was suspended halfway between the personnel report before him and the vengeance fantasy unrolling in his mind's eye when the ringing of his desk phone startled him away from both. He snatched at the handset in irritation and wedged it between his head and shoulder.

"Security."

"Chris, it's Todd. Do you have a few minutes for me?"

"Uh, sure, Todd. Be right up." Chris flipped the handset back into its cradle, rose and trotted for the stairs.

He found Todd Iverson in his usual posture, crouched over his desk, peering into his computer monitor as if he could read tomorrow's headlines from it. So spectacular and uninterrupted had Arcologics's rise been that no few of Iverson's competitors believed exactly that. Chris closed Iverson's office door quietly behind him, slipped into one of his leather guest chairs, and waited for the CEO to notice him.

Iverson thrust his mouse aside, tilted back in his chair and swung his feet up onto his desk. As always, he was wearing the high-heeled platform boots that had become one of his signature practices. They clunked woodenly against the surface of the desk.

From his first day at the company, Chris had wondered why Iverson was so sensitive about his height. Arcologics's owner and CEO was a polymathic genius. He'd steered his firm to the top of half a dozen different fields without apparent effort. He seemed ready, willing, and able to master any field at all, if the profit potential were sufficient. He treated his employees like beloved relatives, and they were unanimous in their adoration of him. His wife Jeanne, a petite blonde beauty who was also the company's benefits liaison and ombudsman, had hinted that he possessed powers and abilities far beyond those of mortal men. "Don't ask," she'd giggled. "There are some things we'd rather keep to ourselves." Why so gifted a man would be insecure about his height was impossible to fathom.

Everyone is sensitive about something. Best to let it pass.

"You're planning to hit the vermin that raped Amanda, aren't you?" Iverson said without preliminary.

Chris started in his seat. "You knew?"

"Of course I knew," Iverson said. "And I'm a leeeetle concerned that my top cop might be about to go outside the law to avenge his daughter's honor."

So he has sources inside the Onteora police. Why does that surprise me?

Maybe because he's so fastidious.

"I can deal with it, Todd."

Iverson's eyes went flat. He shook his head once, very slowly.

"How did I find out, Chris? Do you really expect that any of those boys could even stub a toe without it being blamed on you?"

Chris grimaced. "Maybe so. But we both know the Onteora police aren't worth a damn any more. If Amanda's going to have justice --"

Iverson held up a hand, and Chris swallowed the rest of his sentence. The CEO rose from his chair and sauntered over to his office window. It was a strange view for the office of a multimillionaire; it overlooked the Arcologics parking lot, beyond which there were only trees.

"Is it justice you want?" he said softly.

Chris bit back his reflex response and briefly closed his eyes.

"Maybe a little more than that."

"Do you think that's what Amanda wants?"

"I haven't asked her."

Iverson turned to face him, brown eyes deep and brilliant.

"And why would that be?"

It stopped him cold.

Because you've made this into a personal contest between you and those young pricks, haven't you? Amanda is secondary to your need to prove that no one can abuse someone under your protection and get away with it.

His hands, which he'd unconsciously balled into fists, relaxed in his lap. He laid his palms along his thighs and said, "I assume you have a suggestion?"

Iverson looked at him critically a moment longer, then resumed his seat, boots up on the desk once again.

"Not a suggestion," Iverson said. "An offer, and a constraint. Until you get closure on this you'll be unable to concentrate, and I can't have that in my Director of Security. Also, I don't want to lose you. I know a little about the impulse to vengeance. A man can easily lose his perspective under that sort of stimulus. So I called you here to offer you a deal."

Chris drew a quick, sharp breath. "What sort of deal?"

Iverson grinned devilishly. "You can have the full resources of your department to use however you wish, including what's left of its operating budget for the year, so long as neither you nor anyone you hire or supervise lays the lightest finger on any of those gangbangers."

Chris's mouth fell open.

"Do you doubt my right, Chris? It is my company, you know."

"But --"

"That's the deal." Iverson spread his hands. "You want justice for Amanda? Use your department. Find a way to get it without inflicting violence on the scum that raped her. I don't want to have to bail you out of jail, and for sure I don't want to have to testify at your murder trial." He waved at the door. "Go chew on it for a while. You don't have to give me an explicit answer. I'll know."

Chris rose shakily. "I expect you will."

Iverson nodded. "Count on it."

***

Maureen laid her hand atop Chris's. "You're sure he's serious?"

Chris nodded. "Serious as cancer. He'd never make such an offer and not mean it."

She squeezed his hand, went to the stove, and filled their teakettle. Chris grinned. His wife's responses to stress were as regular as a metronome: make a pot of tea, change the curtains in the dining room, rummage through one of their closets for clothes to be given to the parish charity closet. Yet her regularity and serenity had tamed the wild man he'd once been: a creature to whom an even-money chance of being hacked to death by Muslim terrorists was the sort of moment he lived for.

Why me? Why did a widowed English nurse, seven years older than me and with a half-grown daughter to protect, take a chance on the ruffian I was? How did she know she could civilize me and why did I let her do it?

His hand went automatically to the small gold crucifix pendant she'd given him upon his baptism.

Does it matter? She and Mandy are the best things ever to happen to me. Thank you, Lord. I am truly blessed.

"It could be," Maureen said as she fiddled with the teapot, "that Todd meant exactly what he said. He usually does. But it could also be that he expects you to wear out your anger without ever bringing those hooligans to book. Maybe he expects that in two or three weeks you'll throw the whole thing up as a bad job and put your mind back on your work."

The notion was uncomfortable. Chris grimaced and tried to consider it dispassionately.

"Todd's a straight shooter, Mo. Plus, he's met Amanda. How could anyone who's met her not want to tear her rapists limb from limb?" The way I want to.

She looked back over her shoulder at him and nodded.

"Which would mean..." The kettle screamed, and Chris trailed off.

"What, dear?" Maureen brought the pot to the kettle, filled it carefully, and deposited it on the dinette table between them. She reached for Chris's hands, and he gave them to her.

"Which would mean he wants me to take it seriously...maybe so he won't take a hand in it himself."

Maureen's forehead wrinkled. "He's not a very physical person, though. Is he?"

"Not that I've seen."

Her eyes locked with his. "That you've seen."

"Right."

***

Chris tapped gently at Amanda's bedroom door. "Mandy, honey?"

There was no answer, but a moment later the door creaked open to reveal Amanda Harkness's pale, tear-streaked face. It was enough to call Chris back to his pitch of rage of the night before.

She's letting it out. It had to happen eventually.

"Can I talk to you for a minute?"

She nodded and beckoned him in. He sat on her bed and gestured for her to sit beside him. She did, and he settled an arm around her shoulders.

"I have a problem, honey." He drew a deep breath and did his best to settle himself. "I don't quite know what to do about...those boys."

She said nothing, only drew herself closer against him.

"Do you remember Todd? I mean, my boss?"

He felt her nod.

"He told me..." Chris swallowed. Now that he was at the point of doing so, the notion of asking Amanda what she would consider justice for her violation seemed absurd. But Iverson had plainly had something in mind...something he couldn't tell Chris directly, because he expected that the ex-SEAL would snort it aside.

"What, Dad?" Amanda's voice was feather-soft.

"He told me that I should ask you...what you think I should do. What would make things right. Well, as close to right as we can get it." He toyed with the idea of telling her of Iverson's offer, and rejected it.

"Dad, you can unscrew a light bulb --"

"But you can't unscrew a girl." He caressed her hair, and she snuggled closer yet. Not for the first time, he marveled that this delicate creature, who'd been reaved of her father, her friends, and her childhood home, could be so open and trusting. "I know, honey. But we have to do the best we can. I just want to know what you think."

"What about the police?" she murmured.

Yeah, what about them? What could I slip past them, now that they know about me? That Petievich broad seemed pretty sharp. For all I know, she might even be honest.

"I don't think we can count on them for anything, honey. This...sort of thing has been happening a lot lately. I haven't heard of any arrests being made for it."

"Wouldn't they try to stop you?" She looked up at him, doe-eyed, ready to accept whatever he might say.

He nodded. "They'd try. And if something really horrible happened to one of those boys -- say, if he fell down in front of a speeding truck -- and they thought I'd done it, things could get pretty bad for us." Again.

"Then you mustn't." Her arms went around his waist. "I'll be all right."

"I know you will, honey. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do anything, does it? We can at least try to think of something clever, you and me." Something to fix their little red wagons permanently.

"It has to be really clever, then," she said. "Because the police can't know it was you, or things will get lots worse."

He nodded.

Something humiliating, that will leave them knowing they've been punished, but that they'd never dream of taking to the cops. Something they wouldn't even talk about among themselves.

"I might get an idea, honey. And I promise you that if I don't, I won't do anything that would mean any more trouble, either for you or for me."

"Do you think you can keep them from doing this to some other girl?" she said.

He caressed her hair again. "I might."

Her gaze was steady. He could feel her weighing his ingenuity against his rage, and her own need for justice against her fear of losing him.

"Then I'll tell you who they are."

***

"Mo?"

"Yes, love?" Maureen didn't turn from her sinkful of dishes.

"Do you think it's true that rape is about power?"

Maureen didn't answer. She fished a saucepan from the sudsy water and scrubbed it as if getting it perfectly clean were the only imperative of existence.

"Mo?"

The silence persisted. Chris rose from the table, went to his wife and put his hands to her waist. She rinsed the saucepan, deposited it in the drying rack and leaned back against him.

"It must be," she said. "Especially here in...in America. The girls are all so free with their favors. Why would anyone feel he needed to rape just to get a bit of tail?"

He slipped his arms further around her waist and hugged her to him. "Maybe I shouldn't say. I wouldn't want you to think any worse of us here in the colonies."

She chuckled and reached up to caress his face. "I have my wild colonial boy. What does it matter what I think of the rest of your lot?"

He squeezed her gently, and she let her head loll back against his chest.

It matters. I want you to be happy with your new homeland. I don't want you to grouse about having traded down-at-the-heels England for prosperous but wild-West America. Even if you never say a word, I'll know.

"You haven't been here that long, Mo," he said. "Actually, I haven't either. I'd been in the Navy for fourteen years when I met you, and I hadn't been back home in all that time."

She turned in his embrace and frowned at him. "You didn't use your leave to come stateside?"

"Mostly not. I spent most of them in the nearest fleshpot. Paris, Tokyo, Seoul, Taipei, Sydney." He smiled. "And London, of course. I did come back to America on two occasions. But what I meant was that I hadn't come back to Onteora. When you and I and Mandy arrived here, I could see at once that things had been moving in a new direction. One I didn't like." One I took you out of England to get you away from, and then found it waiting for us here.

He put his hands to the sides of her face and stroked gently.

"When I joined up, this was a safe, clean, peaceful place. Not exciting, and not particularly prosperous, but a good place for kids to grow up. A good place for people who mostly wanted to be left alone. We hadn't had but one capital crime in all the years I'd lived here, and I don't remember ever hearing about a rape. But things have changed. There's...a new element in the county, one you might remember from your troubles in London. It doesn't hold to the norms I was taught as a boy." Or the ones I honor as a man.

Maureen paled. He could almost read the memories unrolling behind her eyes.

"The same...element that killed Ernest?"

He nodded. "Younger, but the same." And Todd Iverson has forbidden me to deal with them in the way I know best. The way I followed for fourteen years in one hellhole after another.

"Chris, how could...your people have been so stupid, after everything they've heard about Britain and Europe, to let them in here?"

Christopher Chase, retired Navy SEAL who had lost count of the terrorists he'd killed in his years at arms, pulled his wife close and whispered into her ear.

"I don't know, Mo. But if it can be fixed, I'll fix it. At least here, now, for us."

***

Kevin Conway, the owner-operator of Integral Security, was a tall, broad-shouldered, pleasant-faced man in his forties with thick red-brown hair, keen hazel eyes, the manners of a diplomat, and the build of a professional brawler. He wore a plain khaki-green uniform with Integral embroidered over the breast pocket of his tunic. A short-barreled revolver was holstered at his right hip. He gestured Chris into a guest chair and sat at his desk. "To what do I owe the pleasure, Mr. Chase?" he said.

