I STOOD IN THE SHADOWS and looked across at the rundown lot with the windblown trash packed against the wire mesh barrier fence and the yellow glare panel that said HAUG ESCORT. There was a row of city-scarred hacks parked on the cracked ramp. They hadn’t suffered the indignity of a wash-job for a long time. And the two-story frame building behind them—that had once been somebody’s country house—now showed no paint except the foot-high yellow letters over the office door.
Inside the office a short broad man with small eyes and yesterday’s beard gnawed a cigar and looked at me.
“Portal-to-portal escort cost you two thousand C’s,” he said. “Guaranteed.”
“Guaranteed how?” I asked.
He waved the cigar. “Guaranteed you get into the city and back out again in one piece.” He studied his cigar. “If somebody don’t plug you first,” he added.
“How about a one-way trip?”
“My boy got to come back out, ain’t he?”
I had spent my last brass ten-dollar piece on a cup of coffee eight hours before, but I had to get into the city. This was the only idea I had left.
“You’ve got me wrong,” I said. “I’m not a customer. I want a job.”
“Yeah?” He looked at me again, with a different expression, like a guy whose new-found girl friend has just mentioned a price.
“You know Gra’nyauk?”
“Sure,” I said. “I grew up here.”
He asked me a few more questions, then thumbed a button centered in a ring of grime on the wall behind him. A chair scraped beyond the door; it opened and a tall bony fellow with thick wrists and an adams apple set among heavy neck tendons came in.
The man behind the desk pointed at me with his chin.
“Throw him out, Lefty.”
Lefty gave me a resentful look, came around the desk and reached for my collar. I leaned to the right and threw a hard left jab to the chin. He rocked back and sat down.
“I get the idea,” I said. “I can make it out under my own power.” I turned to the door.
“Stick around, mister. Lefty’s just kind of a like a test for separating the men from the boys.”
“You mean I’m hired?”
He sighed. “You come at a good time. I’m short of good boys.”
I helped Lefty up, then dusted off a chair and listened to a half-hour briefing on conditions in the city. They weren’t good. Then I went upstairs to the chart room to wait for a call.
It was almost ten o’clock when Lefty came into the room where I was looking over the maps of the city. He jerked his head.
“Hey, you.”
A weasel-faced man who had been blowing smoke in my face slid off his stool, dropped his cigarette and smeared it under his shoe.
“You,” Lefty said. “The new guy.”
I belted my coat and followed him down the dark stairway, and out across the littered tarmac, glistening wet under the polyarcs, to where Haug stood talking to another man I hadn’t seen before.
Haug flicked a beady glance my way, then turned to the stranger. He was a short man of about fifty with a mild expressionless face and expensive clothes.
“Mr. Stenn, this is Smith. He’s your escort. You do like he tells you and he’ll get you into the city and see your party and back out again in one piece.”
The customer looked at me. “Considering the fee I’m paying, I sincerely hope so,” he murmured.
“Smith, you and Mr. Stenn take number 16 here.” Haug patted a hinge-sprung hood, painted a bilious yellow and scabbed with license medallions issued by half a dozen competing city governments.
Haug must have noticed something in Stenn’s expression.
“It ain’t a fancy-looking hack, but she’s got full armor, heavy-duty gyros, crash-shocks, two-way music and panic gear. I ain’t got a better hack in the place.”
Stenn nodded, popped the hatch and got in. I climbed in the front and adjusted the seat and controls to give me a little room. When I kicked over the turbos they sounded good.
“Better tie in, Mr. Stenn,” I said. “We’ll take the Canada turnpike in. You can brief me on the way.”
I wheeled 16 around and out under the glare-sign that read “HAUG ESCORT.” In the eastbound linkway I boosted her up to 90. From the way the old bus stepped off, she had at least a megahorse under the hood. Maybe Haug wasn’t lying, I thought. I pressed an elbow against the power pistol strapped to my side.
I liked the feel of it there. Maybe between it and old 16 I could get there and back after all.
“My destination,” Stenn said, “is the Manhattan section.”
That suited me perfectly. In fact, it was the first luck I’d had since I burned the uniform. I looked in the rear viewer at Stenn’s face. He still wore no expression. He seemed like a mild little man to be wanting into the cage with the tigers.
“That’s pretty rough territory, Mr. Stenn,” I said. He didn’t answer.
“Not many tourists go there,” I went on. I wanted to pry a little information from him.
“I’m a businessman,” Stenn said.
I let it go at that. Maybe he knew what he was doing. For me, there was no choice. I had one slim lead, and I had to play it out to the end. I swung through the banked curves of the intermix and onto the turnpike and opened up to full throttle.
It was fifteen minutes before I saw the warning red lights ahead. Haug had told me about this. I slowed.
“Here’s our first roadblock, Mr. Stenn,” I said. “This is an operator named Joe Naples. All he’s after is his toll. I’ll handle him; you sit tight in the hack. Don’t say anything, don’t do anything, no matter what happens. Understand?”