"Laura?" David emerged from downstairs, carrying the baby. The mayor of Galveston followed him.
Laura stood up jerkily. "Mr. Mayor! Good morning."
Mayor Alfred A. Magruder nodded. "Laura." He was a hefty Anglo in his sixties, his barrel paunch wrapped in a garish tropical dashiki. He wore sandals and jeans and had a long Santa Claus beard. Magruder's face was flushed and his blue eyes in their little pockets of suntanned fat had the rigid look of contained fury. He waded into the room and flung his briefcase onto the table.
Laura spoke quickly. "Mr. Mayor, this is our security coordinator, Debra Emerson. Ms. Emerson, this is Alfred
Magruder, Galveston's mayor."
Emerson rose from the console. She and Magruder looked each other up and down. They summed each other up with slight involuntary winces of distaste. Neither offered to shake hands. Bad vibes, Laura thought shakily, echoes from some long-buried social civil war. Already things were out of control.
"There's some heavy heat coming down here soon,"
Magruder announced, looking at Laura. "And now your old man here tells me that your pirate friends are at large on my island. "
"It was quite impossible for us to stop them," Emerson said. Her voice had the infuriating calmness of a grade school teacher.
Laura cut in. "The Lodge was strafed by a machine gun,
Mr. Mayor. It woke the whole staff-threw us into panic.
And the-the guests-were up and out of here before the rest of us could think of anything. We called the police---
"And your corporate headquarters," Magruder said. He paused. "I want a record of all the calls in and out of this place."
Laura and Emerson spoke at once.
"Well of course I called Atlanta-"
"That will need a warrant-"
Magruder cut them off. "The Vienna Convention heat will seize your records anyway. Don't screw me around on technicalities, okay? We're all walking fast and loose here, that's the point of Fun City. But y'all have gone way over the line this time. And someone's ass is gonna fry, okay?"
He glanced at David. David nodded once, his face frozen in a bogus look of chipper nice-guy alertness. -
Magruder plunged on. "Now who's it gonna be? Is it gonna be me?" He thumbed his baggy shirt, prodding a splashy yellow azalea. "Is it gonna be you? Or is it gonna be these pirate assholes from off-the-island?" He drew a breath.
"This is a terrorist action, comprende? That kind of crap isn't supposed to come down anymore."
Debra Emerson was all strained politeness. "It still does,
Mr. Mayor."
"Maybe in Africa," Magruder grunted. "Not here!"
"The point is to cut the feedback relationship between terrorism and the global media," Emerson said. "So you needn't worry about bad publicity. The Vienna Convention specifies-"
"Look," Magruder said, turning the full force of his glare on Emerson. "You're not dealing with some cracker hippie here, okay? When this blows over you can sneak back to your spook warren in Atlanta, but I'll still be down here trying to make a go of a city on the fucking ropes! It's not the press that scares me-it's the cops! Global cops, too-not the locals, I can deal with them. I don't want to go down on their bad-boy list with the data-haven mafiosi. So do I need you using my island for your clapped-out shenanigans? No, ma'am,
I don't."
Rage boiled up in Laura. "What the hell is this? Did we shoot him? We got shot at, Your Honor, okay? Go outside and look at my house." .
They stared at her, shocked at her outburst. "They could have killed us. They could have blown the whole Lodge up."
She snatched up the printout and shook it at Magruder.
"They even wrote directly to us and taunted us! The F.A.C.T.
-whoever they are-they're the killers, what about them?"
The baby's face clouded up and she tried a tentative sob.
David rocked her in his arms, half turning away. Laura lowered her voice. "Mr. Mayor, I see what you're getting at.
And I guess I'm sorry about this, or whatever the hell you want me to say. But we have to face the truth. These data- haven people are professionals, they're long gone. Except maybe the other Grenadian, Sticky Thompson. I think I know where Thompson is. He's gone underground here in Galves- ton, with the Church girl. I mean your friends here in the
Church of Ishtar, Mr. Mayor."
She shot a quick look at David. David's face had thawed, he was with her. He looked encouragement: go on, babe.
"And we don't want them looking at the Church, do we?
They're all webbed together, these fringe groups. Pull one thread and the whole thing comes apart."
"And we end up bare-ass naked," David put in. "All of us."
The mayor grimaced, then shrugged. "But that's exactly what I was saying."
"Damage limitation," Emerson said.
"Right, that's it."
Emerson smiled. "Well, now we're getting somewhere."
Laura's watchphone beeped. She glanced at the board. It was a priority call. "I'll take it downstairs and !et y'all talk," she said.
David followed her downstairs, with Loretta in the crook of his arm. "Those two old boomers," he muttered.
"Yeah." She paused as they stepped into the dining room.
"You were great," he said.
"Thanks '
"Are you okay?"
"Yeah, I'm okay. Now." The Lodge staff, red-eyed with lack of sleep, sat around the largest table, taking in Spanish.
They were disheveled and shaky. The gunfire had jolted them out of bed at two in the morning. David stopped with them.
Laura took her call in the little downstairs office. It was
Emily Donato, calling from Atlanta. "I just heard," Emily said. She was pale. "Are you all right?"
"They shot up the Lodge," Laura said. "They killed him.
The old Rastaman, I was standing right next to him." She paused. "I was scared of the spy machine. He came out to protect me. But they were waiting for him, and they shot him dead right there."
"You're not hurt, though."
"No, it was the walls, y'know, concretized sand. The bullets sank right in. No ricochets." Laura paused again and ran her fingers through her hair. "I can't believe I'm saying this."
"I just wanted to say.... Well, I'm with you all the way on this one. You and David. All the way." She held up two fingers, pressed together. "Solidarity, okay?"
Laura smiled for the first time in hours. "Thanks, Em."
She looked at her friend's face gratefully. Emily's video makeup looked off; too much blusher, eyeliner shaky. Laura touched her own bare cheek. "I forgot my vid makeup,"
Laura blurted, realizing it for the first time. She felt a sudden unreasoning surge of panic. Of all the days-a day when she'd be on the Net all the time.
There was noise in the lobby. Laura glanced through the open door of the office and past the front desk. A woman in uniform had just pushed through the lobby door from outside.
A. black woman. Short hair, military blouse, big leather gun belt, cowboy hat in her hand. A Texas Ranger.
"Oh, Jesus, the Rangers are here," Laura said.
Emily nodded, her eyes wide. "I'm loggin' off, I know you have your hands full.
"Okay, bye." Laura hung up. She hurried past the desk into the lobby. A blond man in civvies followed the Ranger into the Lodge. He wore a charcoal-gray tailored suit vented at the waist, wide, flamboyant tie in computer-paisley.... He had dark glasses and had a suitcase terminal in his hand. The