Anarchy of the Mice

Chapter Fifty-Four

The tanning salon was being cased. Quaid thought Durwood was bonkers, but Durwood knew. His ears felt wrong when he walked the neighborhood. A stiffness in the fine inner hairs. Ever since Molly'd come back from Roche Rivard.

You turned around, something stuck out. Some bystander slid from view. Wrong-colored specks showed in the background. Durwood took care to act natural and not let on.

But he knew.

He lengthened his nightly patrols. He covered more territory. Swept up greater numbers of offenders.

On the eve of the kernel exchange, Durwood struck out at nightfall to find their watchers—once and for all.

He cleaned and holstered his M9, and walked to the tanning salon entrance where Sue-Ann dozed, snores rattling her ribs.

"Well, ole girl." He touched her foreleg with a boot. "Let's see what we see."

With a phlegmy wheeze, Sue-Ann struggled to all fours.

They left by the alley door. Durwood charted an impossibly wide perimeter. A solid mile, from Times Square to the East River. Man and dog walked a steady hour, pausing only to stop large thefts—auto or greater—and free obvious captives.

At the Queensboro Bridge, Durwood pulled microbinoculars from his coat. He started hiking stairs for the upper deck.

Sue-Ann balked.

Durwood stood on the fourth step. "Been taking stairs since you were a pup. Scared?"

Sue-Ann kept her sit. Her shoulder twitched in place.

She wasn't scared.

Any emotion Durwood felt yielded to practicality. The moment you felt sorry and accommodated a dog's condition, he knew, you finished it.

He fished a tab of venison jerky from a pocket. "C'mon already."

Sue-Ann's eyes bulged. She scampered up.

"So you know," he said as the warm tongue scratched his palm, "this isn't turning into a habit."

From the upper deck, through chain link diamonds, Durwood surveyed the tanning salon. Trying on Leathersby's head. He considered angles and lines of sight. Where Rivard might set up. The sun's path through skyscrapers. The effect of low-lurking smog.

He identified five likely spots.

Descending stairs was harder still on Sue, but she managed. The patrol resumed.

The night air invigorated Durwood. They walked progressively tighter circles. Curfew passed. Pedestrian traffic dwindled. The city had no means of enforcing curfew, but the policy's good sense was obvious. Few flaunted it.

Durwood enjoyed the extra room, so strange in the middle of Manhattan. They had cross streets to themselves. Avenues were like dust-whorled streets of the Old West. Violence hummed in every glance and passing.

If you were about now, you meant trouble.

Government had no say here. Nobody'd look askance if Sue-Ann made water, or killed a stray cat as she'd been apt to in younger days

A man could cross a street where he wanted, ignoring prissy beeps and signals. You made your own way. The only judge who could reach you was Christ the Lord.

Durwood received a consistently wide berth from his fellow travelers.

Though he accepted Rivard's role in create the Anarchy, he believed the modern world deserved its share of blame too.