Chris's eyes roamed curiously around the little office. Conway had chosen accommodations even starker than Todd Iverson's. The room was about fifteen feet square, with walls of whitewashed cinder block. Its sole window looked down on an idle street. Conway's desk and bookcases were standard sheet-steel office gear. The wall behind him, where nearly any other executive, Iverson included, would have an "I love me" array festooned with awards, certificates, and testimonials, bore only his diploma from the University of Rochester and Integral's corporate license from the New York State Department of Commerce.

Well, a man best known for facing down the county and state governments isn't likely to need ego sops.

"Well, sir, I have a problem I can't solve myself, and I can't take to the police."

Conway squinted. "A security matter? You're Arcologics's security officer, aren't you?"

"No, sir, not exactly."

"Then what? Oh, you can drop the 'sir,' by the way. I'm Kevin to everyone."

"A crime." Chris breathed deeply and reminded himself to stay calm. "My...my daughter Amanda was gang-raped in Beregond Park the night before last. She was on her way home from gymnastics practice."

Conway said nothing. His sole reaction was a tightening of the muscles around his eyes.

"Todd -- Mr. Iverson has given me the full resources of my department to use in obtaining justice, but on a condition: he doesn't want any violence done to Amanda's attackers, by me or anyone I hire."

"And that," Conway said slowly, "puts the matter a little out of your line."

Chris nodded. "I was hoping for the benefit of your counsel."

"You have it, for what it's worth. But Chris -- may I call you Chris?"

"Of course."

"Thank you. Do you have a particular reason not to leave the matter to the police?"

Chris grinned despite himself. "You mean, apart from their corruption and general ineptitude?"

Conway grinned crookedly. "Yes, apart from that."

"As it happens, I do." Chris slid forward in his seat. "Amanda recognized her attackers, Kevin. She gave me six names, and assured me that she was in no doubt about any of them. They're boys at Foxwood High, where she goes." The point of no return was upon him. "If I give you their names, will you hold them in confidence?"

Conway hesitated, then nodded once.

"Tariq al-Malim," Chris said. "Heshayem Mohamed. Farooq ibn Azzam. Maroun Mazaram. Riyadh ibn Sharif. And Khalid Khaldoun."

Conway's face shed all expression. "Khalid Khaldoun, the eldest son of Hassan Khaldoun?"

Chris nodded. "The very same."

"Well, I can see why you don't want to involve the police. Does anyone know those names besides yourself and your daughter?"

"Only you, Kevin. Do you have any thoughts to share with me, or should I leave you to ponder the matter for awhile?"

Conway rose and stuck his hands in his pockets. "Only that one doesn't casually charge the apple of the deputy chief's eye with a major felony." He looked down at his desk. "Otherwise, I believe I will have to ponder this for a stretch. Would you like some coffee? Our cafeteria blend is excellent, if I do say so myself."

Chris rose. "Are there jelly doughnuts to go with it?"

"Of course. Fresh as of this morning."

"Then I'm buying."

***

Conway wiped his hands free of sugar and picked up his mug. "I see three major aspects to the problem." He held up a finger. "First, you want to punish the thugs who raped Amanda."

"That's absolute," Chris said.

Another finger. "Second, you want to stay out of jail yourself." Conway grinned. "At least, I would. And we can't assume that the police don't know who Amanda's rapists were, since one of them is the deputy chief's son." He raised a third finger. "Third and last, but not trivial even by comparison to the other points, you want to remain in your employer's good graces." The security chief's brow furrowed. "Actually, that might not be as hard as you think. Iverson specified that neither you nor anyone you hire or supervise was to lay a hand on those boys, correct?"

Chris nodded. "Close to his exact words."

"Okay, we'll come back to that." Conway sipped at his coffee and peered over the rim at Chris. "Do you have any constraints you want to lay on the solution, Chris?"

"Nothing you probably haven't thought of yourself," Chris said. "Protect my family from further violation, restore Amanda's sense of security, ensure that those bastards never hurt anyone else, get a brand-new Mercedes and a mansion in Chedwick..."

"Hm?"

"Well, as long as we're composing wish lists."

Conway chuckled. "Oh. Okay. What about time? Will you be able to keep calm if this should take a while?"

Chris tensed. He tried not to let it show. "How long a while?"

Conway didn't answer him at once. He pushed his chair a little way back from the cafeteria table and looked over at the knot of uniforms gathered around the pastries table. Chris assessed them soberly. Seven men, two women, of varying sizes and colors. All were fit and clean-cut, plainly at ease with their trade and its duties. Each wore a holstered short-barreled revolver at his right hip.

I might have been one of them, if the dice had fallen a little differently. I wonder if I'd have enjoyed it.

"It's a matter of priorities," Conway said. "If you're willing to skimp on some of the lesser priorities for the sake of a speedy resolution, we could get it done pretty quickly."

We?

"On the other hand," Conway continued, "if those lesser priorities really aren't that much less, and you're willing to take some time about the thing, perhaps we could satisfy them all. You said Amanda is a gymnast?"

Chris nodded. "A good one. Quick and graceful."

"Have you considered having her punish those boys herself?"

Chris opened his mouth, closed it again, and thought hard.

"Combat training?"

Conway nodded. His face was grave.

"I have a genius trainer on my staff. All my new hires have to pass muster with her before I'll put them on a detail. Are you familiar with the various schools of unarmed combat?"

Chris grinned. "You could say so."

Conway's eyes glinted. "Do you have a favorite? One at which you'd be willing to match your skills against anyone?"

Chris shrugged. "What I've studied doesn't really have a name. But it works well enough. I'd give you some references, but I'm afraid they're all dead."

Conway drained his coffee and stood. "Then it's time for you to meet Christine."

***

The statuesque brunette beauty who'd trounced Chris as if he were a boot camp newbie knelt beside him with a look of concern. "I didn't hurt you, did I?"

Chris blinked away the swarming blue fireflies and squinted up at her. "No, it's okay, but would you do me a favor, please?"

"Sure, what?" She extended a hand and hauled him to his feet. He straightened up tentatively and heaved a sigh.

"Wrap your gi a little tighter? It's, ah, sort of a distraction."

Christine D'Alessandro glanced down at her exposed cleavage and giggled. "Sorry." She pulled her gi more closely around her and snugged the belt. "Look, you're pretty good, but your style is definitely a man's style. We ladies have to do things a little differently. How big did you say Amanda is?"

Chris glanced over at Kevin Conway, who sat in a folding metal chair at the edge of the mats. The security chief was watching without expression.

If he's serious about this, I'd be a fool to pass it up. This gal could take Chuck Norris, Jackie Chan, and Jet Li without working up a sweat.

But will Amanda go for it? Will Maureen?

"About the same size as her mother: five-five, a hundred ten pounds. That's not what she would say, of course."

Christine cocked an eyebrow. "Body image problems?"

Chris grinned. "No, metric-system problems. Mo and Mandy are Brits. To them, it's a hundred sixty-five centimeters and fifty kilos."

"Oh. Well, if you can get them here twice a week -- Tuesday and Friday afternoons okay, Kevin?" Conway nodded. "I can teach them anything they're willing to learn."

Chris reviewed his family's multiple schedules. "Could you stand to have them show up in the evenings?"

Christine shrugged. "Not a problem for me. In fact, if they're willing, I could have them here every evening of the week. Do you think they'll go for it?"

Chris forced himself to consider it carefully.

"It'll be a departure for both of them. They're very gentle. This country sort of frightens them."

"Do you frighten them, Chris?" Christine regarded him levelly.

"I did...at first." You don't want to know how we met or what I did right before their eyes, lady. Trust me on that.

"But not any more, right? So they're probably tougher than you give them credit for." As naturally as if they were friends of twenty years' standing, his conqueror wrapped an arm around his shoulders and shepherded him toward his host. Conway rose as they approached, his eyes a question focused not on Chris but on Christine. She nodded.

"He's got balls, Kevin. If his girls are half as solid, it'll be no problem at all."

Conway's eyes flicked at once to Chris's. "Would you come back upstairs with me for a bit, Chris? There are a few details I'd like to iron out before we proceed."

Chris nodded. Christine gave him a quick squeeze.

"I'll change and join you later."

***

"How are your small-arms skills, Chris?" Conway said.

Chris shrugged. "Making them, maintaining them, or using them?"

"Never mind." Conway pulled his revolver from his holster and passed it across the desk, grip first. "Safety's on." Chris took it and weighed it in his hand.

"Smith and Wesson thirty-eight, double action revolver. One of the most reliable wheelguns ever made. Two inch barrel, so don't get into it with a sniper." He passed it back. "I prefer a Colt automatic, but for close quarters work the Smith is as good as they come."

Conway returned the revolver to its place at his hip. "Would you be averse to carrying one?"

"Why? I have two M1911s and a Browning nine millimeter that suit me fine."

"Because all my men carry them."

"What? I didn't --"

"I did. I'm recruiting. You. Today. Right now."

Chris blinked and stared hard at Conway. The security chief seemed perfectly serious.

"You're aware that I have a job, right?"

Conway nodded. "Got a problem with having two?"

"But why?"

"I have my reasons. I hate to let a good man get away. Integral's customer list has been growing fast, and I don't doubt that it will continue to do so." Conway's mouth drew thin. "I might not need senior personnel at this very instant, but I'm sure in a year I'll have enough work to keep two more watch commanders fully occupied, so why not stock up now and avoid the rush?" Conway's grin turned naughty. "And there's this: if you work for me, then you didn't hire me, and you certainly don't supervise me. You'd go where I tell you and do as I order. Right, Lieutenant Chase?"

"Uh, yes, sir."

Conway rolled his eyes in mock exasperation. "There he goes with the 'sir' again. Look, Chris, whether you join my shop or not, I'm Kevin. Anyway, what I plan to do is lease you back to Iverson, to do exactly what you're doing for him now, for the next year at least. It'll cost him exactly the salary you're already getting, so he loses nothing. It'll cost me a few bucks, but I can stand it. Maybe not that much, considering that I can deduct the cost of your family's training and protection as a legitimate business expense. By the way, what does he pay you?"

"Seventy, plus four into my 401(K) every year."

"My watch commanders get eighty, and I match their 401(K) contributions dollar for dollar." Conway rose and stuck out his hand. "Don't worry, you'll earn it. Welcome aboard, Lieutenant."

Chris rose shakily and took it. "Thank you, si -- Kevin. Can I ask a question?"

"Shoot."

"The lady downstairs in the gym? Christine?"

"Yes?"

"Could she do that to you?"

"In her sleep, Chris. In her sleep." Conway gestured toward the door. "Come on, let's get you on the payroll and introduce you to the rest of the crew. Then comes the hard part."

"Hm?"

"Telling Todd Iverson that you've changed jobs." A cloud passed over Conway's face. "I'd better come with you for that. He won't like it, you know."

"No," Chris said. "He won't."

***

Todd Iverson was not pleased. He glared at Conway as if the two had a long history of unpleasantness. When he swung the glare to shine on Chris, it took a conscious effort not to flinch visibly.

"You were underpaying him, you know," Conway said.

"Not for what he was doing," Iverson growled.

Chris kept his lips clamped together. Every Navy man knew the hazards of inserting oneself into a pissing contest between brass hats. In a contest between superior officers, do your best imitation of wallpaper.

"Todd," Kevin said, "you can have him back for at least the next year, and for no more than you're paying him now." He showed no tension at all. "You just have to pay it to me. And you don't have to worry that his attention will be split. Arcologics will be his sole responsibility for at least one year from this date. You have my word."

Iverson appeared unmollified. "I'm supposed to use a contractor as my Director of Security? Someone whose ultimate loyalty is outside the corporation? Are you practicing your lunacy act, or is this some sort of very poorly conceived joke?"

Conway merely shrugged.

Iverson's brown eyes bored into Chris's own. "Do you realize," he said in a tone that sang with fury, "that you'll be the first Arcologics employee ever to leave my service? Do you have the slightest idea what that will say to the rest of my staff? To my personnel director? To my wife?"

"Todd," Chris said as quietly as he could, "I'm not really leaving. Not unless you want me to. Kevin is serious. I wouldn't have accepted his offer otherwise."

Iverson's expression didn't soften. "He's given me no guarantees I can trust."

