What Came After by Sam Winston Page B

was a great brutal square of raw concrete jutting up near the foot of the Brooklyn Bridge. As complex and varied within as it was plain without. A claustrophobic tangle of hallways and offices and conference rooms. Laboratories and closets and narrow chambers whose uses remained unknown or at least unstated. Long rooms doubled by one-way glass and secret rooms kept dark.
    Black Rose had the first five floors and they ran the parking garage and the helipad and the security all around. Nobody came or went without their approval. AmeriBank security had the top floor and the one below that, New York being their city. PharmAgra had the better part of a floor all to themselves, and National Motors shared one with Family Health Partnership if you could call it sharing. A wall of concrete and glass block dividing the two, and scanners mounted on either side. Not even using the same scanner. Not even that much trust between them.
    Weller and his daughter sat in a locked room. One table three feet on a side bolted to the floor and a chair bolted down on each side of it. Weller sitting in one chair and Penny sitting on his lap. The afternoon draining away.
    She said, “Will that bad man come here?”
    “What bad man is that?”
    “The man from the school.”
    “No. He won’t come here.”
    “I didn’t like him.”
    “Neither did I. But he’s not coming here. There’ll be some other men we probably won’t like much either, but he won’t be one of them.”
    She said, “Are those other two coming back?”
    “Probably. Maybe.”
    “What do they want?”
    “I was carrying something I shouldn’t have been carrying.”
    “Tobacco,” she nodded.
    “Right.”
    “Tobacco is bad for you.” Still nodding.
    “I know. They think I was smuggling it. Do you know what that means?”
    “I do. But you were only carrying it.”
    “They don’t see the difference as plainly as you do, I’m afraid.”
    “Tell them.”
    “I will.”
    “Tell them why we’re here.”
    “I will.”
    “Tell them why we left home.”
    “I’ll do my best. I promise.”
    “I know.”
    They waited. Lights burned yellow in the hallway, visible through steel mesh embedded in a square glass window. They heard footsteps come and go but they didn’t see anyone.
    After a while the two men came back and a third man with them. The third one was older and impatient. Broad-shouldered in spite of his age and narrow at the waist and disdainful of them all. Not just of Weller and Penny but of the other men too. He was taller than either of them by a head and his uniform was different. The same design but not made in the same way. It was custom and it fit him like the skin of a horse fits a horse and he looked as if he had been born for the purpose of wearing it.
    The one who’d done the driving lifted Penny from her father’s lap while the other one bound Weller’s hands behind his back. As if he might try something right here in One Police Plaza of all places. The tall man shook his head at the idiocy of bothering. Told them to come.
    Down the hall and down other halls. Through checkpoints and turnstiles and tight clusters of armed men. The tall man led the way and he said just the bare minimum to anyone they met if he spoke at all. At the end of one hallway he unlocked a steel door and threw it open to a set of concrete stairs going down and they passed through one at a time. First the tall man and then Penny and then the one who’d done the driving and then Weller. The first three passed all right but a klaxon sounded when Weller’s turn came. Not on Penny’s turn. The scanner was mounted at neck height and she undershot it, and if there was a scale in the floor she was too small to register. As if she were a mail cart or something. But a klaxon sounded when her father came through and red lights they hadn’t even noticed high on the walls began strobing like it was the end of the world. Like everybody had better get out while the getting was