Finally she decided to go with the buckskin. That important choice made, the only remaining question was whether to go with body paint or a copper peace symbol mounted on a rawhide headband. Body paint seemed tacky, but maybe it would take the edge off the buckskin.
Barry Kranish had it narrowed down to the white limousine idling in front of the network building or the black limousine parked around back.
He knew Sky Bluel was not in the building itself. Kranish had found this out in a most direct manner. He had walked up to the main-entrance guard, flashed his business card, and announced he had a subpoena for Sky Bluel.
"And unless your network wants to be slapped with a lawsuit for obstruction of justice," he had said darkly, "somebody had better produce her." For effect, he waved his rental-car agreement under the guard's nose. There was no subpoena.
The desk guard summoned the head of security, who in turn called down a network vice-president.
"The person you are seeking is not in the building," the vice-president informed him stiffly. "At present."
"Where is she, then?" Kranish had demanded.
"I can't reveal that without jeopardizing the First Amendment rights of the press and possibly toppling the republic."
"This is not over," Kranish warned, storming from the building. On his way out, he bumped into a casually dressed man loitering by the door.
"Excuse me," the man said in a tone that carried no apology.
"Shove it," Kranish said, brushing past the man. He had security written all over him. Or maybe private heat. The coplike eyes and thick-soled brogans were dead giveaways.
The fact that the man abruptly stubbed out his cigarette and left the building a few paces behind him clinched it.
Barry Kranish had not gotten the answer he'd hoped for, but he had gotten the one he expected.
Sky Bluel was not in the building. That only meant that she soon would be.
As he waited in his rental car on the busy Manhattan street, Kranish decided on the white limousine. The liveried chauffeur at the wheel looked impatient. He was probably waiting to be told where to pick up the girl. So he settled down to wait. He noticed the private security guard now loitering by the studio entrance, smoking casually and eyeing both the idling limo and Barry Kranish with shifty half-intelligent eyes.
Kranish decided to keep his eye on him too. No telling where he might fit in when things started happening. Not that he was worried about a private dick. He had hired enough of them to get dirt on his political enemies to understand the breed.
Calvin Taggert sucked down a hot cloud of smoke and blew it out one nostril, paused, and then emptied his lungs through the other. It was a trick he had learned watching forties movies.
It was a good break, he decided, that he had overheard that lawyer pump the front guard about Sky Bluel. After repeated attempts to buy off assorted security and maintenance people, he had come up with nothing. Time was wasting. Once the girl got on TV, she would become the focus of every reporter from here to Alaska, and a thousand times harder to snatch.
He figured the white limousine idling by the door was there to pick her up.
So he settled down to wait, noticing that the lawyer was up to the same thing. But Calvin Taggert wasn't worried about the lawyer. Still, he would keep an eye on him too. His eyes looked a little feverish, like he was on drugs or something.
When it came, the break he had hoped for practically stepped up and shook Calvin Taggert's hand.
It was twenty minutes to eight, twenty minutes to air time for Twenty-four Hours. He was starting to wonder if he should check the back when Don Cooder himself emerged from the studio building and stepped up to the chauffeur, who sat patiently behind the wheel.
"Okay," he said, leaning down to speak in the chauffeur's ear, "it's the Penta. Go get her."
Cooder gave the roof an urgent slap, and the limousine pulled away from the curb. Calvin Taggert raced to his rental car and threw himself behind the wheel. He cut off a Federal Express truck and sideswiped a taxi getting the car into the flow of traffic. Despite this, he managed to position himself only three car lengths behind the limousine. He spotted the lawyer's car jockeying behind the limo. That didn't worry him. What was a lawyer going to do? Threaten him with the sharp edge of a subpoena?
Sky Bluel had just finished daubing a passion-purple peace symbol on her right cheek when the hotel-room phone rang.
It was the front desk. "Your driver is here, miss."
"Fab, send him up," Sky said, closing her paintbox. The daisy she intended to adorn the tip of her nose would have to await a better time.
The man who buzzed was not a chauffeur, Sky saw as she opened the door. Instead of a chauffeur's uniform, or even a suit, he wore green work pants and a jersey.
"You're my driver?" she said doubtfully.
"Not me," the man rumbled. "I'm a studio stagehand. The driver's downstairs." His gorillalike arms dangled loose at his sides. He looked like a dockworker, not a TV person, Sky thought.
"I guess you get to carry my pride and joy," Sky said, stepping aside. "It's in the tub."
"Thanks." The big guy lumbered into the bathroom, where he found the neutron device balanced across the porcelain rim. Wrapping huge paws around either end of the electronics-studded breadboard mounting, he lifted it straight up.
Carrying it like an oversize serving dish, he duck-walked out into the corridor.
"What the hell is this thing?" he complained as Sky closed the door behind them.
"It's a neutron bomb, okay? So don't drop it."
"You have my solemn word on that," he said in a thin voice.
As the elevator descended, Sky Bluel had stars in her eyes. She had stars on her face too, but she absently scratched her chin and obliterated both of them.
After tonight, she thought, a whole generation would march behind her, in lockstep, into the future.
"You remember the sixties?" she asked excitedly.
"Not me. I lived through them."
"Well, the sixties are coming back, and I'm going to be the next Jane Fonda. Isn't that absolutely boss?"
The studio worker stifled a laugh. Sky frowned. Maybe "boss" was more fifties slang. She would have to ask her father when she got home.
There were no parking spaces.
"Damn!" Calvin Taggert said bitterly, circling the block with reckless disregard for pedestrians. The white limo was still outside the Penta Hotel, still idling, still empty. But time was running out. He would have to start making moves soon or he could kiss that nice Missouri retirement home good-bye.
He passed the lawyer's car. The lawyer was a real amateur. He was staring out the windshield, craning his head to keep the hotel entrance in sight. For some strange reason, he had smeared his face with brown jungle camouflage paint or something. He was so obvious, he might as well have worn a neon cowbell.
Taggert flipped him the finger in passing.
Barry Kranish clutched the steering wheel in a brown-knuckled death grip. His knuckles were brown because that was the color of the river mud he had plunged them into before slapping his face into a ball of unrecognizable gunk. In his heart he swelled with newfound respect for his fallen Dirt First!! comrades. For one thing, the smell would make a maggot puke.
Guerrilla ectotage was scarier than he'd thought. He wondered what would happen to him if he were captured. Who would bail him out? Maybe he would be forced to defend himself. He shivered.
While he was turning the dire possibilities over in his mind, the hotel's massive revolving door started to turn.
Kranish reached for the car-door lever. Then the girl stepped out, looking like a walking LSD flashback, followed by the liveried chauffeur.
"The bomb!" Kranish moaned, pounding the steering wheel. "Where's the damn bomb?"