When Squirt Frog and the Evolving Tadpoles found themselves snowed in in Guilford, they’d lived at the Trebor Mansion Inn, too. Charlie still did, in the tower room that had once been Rob’s. Like Rob, Biff and Justin had found companions of the female persuasion with more spacious living quarters.
“If we cut down everything in sight now, what will we do next winter?” someone else countered. Those were the two sides of it, boiled down to a nub.
“If we aren’t here next winter, what difference does it make?” Barber said. “Jim Farrell’s basic rule is, you do what you have to do now, and you worry about later, later.” Farrell’s was a name to conjure with. Barber had helped run the retired history prof’s Congressional campaign before the eruption. The winner, a blow-dried lawyer type, hadn’t been back in his district since the supervolcano blew. Farrell hadn’t left. And he knew all kinds of useful things—medieval things—that helped folks get by. He might not be the law west of the Pecos, but he was the biggest cheese north and west of the Interstate.
“He isn’t God, you know. You don’t quote him like you’d quote the Bible,” the other man said.
“As. As you’d quote the Bible,” Barber said helpfully.
Bang! went the gavel. “You’re out of order, Dick,” the mayor said.
“No, his grammar is,” Barber replied.
The two sides wrangled a while longer. The meeting didn’t decide anything. As far as Rob could see, town meetings never decided anything till they absolutely had to. Watching the fur fly was at least half the fun.
Some of the rest came after formal adjournment. People started clapping as the guys from the band ambled up to take their places. They played “Losing My Tail” from their first CD: an inevitable song for a band with their name and quirks. They did “Came Along Too Late,” which could be taken here as a tribute to Jim Farrell, though it hadn’t been conceived as one. They sang “Pleasures,” the closest approach to straight-ahead rock in their eccentric orbit. They did “Impossible Things Before Breakfast,” which was just bizarre. They did… a set.
They got a hell of a hand for it, too. That high was better than dope, even if it didn’t last as long. As things wound down, a pretty brunette came over to Rob and squeezed his hands. “Good job!” she said.
“Thanks, gorgeous,” he answered. “Can I take you home?”
“You’d better, since we’re married,” Lindsey said pointedly. And, in due course, he did.
IV
“No,” Colin Ferguson said.
Eugene Cervus sent him a look full of something between reproach and shock. The mayor of San Atanasio wasn’t used to hearing that word from someone he reckoned an underling. He especially wasn’t used to hearing it in tones that brooked no argument. He argued anyhow: “But you have to assume the chief’s position, at least on a temporary basis. The political situation in the city cries out for it.”
“No. I told you that before,” Colin repeated. “Now I’ll say it again. Hell no, as a matter of fact. I’ve spent a lot of time thinking about it since… well, since all this stuff happened. And I just don’t want the job. I don’t want it, and I wouldn’t take it on a silver platter.”
“Be reasonable, Lieutenant Ferguson,” the mayor said, by which he meant Do what I tell you, Lieutenant Ferguson. Take some heat off of San Atanasio, Lieutenant Ferguson. “Why don’t you want the position at this point in time? You applied for it. You competed for it when, ah, the previous holder was selected. When we talked at the recent press conference, you didn’t seem to find the idea hateful.”
He was right about that much. And Colin didn’t blame him for not wanting to speak Mike Pitcavage’s name. Colin did blame him for saying things like on a temporary basis and at this point in time when he meant things like for a little while and now. You couldn’t trust people who talked like that, because people who talked like that thought like that—which is to say, not too well.
He couldn’t even explain that to Cervus, not so it made sense to him. People who didn’t think too well didn’t take kindly to having that pointed out. So Colin said what he could: “Back when I applied, I didn’t know what all was involved. Mike was good at making nice. He made a fine chief, or he would have if he didn’t get his jollies killing old ladies. Me, I’m not so good at it. I’d be a disaster in that chair. You’d want to throw me out inside a week. I’d want to tell you where to head in, and I bet I would. And all the cops would start hating me. Find somebody else.”
Cervus studied him like a herpetologist examining a previously undescribed and very strange toad. “Doesn’t the difference in remuneration between lieutenant and chief interest you?”
“It wouldn’t make up for the headaches,” Colin answered.
The mayor’s gaze hardened. “If you feel that way, are you sure you should remain in the department under any capacity?” Do what I tell you or I’ll squeeze you out. Yes, Colin understood Politico.
He went on being blunt himself: “The worst thing you can do is can me. If you do, I’ll go home and play with my little girl. But I promise you one other thing—if you can me for the Pitcavage thing, you and the city won’t have enough nickels to use a pay toilet by the time my lawyers get done working out on you. And nobody from here to Miami will be able to say San Atanasio without holding his nose when he does.”
Cervus let out a pained hiss. “I assure you, Lieutenant, any such unfortunate course of events was the furthest thing from my mind.”
“Glad to hear it,” Colin said, in lieu of My ass. Even as a lieutenant who’d stopped caring about being anything more than a lieutenant, he needed a certain minimal amount of diplomacy. And the mayor was no dope, even if he was also no genius. He would hear the words behind Colin’s words, the same way Colin heard the ones behind his.
His Honor tried again, asking, “Will you please take the position on an interim basis, until we can fill it permanently?”
“Thanks, but no.” Colin shook his head. “Give it to, oh, Captain Miyoshi. He’s back from his surgery now, and he’s doing pretty well. It’ll be a feather in his cap. If you promote me over his head, he won’t like it. I sure wouldn’t if I were in his shoes. And dropping back to lieutenant after I’d been running the department wouldn’t be comfortable for me or anybody else.”
“You are a difficult man,” the mayor said with a sigh.
“Sorry about that,” Colin answered: one of the bigger whoppers he’d told lately. “Can I go now, sir?”
“Yes, go on.” By the expression on Cervus’ face, he understood exactly why they’d passed over Colin when they chose the last chief. Well, so did Colin himself—now. He sure hadn’t at the time, and losing out to Mike Pitcavage hurt worse than anything that had ever happened to him… till Louise walked out, anyway.
Both the city hall and the nearby police station were low-slung, blocky, modern stucco buildings—modern when they’d gone up, of course. Those had been good times for all the booming L.A. suburbs. Now the buildings were showing their age. So was San Atanasio. The city had no money to fix them up. Even if it had had the money, it probably wouldn’t have had the will. People just didn’t care.
By contrast, the grass and shrubbery between the two buildings were lush and green, even if they weren’t well tended. San Atanasio got so much more rain now than it had before the eruption that everything seemed green, green, green to people who remembered hills brown eight months a year and rationed water.