"Now hold on a minute," Conway said. "Are you saying you don't think my word is good?"

Iverson glanced at him and sneered, as if there ought to be no need to reply to a statement that bizarre. For the first time, Chris saw blood rise into Conway's face.

"Todd, I asked you a question."

"I don't particularly care," Iverson said, "whether your word is good. I don't particularly care for you, or your company, or your easy way with my employees. I don't particularly care who your customers are, or how well you perform for them. To me you're just one more Irish thug, except that you've managed to turn your thuggery into a comfortable living. And I don't care whether hearing that makes you burst a blood vessel. In fact, I rather wish it would. You've made your pitch, and your score. You've ruptured my security and forced me to replace a man I thought I could rely on. But you'll do no more at my expense. Now get out of my office."

Anger crackled through the air. Chris regarded his former employer's set features and his new one's boiled-ham color and wondered whether it would fall to him to keep them from killing one another.

If we were anywhere but Todd's office, these two would be settling their differences the old-fashioned way.

Presently Conway said. "As you prefer, Mr. Iverson. We 'Irish thugs' might not all be geniuses, but we have our place in the world. Like as not you'll find that out the hard way."

"Are you threatening me, Conway?" Iverson screeched.

Conway shook his head. "No, Iverson, I'm doing something worse. I'm throwing you on your own resources. Lieutenant Chase is my responsibility now. I'm sure I'll find enough to keep him fully occupied." He bared his teeth. "Best of luck with your personnel search."

As they entered the stairwell, Chris murmured, "He's a very good man, Kevin."

Conway glanced at Chris without expression. "I've known better."

They descended the stairs, nodded to the security guard at the front desk, and walked straight into the waiting arms of Sonia Petievich, Hassan Khaldoun, and half the uniforms of the Onteora County First Precinct.

***

Hassan Khaldoun propped his enormous bulk on his knuckles and glared at Chris and Conway in turn. "You are aware," he said, "that it's a felony to conceal evidence of a felony."

Neither Chris nor Conway spoke.

"Well?" Khaldoun barked.

"Are you ready to charge us with something, Hassan?" Conway said pleasantly. "Because my patience with you is pretty close to bottoming out."

Alarm bells rang in Chris's head. They were in a basement interrogation room, with whitewashed cinderblock walls and a door that could only be unlocked from outside. They'd been disarmed upon apprehension; Khaldoun's sidearm was prominent at his hip. If Conway was about to make a play, he could hardly have picked a less promising situation.

Khaldoun's hot black eyes scraped across their faces like twin lasers. Chris could see his neck swelling. Badness was imminent.

"Do you think," Khaldoun said in a whisper that crackled with rage, "that I'd have any real trouble coming up with a reason to keep you as long as I wished?"

"Actually," Conway said, "I do." He pointed to the clock on the wall. "We've now been in your custody for two hours and thirty-five minutes. My last reported location was the Arcologics offices on Grand Street, where I spent a little more than an hour. My people expect me to call in no less frequently than once every four hours. So if you don't voluntarily release us pretty damned quick, you're going to have all of Integral Security climbing down your collar in about a discounted hour. They have standing orders to use all necessary force in defense of any one of their own. Not long ago, one of my new hires asked me what 'all necessary force' might entail. I told him it meant to go Biblical on whoever's on the other side. You know, slay and spare not. Are you ready for that, Deputy Chief Khaldoun?"

The policeman bared his teeth. Conway smiled broadly and slumped into a posture of arrogant disdain.

"Go ahead, asshole. Try me and see. The uniforms upstairs would love to have a bloodbath to blame on you. Especially since your co-religionists have been placed out of bounds for investigation, never mind actual law enforcement, ever since you made captain. Hell, they might even side with my guys."

The two men's gazes were so tightly locked that nothing could separate them. Conway merely smiled his superior, try-me smile. Khaldoun was edging near to apoplexy.

"You'd like that, wouldn't you?" Khaldoun growled.

"You know it, Hassan." Conway rose from his seat and stretched elaborately. "So unless you want your personalized Armageddon delivered giftwrapped, C.O.D., and real soon now, speak a nice, unambiguous release order into that little mike on the wall behind you. Otherwise, I don't think you'll be able to avert it."

The contest of gazes went on for several seconds longer. Chris found himself wondering whether he was still ready, willing, and able to kill with his bare hands, in cold blood.

I still have the ability. Do I have the will? I'm in the hands of forces I once swore to defend with my life.

Khaldoun yielded. He muttered a release-without-conditions command into the mike mounted on the wall, waited for the door to open, and exited the room without another word.

Chris and Conway rose as a pair of uniforms entered. "Well, gentlemen?" Conway said. "Was there something else?"

One of them said, "We're here to escort you out of the building."

Conway frowned. "Nice of you, but we have to reclaim our property first."

"I'm afraid not, sir," the uniform said in a monotone. "We're under orders to convey you directly to the street, no stops in between." His hand drifted toward his sidearm.

Conway turned toward Chris with a wave and a look of exasperation. Chris barely caught the flicker of his left eyelid. He returned it.

Three seconds later, the two cops were coughing their lungs out on the floor at their feet. Conway hefted the German automatic he'd taken from his opponent, scowled, and said, "Trash. Guaranteed to jam when you need it most. Give me an S&W any day."

Chris nodded, pulled the clip from the gun he'd taken from his target, and flipped the gun into the far corner. Conway did the same.

"Shall we get back to work, Lieutenant?"

"Of course, si -- Kevin."

Conway flipped a mock salute at the two cops writhing on the floor as they departed.

Sunday, February 18, 2007

A Change Of Scene

(From the Onteora Canon. We’ve all heard the cliched phrase “saved by the love of a good woman.” People tend to sneer at it these days, what with the rise of gender-war feminism and political correctness. I don’t. Moreover, I don’t think the person so saved necessarily has to be a man. Nor does the “saving” have to be a one-way transaction.

Meg and Emil also appear in “A For Effort,” to which this is a sequel of sorts.)

---

    The slicing pain in her back as she flopped against the curbstone jolted Frederica Baskin partway back to consciousness. She became sequentially aware of the rough macadam against her bare legs, the damp grass against her cheek, the lump of her purse beneath her, and the early spring wind that puffed out her satin blouse and gusted up her short leather skirt. She writhed weakly against the chill invasions, eyes closed, all but deaf to the sound of the unmuffled engine receding in the distance.

    It was some time before she regained enough awareness of her surroundings to do anything but stumble about the borderland of oblivion. In a deep corner of her mind she knew she'd been drugged and abused, but the lingering effects of the drug, whatever it was, withheld the full impact of whatever pain there was to feel.

    Her senses returned slowly. There was a foul taste in her mouth, bitter and salty. Her nether parts ached from violation. In her nostrils lingered the cloying acridity of dense smoke and an after-hint of male musk, that the sharp, clean night air only slowly dispelled.

    She opened her eyes to find herself lying across the curb of Helmsford Avenue, on the western edge of Onteora. It was full night.

    She hoisted herself painfully off the street and looked about. No one else was present. The streetlights shone down on a city asleep. The only sound was the thin yowling of a feral cat in search of a mate.

    She swore, struggled to her feet, and shook herself against the April cold. At least she still had her purse and shoes.

    She was far from her Oakleigh apartment. There were no businesses open that she could see. For all her bravado, she wouldn't smash an alarmed window just to spend the night in a warm cell.

    She swayed a little on her stiletto heels, balance not yet fully regained, and staggered out of the city, toward the shadowed belt of detached homes and tree-lined streets that beckoned from the west.

    There were no lights on in any of the houses she passed. No car passed her on the silent streets. It had to be past midnight, when only such as she were up and about and plying their trades.

    Lurching about in the darkness, she caught a heel in a crack in the walk and fell against a large sign mounted on the lawn of what looked to be a church.

Our Lady Of The Pines R.C. Church

Sunday Masses at 7, 8, 9 and 10AM

Come Unto Him

All Ye That Labor

    From the ache in her loins, she'd been laboring a lot lately, even if the work was unpaid and unremembered.

    With that thought, the details of the night just past flooded back.

    Her Saturday evening had started uneventfully. Unusually, she'd had no clients booked, and had been about to settle in with a trash romance and a bowl of popcorn when the phone rang. The call was from a fraternity of the local state college campus. Six of the boys had taken up a collection and wanted to buy a little fun. Six of them. No rough stuff, the caller promised. She said six hundred, and the caller had agreed without argument. He'd given her an address, and she'd rung off without further thought. Ten minutes later she was in her party clothes and speeding toward the frat house.

    They welcomed her into a den filled with worn but comfortable-looking furniture and decked with sports trophies. A long, low table sported an array of finger foods and a large bowl of punch. She accepted her fee, grabbed a handful of the nibble bait and a paper cup full of punch, and sat between two of her husky young hosts. They smiled broadly and told her to relax.

    Relaxation proved to be involuntary. The punch was spiked with something stronger than alcohol.

    She remembered her incredulity. Why drug her? She was a paid performer. For the fee she'd quoted, she'd have given them any thrill they could imagine. But the thought dissolved into blackness as she succumbed to whatever they'd slipped her. Her last memory prior to waking up in the street was of rough hands pulling up her skirt.

    One more occupational hazard of a woman for hire.

    Out of a vague sense of obligation to her trade, she opened her purse and peered inside. Her wallet nestled among her brushes and cosmetics. To her considerable surprise, she found a sheaf of hundred-dollar bills within it.

    They drugged me, but they didn't rob me. Too weird.

    She stumbled up the church walk, paused before the tall double doors, and put her hand to the latch. It was unlocked.

***

    The interior of the church was dim. On each of two tables that flanked the altar stage burned a sparse line of candles set in red glass jars, teasing random flashes of color from the tall stained glass panes nearby. Behind the altar burned a Presence lamp shaped like a conventionalized heart. The ruddy light illuminated a single human figure, a girl about Freddi's age, sitting motionless in a pew near the center of the nave.

    Freddi sidled up to the girl and looked her over as unobtrusively as she could.

    The girl was short, fresh faced, and petitely beautiful. Her clothes were stylish without being flashy. Her lush brown hair bobbed fetchingly around her face. She had the sort of understated, unprovocative glamor that subtly commands the attention of men. She sat perfectly upright, but was so still that Freddi took her for sleeping, until she spied the girl's open, alert eyes. Those eyes were fixed on the altar. Now and then their lids would flutter closed, but their owner showed no other sign of life.

    The eyes turned to engage Freddi's own.

    Freddi repressed the impulse to cringe away. There was nothing threatening in the girl's expression. She gazed at Freddi for a moment, smiled formally, and went back to staring at the altar without speaking. It was as bare an acknowledgement of another person's presence as Freddi could imagine.

    "What..." Freddi's voice caught in her throat. "What are you watching for?"

    The girl turned toward her again, expression still pleasant but a hint of puzzlement in her eyes. "Nothing." This time, she didn't turn away.

    Uncertain of her ground, Freddi slid down the pew, stopped and sat on the wooden bench with about a yard between them. The other girl didn't move or speak.

    "You got nowhere else to go?"

    The girl smiled. "Not quite. I was thinking about some things." She held out her hand. "I'm Meg."

    Freddi took it. "I'm Freddi. You do a lot of thinking here?"

    Meg shook her head. "It's only my second time here." She half-turned to face Freddi. "My boyfriend popped the question day before yesterday. He's Catholic, I'm not. I've been wondering whether we'd have any problems because of it."

    "Is he really into it?"

    A moment of silence flowed past.

    "Yes," Meg said. "He is. He said it saved his life."

    "Gonna...what do they call it...convert?"

    Meg's lips compressed. "That's what I was thinking about. Do you have any kids?"

    Freddi snorted a laugh before she could think. "No, girls in my...no, I don't. Why?"

    Meg turned a little away and let her head droop. "I don't know if it would be fair to our kids for us not to have the same religion."

    "What're you, then?"

    "Nothing much. I was raised Jewish, but I never paid much attention to it." There was a hint of pain beneath Meg's conversational tone.

    Freddi started to speak again, halted herself.

    "Say, you got a car?"

    Meg looked at her again. "Yes, why?"

