“About,” Jesse said.
“And you understand your term of employment is about to come to an end?”
“Yes, sir. Obviously.”
“We’ve been generous to you in terms of salary, correct?”
“Yes.”
“And you saved some of that? You won’t be left penniless when we shut down the Mirror?”
“I expect I’ll do all right.”
“Your contract specifies severance pay if you’re employed to the end of the City’s tenure. Are you worried about getting that payment?”
In truth, Jesse hadn’t given it much thought. Given the questions surrounding the City’s banking practices, maybe he should have. “You’ve always been as good as your word.”
“I’m sending you and Elizabeth into San Francisco to find my daughter. Right now that’s your one and only job. I know Elizabeth won’t have a problem with it. She’s a loyal employee and she wants to go home with a commendation and money in her pocket. I trust her because I know where her interests lie. But you’re in a different position. This is your home. And right now it could be dangerous for you to be identified with the City of Futurity. So you might be thinking how easy it would be to just walk away, especially with the trouble at the sandlots.”
The sandlots were a patch of unimproved ground outside City Hall, favored territory for rabble-rousers. “Has there been trouble?”
“Last night there was a big rally. Assholes with torches and pick handles, basically, but they stopped short of marching on Chinatown. There might be worse tonight or tomorrow.”
“A few Kearneyites don’t scare me.”
“I believe you, and that’s why I chose you for this assignment. But human nature is human nature. So I want to show you something.” Kemp went to the desk and opened a drawer and extracted a leather drawstring bag. He hefted it to demonstrate its weight and loosened the string to expose a glitter of coins. Eagles and double eagles, mainly. “Gold,” Kemp said. “Not specie. Not bank drafts. This is your severance pay, Jesse. This is what you get when you bring Mercy back. Do you understand?”
Jesse looked at Kemp and the bag and tried to decide whether he was being bribed or insulted or both. Most likely both. “I understand perfectly.”
“Good. Because the rules for runners don’t apply right now. I need you to be absolutely clear on that. Find Mercy, bring her back. Willing or unwilling. I don’t care what laws you break and I don’t care who you hurt. I want her unharmed and on board the last train to the City when it leaves. Do you accept that commission?”
“What about Theo Stromberg? Under the rules, I’m obliged to offer him the chance to go home.”
“I don’t give a shit. Was I unclear about that? Fuck the rules! The rules were made to protect the paying customers, not Theo fucking Stromberg.”
Jesse heard a faint ticking in the ensuing silence. He guessed the sound came from Kemp’s wristwatch. Like the double eagles in the leather bag, the watch appeared to be made of gold. “I understand,” Jesse said.
“Okay. We’re on the same page? Good. Then let’s get you outfitted. There’s no time to waste.”
* * *
An hour later Jesse was aboard the ferry Futurity with Elizabeth beside him, standing at the rail as the vessel drew away from the Oakland docks.
He had been given a calico travel bag containing two Glocks with ammunition, a pair of Tasers, a portable radio, and a selection of stun grenades—Kemp seemed to feel Theo might put up a fight. Jesse felt conspicuous in his City-issued trousers and cotton shirt, which seemed too crisp and unsullied to be entirely plausible, and Elizabeth plucked at her Velcro-fitted day dress as if she found it binding. She turned to him and said, “Does this bustle make my ass look fat?”
“No.”
She laughed. “It’s a joke. Sorry.”
“Is it? I’ve seen those magazines tourists leave behind. Women as bony as tubercular mules.”
“Fashion models.”
“You’re not like that.”
“Okay, yeah.”
“You’re much more wholesome and … rounded.”
“Right, thank you. Sorry I mentioned it.”
The sun was bright and a spring breeze kicked up chop in the water. Futurity sounded its whistle and began to move through the traffic of other vessels, a motley assortment of crowded ferries and cargo boats laden with produce, but the only passengers aboard Futurity were Jesse and Elizabeth and a few local hires headed for San Francisco to recover what remained to be recovered from various City-held sites. Elizabeth grew moody, clutching her hat as the vessel passed through scrims of coal smoke toward the scalloped hills. At one point she turned to him and said, “Do you think we can do this? Find Mercy, I mean?”
“Probably we can find her. Whether we can find her before the last train leaves is another question entirely.”
“Do you know where to start? Because I don’t.”
“I have an idea or two,” he said.
Elizabeth lapsed into silence, though she was briefly excited when a humpback whale surfaced off the starboard side of the ferry. Maybe whales were as scarce as bison or passenger pigeons where she came from. Jesse rummaged in his bag and found the iPod she had given him. He put the earpieces in his ears and tried to remember how to instruct the machine to play music. He wanted Axis Bold as Love but ended up with an entirely different suite of songs by the same composer, Electric Ladyland. A song called “Crosstown Traffic” was grinding away like a cakewalk for steam engines and steel barrels by the time the Futurity docked at its Folsom Street mooring. The strange and raucous music seemed perfectly suited to the crowded wharf, but Jesse was careful to remove the earbuds and conceal the device before any locals spotted him with it.
Ashore, they were met by a harried-looking City employee who escorted them through the busy terminal to the street, where a horse and a two-person buggy had been procured for them. Jesse took the reins, and before long they were fighting for a place in a merciless roil of carriages and carts. Elizabeth said, “Where are we headed?”
“California Street Hill.”
“What’s there?”
“The house where my sister lives.”
“We’re going to see your sister?”
“Yes.”
“You know we’re working a deadline, right?”
“I know.”
“So is your sister going to help us find Theo and Mercy?”
“She might,” Jesse said. “One way or another.”
13
Elizabeth knew Jesse well enough to expect an explanation from him. She also knew he wouldn’t give it to her until he was ready. So she relaxed, as much as it was possible to relax while clinging to the seat of a loosely sprung buggy as it was dragged up steep grades by an enthusiastically farting dray horse, and tried to enjoy the ride. There was architecture to look at. Weird old San Francisco architecture, especially as they worked their way from the tobacco-spit districts to the fancier environs of Nob Hilclass="underline" big houses with stone turrets and what looked like minarets, window’s walks, gabled roofs. Things architectural students would know about. The question she wanted to ask was: How had Jesse’s sister, raised in a whorehouse, come to live in a wealthy neighborhood like this?
Jesse brought the rig to a stop near one of these grandiose stone piles, humming what sounded like a version of Hendrix’s “Crosstown Traffic.” Jesse had taken to Hendrix in a big way, surprisingly. Elizabeth would have put him down for country and western, maybe classic Dylan, but his tastes seemed more adventurous than that. Fortunately, the playlist she’d downloaded for him was eclectic: For all she knew he might develop a fondness for Kanye West or Taylor Swift. There was no predicting. Nor would she ever find out, given that tomorrow or the next day would be the last of their time together.