up front and bolts of radio traffic like electricity made audible. One man wondering what caused that sonofabitch to change his mind anyhow. To come all the way from Connecticut and just about get through the toughest checkpoint there is and change his mind at the last minute. Give up this runner and his load of tobacco and have the nerve to ask for the reward. The chutzpah. The other one saying maybe they’d had a fight. There’s no honor among thieves is there. More bolts of radio noise coming and going. The first one saying it’ll serve that sonofabitch right anyhow. That’s the last time he’ll ferry a runner. Those radio noises again, hurting Penny’s ears.
The car bounded down the devastated street. Deep potholes in Washington Heights and Harlem and the suspension shot a long time ago. An armored Crown Vic, two tons of reinforced steel and bulletproof glass and hard-muscled men lurching toward Central National Park.
“Look,” said Weller. Above the engine roar and the complaint of the springs and the hard noise from the radio. Pointing out the window. “Look up.”
She did.
A high framework of rusted steel draped with wire mesh netting. Above the trees. Above everything. The ghost of some circus big top with birds fluttering against it. “Pigeons,” he said. They looked like gray scraps of newspaper torn and rainsoaked and dried out again by such sun as could reach this deep. Floating skyward on wind. Weller asked himself how long it would take before they quit trying. How long it had been and how long it would take. Generations. Forever, maybe. Not just one bird but the whole species.
Penny just marveled, twisting in her seat and craning her neck. What it looked like to her he didn’t know. Just shapes moving. Just shapes moving in the sky. That alone was miracle enough.
They kept going south and the neighborhoods got better and the street smoothed out. Brownstones fronting the park. Management doormen standing on sidewalks in the dappled sun and cars coming and going, small cars and large cars and great long legendary limousines piloted by Management drivers in snap-brim hats. Now and then an old bus of the same vintage, hard used, roaring away from the curb blowing diesel smoke and coughing. It went on for block after block after block with the park opposite, sealed off tight behind wire fences and steel beams and iron bars upright in a line. Razor wire in coils stretched out.
There was a gate near the southernmost end, with a big brushed steel circle suspended over it. So big that Penny pointed it out and said, “O. Does that mean Open?” The car waiting at a light.
Her father hadn’t even seen it as a letter. Just a huge circle of steel. Some kind of municipal sculpture. There were people passing beneath it, though, a thin line of people moving through a tall marble archway carved with the likenesses of wild animals in high relief. Bears and beavers and moose. Salmon leaping from cascades of water. There must have been a scanner concealed among the carvings, because each person in the line assumed a certain head-up stance as he drew near. Almost unconscious but not quite. A cheerful man dressed in camouflage greeted them as they came, welcoming them to the park, handing out printed maps. The black pistol at his hip conspicuous but untouched. No need for it. The park was Ownership only, and everybody knew it.
“O is for Open,” said one of the men in the front seat. “That’s a good one.”
“Goddamn generics,” said the other. The one driving. “You never know what you’ll hear.” The light changed and a cloud of messengers on bicycles ran it from the right and he hit the gas.
*
One Police Plaza was still One Police Plaza even though the police were long gone. It had become a kind of neutral ground for competing security forces. The place where exchanges got made and information got shared if it got shared at all. Shared or sold or bartered, depending.
The building itself
The car bounded down the devastated street. Deep potholes in Washington Heights and Harlem and the suspension shot a long time ago. An armored Crown Vic, two tons of reinforced steel and bulletproof glass and hard-muscled men lurching toward Central National Park.
“Look,” said Weller. Above the engine roar and the complaint of the springs and the hard noise from the radio. Pointing out the window. “Look up.”
She did.
A high framework of rusted steel draped with wire mesh netting. Above the trees. Above everything. The ghost of some circus big top with birds fluttering against it. “Pigeons,” he said. They looked like gray scraps of newspaper torn and rainsoaked and dried out again by such sun as could reach this deep. Floating skyward on wind. Weller asked himself how long it would take before they quit trying. How long it had been and how long it would take. Generations. Forever, maybe. Not just one bird but the whole species.
Penny just marveled, twisting in her seat and craning her neck. What it looked like to her he didn’t know. Just shapes moving. Just shapes moving in the sky. That alone was miracle enough.
They kept going south and the neighborhoods got better and the street smoothed out. Brownstones fronting the park. Management doormen standing on sidewalks in the dappled sun and cars coming and going, small cars and large cars and great long legendary limousines piloted by Management drivers in snap-brim hats. Now and then an old bus of the same vintage, hard used, roaring away from the curb blowing diesel smoke and coughing. It went on for block after block after block with the park opposite, sealed off tight behind wire fences and steel beams and iron bars upright in a line. Razor wire in coils stretched out.
There was a gate near the southernmost end, with a big brushed steel circle suspended over it. So big that Penny pointed it out and said, “O. Does that mean Open?” The car waiting at a light.
Her father hadn’t even seen it as a letter. Just a huge circle of steel. Some kind of municipal sculpture. There were people passing beneath it, though, a thin line of people moving through a tall marble archway carved with the likenesses of wild animals in high relief. Bears and beavers and moose. Salmon leaping from cascades of water. There must have been a scanner concealed among the carvings, because each person in the line assumed a certain head-up stance as he drew near. Almost unconscious but not quite. A cheerful man dressed in camouflage greeted them as they came, welcoming them to the park, handing out printed maps. The black pistol at his hip conspicuous but untouched. No need for it. The park was Ownership only, and everybody knew it.
“O is for Open,” said one of the men in the front seat. “That’s a good one.”
“Goddamn generics,” said the other. The one driving. “You never know what you’ll hear.” The light changed and a cloud of messengers on bicycles ran it from the right and he hit the gas.
*
One Police Plaza was still One Police Plaza even though the police were long gone. It had become a kind of neutral ground for competing security forces. The place where exchanges got made and information got shared if it got shared at all. Shared or sold or bartered, depending.
The building itself
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