    "'Cause I could use a lift and you look like you could use a cup of coffee. How about it?"

    Meg's expression went blank. Her gaze flicked briefly to the Presence lamp, then back to Freddi. She rose, picked up a shearling coat from the pew beside her, and slipped it on.

    "Okay."

***

    They had the Idle Hours Diner almost to themselves. At the counter, a middle-aged man in a beige trench coat hunched over a steaming cup. Two waitresses stood facing one another behind the counter, chatting and waving their hands. At long intervals the headlights of a car would swerve around the corner on which the diner sat, then recede into the blackness of Forslund Drive.

    Meg sipped at her coffee. "So what had you out so late?"

    "I...ah, a little business."

    Meg's eyes traveled swiftly over Freddi's attire. "I see."

    Freddi suppressed the urge to explain.

    "Do you usually go to church after...business?"

    Freddi flushed. "No, it's just...hey, look, it's a tough trade, you know? I got blindsided tonight. They tossed me out in front of that church, near enough, and I'm not exactly dressed for the weather, so..."

    Meg's expression of grave interest was unchanged.

    " 'They,' you said?"

    Freddi nodded.

    "So you're not a Catholic, then."

    Freddi snorted. "About as much as you."

    Meg's eyes darkened. "Maybe not. It's a pretty set of ideas."

    Freddi snorted again. "A lot of stupid rules."

    "Not that many, and not that stupid."

    "You sound like you're gonna take the plunge."

    Meg's mouth tightened. "I might."

    "What's stopping you?"

    "Faith."

    "Hm?"

    "I don't know if I have it." Meg set down her cup and sat back in the booth. "There's more to being a Catholic than just following the rules. You have to believe some stuff I'm not sure I can accept."

    "Like God and Satan and heaven and hell?"

    Meg grinned crookedly. "Among other things."

    "That's the part I could never get." Freddi leaned forward and planted her forearms on the table. "Okay, let's say you learn all the rules and you think they're just great. Why do you have to believe all that stuff about Jesus and Mary and so on? What's the point? You're here, they're not, you live and you die and...and whatever comes next is gonna happen no matter what you believe. How does faith make it any better...or worse?"

    Meg didn't answer at once. She looked down at her folded hands, then off into the darkness beyond their window.

    "I don't know, Freddi. I'm pretty smart. I know that what you believe has no effect on what is. You can believe in unicorns, or dragons, or God all you want, and if there are no unicorns, or dragons, or...or God, there still won't be any. But maybe that's the important part. Most people abide by the rules even if they don't believe in God. I always have. But there's an empty space inside me I can't fill just by saying, hey, I'm a good person, I do unto others as I'd have them do unto me, end of story, cut to commercial." Her eyes returned to rest on Freddi's with an unusual gravity. "Emil doesn't have that space. He did, once. He said it was faith that taught him how to fill it."

    "Emil's your guy?"

    Meg nodded.

    Just one more reason to take their money, bang 'em, and catch a cab home.

    "Sounds like it's gonna matter, one way or the other. Hey, how old is he?"

    "Thirty-five."

    Freddi frowned. The fresh-faced young beauty across from her couldn't be nearly that old. "This'd be the second time around for him?"

    Meg nodded. "His first wife died in a plane crash."

    "Ouch."

    "Yeah."

    They sat in silence for a long interval. Presently Meg said, "Well, I should try to get some sleep." She dropped a dollar bill on the table and rose. "Would you like to visit with me for the night? I'd like it very much."

    Freddi's mouth dropped open. "Hey, I'm not -- wait a second. I've got a place of my own, you know?"

    Meg nodded. "I didn't mean to suggest otherwise. I just thought you might like some company. Someone to have breakfast with. I'll drive you to your place if you'd rather be alone, but I'd really like it if you'd come spend the night with me."

    Freddi hunched forward against a sudden, inexplicable pain.

    "Freddi? Are you okay?"

    "Yeah." She straightened up carefully and did her best to smile. "It sounds kinda fun. You a good cook?"

    Meg shrugged. "Not terribly, but what does that matter? We usually have Sunday breakfast here."

    We? "Does your guy live with you?"

    Meg shook her head.

    "Okay, let's boogie."

***

    Meg's apartment was in a garden apartment colony in Foxwood. It was spacious and cool, sparsely furnished and excessively neat. The walls were lined with bookshelves, all of them heavy with hardcover volumes. There was no television. It looked much too big for a young single woman, as if it had been rented for a larger group of occupants that had unaccountably failed to appear.

    Freddi stood just inside the door and waited. Meg tossed her purse and coat onto the little sofa and disappeared into the kitchen. The sound of running water followed.

    "You cooking something?" Freddi said.

    "Just tea," came the reply. "I like a cup of tea before I go to bed. Want one? It's decaffeinated."

    "Uh, sure."

    Freddi went to the nearest of the bookshelves and perused the titles. Most of them were about electronics. There were a scattering of texts on philosophy and history, and a bare handful of paperback novels.

    This chick's a heavyweight. A looker like her! Go figure.

    Presently Meg came back with a pair of large mugs that trailed steam behind her. She offered one to Freddi and gestured her toward the sofa. Freddi sat and sipped at her mug. It was a delicately minty brew, mildly sweet and gently soothing, the sort of thing one might use to relieve a minor headache.

    "This where I'm gonna sleep?" She tested the springiness of the sofa with her free hand. It resisted nicely.

    Meg shook her head. "No, I have a guest room with a real bed. You wouldn't want to sleep out here anyway. Feel the draft from the door?"

    No. "Uh, yeah."

    A few moments' silence passed before Meg said, "So tell me about your life."

    "Huh?"

    Meg leaned forward, her face suddenly filled with intensity.

    "Please? I know you've, uh, been around. I haven't. What's it like to, uh..."

    Freddi locked eyes with her hostess. The young woman was deeply flushed, as embarrassed as she was curious.

    "Freddi," Meg forced out, "Could you please tell me a little about the way it is when you...let yourself get loose?" Her voice sank still further. "Emil's the only man I've ever...been with."

    The pain that had surged in Freddi's chest at the church returned at doubled force.

    "How..." Her voice broke. "How can you..."

    Her tears burst forth as she slumped into Meg's waiting arms.

***

    Meg seemed to know what she was about, so when her hostess led Freddi to a bedroom, told her to disrobe and climb into bed, she did so. Meg did the same, quenched the light, slipped under the covers and beckoned Freddi into her arms. Freddi hesitated only a moment.

    "I haven't held somebody this way in a long time," Freddi murmured. Meg's body was a warm velvet presence against hers.

    "Hm?" Meg stroked Freddi's hair and pulled her snugly against her.

    "You know. No sex."

    Meg grinned. "Same here."

    "Huh? What about...?"

    "He's only slept here once." Meg squirmed onto her side and faced Freddi. "Our first night together. It was nice, but the next morning, we practically fell over one another with excuses about why it shouldn't happen again."

    "But you still...do it, don't you?"

    Meg nodded. "Not often, but yes, we do. Most of our time together is pretty sedate. He's a very quiet sort." She paused. "So am I, really."

    Freddi mused in the warmth and darkness.

    "You think it's gonna work?"

    "Marriage? Sure, why not? We love each other, we want to be together, we both want the usual stuff. Why shouldn't it work?"

    "Dunno." Freddi pondered. "I've got a lot of married customers. If it's so great, why do they need me?"

    "Need might be the wrong word, Freddi."

    "Yeah."

    Meg pulled Freddi snugly against her again. "Maybe it's the right one. I don't know. I'm twenty-five years old and barely out on my own. What do I know about what happens to a couple after a few years have gone by? Women do turn nasty, sometimes. Hell, men do too."

    "What about...your folks?"

    Freddi felt Meg's mouth rise in a grin. "The ultimate married couple. He's an accountant and estate planner, she's a homemaker and charity organizer. They live in Harrison, in northern Westchester. He 'leaves for work' by walking down the hall to his office. He 'comes home' at exactly five-thirty every evening. They eat every meal together, watch TV together, go grocery shopping together, the works. And every one of their neighbors is the same. There hasn't been a divorce in that town for about a million years. It's probably against the zoning ordinances."

    "Do you think..."

    Meg squeezed her gently. "Think what, Freddi?"

    Freddi had to force it out. "Think your pop ever did business with someone like me?"

    Silence elongated between them.

    "I doubt it," Meg said at last. "But it's not something I'm really hot to think about."

    Or talk about, right, babe?

    "What about...Emil?"

    Meg chuckled. "Not a chance. That's one I don't have to research."

    "You really that sure of him?"

    "Yup. And when you meet him, you'll be just as sure."

    "Huh? When I meet him?"

    "Yeah, he'll be here for breakfast. Freddi, this is a pretty big bed, but if you think you'd be more comfortable in the guest room --"

    "No!" Freddi's arms tightened involuntarily around Meg, squeezing a gasp of surprise from her. "Uh, no, this is really nice. I mean you're, uh, oh hell, let's not talk about it, okay?" Unaccountably, she felt her tears rise for the second time that night.

    Meg's hands rose to cup Freddi's cheeks. Even in the darkness, Freddi could see the searching intensity of the young woman's gaze.

    "Freddi," Meg murmured, "I'm not exiling you, and I'm not going anywhere. Even if we've only known each other for a couple of hours, I'm your friend, and I'm going to remain your friend. I practically begged you to stay here tonight, I put you in my bed and climbed in after you, and you've got my naked body in your arms right now. I'll be here when you wake up. I'll be here when you get out of the shower. I'll be holding your hand when Emil comes through the door. Whatever he says, and I'll bet a dollar to a doughnut he doesn't say one word, I'll still be your friend. Will you please believe that?"

    Freddi sniffled.

    "Please?"

    "Okay."

    Meg smiled. "Turn around."

    Freddi flipped onto her right side. Meg spooned in behind her, one arm curled around her waist. "Good night, dear."

    "G'night."

    Sleep was upon her at once.

***

    They awoke to strong April sunlight and immediately started giggling like children. Unable to decide who should shower first, they showered together, giggling and squealing all the while. Freddi was amazed at the thickness of Meg's hair. It seemed to require a pound of shampoo to lather it properly and half an hour to rinse it out. When they'd toweled off, Meg cast a disapproving eye at Freddi's nails and proclaimed that manicures and pedicures would be their next undertaking.

    "Okay, where do you go?" Freddi asked.

    Meg frowned. "Don't be silly. I'll do you myself. Can I trust you to do me?"

    "Uh, sure."

    Minutes later Freddi found herself in the kitchenette, her feet in Meg's lap trapped in foam toe spreaders. Meg labored over her with a craftsman's concentration, filing the edges of her nails to a perfect smoothness and buffing away her calluses before she reached for her polish. Freddi held completely still, wondering not for the first time if she were imagining the whole experience. When her toenails were finished, Meg went straight on to her fingernails, and with the same degree of care and skill.

    Freddi's nails were just barely dry when there came a knock at the door. Meg scampered to answer it, revealing a tall, huskily built young man wearing a navy blue suit and a shy smile. Meg took his hand and pulled him inside. His eyes lit on Freddi and his forehead crinkled.

    "Freddi, this is my fiance, Emil Deukmeijian. Emil, I'd like you to meet my friend Freddi Baskin. Careful of her nails, Emil, I just did them."

    Freddi rose and extended her hand. Emil took it in a careful clasp and murmured a pleasantry.

    "Freddi will be coming to church with us," Meg said.

    I will?

    "Breakfast too, I hope?" Emil said. His voice was deep and pleasant.

    "Of course," Meg answered for her.

    "Where do you know my sweetie from, Freddi?" Emil asked.

    Freddi opened her mouth but Meg leaped in first. "We have to get dressed and get to Mass, Emil. Church first, then breakfast, then small talk." She grabbed for Freddi's hand. "Come on, Freddi."

    Freddi was five inches taller than Meg, but the two of them were close enough in proportions that one of Meg's skirt suits fit her adequately well. Her leopard-pattern stilettos didn't go with the navy blue ensemble, but there was nothing to be done about it. Presently they were in Emil's car, on their way back to Our Lady of the Pines.

    The church was almost full when they arrived. Emil steered them to a back-corner pew where no one else was sitting. They'd just gotten settled when the service began.

