Longstreet glanced at her with a raised eyebrow. "I Am a Camera? Your milk-and-cookies exterior really is a crock, isn't it?"
Cynthia realized that she had screwed up. The booze had made her careless. Longstreet read her expression and laughed.
"Don't look so upset, my dear. You're among friends. We all have pasts, you know. Only the very rich and the very stupid don't have to wear bland masks, but if you're going to swill martinis by the bucket, I suggest we order some food."
As Cynthia was finishing the best steak she had tasted since she left Canada, a man and two women joined them. The man was a short, Napoleonic Chilean called Raoul. Longstreet told her later that Raoul owned one of the biggest hack houses engaged in running the Japanese embargo. The deacons were never going to touch him, and he expected the pick of everything. Since he brought in 40 percent of the advanced software that reached the Eastern Seaboard, he normally got what he wanted. One of the women played small parts in the soaps. Her name was Donna, her hair was black, and she was voluptuous and wore a leather dress that suggested that pain might be amusing. She hardly said a word and rarely even smiled. The other was a willowy and anemic blonde with the unlikely name of Webster. Her white jersey dress was quite as tight and revealing as Cynthia's satin uniform but, in addition, she had a Blackglama mink hanging over her shoulders. She was also stumbling drunk. At regular intervals, she would do a mood switch, stop giggling, petulantly announce that she was bored, and demand to be taken to Hell.
Hell turned out to be a clandestine nightspot among the ruins of Tenth Avenue. It was the renovated and heavily disguised basement of one of the blackened buildings beside the burned-out Javits Center. The five of them rode down there in Radii's rented limousine. When they got out of the car, they had to pick their way along a narrow path between piles of rubble. Cynthia, who had drunk most of a bottle of Mouton Rothschild with her steak, as well as a couple more martinis, did not like this at all. Aside from the simple physical problems of negotiating the uneven surface in four-inch heels, an impossible skirt, and with her sense of balance more than a little impaired, it also reminded her too much of the dark vacant lot where she had shot the two cops.
There must have been some kind of heat sensor concealed in the rubble. Without any warning an automatic trap slowly lifted. Red light spilled out from below.
"Damn, it really is the entrance to hell."
A flight of steps led down to something out of the pre-AIDS '80s. Lasers flashed and holograms whirled in a huge, industrial-tech cavern. Porno loops were playing on a giant back-projection screen, and the music was oldies and outlawed. The live DJ, a tall black woman in spandex, seemed determined to run through the entire catalog of proscribed rock and roll. The dance floor was crowded with gyrating people, some of whom were practically naked.
Cynthia looked at Longstreet in amazement. "I didn't know anything like this existed."
"Everything exists. There have to be a few fleshpots, if only for foreign visitors. We're not Syria, you know. Most things can be accommodated if they're discreet and don't frighten the proles."
"This isn't discreet."
"That's why it has only three more weeks to go."
"You sound like you know that for a fact."
Longstreet laughed. "I'm already composing the media campaign that will accompany the bust."
"And what about all these people?"
"I'm afraid a lot of them will end up in the camps. Illicit thrills wouldn't be thrills if there wasn't a penalty attached to them. Besides, anyone who's important to me will be warned to stay away."
Cynthia blinked and shaded her eyes with her hand as a focused light effect hit her full in the face. "Don't have the fun if you can't do the time? Is that what you're saying?"
Longstreet nodded. "Exactly."
"There's something fucked up about all this."
"Of course there is. It's all a part of modern America."
They left after what purported to be a heavy metal band took the stage. Four young men in shag wigs and bondage costumes hammered loud raucous guitars and howled about Satan.
For the next party, they went uptown and across the park to Fifth Avenue. The Gotti Building was an art deco spire that had been financed by some very dubious millions during the mini-boom of the mid-'90s. Up in the penthouse, the music was smuggled hits from England and Australia, and the style was a brittle sparkle. The women were in designer originals and wore their own diamonds, and the men were in tuxedos. No doubt the tuxedos had been immaculate at the start of the evening, but by the time Longstreet's party arrived, jackets were unbuttoned and bowties undone, voices were loud, and the odd breast threatened to spill out of a low-cut Giva or Manetti. Cynthia felt more than ever like a freak on display, but she had passed the point of caring. Longstreet was treated like a major celebrity, and once it had been explained who Cynthia was, she found herself surrounded by her own circle of admirers. A breathless woman with cropped red hair and orange lipgloss wanted to know how it felt to kill someone.
Cynthia winked. "You just curl your finger around the trigger and pull, honey. You know how to pull, don't you?"
Later she heard the woman describing her to a group of friends as a psychopath. By that point, Cynthia was seriously drunk. Even coming up in the elevator, she had sagged against Long-street.
"How do you keep this up night after night?" she had asked them.
"You probably haven't noticed, but I don't drink that much."
Cynthia lost all sense of time. The penthouse was starting to spin. Running on automatic, she headed for the bathroom, which turned out to be bigger than her apartment and decorated in black glass. Two women were leaning against one of the walls, caressing each other. One of them was Webster. She was half out of her clothes. She turned and looked blearily at Cynthia. "Your Longstreet's protegee, aren't you? What was your name again?"
"Cynthia."
"Hi, Cynthia."
Webster's companion also peered at her. Her bared breasts looked as if they had had the benefit of surgical implants.
"Hi, Cynthia."
Cynthia swayed and raised an ineffectual arm in greeting. "Hi."
Webster held out a small fold of blue paper and a rolled hundred-dollar bill. "You ever do cocaine, Cynthia?"
Cynthia's eyes widened. She had not seen cocaine since the '90s.
"Don't look so shocked. Although it is terribly illegal."
Webster's friend giggled. "They'll come and take us all away one of these days." She waved a fluttering butterfly hand. "All away."
Webster disengaged from her friend and moved unsteadily toward Cynthia. "You want some?"
It seemed to be a drunken dare. Or maybe it was a trap. Paranoia floated up through the haze.
"I don't know."
"Come on. You only live once."
"We're all witches and we're all going to burn. Might as well burn for something good."
Cynthia took the packet. Drunken bravado had swamped fear. She opened it and what she saw stopped her dead. Sure there was a small amount of white powder in the blue paper, but that wasn't it. There was a single symbol drawn on the inside of the pack. A simple right angle like an inverted L. It was the symbol of the Lefthand Path.
1346408 Stone
The hiss and staccato crack of the whip were immediately followed by the scream of the inmate. The sequence of sounds echoed around the concrete wails of the blockhouses that surrounded the main yard. There was nothing else. The whole camp, assembled there in the yard, seemed to have stopped breathing.
"Twenty!"
Voorhiss, the huge guard who acted as camp executioner, was bringing back his arm once again. He stretched to his full six five, leaning back slightly. The inmate was making soft whimpering noises. The scaffold on which the punishment was taking place had been fully miked. Every audio detail was being relayed over the PA. Voorhiss struck again. Again there was the hiss, the crack, and the scream. The inmate struggled and twisted against the heavy plastic restraints that secured her to the tall wooden triangle.