At the 469th Precinct station, Jason Taverner found himself lost in a multitude of men and women who moved aimlessly, waiting to get in, waiting to get out, waiting for information, waiting to be told what to do. McNulty had pinned a colored tag on his lapel; God and the police alone knew what it meant.
Obviously it did mean something. A uniformed officer behind a desk which ran from wall to wall beckoned to him.
“Okay,” the cop said. “Inspector McNulty filled out part of your J-2 form. Jason Tavern. Address: 2048 Vine Street.”
Where had McNulty come up with that? Jason wondered. Vine Street. And then he realized that it was Kathy’s address. McNulty had assumed they were living together; overworked, as was true of all the pols, he had written down the information that took the least effort. A law of nature: an objector living creature—takes the shortest route between two points. He filled out the balance of the form.
“Put your hand into that slot,” the officer said, indicating a fingerprinting machine. Jason did so. “Now,” the officer said, “remove one shoe, either left or right. And that sock. You may sit down here.” He slid a section of desk aside, revealing an entrance and a chair.
“Thanks,” Jason said, seating himself.
After the recording of the footprint he spoke the sentence, “Down goes the right hut and ate a put object beside his horse.” That took care of the voiceprint. After that, again seated, he allowed terminals to be placed here and there on his head; the machine cranked out three feet of scribbled-on paper, and that was that. That was the electrocardiogram. It ended the tests.
Looking cheerful, McNulty appeared at the desk. In the harsh white overhead light his five-o’clock shadow could be seen over all his jaw, his upper lip, the higher part of his neck. “How’s it going with Mr. Tavern?” he asked.
The officer said, “We’re ready to do a nomenclature file-pull.”
“Fine,” McNulty said. “I’ll stick around and see what comes up.”
The uniformed officer dropped the form Jason had filled out into a slot, pressed lettered buttons, all of which were green. For some reason Jason noticed that. And the letters capitals.
From a mouthlike aperture on the very long desk a Xeroxed document slid out, dropped into a metal basket.
“Jason Tavern,” the uniformed officer said, examining the document. “Of Kememmer, Wyoming. Age: thirty-nine. A diesel engine mechanic.” He glanced at the photo. “Pic taken fifteen years ago.”
“Any police record?” McNulty asked.
“No trouble of any kind,” the uniformed officer said.
“There are no other Jason Taverns on record at Pol-Dat?” McNulty asked. The officer pressed a yellow button, shook his head. “Okay,” McNulty said. “That’s him.” He surveyed Jason. “You don’t look like a diesel engine mechanic.”
“I don’t do that anymore,” Jason said. “I’m now in sales. For farm equipment. Do you want my card?” A bluff; he reached toward the upper right-hand pocket of his suit. McNulty shook his head no. So that was that; they had, in their usual bureaucratic fashion, pulled the wrong file on him. And, in their rush, they had let it stand.
He thought, Thank God for the weaknesses built into a vast, complicated, convoluted, planetwide apparatus. Too many people; too many machines. This error began with a pol inspec and worked its way to Pol-Dat, their pool of data at Memphis, Tennessee. Even with my fingerprint, footprint, voiceprint and EEG print they probably won’t be able to straighten it out. Not now; not with my form on file.
“Shall I book him?” the uniformed officer asked McNulty.
“For what?” McNulty said. “For being a diesel mechanic?” He slapped Jason convivially on the back. “You can go home, Mr. Tavern. Back to your child-faced sweetheart. Your little virgin.” Grinning, he moved off into the throng of anxious and bewildered human men and women.
“You may go, sir,” the uniformed officer told Jason.
Nodding, Jason made his way out of the 469th Precinct police station, onto the nighttime street, to mix with the free and self-determined people who resided there.
But they will get me finally, he thought. They’ll match up the prints. And yet—if it’s been fifteen years since the photo was taken, maybe it’s been fifteen years since they took an EEG and a voiceprint.
But that still left the finger– and footprints. They did not change.
He thought, Maybe they’ll just toss the Xerox copy of the file into a shredding bin, and that will be that. And transmit the data they got out of me to Memphis, there to be incorporated in my—or rather “my”—permanent file. In Jason Tavern’s file, specifically.
Thank God Jason Tavern, diesel mechanic, had never broken a law, had never tangled with the pols or flats. Good for him.
A police flipflap wobbled overhead, its red searchlight glimmering, and from its PA speakers it said, “Mr. Jason Tavern, return to 469th Precinct Police Station at once. This is a police order. Mr. Jason Tavern—” It raved on and on as Jason stood stunned. They had figured it out already. In a matter not of hours, days, or weeks, but minutes.
He returned to the police station, climbed the styraplex stairs, passed through the light-activated doors, through the milling throng of the unfortunate, back to the uniformed officer who had handled his case—and there stood McNulty, too. The two of them were in the process of frowningly conferring.
“Well,” McNulty said, glancing up, “here’s our Mr. Tavern again. What are you doing back here, Mr. Tavern?”
“The police flipflap—” he began, but McNulty cut him off.
“That was unauthorized. We merely put out an APB and some figtail hoisted it to flipflap level. But as long as you’re here”—McNulty turned the document so that Jason could see the photo—“is that how you looked fifteen years ago?”
“I guess so,” Jason said. The photo showed a sallow-faced individual with protruding Adam’s apple, bad teeth and eyes, sternly staring into nothing. His hair, frizzy and corn-colored, hung over two near-jug ears.