    Freddi expected the service to be incomprehensible and tedious, but in truth it flowed along briskly. She understood more of it than she expected. The priest's homily, on the inner significance of forgiveness, was fresh and appealing. When the communion procession began, Emil rose to join it, leaving the two women alone in the pew.

    "What are they doing?" Freddi whispered to Meg.

    "Taking communion."

    "What's that?"

    "Part of the faith. The priest supposedly turns the wafers into the body of Christ, and the wine into his blood. It's a reenactment of the Last Supper."

    "Before they killed him, you mean?"

    Meg nodded.

    "Why aren't you doing it?"

    "I'm not..." Meg's voice caught. "...one of the family yet."

    "Do you think..."

    Meg glanced sideways at her. "What?"

    "Never mind."

    Millions of people do this every Sunday. Some do it even more often. Why? How can they believe it's about anything real? Even that it really happened? Just because it's written in an old book?

    Emil returned and sank to his knees beside her, head bowed over his folded hands.

    How could Meg buy into it? She's as smart as they come. Emil, too, probably, or he wouldn't have bagged her, and he believes it already! What do they get out of it? What does it have to do with anything real? What's the deal here?

    What happened then, Freddi could never thereafter describe. It was an entirely interior event, without the slightest of external consequences, yet it consumed and shook her like no orgasm she'd ever had.

    In a space of time too fleeting to be measured or named, she was overcome by a sense of transcendence, as if her body had exploded to engulf the entire universe. Beyond stood a Presence vaster than vast, that looked down upon Creation as a father might look upon his newborn child. Each iota of its substance, and all the laws that governed its journey through time, had been formed in His thought and cast forth by His will. Though it blended sorrow and splendor, pleasure and pain, jubilation and tears in equal measure, all of it was exactly as He intended; there was no waste. He saw it all, named its name, and pronounced it good.

    Including her.

    "Freddi?"

    She heard her name as if it bore no relation to her whatsoever.

    "Freddi...?" Meg's hand closed upon her shoulder.

    She shook herself, cognizant once again of her surroundings. The vision had sent her to her knees. Emil and Meg had risen and were peering down at her in some concern. The church was almost empty.

    She rose awkwardly, uncertain of her balance. Meg took her by the hand and led her out of the church.

***

    They were back at the garden apartment complex before she could speak again. Emil, apparently aware that the two of them needed some time without him, kissed Meg and told her he'd call that evening. They got out and hurried up the stairs.

    When Meg had closed and locked the door behind them, she pulled Freddi down onto the sofa, made a ball of their four hands, and whispered, "What happened to you?"

    "I don't know." Freddi groped for a purchase on the vision, tried to haul it back into clarity, but to no avail. "You...didn't see it?"

    "See what?"

    Freddi started to speak, halted herself, and thought furiously.

    It's not supposed to be obvious. Not the faith part. If it were obvious, it wouldn't be worth anything. Maybe I got it because I'm not smart. Maybe the guys who are smart enough to work it out for themselves never get a shot like this one.

    Meg might never get one.

    You got something in mind for me, God?

    "I don't know, babe. Probably I just haven't had enough sleep." Freddi did her best to grin. "Or maybe it was all that nail polish. People get high on the fumes sometimes, don't they?"

    Meg winced. "You gave us a fright. Sure you're okay?"

    Freddi nodded, rose, and stretched out the muscles in her lower back. "Yeah. Got anything planned for your afternoon? Wait, we haven't had breakfast yet. Hungry?"

    Meg nodded, her face still tense with uncertainty.

    "Then let's get some. My treat. Think that diner is still open?"

    "It's always open. Like the church."

    Freddi swallowed. "Yeah."

***

    A dour-faced waitress brought them corned beef, scrambled eggs, and hot coffee. Freddi watched her move away before picking up her fork. Meg was already digging in.

    Freddi picked at her hash, uncertain how she should frame her announcement.

    "I'm gonna stop hooking."

    Meg looked up, a forkful of hash halfway to her lips. "Well, good. Because of last night?"

    Freddi nodded.

    "But do you have another line?"

    Freddi shrugged. "I've got a few bucks to tide me over while I look for one."

    "Ever done any data entry?"

    "What's that?"

    "A lot of typing, mostly. My company has a training program. I could probably get you in."

    "Sounds good. Thanks! But I'll bet the money isn't much."

    Meg grimaced. "Bull's-eye."

    "So I'm gonna have to cut expenses. Find a roommate, maybe."

    Meg lost all expression.

    "Hey, what'd I say? You okay?"

    "Never better," Meg said. Her tone was completely without affect, almost electronically flat. "Are you...attached to your apartment?"

    Freddi felt a thrill wash through her. She closed her eyes briefly and waited until it had passed.

    "It's a dump. I don't spend a lot of time there with my eyes open, you know?"

    "Freddi..." Meg looked away. "I do have a spare bedroom."

    Freddi said nothing.

    "I used to have a roommate. She moved out about two years ago."

    "When you started seeing Emil?"

    Meg nodded. "I've been kind of lonely."

    You smart gals usually are.

    "What about Emil?"

    "Not for at least a year. Neither of us wants to go fast."

    "Okay. What's the rent?"

    "For you? Nothing until you're working again."

    "Again?"

    Meg grinned. "Let's not split hairs. Anyway, would you like to room with me for a year or two? I think I'd enjoy your company. And you might enjoy a change of scene."

    I already have, babe.

    "You're on. Just one thing, though."

    "Hm?"

    "When we go to church on Sundays --"

    "You want to go back?"

    Freddi nodded. "Could it be just you and me for a while? Or do you think Emil will make a stink about it?"

    Meg's mouth had fallen open. "I...wasn't sure I wanted to keep going myself. Okay, sure. But why?"

    Freddi scowled. "Some of the things the priest said this morning. I've got a lot of forgiving to do. And a lot of learning. I've got this feeling there's gonna be a lot of, you know, girl stuff. I'd like us to do it together, if you're into it."

    There was silence between them for a long moment. Meg's beautiful face, soft and round as a medieval portrait of the Madonna, slowly warmed to a brilliant smile.

    "I think I am. So when do you want to move in?"

    Freddi snorted laughter. "Let's finish breakfast first. Say, about Emil?"

    "Hm?"

    "Does he have any nice friends?"

    "Ha!"

-- The End --

Friday, October 06, 2006

Tit For Tat

(This is a sequel to “Impurities.”)

---

The prime minister strained against his bonds, to no avail. The plastic cuffs at his wrists were unbreakable. Similar pinions at his elbows, knees, and ankles held him securely to his seat. His captor sat unspeaking and impassive, arms crossed over his chest, as the silent drama of vengeance played out on the monitor before them.

The prime minister's towering rage at being treated like a common criminal, snatched by unspeaking ruffians from his home, cuffed, blindfolded, drugged to sleep and awakened in an impersonally sterile place of confinement, had metamorphosed long ago into weak tears of helplessness. His rank was as nothing here. His captor had told him that, had assured him that he would live, had set the monitor before him, and then seated himself to watch.

For the head of state of a sovereign nation to be reduced to such a state was unthinkable, intolerable. It violated all the laws of international dealing. But who in the world could do anything about it? Certainly no one he could name. Nor could any nation upon whose powers he might call for assistance, even if he could make himself heard beyond the walls of that starkly white, windowless room.

He could not say how much time had passed since he'd awakened. He'd exhausted his voice in screaming long ago. He'd flailed and squirmed and rattled his bonds. He'd even allowed his bladder to empty, to his own shame. It had accomplished nothing. All he knew was the grip of his bonds, the silent company of his captor, and the sequence unfolding inexorably on the screen.

Finally the sleek black shape he'd watched for an unknown time pitched upward, opened its bomb bay doors, and released a cruise missile. As the missile's jet engine ignited and its wings deployed, the airplane wheeled and accelerated away. The missile descended unhurriedly to follow the nap of the earth. The image from its nose camera replaced that of the fighter plane that had guarded its deliverer.

The fields over which the missile flew streaked by too quickly for him to identify them, but he knew with a certainty that transcended reason what the thing's target would be. Three minutes after its release, the missile executed its terminal pop-up maneuver, tipped over and began its final descent. He wanted to close his eyes, but found that he could not.

The video feed switched off just as the screen flared white.

The prime minister wept. His captor rose, turned off the monitor, and faced him squarely.

"You did not heed me."

"It was an accident! In Allah's name, what kind of beast are you to take such vengeance on half a million unsuspecting people for an accident, a thing neither of us wanted and would have stopped the world to prevent?"

His captor inclined his head. "But you could have prevented it. You could have turned your weapons over to us, as we demanded that you do, not once but many times. You sat in my office and assured me that they were well guarded, utterly secure. Yet al-Qaeda infiltrators managed to steal one, didn't they? My operatives are still counting the bodies."

"I could not have given in to your demands and kept my position," the prime minister wheezed. "An appearance of weakness is a sentence of death among my people. You know that as well as I."

"Just so," his captor said. "You scamped your responsibility as a sovereign for the appearance of strength -- a strength, as it developed, you did not possess. You brushed aside our offer of assistance because to accept it would have put you in a secondary position to a greater power. You made statements of confidence in your control of your country's arsenal that were a sham from first to last. And here is the result."

Stephen Sumner's eyes, mild until then, turned in an instant to daggers of ice.

"It was no accident, General. It was a failure of your security apparatus, noted neither by you nor by anyone under your authority. I'm willing to believe that it wasn't according to your wishes. That's why I refrained from incinerating your entire country. But perhaps there will be no more such...accidents, now that thirty-four thousand Israelis and half a million of your subjects are dead in consequence. Perhaps you will accept my offer and allow American experts to destroy your remaining nukes and war gases. At the least, you and your fellows will know better than to doubt me. For you did doubt me, didn't you? You thought such a deed was impossible to an American president, that his tender conscience would prevent him from even thinking of it."

"I..." The prime minister choked on his grief and shame, unable to force out another word.

"You were wrong. Your people have paid for your arrogance. So have you, in your fashion." Sumner closed his eyes. "And so have I, General. I can never forgive you for forcing this on me. But my responsibility to my people left me no choice." He turned and made for the door.

"I am a dead man," the prime minister whispered.

Sumner looked back over his shoulder a final time. "Ultimately, General, we all are. You will now be returned to your palace. Have a nice day."

-- The End --

Friday, August 25, 2006

Taillights

(An Onteora County romance. If you cock your ear just so, you can hear about 837 gazillion women ranting about how hard it is to find a good man. Stipulated that there are some schmucks out there, but there are about an equal number of self-indulgent, self-absorbed princesses. Beyond both groups, there’s a third that receives little to no attention: the truly superior types of both sexes, for whom a suitable mate can be as elusive as...well...as the butterfly of love.)

---

"Where will I be sitting?" Jeanne Newton asked.

Art Giordano waved at an unoccupied desk. It appeared to have been recently cleaned. The fabric-covered chair beside it looked new.

Jeanne cast a quick glance at the men at the neighboring desks. All had their heads down over their work. Most wore wedding rings; the exceptions didn't look particularly tasty. All the same, she sashayed past them in her sassiest style, planting one high-heeled foot in front of the other in the deliberate stride of a runway model. A number of eyes rose to assess her figure and dress.

Giordano led her away, past the secretary's station and toward a walled office whose door stood open.

"Time to meet the brains of the outfit," he said.

Behind the wide mahogany desk that faced the door hunched a casually dressed middle-aged man with a pleasant face and a thick mop of dark brown hair. His brown eyes were intent on the terminal screen before him. The founder of Arcologics slid his mouse along the desktop with the delicacy of a microsurgeon.

"Todd?" Giordano said softly.

The brown eyes leaped, skipped off Giordano's face and settled on Jeanne's. "Hm?"

"New associate. Miss Newton, this is Todd Iverson. Todd, this is Jeanne Newton."

Iverson grinned, rose, and offered her his hand. "Charmed." Before she could reply, he said, "What's your specialty?"

"I -- I was an operating room nurse."

"Where?" The eyes bored into hers from well above her, warm but unsettlingly intense. There was no ring on his left hand.

"Onteora General."

"How recently?"

"Until about three weeks ago."

