right, and he drove off the property at once. It was still early in the day, and they drove immediately out of the city, finding a suburban shopping center in Timonium, where Pam over a period of two - to Kelly, interminable - hours selected three nice outfits, for which he paid cash. She dressed in the one he liked best, an understated skirt and blouse that went well with his jacket and no tie. For once Kelly was dressing in accordance with his own net worth, which was comfortable.
Dinner was eaten in the same area, an upscale restaurant with a dark corner booth. Kelly didn't say so, but he'd needed a good meal, and while Pam was okay with chicken, she still had a lot to learn about cooking.
'You look pretty good-relaxed, I mean,' he said, sipping his after-dinner coffee.
'I never thought I'd feel this way. I mean, it's only been... not even three weeks?'
'That's right.' Kelly set his coffee down. 'Tomorrow we'll see Sarah and her friends. In a couple of months everything will be different, Pam.' He took her left hand, hoping that it would someday bear a gold ring on the third finger.
'I believe that now. I really do.'
'Good.'
'What do we do now?' she asked. Dinner was over and there were hours until the clandestine meeting with Lieutenant Allen.
'Just drive around some?' Kelly left cash on the table and led her out to the car.
It was dark now. The sun was nearly set, and rain was starting to fall. Kelly headed south on York Road towards the city, well fed and relaxed himself, feeling confident and ready for the night's travail. Entering Towson, he saw the recently abandoned streetcar tracks that announced his proximity to the city and its supposed dangers. His senses perked up at once. Kelly's eyes darted left and right, scanning the streets and sidewalks, checking his three rearview mirrors every five seconds. On getting in the car, he'd put his.45 Colt automatic in its accustomed place, a holster just under the front seat that he could reach faster than one in his belt - and besides, it was a lot more comfortable that way.
'Pam?' he asked, watching traffic, making sure the doors were locked - a safety provision that seemed outrageously paranoid when he was so alert.
'Yes?'
'How much do you trust me?'
'I do trust you, John.'
'Where did you - work, I mean?'
'What do you mean?'
'I mean, it's dark and rainy, and I'd like to see what it's like down there.' Without looking, he could feel her body tense. 'Look, I'll be careful. If you see anything that worries you, I'll make tracks like you won't believe.'
'I'm scared of that,' Pam said immediately, but then she stopped herself. She was confident in her man, wasn't she? He'd done so much for her. He'd saved her. She had to trust him - no, he had to know that she did. She had to show him that she did. And so she asked: 'You promise you'll be careful?'
'Believe it, Pam,' he assured her. 'You see one single thing that worries you and we're gone.'
'Okay, then.'
It was amazing, Kelly thought, fifty minutes later. The things that are there but which you never see. How many times had he driven through this part of town, never stopping, never noticing? And for years his survival had depended on his noting everything, every bent branch, every sudden birdcall, every footprint in the dirt. But he'd driven through this area a hundred times and never noticed what was happening because it was a different sort of jungle filled with very different game. Part of him just shrugged and said. Well, what did you expect? Another part noted that there had always been danger here, and he'd failed to take note of it, but the warning was not as loud and clear as it should have been.
The environment was ideal. Dark, under a cloudy, moonless sky. The only illumination came from sparse streetlights that created lonely globes of light along sidewalks both deserted and active. Showers came and went, some fairly heavy, mostly moderate, enough to keep heads down and limit visibility, enough to reduce a person's normal curiosity. That suited Kelly fine, since he was circulating around and around the blocks, noting changes from the second to the third pass by a particular spot. He noted that not even all the streetlights were functioning. Was that just the sloth of city workers or creative maintenance on the part of the local 'businessmen'? Perhaps a little of both, Kelly thought. The guys who changed the bulbs couldn't make all that much, and a twenty-dollar bill would probably persuade them to be a little slow, or maybe not screw the bulb in all the way. In any case, it set the mood. The streets were dark, and the dark had always been Kelly's trusted friend.
The neighborhoods were so... sad, he thought. Shabby storefronts of what had been mom-and-pop grocery stores, probably run out of business by supermarkets which had themselves been wrecked in the '68 rioting, opening a hole in the economic fabric of the area, but one not yet filled. The cracked cement of the sidewalks was littered with all manner of debris. Were there people who lived here? Who were they? What did they do? What were their dreams? Surely not all could be criminals. Did they hide at night? And if then, what about the daylight? Kelly had learned it in Asia: give the enemy one part of the day and he would secure it for himself, and then expand it, for the day had twenty-four hours, and he would want them all for himself and his activities. No, you couldn't give the other side anything, not a time, not a place, nothing that they could reliably use. That's how people lost a war, and there was a war going on here. And the winners were not the forces of good. That realization struck him hard. Kelly had already seen what he knew to be a losing war.
The dealers were a diverse group, Kelly saw as he cruised past their sales area. Their posture told him of their confidence. They owned the streets at this hour. There might be competition from one to the other, a nasty Darwinian process that determined who owned what segment of what sidewalk, who had territorial rights in front of this or that broken window, but as with all such competition, things would soon attain some sort of stability, and business would be conducted, because the purpose of the competition was business, after all.
He turned right onto a new street. The thought evoked a grunt and a thin, ironic smile. New street? No, these streets were old ones, so old that 'good' people had left them years ago to move out of the city into greener places, allowing other people, deemed less valuable than themselves, to move in, and then they too had moved away, and the cycle had continued for another few generations until something had gone very badly wrong to create what he saw now in this place. It had taken an hour or so for him to grasp the fact that there were people here, not just trash-laden sidewalks and criminals. He saw a woman leading a child by the hand away from a bus stop. He wondered where they were returning from. A visit with an aunt? The public library? Some place whose attractions were worth the uncomfortable passage between the bus stop and home, past sights and sounds and people whose very existence could damage that little child.
Kelly's back got straighter and his eyes narrower. He'd seen that before. Even in Vietnam, a country at war since before his birth, there were still parents, and children, and, even in war, a desperate quest for something like normality. Children needed to play some of the time, to be held and loved, protected from the harsher aspects of reality for as long as the courage and talents of their parents could make that possible. And it was true here, too. Everywhere there were victims, all innocent to some greater or lesser degree, and the children the most innocent of all. He could see it there, fifty yards away, as the young mother led her child across the street, short of the corner where a dealer stood, making a transaction. Kelly slowed his car to allow her safe passage, hoping that the care and love she showed that night would make a difference to her child. Did the dealers notice her? Were the ordinary citizens worthy of note at all? Were they cover? Potential customers? Nuisances? Prey? And what of the child? Did they care at all? Probably not.
'Shit,' he whispered quietly to himself, too detached to show his anger openly.
'What?' Pam asked. She was sitting quietly, leaning away from the window.
'Nothing. Sorry.' Kelly shook his head and continued his observation. He was actually beginning to enjoy himself. It was like a reconnaissance mission. Reconnaissance was learning, and learning had always been a passion for Kelly. Here was something completely new. Sure, it was evil, destructive, ugly, but it was also different, which made it exciting. His hands tingled on the wheel.
The customers were diverse, too. Some were obviously local, you could tell from their color and shabby clothing. Some were more addicted than others, and Kelly wondered what that meant. Were the apparently functional ones the newly enslaved? Were the shambling ones the veterans of self-destruction, heading irrevocably towards their own deaths? How could a normal person look at them and not be frightened that it was possible to destroy yourself one dose at a time? What drove people to do this? Kelly nearly stopped the car with that thought.
