The wind at La Guardia was chill. Speedboat realized that he had been standing on the curb for too long. Two of the airport's own paramilitary rentacops had started looking him over. If he did not move on into the system, they would begin to get interested. He walked toward the first-stage security check. It was the same basic system as the sensor tunnel that he had walked through to get into the Garden, but it was much older and therefore much less sophisticated. Nothing took an objection to him, and he found himself in the main body of the airport. It was a dirty, dilapidated place of cracked and smeared glass and degenerate plastic. The walls were plastered with cheap government posters, mainly red and black ones warning of the criminality of various kinds of behavior and the penalties that might be expected. There were quite a number that referred to forgery and undocumented travel. A distorting sound system played sacred feelgood music. One closed-off section of the arrival area was still scarred and blackened from last year's bomb attack.
At least half of those traveling were in some branch of the military. Again it was reminiscent of a World War II movie. Brown, tan, and olive-drab uniforms were stretched out on benches or sprawled in broken TV chairs. Some had even sacked out on the gum-crusted carpet with their heads on their kits. The traveling civilians were a sorry bunch who had the dull, hopeless look of people who were for from convinced that their plane would come at all. Of course, La Guardia was the poor folk's airport, from which the domestic cattle cars went to Chicago and Dallas-Fort Worth. Forty miles away at Koch International there were cocktail bars and restaurants and people who took the suborbitals to Manila and Rio de Janeiro.
Before a person could even purchase a ticket, there was a three-phase document check. The first level was comparatively benign, a counter where airport clerks checked out the documents before the bearer moved on to population control and finally the deacons.
Speedboat joined that line. It took him almost an hour to reach the counter, and by that point he was more bored than worried. But when he faced the unsmiling clerk with sandy hair, bad teeth, and a receding chin, all his fears came back.
The clerk looked over the two flimsy plastic strips that gave him the right to travel and then looked at him. "Mr. Evan?"
The documents identified Speedboat as Leroy Evan, a U.S. citizen with a Canadian grandmother in Toronto. She was dying, and he had compassionate permission to visit her.
"Yes?" he said politely.
"Mr. Leroy Evan?"
"That's right."
The clerk dropped the plastic into the scan slot in his computer terminal.
"I'm sorry to hear about your grandmother."
"You're very kind."
The clerk took a red folder from under the counter and put Speedboat's plastic slips in it. He handed the folder to Speedboat. "Please follow the red line to the bench, Mr. Evan, and wait there."
He indicated a bench against the wall. Two sorry-looking men were already sitting there, clutching red folders. Speedboat's heart sank. The papers were no good. He had been ripped off and now he was busted.
The unsmiling clerk processed two more people and then put up the 'Use Next Position' sign. He walked over to where Speedboat was sitting.
"Please come with me, Mr. Evan."
There was a line of private interview cubicles behind the counter. As Speedboat followed the clerk toward them, he was certain that he was terminally screwed. That bastard at the Garden – -if he ever got out of all this, he would kill the creep.
Inside the cubicle, there was a desk and a chair. The clerk sat in the chair. Speedboat had to stand. The clerk held up the flimsy plastic strips.
"You understand that one of these allows you to fly to Buffalo and the other to cross the border on the Trailways bus to Toronto?"
"Right."
The clerk shook his head. "Wrong."
"Wrong?"
"These are really terrible."
"What do you mean?"
"You actually paid for these?"
"I don't understand."
"These are very poor forgeries. You were robbed, my friend."
"I don't know what you're talking about."
"Sure you do." He held out the documents to Speedboat. "Look at the ink, look at the embossing. The data fix only just holds up."
Speedboat sagged. There was no point in going on pretending. "So what happens now?"
"The one for the flight to Buffalo isn't too bad. Nobody looks too closely at domestic flights, and you could get away with using it. The one for Toronto is a joke. It'll never stand up to the kind of scrutiny that you'll get at the border. I'd sell it if I was you."
"Say what?"
"Sell it to another sucker. Try to cut your losses."
Speedboat could not believe what he was hearing. "Are you serious?"
"Sure I'm serious. You look like you know your way around. In tact, I'll do you a favor. I'll give you a hundred for it right now."
Speedboat was at a loss. "Why should you do that?"
The clerk smiled for the first time. "Because I can get five hundred for it inside of an hour."
Speedboat knew that corruption was endemic, but this was absurd. It was also reeked of a possible con job. "I don't know about this."
The clerk made a dismissive gesture. "I suppose I could do my job and turn you in."
"How do I know it's bad forgery? I've only got your word for that."
The clerk had pulled out a dirty hundred. "You want to take a chance on it?"
"What about the one for Buffalo? You want to buy that, too?" The clerk shook his head. "If you've got some money, you might as well go on to Buffalo."
"What's the point of going to Buffalo, if I can't cross the border?"
The clerk was smiling again. "It's easy to find someone in Buffalo to take you across. It's a local industry in Buffalo."
"It is?"
"Sure."
The clerk had produced a pen. He wrote a phone number on the hundred. "Call this number when you get there. They'll take care of you."
Speedboat was certain that the goddamn clerk was running a con on him, but he was not so certain that he was going to bet his life on it. In this game, the loser went to a camp.
"I'll take the hundred."
Kline
Harry Carlisle had fallen asleep in front of the TV. He and Cynthia had spent the afternoon drinking and making love until a smug, bleary exhaustion had set in. Unfortunately Cynthia could not quite enjoy the sensation. The software in her bag had to be checked out. She could not completely bury it in the back of her mind. The uneasiness kept coming back. There could be urgent instructions or even some kind of warning. There could be real trouble bearing down on her while she was trying to lose herself drinking and fucking this quietly charming police lieutenant.
She looked closely at Carlisle. He was dead to the world. Even the noisy chatter of Channel 8's Happy Talk News did not show any sign of waking him. She climbed out of bed and slipped into the hapi coat she used as a robe. She removed the cover from the laptop. A second glance at Carlisle assured her that he was sound asleep. She turned on the power, took the software from her bag, and loaded it. She scrolled quickly through the cover program. It was a rather dull piece of cheap porn based on the romance stories of Lydia Lovelock. She fed in her recognition code, and the software down-leveled to her hidden instructions. A message appeared on the screen.