"Excellent." Iverson's eyes flicked to Giordano again. "She'll know what we need to verify the gatekeeper procedures Olympian's been using on our health insurance claims."

Giordano nodded. "My thoughts exactly."

"Have you started already, Miss Newton?"

"Uh, yes, just today."

He smiled brilliantly and came out from behind his desk. "Then it's time you made the acquaintance of our benefits liaison officers. They'll be the source of all your nightmares for the next few months." He indicated the door, and they strode out into the larger office space. Giordano excused himself and moved off.

She surveyed his body furtively. He was considerably taller than she, athletically slender, and visibly charged with vital energy. He was easily the most attractive man she'd seen in Arcologics' offices so far, but his proportions seemed a bit off. His arms looked short for his height, and his waist fell two or three inches higher than seemed natural.

She glanced sideways at his legs. His knees appeared unusually placed as well. His stride was somewhat compact for a man of his height, as if he were just slightly unsure of his balance.

He's wearing high heels.

Though his slacks were long and baggy enough to shroud them, the way the fabric flowed as he walked, combined with his carefully shortened gait, gave the game away.

They have to be four inches high at least. Without them, he'd be no more than five-nine.

He squired her to the Personnel offices and introduced her to several other women, addressing each of them with "Miss" and her surname, and speaking of each in terms complimentary enough to elicit a blush. They glowed in response. All of them regarded him with the gaze by which a woman says I'd do anything at all for you. If they were aware of his footwear affectation, they gave no sign.

Presently they returned to his office. He waved her into a guest chair, settled into his own chair, and, defying all expectation, tilted back, hands behind his head, and swung his feet up onto his desk.

There they were. Laced ankle boots of matte black leather, with two inch platforms and five inch heels. He winked at her as she gaped.

"I knew you noticed," he said. "Any problems?"

"Uh, no, but...why?"

He shrugged. "I like being tall." He raised an eyebrow. "And yourself?"

"Huh?"

"Why do you wear high heels?"

"Well," she stammered, "I guess because all women do."

He shook his head. "No they don't. You've met a dozen or more women here today. Were any of them wearing heels?"

She thought, and shook her head.

"So why you, then?"

"Uh, maybe for the same reason as you?"

He grinned. "Maybe. Or maybe because you were raised to prefer them. Or maybe because you're single -- yes, I noticed -- and you know that men like the sight of a woman in heels, especially a petite woman such as yourself. But it's by choice, right? No one forced you into them before you came here this morning?"

She grimaced. "Yes, it's by choice."

"Good." He pulled those disconcerting boots off his desk and slid forward. "So let's talk about health care cost accounting."

***

Jeanne returned to her Chedwick flat that evening to find Sarah already at home. Her roommate was dressed to the nines as usual, lounging on their living room sofa with a book: The Uses And Abuses Of Psychiatry, by someone with an Eastern European name. The television was on but unwatched. A newsreader droned unintelligibly in the background.

"So? How was your first day?"

"Tiring." Jeanne dropped the leather satchel that served her as a briefcase and thumbed through the pile of mail on the secretary. It was the usual assortment of junk mail and bills. There was nothing from Walt. The answering machine's readout showed 0. "Any calls on the machine when you got home?"

Sarah shook her head.

Bastard meant it when he said we were through.

"Any plans for the evening?" Sarah asked.

Jeanne shrugged. "I thought to ring Larry up, but I'm really too tired. You?"

"Well," Sarah said, "I thought I might take you out for dinner, to celebrate the new job." She grinned. "And to pump you about it. Any cuties?"

Jeanne tensed internally. She tried not to let it show on her face.

"Not that I noticed. Nobody who'd meet your standards, anyway."

"Oh? Which part of my standards?"

The part about being richer than you. Except for one, maybe. "You'd probably think they were all pretty dull. They work a lot, don't make much small talk."

"I teach small talk." Sarah Forslund rose gracefully, smoothed her hammered-silk skirt, and slipped into her high-heeled pumps. She was a natural dancer-athlete whose every smallest movement and gesture, conscious or not, was an esthetic delight. Her grace, her classic beauty, her high intelligence, and her family's wealth made Jeanne feel like a member of a lesser species. "Anyway, you shouldn't expect much of that on the first day. Let's go get fed."

Jeanne sighed. "Lead the way, roomie."

***

Jeanne hadn't been hired for her medical background; Arcologics hadn't been looking for a nurse. Its help-wanted ad had declared an interest in anyone who could pass its intelligence and judgment tests, qualities with which Jeanne was well supplied. No more than a day had passed before she realized how very much she'd need them.

Her work absorbed her completely. The company was as much a maverick as its founder and CEO. Nothing about it fell within the bounds of conventional commerce. She had to learn at a terrifying rate, for the firm's needs were both immediate and considerable.

Though her responsibilities as insurance liaison officer didn't require it, she began to spend large fractions of her evenings poring over the corporate records, trying to make sense of Arcologics's product offerings and its relations with other companies. In its four years of existence, it had marketed a robotic food irradiation unit, a self-contained hydroponics control system, a catalytic air sanitizer, an electrical power conditioner, and a program for solving advanced problems in mechanics. It had entered into co-development agreements with a manufacturer of nuclear reactors, a maker of specialty fabrics, and a statistical reliability assessment firm. It was deep in negotiations with a commercial construction firm that specialized in giant office towers, having won the subcontract to provide the environmental controls for an eighty-story skyscraper to be erected in Rochester the coming year.

Arcologics's activities seemed to be united in only one way: they all showed a profit.

Profit seemed to be Todd Iverson's Holy Grail. He wasn't just Arcologics's founder and chief executive officer; he was also its resident inventor. All its products to date had been born in his mind. A man like that would normally invest emotionally in his creations; he'd be stubborn about pushing them all the way to the market no matter how slender their commercial possibilities might be. Not Iverson. He'd killed several of his own ideas under development despite his lieutenants' enthusiasm for them, when he became convinced that they'd earn too little to be worth pursuing.

The attitude carried over to inter-corporate relations. Iverson handled all contract negotiations personally. He invariably set terms that would return a fifteen percent pre-tax profit to Arcologics, and he never budged from them. He ignored attempts to deflect his attention onto matters of little relevance. He refused to "buy into" a deal: to accept a reduced profit margin on the matter under immediate discussion in return for a promise of concessions on some notional larger deal to come. "We're here and this is now," he would say. "Let's do what we came here to do." He'd never yet failed to carry any point he cared to make.

But if Iverson were mad for money, there were no symptoms of it in his treatment of Arcologics's personnel. He paid above-average salaries, and provided above-average noncash benefits, to everyone on his payroll. He'd rebuffed his own personnel officer for suggesting that there be a cap on annual merit raises. He kept a lawyer in-house, at a generous salary, strictly for the convenience of his workers. He employed three people, most aberrantly, to negotiate with other companies of every description -- again, strictly for his employees' benefit. Jeanne was one of the three.

He was as courtly and considerate to everyone in his office as Walt had been to her at the peak of their romance. They were "Mister" or "Miss" to him, and he was "Todd" to them, without exception. He paid for their coffee and tea. For those who stayed late, he paid for their meals. He swapped small talk, jokes, and personal anecdotes with anyone who cared to do so. No few of his people would jump in front of a speeding truck to protect him.

And he wore high-heeled boots to the office every day, and no doubt everywhere else he went, and no one ever said a word about it.

***

Larry Lansing put down his fork and flattened his palms against the table. "Something on your mind?" he said.

"No, not really." Jeanne kept her eyes on her plate. She toyed with her scallops in drawn butter, seeking an arrangement that would make them look more like a remnant than an entirely untouched meal. "I'm just a little off my game."

"Does the new job have you down? You haven't said a lot about it."

I didn't appreciate being quizzed. "There's a lot of learning involved. Lots of ropes to get hold of." She put down her own fork and sat back. Around them, the Aquarium buzzed with the usual clamor of the Friday evening dinner crowd. The little seafood restaurant's every table was full. Its reliably fresh cuisine and modest prices made it a favorite haunt of Onteora's courting couples and young marrieds.

Ever since she'd admitted her fondness for fish, Larry had taken her there and nowhere else.

His anxious gaze remained on her. "I hope it isn't wearing you out. You've been putting in a lot of overtime."

That sat her up straight. "I haven't said anything about that." Even though it's true. "What makes you say so?"

He cringed at that. "You've been a lot less available lately. I just figured it was probably work."

That's what you wanted it to be.

She sighed faintly. "I guess I have. I've been tired, Lar. I'm not getting enough..."

"Enough what? Rest?"

She scowled. "I don't know."

But it's not the job. I'm more alive in the office than when I'm out with him. A lot more.

Walt was a bastard, but at least there was some substance to him. He had some interests, some conversation. He could see what was around him without my having to point it out and tell him why it mattered. Why am I wasting my Friday evenings on a man with nothing to him? A man who doesn't dare take me to another restaurant? A man for whom I can barely stay awake and can't bear to touch?

The thought that followed from that rose almost to her consciousness. It brushed the surface of her mind before she seized her mental broom and drove it back into the darkness.

He leaned forward and dropped his voice. "Would you like me to take you home?" His tone was so solicitous it made her want to scream.

She forced herself to count to ten. "Maybe that would be best. I really am tired."

He nodded and signaled for the waitress.

At her door, she smiled and turned to put her key in the lock, when he surprised her by reaching for her hand. She stood there, silent and half-paralyzed, while he groped for words.

"Jeanne..." He faltered, collected himself, and produced a plastic smile. "Thanks for tonight." She thought he was about to kiss her, but he merely chafed her hand gently before releasing it, turned swiftly and walked away.

He knows.

She unlocked her door and found the apartment dark. Sarah was still out. She dropped her keys on the phone secretary and slipped swiftly through the darkness to her bedroom. She manage to undress, remove her makeup, and secure herself between the covers, all the lights out, before the tears came.

***

She dialed Iverson's extension with a microscopically trembling finger.

"Yes?"

"It's Jeanne Newton. I think I have all the claims rejection data assembled, if you'd like to see it."

"Sure would. Come on by." The connection broke at once.

She swept her charts and spreadsheets into a neat bundle, rose, and strode for Iverson's office with all the confidence she could simulate. His door was open. She started to deliver a pro forma knock, saw what he was doing, and halted herself. He seemed not to notice her arrival. She slipped in and slid into his guest chair without a sound.

He was sketching with a charcoal on a huge vellum pad. His charcoal was sharpened to a fineness that would have done credit to a #3 pencil. Its marks were delicately precise, as minute and perfect as the smallest scalpel cuts of the finest surgeon. The sketch was a profile of a middle-aged woman's face. It was more detailed than Jeanne could have imagined possible in so soft a medium. He was drawing a group of fine hairs that lay along her right temple.

She watched in silence as he worked. When he'd completed the woman's hair, he set to work on a headpiece that covered nearly all of it. It was that of a Catholic nun.

Presently he ceased to draw, merely sat staring down at the completed sketch with the charcoal in his hand. She thought to alert him to her presence, decided against it when she saw his eyes brim over.

"What do you think?"

She started. "I didn't think you knew --"

He looked up at last. "Of course I knew. You did call me, remember?" He glanced at his desk clock. "Twenty-seven minutes ago, at that." He grinned. "It's all right to interrupt me. That's what I'm here for."

I got lost in what you were doing.

"So," he said, shoving the gorgeous thing toward her, "what do you think?"

"It's...exquisite." She frowned. "But why charcoal?"

"The saddest medium. Charcoal helps to bring out the somberness of an image. She was always a sad figure, even after she took her vows." He grinned wanly. "Even though that was the one thing she'd always wanted to do."

He seemed unaware of the tears running down his face.

Someone he loved very much. Someone he's lost. To the Church?

"When did she die?"

He shook his head. "She's still alive."

"An aunt?"

Another shake. "My mother."

She suppressed a gasp. He grinned again.

"Don't get the wrong idea. She wasn't a nun when I was born. That came afterward, after my father passed away." He rose and shoved his hands into his pockets. "That stuff can wait till after lunch, can't it?"

"Well, if you say so."

She rose and was about to depart when he said "What's your taste in music like?" He rounded his desk and grabbed a cardigan from the coat tree by the door.

She shrugged. "I like a lot of stuff."

