Ambient (29 page)

"I know I can," he said, getting up and slowly walking over
to his upturned desk. He reached underneath, as if looking for
something. "I've not always done you right. OM. I'm sorry.
What I've said stands-"

"Don't worry," I said. "Let's just go. They wouldn't have
done anything to Avalon yet, do you think?"

In his hand he held one of his pill bottles, evidently extracted
from a desk repository. He kept his supplies everywhere. "Not
for a time," he said, softly as a pigeon cooing in the eaves; he
popped off the bottle's protective cap. "She'd be safe for a while."

"Shouldn't you go up recker-free?" I asked, seeing the bottle,
turning to retrieve my chainsaw from where I'd let it drop. "You
want your wits fresh. Those pills'll be the death of you one
day-"

There came a thud, as if something large and soft had fallen
from the sky; I looked, Mister Dryden lay on the floor; he'd worked
himself so up that I wasn't surprised to see him enter this faint. I
knelt beside him, jiggling his shoulder.

"Come on. It's time." His trance seemed overly deep, or especially well feigned. "Mister Dryden. Come on, get up."

He lay as if enjoying a sound, refreshing sleep. HIs lips curled
upward at the corners; a pleasant dream he seemed to have. I
tugged open his eyelids; his eyes stared dully upward, glass balls
fixed at a skewed angle.

"Mister Dryden." When I shook him he barely rattled.

Flattening my palm against his chest I discerned no heartbeat,
no assuring thump; discovered no pulse when I took hold of his
wrist. A specialty of Jake's, in the more advanced sort of takeovers, was the provision and application of nonnegotiable offers.
This particular variant he pegged a blue job, for that was the color
the recipient shortly turned-shading light azure as if having been
rinsed in an ink wash. Before his last recker left his mouth it had
worked.

"Mister Dryden."

Upon moving from him, I sat down in one of his big chairs,
staring down at him as if I were one of those stuffed animals;
appalled by what I saw, powerless to do anything about it. Not far from where Mister Dryden rested Renaldo crouched, contorted enough to appear as a statue struck down from its pedestal.

"Mister Dryden," I heard myself saying, as if by giving speech
most diligently the words might in time return life. "Wake up."

Strands of his hair stirred faintly in the AC's breeze. He made
no movement, showed no response, gave no word, brought no
action, expressed no thought, and granted no gesture. Wishing
almost that I, too, could find such encompassing rest, ignoring
my body's pains, I stood and walked to the windows, drawing
back the drapes. He and Renaldo looked grayer in the light than
they had in shadow. Outside, the clouds were so thick that nothing of the city could be seen. There was a choice no longer, I
knew; if I wanted that chance to be with Avalon at least one last
time, I'd have to go up there alone and take it as it fell myselfthere was nothing so much that I wanted so much as that chance,
no matter the result. The hair rose at the nape of my neck; apprehension chilled my running blood. If Mister Dryden had been so
scared as to do this, why should I be so set to act without pause?
I had a choice, though, over how fearful I should let myself be;
so used all strength to deny such terror. There was no need to
worry until I knew about which I should be worrying. I repeated
that to myself, as if by saying it often enough it would so become.

No one saw me go, least of all those of whom I'd
so recently taken leave. Returning by the guard's
chair, emerging in the lobby, I set my path past
the display cases, sliding between them as if being
pulled along by another. I scooted up to the doors
facing the plaza; Jimmy stood out there by the car, looking away
from the building. In a trice I was at him, my gun's barrel pressing his ear.

"Irie, man, irie. What calls?" he asked, quietly enough, as if
I'd been expected.

"We're going to the estate," I said, ready if he wished to
debate; he didn't. He opened the passenger door and walked around
to the driver's side.

"Big bullbucker be mighty mad when he finds his wheels gone."

"No, he won't," I said, sitting down. "He's dead."

Jimmy slowly lowered himself into the car, easing behind the
wheel. I closed the door. He looked at me, his eyes bloodblister
black.

"By your hand?" he asked.

"By his," I said. He pressed the ignition; we pulled away.

"You sit high clever now, man," he said. "Why'd he run
such a field?"

"He was afraid."

"With reason?"

"I'm not sure."

We rolled along; left Midtown, passed into the Upper West,
leaving view of the ugly towers enclosing Columbus Circle. So
set I was on what I had to do that Jimmy's wishes, or thoughts,
did not occur to me at once.

"Jah at last called hellfire down on duppy clots," Jimmy said,
smiling, packing his bowl. "Big trees fall and make little noise.
What do you aim then, O'Malley? Set to work your charms?"

"I don't know," I said. "I'm figuring it as we go."

As we drove up Broadway the wind rose; snow cascaded over
the still and the quick. Brownish-white clumps pelted the car;
Jimmy switched on the wipers and the cleaning sprayers. This
wasn't natural snow-such rarely fell in New York anymorebut variant precipitation; dried human waste, lifted by gusts, so
often sprinkling the city. La Muerda, Ambients called it. As
neighborhood water supplies ran out, or were cut off, the snows
became more common. These showers never lasted longer than
a few minutes; no one complained.

"Where's our sweet sister?" Jimmy asked, expelling strands
of smoke.

"I think she's at the estate," I said. "I hope she is."

"And so you come up now to court?"

"Yeah," I said, keeping my gun aimed at him in the event he
proved not so calm as he seemed. "She disappeared. I thought
he'd picked her up. He didn't."

"You think she keep whole up there?" he asked. "She was
big with soul when I last lay eyes. Fighting every step."

