Part 8 (2/2)

”So no wonder you're so handsome and dignified,” McNulty said. ”So stately. So”--he groped for the word-- ”commanding. It's really hard to believe that they could do to _that_”--he put his index finger on the fifteen-year-old photo--”something to make it look like that.” He tapped Jason friendlily on the arm. ”But where'd you get the money?”

While McNulty talked, Jason had begun swiftly reading the data printed on the doc.u.ment. Jason Tavern had been born in Cicero, Illinois, his father had been a turret lathe operator, his grandfather had owned a chain of retail farmequipment stores--a lucky break, considering what he had told McNulty about his current career.

”From Windslow,” Jason said. ”I'm sorry; I always think of him like that, and I forget that others can't.” His professional training had helped him: he had read and a.s.similated most of the page while McNulty was talking to him. ”My grandfather. He had a good deal of money, and I was his favorite. I was the only grandson, you see.”

McNulty studied the doc.u.ment, nodded.

”I looked like a rural hick,” Jason said. ”I looked like what I was: a hayseed. The best job I could get involved repairing diesel engines, and I wanted more. So I took the money that Windslow left me and headed for Chicago--”

”Okay,” McNulty said still nodding. ”It fits together. We are aware that such radical plastic surgery can be accomplished, and at not too large a cost. But generally it's done by unpersons or labor-camp inmates who've escaped. We monitor all graft-shops, as we call them.”

”But look how ugly I was,” Jason said.

McNulty laughed a deep, throaty laugh. ”You sure were, Mr. Tavern. Okay; sorry to trouble you. Go on.” He gestured, and Jason began to part the throng of people before him. ”Oh!” McNulty called, gesturing to him. ”One more--” His voice, drowned out by the noise of the milling, did not reach Jason. So, his heart frozen in ice, he walked out.

Once they notice you, Jason realized, _they never completely close the file_. You can never get back your anonymity. It is vital not to be noticed in the first place. But I have been.

”What is it?” he asked McNulty, feeling despair. They were playing games with him, breaking him down; he could feel, inside him, his heart, his blood, all his vital parts, stagger in their processes. Even the superb physiology of a six tumbled at this.

McNulty held out his hand. ”Your ID cards. I want some lab work on them. If they're okay you'll get them back the day after tomorrow.”

Jason said protestingly. ”But if a random pol-check--”

”We'll give you a police pa.s.s,” McNulty said. He nodded to a great-bellied older officer to his right. ”Get a 4-D photo of him and set up a blanket pa.s.s.”

”Yes, Inspector,” the tub of guts said, reaching out an overstuffed paw to turn on the camera equipment.

Ten minutes later, Jason Taverner found himself out once more on the now almost deserted early evening sidewalk, and this time with a bona fide pol-pa.s.s--better than anything Kathy could have manufactured for him . . . except that the pa.s.s was valid only for one week. But still .

He had one week during which he could afford not to worry. And then, after that.

He had done the impossible: he had traded a walletful of bogus ID cards for a genuine pol-pa.s.s. Examining the pa.s.s under the streetlights, he saw that the expiration notice was holographic . . . and there was room for the insertion of an additional number. It read seven. He could get Kathy to alter that to seventy-five or ninety-seven, or whatever was easiest.

And then it occurred to him that as soon as the pol lab made out that his ID cards were spurious the number of his pa.s.s, his name, his photo, would be transmitted to every police checkpoint on the planet.

But until that happened he was safe.

PART TWO

Down, vain lights, s.h.i.+ne you no more! No nights are black enough for those That in despair their lost fortunes deplore. Light doth but shame disclose.

7

Early in the gray of evening, before the cement sidewalks bloomed with nighttime activity, Police General Felix Buckman landed his opulent official quibble on the roof of the Los Angeles Police Academy building. He sat for a time, reading page-one articles on the sole evening newspaper, then, folding the paper up carefully, he placed it on the back seat of the quibble, opened the locked door, and stepped out.

No activity below him. One s.h.i.+ft had begun to trail off; the next had not quite begun to arrive.

He liked this time: the great building, in these moments, seemed to belong to him. ”And leaves the world to darkness and to me,” he thought, recalling a line from Thomas Gray's _Elegy_. A long cherished favorite of his, in fact from boyhood.

With his rank key he opened the building's express descent sphincter, dropped rapidly by chute to his own level, fourteen. Where he had worked most of his adult life.

Desks without people, rows of them. Except that at the far end of the major room one officer still sat painstakingly writing a report. And, at the coffee machine, a female officer drinking from a Dixie cup.

”Good evening,” Buckman said to her. He did not know her, but it did not matter: she--and everyone else in the building--knew _him_.

”Good evening, Mr. Buckman.” She drew herself upright, as if at attention.

”Be tired,” Buckman said.

”Pardon, sir?”

”Go home.” He walked away from her, pa.s.sed by the posterior row of desks, the rank of square gray metal shapes upon which the business of this branch of earth's police agency was conducted.

Most of the desks were clean: the officers had finished their work neatly before leaving. But, on desk 37, several papers. Officer Someone worked late, Buckman decided. He bent to see the nameplate.

Inspector McNulty, of course. The ninety-day wonder of the academy. Busily dreaming up plots and remnants of treason . . . Buckman smiled, seated himself on the swivel chair, picked up the papers.

TAVERNER, JASON. CODE BLUE.

A Xeroxed file from police vaults. Summoned out of the void by the overly eager--and overweight--Inspector McNulty. A small note in pencil: ”Taverner does not exist.”

Strange, he thought. And began to leaf through the papers. ”Good evening, Mr. Buckman.” His a.s.sistant, Herbert Maime, young and sharp, nattily dressed in a civilian suit: he rated that privilege, as did Buckman.

”McNulty seems to be working on the file of someone who does not exist,” Buckman said.

”In which precinct doesn't he exist?” Maime said, and both of them laughed. They did not particularly like McNulty, but the gray police required his sort. Everything would be fine unless the McNultys of the academy rose to policy-making levels. Fortunately that rarely happened. Not, anyhow, if he could help it.

Subject gave false name Jason Tavern. Wrong file pulled of Jason Tavern of Kememmer, Wyoming, diesel motor repairman. Subject claimed to be Tavern, with plastic S.

ID cards identify him as Taverner, Jason, but no file.

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