He shrugged into the sweater and cast a speculative look at her. "You've already gotten to play art critic this morning. Want to take a stab at music reviewer?"

"Uh, sure, why not?"

He gestured her toward the door with a sweep of his arm. "Then lunch is on me."

***

He drove them to a small one-story warehouse on the western edge of the city, about a mile from the Arcologics offices. Another car, a German sedan of venerable years, was parked alongside them. The building was shabby, and lacked an identifying facade, Its windows were heavily begrimed. The large sliding drive-through doors were padlocked shut. He strode to the personnel door without comment and pushed inside.

Funny place for a concert.

The interior of the little warehouse was no match for its exterior. It was as clean as many a private residence. It contained nothing that suggested storage or any other rough use. All its surfaces were padded with eggcrate foam panels. Musical devices lined the four walls. Most were identifiable: keyboards, electric guitars, assorted brass and wind instruments, and a bevy of amplifiers and speakers. Some were more mysterious. A web of cables joined them to a computer that stood beside a large mixing board.

At the far wall, laboring over one of the instruments she couldn't identify, she spied a tall, frail-looking man of perhaps sixty. He was clad in denim, and his rough gray hair was pulled back into a ponytail. When he saw Iverson approach, he put down the tool he'd been using and spread his arms in welcome. Iverson embraced him.

"Padrone!"

"Paisano mio!" Iverson replied. He turned back to Jeanne and beckoned her forward. "Miss Newton, I'd like you to meet Sal Acunzo, one of the two best completely unknown keyboardists in America, who does me the honor of playing with me in my spare moments. Sal, this is Miss Jeanne Newton, who's doing us the honor of listening to us today."

Acunzo extended a hand, and she shook it.

"How did he rope you into this?" Acunzo said.

"He promised me lunch."

"Todd! When are you going to learn some new tricks?"

Her employer shrugged. "Why bother, when the old ones still work just fine?"

Acunzo shook his head. "Hopeless. Did you get the bridge of that thing you were working on last week straightened out?"

"Got a new tack to try, but I want you to rip it to shreds for me."

Acunzo flipped a hand. "Lay it on me."

Iverson's eyes roved among the cables that crisscrossed the floor. "Ready for it?"

"Just finished."

Iverson nodded and positioned himself before an enormous console that had more keyboards, switches and dials than any organ she'd ever seen. The older man leaned against an amplifier case and beckoned Jeanne to join him. She perched herself beside him as Iverson did a series of incomprehensible things to the huge device.

Abruptly, without a word of preliminary, Iverson straightened, put his hands to one of the keyboards, and began. The speakers that lined the warehouse walls fountained forth a rippling cascade of glory.

***

"So," he said around a mouthful of bacon-cheeseburger, "what did you think?"

What sort of test is this?

Jeanne laid her fork alongside her plate and sat back in her chair. "Mr. Iverson --"

"Todd, please."

"Okay." She scanned the little tavern as she chose her words. They were almost alone. A lone customer sat at the bar. The bartender was busying himself with minute rearrangements of his condiment trays.

"Why did you want my opinion in the first place?"

He grinned. "Answering my question with a question is hardly cricket. Don't you know any other artsy types?"

She grimaced. "One or two."

"And from that face you just made, I'd guess that they press their stuff on you at every opportunity. Am I right?"

She nodded.

"Well, why should I be any different?"

Because you're a genius. As much a genius at art and music as at engineering, management, and marketing.

His eyes pressed her for a response.

"I suppose," she said, measuring out each syllable, "I'd say that you just have to know how good you are already. You certainly don't need the praise of a former operating-room nurse. So why did you want my opinion?"

He merely grinned more widely.

"Todd...do you display these gifts of yours to all your new employees?"

"Nope." His grin turned impish and he looked away. "Only the young, single, pretty ones."

She opened her mouth, closed it without speaking, and went back to digging through her chef's salad.

***

Sarah peered at her over their omelets. "Not hungry?"

"Yes and no." Jeanne stopped stabbing at her eggs and laid down her fork. "More distracted than anything else, I think."

Sarah smiled. "And you can't do two things at once. At least not when one of them is eat and the other is moon over your new boss."

Jeanne sat up straight at that. "Excuse me? Who said anything about him?"

"You did."

"What? But --"

"By not saying anything about him for nearly two weeks now. The word around town is that he's a major hottie, and that he's very, very eligible. And you work directly with him. But I haven't been able to goose a word out of you with a pitchfork, practically since you started there, and that's just not you. So what's the story, roomie?"

Jeanne let her eyes rove around their kitchenette and tried to get her thoughts to congeal.

Sarah's social connections are a lot better than anything I've got. Maybe she's heard something about him. About him and me. God knows, enough people have seen us together.

And I still can't figure out if he's hitting on me.

"You know," Sarah said, "if you don't want him, you could always toss him my way."

Jeanne frowned. "Haven't you met him, Sar?"

Sarah shook her head. "Haven't had the pleasure, as much as I'd love to. Dad invited him to a shindig a few weeks ago, and we didn't even get an R.S.V.P."

So his manners aren't perfect.

"What was the occasion?"

"Just a big backyard party. Dad invites the whole clan, all his business associates, and anyone he's decided he'd like to meet. The non-family invitees almost always show up bearing gifts."

Not too surprising when the invitation's from Onteora's only billionaire.

"He probably didn't know he'd been invited, Sar. You wouldn't believe how many hours he puts in, or all the, the stuff he does outside the office. He's --" She halted herself just short of the sort of effusive praise that would confirm Sarah's guess.

From the look on her face, it was clear that Sarah Forslund had received all the confirmation she needed.

***

Jeanne was straining to choose between going to the local art house to see a movie she'd seen before and curling up with a book she'd read twice before when the phone rang.

"Hello?"

"Hi, Jeanne."

Jeanne's mood went at once from mildly bored to despairing. "Oh, hi, Larry."

"Interested in going somewhere tonight?"

"I hadn't thought about it. What did you have in mind?"

There was a brief silence on the line. "I don't know. I thought you might have an idea."

Well, at least it's not dinner at the Aquarium.

"I'm kinda dry of ideas tonight, Larry. Maybe we should try another night?"

Another silence.

He has to get the message at some point.

"Okay, Jeanne. See you soon. You have a good evening, okay?"

"You too, Lar. Good night."

"Good night."

Jeanne set the phone down with a sense of pointlessness.

I would have liked to go somewhere, do something. Anything. Sarah never has a problem filling her free time with good stuff. She's always full of stories, even though she goes out alone almost every evening. But all Larry ever offers me is the world's most boring crap. Why can't he come up with anything worthwhile?

Why should I expect him to, at this point?

She banished the thought forcefully, grabbed her twice-read romance novel, and headed for her bedroom.

***

Jeanne did her best to stay buried in work. There was plenty of it; deliberately or not, Olympian Assurances had become a thorn in Arcologics' flesh, regularly rejecting half the claims submitted to it and occasionally more. Her days were evenly divided between reviewing disputed medical claims and phoning various Olympian officers with information, complaints, and carefully phrased threats. It was the only thing in her life interesting enough, and plentiful enough, to keep her from daydreaming about her handsome, charming, brilliant, excessively gifted, maddeningly indirect, high-heeled boss. It worked.

It was close to being the only thing in her life at all. Her free time was spent with her books, her music, and an occasional rerun of a medical drama. Larry had stopped calling. Sarah had taken to spending all her evenings out of the apartment, often leaving only a note asking Jeanne to leave a light on when she retired. Even telemarketers seemed to have decided to let her be. When she came home after a day of work, Jeanne had a completely private world.

She found it peaceful, even refreshing. She'd never minded her own company, but her failed romances with Walt Rustow and Larry Lansing had somehow deflected her from the enjoyment of the things she really loved. She'd allowed herself to become anxious over her advancing age, but why? Time would pass at a rate of sixty seconds per minute whether she was dated, mated or alone. For the first time in months, she felt no need to expose herself to potential suitors.

It came as something of a surprise when Sarah, whose face she'd hardly seen for several weeks, swooped down upon her at the end of a workday and dragged her out to an artists' cafe for coffee and distraction.

***

"A poetry open mike?" Jeanne said as they sat.

Sarah nodded. "Most of these guys are about as interesting as listening to paint dry, but a couple have really got it. With luck we'll get one or two of them."

The cafe was decently large, yet every table but theirs was full. Except for them, the crowd was exclusively male, but no one had taken conspicuous note of their presence. That they might ignore her was thinkable to Jeanne, but for Sarah's Nordic beauty to go unremarked struck her as unthinkable.

"Is this a gay hangout, Sar?"

Her roommate shrugged. "It hadn't occurred to me to ask."

A waiter in a suede drawstring shirt and black beret asked for their order. Jeanne asked for coffee, Sarah for a fruit and cheese platter. As the waiter made for the kitchen, the lights came down and a similarly garbed emcee mounted the stage and moved to the microphone.

"We have a short lineup for you tonight," he murmured into the mike. "Two new contributors, Danny and Steve --" He paused as a rustling murmur passed over the crowd -- "and Todd whose work you've enjoyed before."

At the last name a round of applause punctuated by scattered cheers rang out. The emcee smiled. "You know, for an artsy bunch, you guys sure seem to like the old forms." That triggered a second round of applause, and a considerable amount of laughter.

"All right, let's get to it." The emcee departed the stage and a tall, husky young man moved diffidently toward the mike.

Danny, the first entrant, hunched over the mike as if he were hoping to hide behind it. He read a free-verse poem about war casualties in a reedy, halting voice. At the conclusion there were a few scattered claps, but on the whole the audience seemed unmoved.

Steve, the second contributor, was a short, slight man of middle age with a tubercular cast to him. He clutched the microphone stalk as if he could barely stand without it. His poem, if it could be called that, was a shrieking, twenty-minute denunciation of greed and selfishness that shaded over into a demand for respect for "the shades that linger, endlessly dying, awaiting the respect that will set them free." There was no applause.

There was a brief hiatus before the third participant stepped out of the shadows toward the mike. His platform boots clapped loudly against the wooden tympanum of the stage. The crowd roared in approbation, and Jeanne suppressed a gasp. Beside her, Sarah hmmm'ed in approval.

Todd Iverson smiled shyly. "Hi, everybody." He held up a single sheet of paper. "I call this one 'Valkyrie'."

Silence fell, and he read.

Their forces loomed, hard, angry, fierce of eye,
My mistress spurred her steed and charged, forbye.
Retainers who had ne'er knelt to a foe,
Pulled hard upon their reins and watched her go.

Her battle-cry resounded forth alone,
Her courser's hooves struck sparks from flint and stone.
She did not turn to see the naked plain,
Her yeomen having thought best to refrain.

Sword gleaming in her hand, she struck and swore,
The foemen quickly giving ground before,
Such righteous rage boiled from that flaxen head,
That those she did not fell soon mocked the dead.

As through the bristling ranks uncompanied,
She drove, with flashing steel and brilliant speed,
Her own behind her muttered at such play,
Alone yet unafraid, to win the day.

All quit the field before that angel's rage,
Her foemen and the men who wore her gage,
The foe feared death, her own feared to remain,
To face her and her most deserv'd disdain.

And when the plain lay thick with blood and steel,
She sat unmarred, and scanned that crimson field,
Sheathed sword and turned her courser toward her home,
Into her keep she rode, proud and alone.

'Twere dark, and grim, and pierced by northern cold,
Strange in that sunlit land, Valkyrie's hold,
Wherein she could await the promised day,
When he for whom she yearned would make his way,

A knight of strength and grace, unmarred by fright,
To company her each morning, noon, and night,
Till battle's joys, and life's, could not abide,
They set together on Valhalla's ride.

I could but wish to be that worthy knight,
To raise my sword and join her in the fight,
But only a crude seneschal am I,
To dream, to yearn, regret, renounce, and sigh.

For heroes notice not the lowly born,
Such mind their place, endure their betters' scorn,
Except alone, when nightfall sets them free,
To dream of other worlds where such might be.

He bowed his head. For several seconds there was a silence as profound as night, and then the crowd came to its feet, clapping and cheering to shake the very roof loose from the walls.

He raised his head once more, and the silence returned.

"Thank you."

