“Can you give me an idea, sir, of where your son-in-law was supposed to be going when he left here yesterday morning?”
“Yeah,” he says. “Just running errands. Milk, cheese, flour. Toilet paper. Canned tomatoes if anybody has ’em. Most days, he’d come in and open up with me, then go out first thing on the ten-speed, find what he could find, come back for lunch.”
“And where would he have gone to find those things?”
Rocky laughs. “Next question.”
“Right,” I say. “Sure.”
I turn the page of my notebook. It was worth a shot. Wherever Brett was headed yesterday morning to shop, it probably wasn’t an establishment operating within the rigorous strictures on food markets as spelled out in IPSS-3, the revised titles of the impact-preparation law governing resource allocation: rationing, barter limits, water-usage restrictions. Rocky Milano isn’t about to tell all the details to an inquisitive visitor, particularly one with ties to the police force. I wonder in passing how Brett Cavatone felt about these small negotiations of current law: a former policeman, a man with a painting of Jesus on the wall above his bed.
“Can I just ask you, sir, whether there was anything unusual in yesterday’s list? Anything out of the ordinary?”
“Ah, let’s see,” he says, and he closes his eyes for a second, checking some internal log. “Yeah. Actually. Yesterday he was supposed to go down to Suncook.”
“Why Suncook?”
“Place called Butler’s Warehouse down there, a furniture place. A gal came in for dinner over the weekend, said this place was still piled with old wood tables. We thought we’d scoop ’em up, see if we could use ’em.”
“Okay,” I say, then pause. “He was on a bicycle, you said?”
“Yup,” says Milano, after a brief pause of his own. “We got a trailer hitch on the thing. Like I said, the kid’s an ox.”
He looks at me evenly, eyebrows slightly raised, and I can’t help but read a cheerful defiance in that expression: Am I supposed to believe it? I picture the short powerful man with the wooly beard from Martha’s photograph, picture him on a ten-speed bike with a trailer hitch on a hot July morning, leaning forward, muscles straining, muling a stack of round wooden tables all the way back from Suncook.
Rocky stands abruptly and I look behind me, following his gaze. It’s the kid from outside, the one with the stubbly adolescent beard and the ponytail.
“Heya, Jeremy,” says Rocky, offers the kid a mock salute. “How’s the world outside?”
“Not bad. Mr. Norman is here.”
“No kidding?” says Milano, standing up. “Already?”
“Should I—”
“No, I’m coming.” My host stretches like a bear and reties his apron. “Hey, our friend here wants to know about Brett,” he says to Jeremy. “You got anything to say about Brett?”
Jeremy smiles, blushes almost. He’s wiry, this kid, small, with delicate features and thoughtful eyes. “Brett’s awesome.”
“Yeah,” says Rocky Milano, striding out of the alcove and into the kitchen proper, on to the next order of business. “He used to be.”
Outside Rocky’s Rock ’n’ Bowl a mangy tabby has insinuated itself under the back wheel of my bike, mewling in terror at the shrill insistent alarm sounding off one of the abandoned cars at Steeplegate Mall. A low-altitude fighter jet whooshes past overhead, fast and loud, leaving a bright white contrail against the gleaming blue of the sky. He’s pretty far inland, I think, extricating the cat and depositing her in a warm patch of sidewalk. Most of the Air Force sorties are closer to the coast, where they’ve been providing support to the Coast Guard cutters tasked with intercepting the catastrophe immigrants. There are more and more of these every day, at least according to Dan Dan the Radio Man: big cargo ships and rickety rafts, pleasure boats and stolen naval vessels, an unceasing tide of refugees from all over the Eastern Hemisphere, desperate to make their way to the part of the earth not in Maia’s direct path, where there is some slim chance of surviving, at least for a little while. The government’s policy is interdiction and containment, meaning the cutters turn back those ships that can safely be turned back, intercept the rest and shepherd them to shore. There the immigrants are processed en masse, moved to one of the secure facilities that have been constructed, or are being constructed, up and down the seaboard.
A certain percentage of the CI’s inevitably escape or are overlooked by these patrols, and manage to evade even the anti-immigrant militias who stalk them along the coasts and in the woods. I’ve only seen a handful here in Concord: a Chinese family, threadbare and emaciated, begging politely for food a couple weeks ago outside the ERAS site at Waugh’s Bakery on South Street. Inside I waited in line for three large rolls and I tore off bits, handed them to the family like they were pigeons or ducks.
On my way back I stop on the broad overgrown lawn of the New Hampshire statehouse, which is ringing right now with hoots and laughter, a small cheering crowd, spread out in groups of two and three. Small families, young couples, card tables pushed together and surrounded by smartly dressed elderly people. Picnic baskets, bottles of wine. A speaker is up on a crate, a middle-aged man, bald, his hands formed into a megaphone.
“The Boston Patriots,” bellows the guy. “The US Open. Outback Steakhouse.” Appreciative laughter; a few cheers. This has been going on for a few weeks now, someone’s bright idea that caught on: people taking turns, waiting patiently, a nonstop recitation of the things that we will miss about the world. There are two policemen, anonymous as robots in their black riot gear, machine guns strapped across their backs, keeping silent watch over the scene.
“Ping-pong. Starbucks,” the speaker says. People hoot, clap, and nudge one another. A skinny young mother with a toddler balanced on her arm stands behind him, waiting to say her piece. “Those big tins of popcorn you get for the holidays.”
I am aware of a sarcastic counterdemonstration being held on and off in a basement bar on Phenix Street, organized by a guy who used to be an assistant manager at the Capital Arts Center. There, people announce in mock solemnity all the things they will not miss: Customer-service representatives. Income taxes. The Internet.
I get back on the bike and go north and then west, toward my lunch date, thinking about Brett Cavatone—the man who got to marry Martha Milano, and then left her behind. A picture is forming in my mind: a tough man, smart, strong. And—what was Martha’s word?—noble. He must be doing something noble. One thing I know, they don’t let just anybody become a state trooper. And I’ve never met one who left to work in food service.
3.
“So this lady’s at the doctor, she’s got this strange pain, the doctor does all the tests, says, ‘I’m sorry, but you got cancer.’” Detective McGully is gesticulating like a vaudeville comedian, his bald head flushed with red, his throaty voice rumbling with anticipatory laughter. “And the thing is, there’s nothing they can do about it. Nothing! No radiation, no chemo. They don’t have the pills and the drip-drip machines don’t work right on the generators. It’s a mess. Doctor says, ‘Listen, lady, I’m sorry, but you got six months to live.’” Culverson rolls his eyes. McGully goes in for the kill. “And the lady looks at him and goes, ‘Six months? Terrific! That’s three months longer than everybody else!’”