“You’ve had plastic S,” McNulty said.
Jason said, “Yes.”
“Why?”
Jason said, “Who would want to look like that?”
“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 document. Jason Tavern had been born in Cicero, Illinois, his father had been a turret lathe operator, his grandfather had owned a chain of retail farm-equipment 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 assimilated 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 document, 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. “O
ne 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 pass,” 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 pass.”
“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-pass—better than anything Kathy could have manufactured for him … except that the pass 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-pass. Examining the pass 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 pass, 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, shine 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 shift 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, passed 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 assistant, 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.
Interesting, Buckman thought as he read McNulty’s notes. Absolutely no file on the man. He finished the notes:
Well-dressed, suggest has money, perhaps influence to get his file pulled out of data bank. Look into relationship with Katharine Nelson, pol contact in area. Does she know who he is? Tried not to turn him in, but pol contact 1659BD planted microtrans on him. Subject now in cab. Sector N8823B, moving east in the direction of Las Vegas. Due 11/4 10:00 P.M. academy time. Next report due at 2:40 P.M. academy time.
Katharine Nelson. Buckman had met her once, at a polcontact orientation course. She was the girl who only turned in individuals whom she did not like. In an odd elliptical way he admired her; after all, had he not intervened, she would have been shipped on 4/8/82 to a forced-labor camp in British Columbia.
To Herb Maime, Buckman said, “Get me McNulty on the phone. I think I’d better talk to him about this.”
A moment later, Maime handed him the instrument. On the small gray screen McNulty’s face appeared, looking rumpled. As did his living room. Small and untidy, both of them.
“Yes, Mr. Buckman,” McNulty said, focusing on him and coming to a stiff attention, tired as he was. Despite fatigue and a little hype of something, McNulty knew exactly how to comport himself in relation to his superiors.
Buckman said, “Give me the story, briefly, on this Jason Taverner. I can’t piece it together from your notes.”
“Subject rented hotel room at 453 Eye Street. Approached pol contact 1659BD, known as Ed, asked to be taken to ID forger. Ed planted microtrans on him, took him to pol contact 1980CC, Kathy.”
“Katharine Nelson,” Buckman said.
“Yes, sir. Evidently she did an unusually expert job on the ID cards; I’ve put them through prelim lab tests and they work out almost okay. She must have wanted him to get away.”
“You contacted Katharine Nelson?”
“I met both of them at her room. Neither cooperated with me. I examined subject’s ID cards, but—”
“They seemed genuine,” Buckman interrupted.
“Yes, sir.”
“You still think you can do it by eye.”
“Yes, Mr. Buckman. But it got him through a random pol checkpoint; the stuff was that good.”
“How nice for him.”
McNulty bumbled on. “I took his ID cards and issued him a seven-day pass, subject to recall. Then I took him to the 469th Precinct station, where I have my aux office, and had his file pulled … the Jason Tavern file, it turned out. Subject went into a long song and dance about plastic S; it sounded plausible, so we let him go. No, wait a minute; I didn’t issue him the pass until—”
“Well,” Buckman interrupted, “what’s he up to? Who is he?”
“We’re following him, via
the microtrans. We’re trying to come up with data-bank material on him. But as you read in my notes, I think subject has managed to get his file out of every central data bank. It’s just not there, and it has to be because we have a file on everyone, as every school kid knows; it’s the law, we’ve got to.”
“But we don’t,” Buckman said.
“I know, Mr. Buckman. But when a file isn’t there, there has to be a reason. It didn’t just happen not to be there: someone filched it out of there.”
“‘Filched,’ “Buckman said, amused.
“Stole, purloined.” McNulty looked discomfited. “I’ve just begun to go into it, Mr. Buckman; I’ll know more in twenty-four hours. Hell, we can pick him up any time we want. I don’t think this is important. He’s just some well-heeled guy with enough influence to get his file out—”
“All right,” Buckman said. “Go to bed.” He rang off, stood for a moment, then walked in the direction of his inner offices. Pondering.
In his main office, asleep on the couch, lay his sister Alys. Wearing, Felix Buckman saw with acute displeasure, skintight black trousers, a man’s leather shirt, hoop earrings, and a chain belt with a wrought-iron buckle. Obviously she had been drugging. And had, as so often before, gotten hold of one of his keys.
“God damn you,” he said to her, closing the office door before Herb Maime could catch a glimpse of her.
In her sleep Alys stirred. Her catlike face screwed up into an irritable frown and, with her right hand, she groped to put out the overhead fluorescent light, which he had now turned on.
Grabbing her by the shoulders—and experiencing without pleasure her taut muscles—he dragged her to a sitting position. “What was it this time?” he demanded. “Termaline?”
“No.” Her speech, of course, came out slurred. “Hexophenophrine hydrosulphate. Uncut. Subcutaneous.” She opened her great pale eyes, stared at him with rebellious displeasure.
Buckman said, “Why in hell do you always come here?” Whenever she had been heavily fetishing and/or drugging she crashed here in his main office. He did not know why, and she had never said. The closest she had come, once, was a mumbled declaration about the “eye of the hurricane,” suggesting that she felt safe from arrest here at the core offices of the Police Academy. Because, of course, of his position.
Flow My Tears, the Policeman Said Page 8
