Carlisle

The crowds outside the Garden started gathering a little before noon. The force of uniforms that waited for them was enormous, but the early arrivals were largely friendly. There was a certain nervousness among the squads of NYPD on the streets. Every cop who ringed the Garden, patrolled the back streets, or waited in reserve in the parked buses knew that the Garden was uncomfortably close to the scene of the recent supermarket riot on Eighth Avenue. It could be that there would be some who would use the event as the excuse for a rematch.

As the afternoon wore on, it started to look as if those fears were groundless. Despite high humidity, a gray, overcast sky, and the hammering of the constantly circling gunships, there was something close to a carnival atmosphere. The crowds bought hotdogs and sodas, radfex balloons, cotton candy, miniature Bibles, and mylar prints of Jesus. They streamed in and out of the big Roy Rogers on Seventh Avenue. Many just waited in long orderly fines. As Carlisle had expected, a lot of them were killing the time until the doors opened by staring into handheld Jesus Waves. He noticed that there was a good smattering of country people in worn blue jeans and threadbare dresses who appeared impoverished even by New York standards. Whole families, who looked as if they had been driving for days, made frugal picnics on the tailgates of their dusty, elderly cars.

Carlisle, Reeves, and Donahue made a slow circuit of the Garden in an unmarked car. They, too, were basically killing time until the crowds were let into the building. If anything went down on the outside, it was not their problem – they were concerned with an organized threat on the inside.

Reeves, who was driving, glanced back at Carlisle. "You want to go around again?"

Carlisle shook his head. "No. I don't even know what I'm looking for. All I've seen is a couple of gangs of kids who could be purse snatchers. Let's dump the car and go on inside with the others."

They pulled over to the curb. A burly, uniformed tac squad sergeant in full armor started to tell them that they could not stop there until they flashed their badges. Carlisle and Donahue left Reeves to park the car and walked toward the nearest entrance. They had to show their badges twice more, first to get through the final line of uniforms and then to pass the Garden's own rentacops. Once they were through the rentacops, Carlisle looked questioningly at Donahue.

"Have those guys been checked out? It'd be an ideal way to infiltrate a shooter. Hell, half of them are armed already."

"The uniforms ran their IDs and gun permits before they were allowed in to work."

Carlisle scowled. "And that was it? Anyone with half a brain could fake out a check like that."

Donahue shrugged. "It was out of our hands. Deacons were supposed to run background on everyone employed here. It all went to Virginia Beach. That's where the lists came from."

"Goddamn it."

"What's the problem?"

"The problem is, where this thing's concerned, we can't trust the deacons farther than we can shit."

With a puzzled look, Donahue ran a hand through his thatch of prematurely white hair. "Are you seriously telling me that the deacons might have a crack at Proverb themselves?"

Carlisle shook his head. "I doubt they'll go that far, but there's a feeling that they might well step aside if any third-party operator tried for the prize."

Donahue's expression hardened. "There's a feeling?"

"That's what I said."

"So where does that leave us?"

"It leaves us where we've always been. If Proverb gets it, it's our ass, and nobody's making our job any easier."

They had moved on to the main arena. Tech crews swarmed over the stage and towers, making last-minute adjustments.

"Did the deacons check Proverb's people, as well?" Carlisle asked.

"Proverb put a block on that. His own security is supposed to be one hundred percent watertight."

"Let's hope it is. In the meantime, make sure that our boys are fully aware that they can't look to anyone for support except their own team. You got that?"

"I got it, Lieutenant."

Carlisle had divided his force of a hundred plainclothes officers into four twenty-five-man teams. Two would operate on the main floor, while the others would spread out over the upper tiers. Before he sent them to their final positions, Carlisle moved around giving last-minute instructions and encouragement. All the time, he kept wishing that someone would encourage him. As he looked down from one of the top tiers, he realized that they didn't have a rat's-ass chance if someone was serious about getting Proverb.

The PA was counting down to the opening. "Doors will open in a half hour."

Someone picked that moment to bring down the house lights. Red swirling lasers blossomed from the overhead catwalks. In the darkness, Carlisle knew there was no point in pretending. Arlen Proverb would be an open target once the show got going.

Speedboat

The large number of cops outside the Garden made him nervous. Speedboat had arrived about twenty minutes before the doors were due to open. He had come early because he wanted to take a look at the layout before the lights went down and the show started. He had been given a ticket and a backstage pass, but he had been told not to use the pass until after the show. His contact for the travel papers had sounded as jumpy as he was.

The crowd waiting to get into the Garden should have been Speedboat's natural cover. He had expected Proverb's followers to be geeky, but he so seldom came out of the eastside ghetto that he tended to forget just how geeky geeky could be. Half of them were brain-canceled by those damned A-wave generators that they liked to stare into. It seemed as if half the world was in a zombie trance. The crowd did not make for very good cover. Speedboat stood out like a sore thumb with his parka and suede-head haircut. He did not belong out there, in what passed as the real world. He was sure that the cops had to be looking at him. The twelve hundred in cash in his secret pocket was quite enough to get him taken down to Astor Place if a couple of eager assholes decided to shake him down. They probably would not hold him, but the money would certainly vanish, and his efforts to get out to Canada would be back at square one.

He really had no option but to get in line and try to look as holy and inconspicuous as possible. He tucked himself in between a sad-looking country family and an excited bunch of Elvi. The country family looked bad: a defeated husband, a washed-out wife, and three hopeless dispirited children in patched and handed-down work clothes. They looked as if they had been living on the edge for years. He could not understand why they stayed in the boonies. There was nothing out there but hunger and desperation since the big food conglomerates had finished running the small family farmers off the land. Maybe they were just too plain terrified of what might happen to them in the cities. What baffled Speedboat most of all was why, after those people had been handed every shitty deal imaginable, they still maintained their ridiculous faith. They might be living on turnips and hot water, but they still thought that Jesus was looking out for them and everything would be all right in the end. It could only be the passivity of the terminally stupid, and Speedboat had no patience with it or sympathy for it. Those dummies could not even pull it together to vent their anger on the corporations like Agricon and U.S. Grain that had made them the way they were. They did not burn barns or trash harvesters – they just sat around on their sorry butts and bought the official line that the Jews had done it to them.

The Elvi were a total contrast. The bunch that were standing behind him sounded as if they came from Jersey; they probably worked in the electronics or chemical plants out around Elizabeth. The Elvi looked out for their own, and it was rare to see one of them that did not have a job. This bunch were definitely on a day out and determined to enjoy themselves. Speedboat had no time for their loony tune beliefs, but at least they seemed to have some spirit in them and to be somewhat in control of their own lives. The men wore the traditional pompadours, triangular sideburns, and mirrored aviator sunglasses, while the women were done up as if they were on their way to a high-school prom in the mid-1950s. The Elvi were as much locked into their particular timeframe as the Amish were in theirs.