She wiggled that unit parodically in the interest of good police relations and entered the building.
The pattern of shot had come in high, judging from the pits marking the wall above the receptionist’s desk. Either the guy had rushed his shot or he intended to miss; in any case the woman sitting behind the desk had retained her brains in her skull. She was still at her post, carefully sorting through charred files. A couple of other women and a man in rough work clothes were sweeping burnt trash into a barrel. Marlene asked the receptionist where the director’s office was; a weary motion pointed her down the hall, toward where a television crew-camera, sound, and glistening reporter-was recording an interview with Alice Reiss-Kessler, the director herself. The reporter, the same Gloria Eng who had reported on the Asia Mall killings, was wearing a peach-colored suit miraculously free of the fine soot that covered every other surface in the place, and at the moment she was asking the inane and inevitable “How do you feel” question. Ms. Reiss-Kessler, a good-sized brunette with a strong, plain face that tended to go jowly under ten-thousand-candlepower light, was not looking her best, but she was gamely doing her duty as a patriotic American by allowing television to share her pain. Marlene wished fervently for her to say something like, “I feel really great, Gloria. We’ve wanted to redecorate this crummy barn for ages, and since we’re insured up to the nipples, we’ll be able to do it right and also pay for about six hundred late-term abortions.” Instead, she did the usual victim moan, and Marlene could see Eng calculating behind her faux-sympathetic matte face how to get an eight-second sound bite out of this farrago. Marlene backed away, intending to lurk in a corner until the newsies left, but her heel came down on a pile of trash and she stumbled noisily.
At the sound Eng looked up and, without missing a beat, broke in with, “Is it true that you’ve retained a private investigator in this matter?”
Reiss-Kessler hesitated. “Ah, well, we’re looking into increased security, but-”
“Does that mean you approve of counter-violence against the kind of people who might want to bomb abortion clinics?”
“No, I believe that the police should do their job and protect the legally recognized right to choose.”
“Then why have you hired Marlene Ciampi? Isn’t Ms. Ciampi associated with the kind of ‘security’ not very distinguishable from vigilantism?”
“We haven’t hired anyone,” said Reiss-Kessler. “We’re talking to consultants.”
Nice block, girl, thought Marlene, but a moment later she was bathed in the unforgiving light herself, as the reporter directed camera and microphones toward an even more interesting subject.
“One of those consultants is apparently Marlene Ciampi, who has just entered this ruined clinic,” Eng said. “Ms. Ciampi has been involved in several fatal shootings in the last few years, and in other acts of violence against people she claimed were harassing her clients. Marlene! Could you tell us what your response will be to whoever perpetrated this attack?”
“No comment,” said Marlene, and moved to pass the reporter, who counter-moved to remain in her path.
“Give me something, Marlene,” said the reporter. “Have you spoken with the police? How do they feel about your involvement?”
Marlene kept her smile, checked, faked, got by, and in a moment had clutched Ms. Reiss-Kessler by the elbow and steered her into her own office, kicking the door shut in the camera’s face.
“Well,” said the director, “you certainly know how to make an entrance. I’d offer you coffee, but the coffee room was a casualty. Have a seat.”
Marlene brushed plaster dust off a side chair and sat down. Reiss-Kessler settled on the edge of her desk. “You don’t care for the media, I take it.”
“They do their job, I do mine,” Marlene said. “In fact, I had no comment.”
“I’d think that getting your face on television would be good for business.”
“I have enough business, Ms. Reiss-Kessler-”
“Please, Alice.”
“. . Alice, and I don’t particularly want to encourage the kind of business Gloria is interested in promoting for me. I’m here representing the Osborne Group. Security? I assume that’s what you’re interested in.” She indicated the wreckage with a wave.
The woman let out a bitter chuckle. “Yes, locking the barn door. Security, but mainly I want the people who did this caught and punished.”
“Uh-huh. I bet. Fortunately, you don’t need me for that. The cops have a good lead on the perps here, and they should make an arrest fairly soon.”
Reiss-Kessler’s eyes widened. “Really? They didn’t say anything about that to me.”
“I try to cultivate good relations with the police.”
An expression of astonishment tending toward sneer appeared on the woman’s face. “You like those chauvinist bastards?”
Marlene stiffened and smiled falsely to cover. “Not like. They’re hard to like. A great many of them are boorish, violent, corrupt, and stupid. But I do love them. In a manner of speaking. My heart goes out to them. They see stuff and do stuff every day that if you did it, it would make you cry for a week, and they’ve got no real training to deal with it and they get no support for it, except that silly macho cynical business they’re all into, which makes it all worse, and includes the idea that only the penis-equipped can do the job. So they make comments to me, technically sexual harassment, technically clear violations of the Patrol Guide, and what I do is, I mean within limits, I don’t give them the ‘that’s not funny’ line and utter threats, I grin like a bimbo and give them a shot back or two. And when I need some help from them, which I do a lot in my business, I usually get it.”
“It’s nice that you’re one of the boys,” said Reiss-Kessler.
Marlene ignored the icy tone, kept her smile, and replied, “Yes, it is nice. Let’s turn to business, Alice, if you don’t mind. We both have a lot to do.”
Alice gave a stiff nod, and Marlene went into her spiel, laying out what the Osborne Group could and could not do in the way of protection and site hardening. This included building surveys, installation of equipment and architectural mods, security seminars for clinic staff, and the provision of bonded square-badge guards. The woman listened, took some notes, asked the usual questions. Marlene could see she was disappointed, had expected something else, something more ardently feminist, a source of emotional support rather than a security firm functionary, which is why she had called Osborne and asked for Marlene by name. Marlene couldn’t help that (it happened a lot), nor could she help what she felt about the clinic. This emerged, too, in the conversation.
At the end, the director made some noncommittal remarks that they’d be in touch. Marlene doubted this; she was being given the boot. She was not exactly famous, but she’d been in the news enough over the past decade so that there were people who would call for an appointment just to take a look, and others who wanted the cachet of having her guard their bodies, and others who thought she was in the business of shooting unwanted males on order. Marlene figured that Alice Reiss-Kessler’s initial thought in the immediate aftermath of the attack had been punishment and revenge, and since she came from a class and subculture that did not trust the police to have the right attitude toward feminist issues, she had sought a private enforcer.
Which Marlene was not, and had made that clear, and now, leaving the sooty storefront, wondered why it was easier for her to be nice to horrible male-chauvinist cops than to a perfectly decent woman with the right liberal opinions on every subject. To be fair, she was just as impatient with the right-wing verities of most cops. And of her mother.
She walked now, head down and grumpy, to her car, an old Volvo 240 station wagon in the usual faded orange, parked illegally on Tenth. Her personal assistant was sitting in the passenger seat. He grunted a greeting as she entered.