beside a gasworks. I watched people come and go through the foyer.
“Lookin’ at people?” he said after a while, suspicious rather than interested. ”
“Eh? Oh. I try to guess what they do.”
The foyer was marble and brass. A modern desk was set out for the receptionist, flowers and notepads and console, a couple of couches for waiting serfs. Except Tye had told me to stand beside him at the windows. A doorman in comic opera regimentals strode about marshalling taxis and leaping to serve. Mostly ladies, one or two with the tiniest dogs you ever did see. Fantastic. One was no bigger than a mouse, and wore a collar worth me twice.
“Rum world, eh?” I said conversationally.
“Uh?”
“Rum world, Tye.” I nodded to indicate the diminutive hound being passed to a liveried chauffeur. “Bet that dog’s got more servants than —”
He did an odd thing. He spun me round to face him. It took hardly any effort on his part, but I was held in a vice, completely immobile. I’d never seen anybody move so fast. His face lowered and he spoke softly.
“You say nuthin’, Lovejoy, less’n you’re spoke to. Got that?”
“If you say so, Tye,” I got out, throttled.
“No names. We’re not here, see? Gina’s our total responsibility.”
He lowered me to the ground and let go. I straightened and recovered my breath. Don’t speak. Don’t mention names. Protect Mrs. Aquilina. Do as you’re expected to do, which meant be invisible and anonymous. Take the money and do the job, in whatever order either comes. I sighed inwardly as the lift went and sundry serfs leapt to fawn on Mrs. Aquilina as she emerged. Okay America, I thought, you’re the boss. I too advanced, smiling the anxious smile of the abject ingrate.
She swept by me without a word, doors parting and kulaks bowing and scraping. I trotted after, a humble ninth in the entourage. Except there was something wrong. And it wasn’t that Mrs. Aquilina also seemed mad at me. It was that a bloke stepping forward in the morning coat of a hotel manager had a luscious eighteenth-century stock pin, ruby head and zigzag stem, in his lapel. Lovely stone, glamorous design, gold mount all just the same as earlier. I’ve only seen about six in my life. Now two on the same day, in one building? Were there scores in New York? And he’d grown a moustache—in an hour?
“Excuse me,” I said, plucking Tye’s sleeve as our lady stopped and we all collided up against each other.
“Shtum.” It was more than a hiss, not proper speech. I only wanted to explain about the bloke with the tiepin, ask why a stylish gent in sunglasses and suave gear would want to change into serf’s uniform. Was he too one of us hirelings, on perpetual guard against New York’s unknowable mayhem? If so, it was overdoing things a bit. This Nicko lot seemed to live on its nerves… Then I saw Tiepin look at a dark blue motor down the street, surreptitiously raise his hand. Two men. Tye was facing the other way, though he scanned the traffic closely as we left the foyer for the pavement.
Mrs. Aquilina got into her limo. I recognized the driver. Tye said, “Hi, Tony,” so that was all right. I made to follow her into the motor. She rounded on me from the interior.
“Out!” she snapped. I’d never seen anybody so furious. “You look like a hobo!
Tye hauled me back onto the pavement, saying desperately, “Wait, Gina —”
“
Tiepin disappeared into the building, moving faster than a major domo should. They stroll, august and serene. This one was… escaping? Definitely at a fast trot. Wrong. Our limo containing Mrs. Aquilina moved off, I thought a little slower than normal. And Tony’s gloved hand reached out of his window and slickly tapped the limo’s roof. Why?
The big blue motor down the street started up, rolled after her no more than sixty feet.
Tye was signalling to a taxi — so the strange motor with the two men couldn’t be ours. Therefore they were…
I barged the commissionaire aside, grabbed his posh metal stand and heaved the damned thing into the road, catching the blue motor. Two other cars swerved. The blue limo tried hard, but dived into a skidding yellow taxi. Tyres squealed, glass fractured and horns parped.
A passing scruff delightedly went, “Wow-eeee, man!” Drivers began bawling with that immediacy New Yorkers manage so easily. I’d never seen so many gestures. Even pedestrians joined in, exclaiming and gesticulating and thronging about. Tye had vanished. Some friend, I thought bitterly. Just when I wanted him.
The commissionaire had me in some deathlock. It had taken ten seconds. I was alone, the centre of attention. In one minute flat I was arrested. The druggie bent to peer in at me as I was clouted into the police car. “Wow- eeee!” he cried after us. I wore handcuffs, heavier and more serviceable than ours. The policemen were about two stone overweight, and brutal masters of invective. Genuine police, at last. I’d made it back to normal.
CHAPTER SEVEN
« ^ »
WELL, all right America, I still love you. I just have my doubts about your constabulary.
NEW York’s joke is “You can’t beat our cops”. True, true. (They do the beating, get it?) I was black and blue when I came to rest among other miscreants, but nowhere did it show. Clever. My face and hands were untouched, yet I could hardly stand. They slung me into some pit amid sounds like a clanging echo chamber. Nine of us, mostly wearing jeans, tattered denim and truculent sneers. I avoided eye contact, slid down the wall bone tired. I realized