"I hope. I'm not even sure what's happening."

"Well," he said. "What's happening to me, it sounds, is that
you took one bird out of the bush. One more left whistling in the
trees. No one misses. You worry overmuch, man. Drydens here.
Drydens gone."

"It'll be easy for them to pin me for this."

"So who saw you, man? Renaldo?"

"Yeah," I said, "but he's dead, too."

"Not by his hand," Jimmy said; I shook my head. "You be
worse bullbucker than you know. Worse more than they ever
know. Ice-cold. "

Broadway's course was silk-smooth; we sailed clipsteady, suffering no interruption, attracting no attention in our IA lane. Before I left the office, I'd wedged Renaldo into one of the closets
and laid Mister Dryden out on the sofa as if for an afternoon nap.
He'd set no appointments for the afternoon and I suspected no
one would drop by calling. Jimmy passed an Army travelall.

"You think something come down hard that she didn't expect?"

"Maybe," I said. "I wish I knew."

"Not for us to tell yet, O'Malley. All in time."

Near the corner of Ninety-sixth, Army vehicles blockaded traffic
moving downtown; troops marched toward the river as if planning to swim en masse to Jersey. Five enormous Croton trucks,
tankfull with water to be delivered to approved neighborhoods,
avoided the blockade by crunching down the boulevard's median. We passed Columbia's razorwired walls. As we entered
West Harlem, we noticed that the barricade guard had received
new rockets; Friday's wreckage, gnarled as old driftwood, still
hung down from the el tracks as if abandoned in play.

"Think we'll have trouble getting in?"

"Not with me driving, man. Not with Martin at the gate. Martin stands on the Lion's side."

"Whose side are you on?" I asked.

"The side of I and I, man. No one takes lien on my soul."

"Each of them thought you're on the other's side-"

He laughed. "Drydens look but never see. Speak but never
talk. Where I drive, my hand turns the wheel. If they want to buy
gas they can."

West Harlem was high ground beyond 137th, past the valley, but no more popular because of it. The depredations of the gangs,
and of the Army in controlling the gangs, had tolled and rung
hard. Smaller buildings were boarded and shelled; larger ones,
where squatters dwelt, were enlivened only by drying laundry,
parrot-bright, billowing from the windows. Gigantic billboards
attached to the fronts of the biggest apartment blocks peeled and
faded in the dim sunlight, advertising products no longer sold,
candidates long since defeated, shows no longer running. At 155th,
artfully crafted ruins marked the remains of a splendid old church;
the rubble looked over an abandoned cemetery, across Broadway. The boneyard stones were toppled and broken; machetes
would blunt, carving paths through the underbrush.

"Avalon might be dead," I said, more to myself than to Jimmy,
as if in heart suspecting that I should adjust myself to that idea.

"Might be," said Jimmy, nodding. "Isn't."

"How can you be sure?"

"Hunching, man. That's all. She's a sharp knife that cuts too
deep for that."

Finishing his bowl, he tapped it out in a cup he kept attached
with tape to the dash. We entered the Inwood Secondary Zone.
This far up, the land was high and would remain forever dry. The
area was reasonably secure, and the population was almost so
great as in the Upper West. There were cars, buses, even cabs;
boozhie stores in the zone flourished, selling goods six months'
backdated from what was sold in Chelsea, or in the Upper East.
Passing through Inwood, a rider could almost forget that New
York surrounded; for a moment dreams would fleshen, and it
would seem that nothing too untoward had ever happened, anywhere-then you awoke, crossing the drawbridge into the Bronx.

"Good place to retire, someday," said Jimmy.

The Broadway el had been torn down years before for scrapI believe the city, or Dryco, had sold the metal to Russia-and
we had an unhindered view of the surrounding terrain. To our left
was Riverdale, where Home Army generals of the New York district lived. On the right were the Bronx hills and plains, cleared
and awaiting reconstruction. Buildings marked for preservation-there were many-remained under Army guard: old apartment buildings on the Concourse; blocks of Tremont flats; red
Belmont rows; Kingsbridge courts guarded by pairs of stone lions;
large houses along Pelham Parkway; throughout the realm, rolling, brick-salted veldts. Every vacant lot bore a sign reading
PROPERTY OF DRYCO/TRESPASSERS SHOT. The ruin of
Yankee Stadium, webbed and netted with leafy vines, rose high
over the southern flat. It had been destroyed when the old Yankees won the series for the last time; overexuberant fans celebrated by burning out the stadium. The Yankees moved to Nashville, changing their name; the Old Man planned to preserve the
stones as a bit of old Rome overlooking the Major Deegan.

Passing Van Cortlandt Park, the leaves of the trees greenishbrown in their confusion of the seasons, I tried imagining what it
would be like to be driving toward something at which I wished
to arrive, to be with people I knew I needn't fear.

"Let's see if they caught you yet," said Jimmy, turning on the
radio.

They hadn't. The President announced that further inference
as to his role in the death of the security adviser, once the vids
were released, would be dealt with in the standard manner. Two
copters collided over Newark International during an accident drill
and crashed, killing the volunteer victims lying on the runway
below. A woman, mindshot, stabbed little Tamoor as he was
being wheeled out of recovery. Russian armies were marching
into Ankara so that proper order might restore itself. A refinery
blew in Bayonne; turning to look behind us, I saw the southwestern sky filled with boiling brown smoke. The wind blew south;
the Downtown Zone wouldn't need to be evacuated.