And he strode off into the shadows.

***

"Pretty obviously they had their eye on an art nouveau sort of ambiance," Sarah said. She guided her Mercedes smoothly into the Arcologics parking lot and pulled up alongside Jeanne's battered Honda. Other than their two cars, the lot was empty. "I don't think it developed the way they expected."

"Nouveaux artes," Jeanne muttered absently.

"Hm?"

"It's one of the exceptions," Jeanne said. "In French, all adjectives come after the noun they modify except for those that indicate beauty, age, goodness, or size."

"Oh. Okay." Sarah turned and fixed a concerned look on her. "Going straight home?"

Jeanne shrugged. "I guess so. Why?"

A ripple of mild irritation passed over her roommate's face. "Because you should. You've been working too much. Pushing the outside of the envelope of human dedication." Sarah smiled faintly. "I know you love your job, but there are limits. You're a good friend and a good apartment-mate. I'm not going to stand by in silence while you trash yourself with overwork. Anyone in my family could tell you how that usually works out."

Jeanne opened her mouth, closed it, and studied Sarah's face.

She means it. She's not just reading from a good-roomie script.

"Sar... well, first of all, thanks for caring that much. But it's not what you think. Yeah, I enjoy the work. I spent a lot of years helping to patch up broken bodies, and getting pissed when some prick of a surgeon decided a patient was too unimportant for his best work, or too...interesting to be treated as a suffering human being instead of an experimental animal. Now I'm on the other side of the desk, swinging a money club and making sure my people get the treatment they deserve. I've got to tell you, it's great. It beats any thrill I ever had in an O.R. all to hell. But I don't do it compulsively. I do it because it's the best thing I do... the best thing I have to do."

She bit her lip, torn by her own words. Were they a simple statement of priorities, or an indirect admission that her life had collapsed around a single, monochromatic pursuit?

Sarah peered at her through the darkness. After a moment, she shrugged.

"Can I interest you in a look at how the other half lives?"

Jeanne's brow furrowed. "Are you inviting me to visit the compound?"

Sarah shook her head. "A backyard party. Grandpa said I could have you, but you have to dress nice. Oh, and you can bring a date if you want." She grinned. "Dress him nice, too."

"I, uh, I'll..."

"Just think about it and let me know before Saturday after next. Get home safe, roomie."

Jeanne nodded. "I will."

***

By seven PM on a Wednesday, even the most dedicated of Arcologics's staff were ready for something else. Jeanne had completed her latest round of case analyses and was about to head home when her phone rang.

"Jeanne Newton."

"Miss Newton, would you please stop by my office for a moment?" Todd Iverson's voice sounded strangely hesitant.

"Uh, sure, be right there." She clapped the handset back into its cradle, grabbed her rucksack and trotted through the rows of empty desks toward Iverson's office.

She found him standing, clutching a sheet of correspondence-sized stationery and squinting at it as if he couldn't make out what it said. She stopped in his doorway and delicately cleared her throat. He started and swiveled to smile at her.

"Please, come in and have a seat." She perched at the edge of one of his guest chairs. He gestured with the paper. "I, uh, have a little problem, and I was hoping you could help."

Is he sick? "Sure, Todd, anything at all." She tried to smile reassuringly.

"I, uh, have to go somewhere Saturday after next," he said. "A social engagement. A party. Forgive me for making it sound like a chore, but if I thought I could decline the invitation, I would. I think I would. See, uh, I'm not going to know anyone there, and I'm just...not too good among strangers. If you're, uh, free that afternoon, would you consider coming with me?" He opened his eyes comically wide. "I'll try to make sure you have a good time."

Jeanne's mouth fell open. Despite her most earnest efforts, she emitted a squirt of astonished laughter.

Iverson grimaced in pain. "I guess not, eh?"

She almost leaped out of her seat. "No, no! I'd be overjoyed to be your date!" She laughed again, in pleasure and relief. "You just had me worried about you. I figured this was about a health claim of yours."

The creases in his face immediately relaxed. His whole body seemed to loosen, as if he'd been relieved of some invisible weight. He released an explosive sigh.

"Thank you, Miss Newton. I'd been telling myself --"

She held up a hand. "Stop right there. I forgot to mention the conditions."

The worry lines returned at diminished force. "Oh, I assure you that --"

"Todd!"

He lapsed into silence.

"For such a smart guy, you sure have a hard time recognizing when to shut up." He grinned bashfully and studied the floor. "It's not about what you were thinking. First, you have to agree to call me Jeanne. At least when we're not in the office, okay?"

He nodded. "Okay."

"The second one I'm going to hold for the moment. Third, there's something we have to do first."

"What's that?"

"Dinner. Now."

He laughed. "Okay. How about Grucci's?"

"You're on."

***

"Did you really think I might say no to you?" Jeanne forked up a medallion of veal.

Iverson shrugged. "I didn't let myself think about it."

She suppressed a snort to save her mouthful. She laid down her fork, chewed and swallowed, and said deliberately, "I would have agreed to go anywhere with you. I was just surprised that you would want to go anywhere with me."

It was his turn to gape in surprise. He sat back, laid his arms flat along his chair's armrests, and studied her face.

"Why not?" he asked, voice barely above a whisper.

Before answering, she scanned the restaurant. There were few diners, it being fairly late on a midweek day, and no one particularly nearby, but she didn't want to say anything that might be overheard to his embarrassment.

"You have to know," she murmured, "how all-stops-out impressive you are. I've seen you excel in half a dozen different fields already, and I have a feeling I ain't seen nothin' yet. On top of that, you're good looking, charming, considerate, and more generous toward your employees than Sarah is willing to believe. You're so far ahead of me in every way that I can barely even see your taillights. Why would a...a major hottie like you want to go out with me?"

He sat silent for several seconds. "Who's Sarah?"

"My roommate."

"Oh." He stared at the table, visibly composing himself to reply.

"Having second thoughts? I do tend to shoot my mouth off in socially awkward ways."

He chuckled. "No, it's not that. Miss Newton --"

"What was my first condition?"

Another chuckle. "Sorry. Jeanne, have you ever had the misfortune to be, well, courted by someone who bored you to tears?"

She cackled. "Have you been keeping watch on my apartment?"

He smiled. "Then you know what it feels like not to be able to deal with a companion you just can't admire. But what if that were all you could date? Men who were flat-out unworthy of a moment of your time? What do you suppose that would do to your attitude toward men?"

"Nothing good, admittedly. But Todd," she said, "I've been on the other end of the stick, too. My last serious romance was with a man who kept complaining about having to 'drag me along,' as if I were a dead weight on his arm. Aren't you at all worried about my doing that to you?" She braced herself for his response.

"Maybe I would be," he said in a measured voice, "if I hadn't had the chance to observe you as I have. You spoke of my excellences before, but apparently you have no idea of yours. You meet people on their own level. You see and you hear without any barriers or preconceptions. You aren't frightened by what's outside your experience. You fight for what you think is right. And you don't back down from your convictions. How many more assets does a woman need?"

Her breath came short and blood fountained into her face.

"How can you think so well of me?" she whispered.

He shook his head as if to clear it of cobwebs. "How can you not? Isn't it possible that you think too little of yourself? That you've been dating down? That you're single not because you don't meet anyone else's criteria, but because you've never allowed that you meet your own? Jeanne," he said in a cracking voice, "you're not just a former operating room nurse who got fired because she mouthed off to one too many arrogant asshole surgeons!"

She could not speak.

"I touched a nerve with that, I know," he said. "But you had to know I'd check into your background before agreeing to hire you. Everything about those incidents struck me as entirely to your credit. I wanted you onboard before I ever saw your face. After we met, I had to know if we might...well...be more than just employer and employee to one another. So I tested you.

"I test everything, Jeanne. I test myself, I test my ideas, I test my subordinates, I test my collaborators, I test the market, and I test my own damned patience until I can't stand myself any longer. It's got to be that way. Too many people depend on me for too many things. I can only afford to be wrong once in a long, long while. If I were to get myself wrapped around you without being pretty sure it was going to work, God alone knows what sort of hash I would make of things. So I made a point of testing you. I showed you everything that's scared away the other women I've courted. And you hung in there."

Her eyes brimmed over. She stretched a hand blindly across the table, and he took it.

"Todd," she whispered, "if I let myself fall in love with you..."

"Yes?"

"...it has to be the real thing. Not a convenience, not a fling, and not some sort of sympathy trip. If you don't think you can fall in love with me, you have to set me straight before I... I..."

He squeezed her hand. "I don't think that will be a problem."

They sat like that, unspeaking, for a long while.

Presently he said, "Are you ready to tell me about that other condition?"

"Maybe later," she said. "After you've taken me home."

"But --"

"Your home. From here. Tonight." She grinned impishly. "There's more to compatibility than mutual admiration, and I want to know now."

He stared hard into her eyes, nodded, and signaled for the waiter.

***

They stepped through the arch of roses that gated the huge Forsland grounds hand in hand. Spread before them was a wonderland of luxuries: a hedge topiary stippled with seating and buffet stations; a set of terraces, atop which stood an elegant, brightly lit pavilion; a display of statuary in a range of styles; and several beautifully sculpted mini-gardens centered on koi ponds. Among them all, dozens of elegantly dressed guests strolled, sat, or stood in clumps.

Todd gawked as delightedly as a small boy. Jeanne smiled.

"The very rich are different from you and me," she said.

He chortled. "Yeah, they have a lot more money."

"You're pretty well fixed yourself. You could live like this if you wanted to."

"Not quite, babe. Anyway, I still have a lot of work to do. Old Anders has done his bit. He can kick back and relax." A puzzled look crossed his face. "You know, you never did tell me about that remaining condition, but here we are."

She shrugged. "It can wait."

He raised an eyebrow. "Come on!"

She pulled his head down to her and whispered in his ear. He snapped upright, eyes wide.

"You're kidding!"

"Call it a nurse thing."

"But --"

"Todd, you can take the nurse out of the hospital --"

He grimaced. "But you can't take the hospital out of the nurse. Okay, just give me a little while to adjust to the idea."

"Not too long, sweetie. I've been waiting." She grinned wickedly. "Oh, you can leave your boots on. I let you wear them here, didn't I?"

He noted the gleam of lust in her eyes and shuddered.

A waiter approached and asked them if they'd care for refreshment. Todd asked for white wine, and Jeanne for a mimosa. Moments later they were ambling, drinks in hand, toward one of the koi ponds when she spied Sarah, playing assistant hostess to a knot of Onteora Aviation executives.

She squeezed Todd's hand. "Give me a minute, sweetie?" He nodded, and she scampered across the great lawn as daintily as high heels would allow.

"Sarah!"

Sarah Forslund's head whipped around. "You came!" she squealed, and ran to embrace Jeanne, the OA execs frowning at her back.

"It's gorgeous, Sar," Jeanne said. "Thanks ever so much for the invite. Are you planning to introduce me to any movers or shakers?"

Sarah nodded. "Anyone you want, roomie. But they're mostly kinda old and kinda married."

Jeanne smiled crookedly. "Can't win 'em all, I guess."

"Did you bring anyone?"

Jeanne nodded. "Want to meet him?"

"Of course!"

They strolled across the lawn to where Todd Iverson stood. His back was to them. He was studying a pair of intertwined figures in marble as if he were calculating how to improve on it.

"Sweetie?"

Todd turned to face them, and Sarah gasped.

"The poet!"

"And a lot more," Jeanne said. "Sarah, I'd like you to meet Todd Iverson, chief executive officer of Arcologics. Todd, this is my roommate Sarah Forslund."

Todd bowed slightly and offered his hand. "Charmed." Sarah stood goggle-eyed, hardly thinking to take it.

"Mr. Iverson," she said in an awed voice, "the whole county is agog with talk about you." Her eyes flicked quickly to Jeanne's and then back to Iverson's. "You can't imagine how much I've wanted to meet you." She gave him a ten-million watt smile, fully equipped with champagne, hot tubs, and satin sheets.

Jeanne stepped to Iverson's side and slipped a possessive arm around his waist. He looked down at her and settled an arm protectively along her shoulders.

"Oh you'll get a lot more chances to get to know each other, Sar," she said. "He's with me."

-- The End --

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