MINUS 077 AND COUNTING

He left Moue’s at ten past midnight, twelve hundred New Dollars lighter. The pawnbroker had also sold him a limited but fairly effective disguise: gray hair, spectacles, mouth wadding, plastic buck‑teeth which subtly transfigured his lip line. “Give yourself a little limp, too,” Molie advised. “Not a big attention‑get­ter. Just a little one. Remember, you have the power to cloud men’s minds, if you use it. Don’t remember that line, do ya?”

Richards didn’t.

According to his new wallet cards, he was John Griffen Springer, a text‑tape salesman from Harding. He was a forty‑three year‑old widower. No technico sta­tus, but that was just as well. Technicos had their own language.

Richards reemerged on Robard Street at 12:30, a good hour to get rolled, mugged, or killed, but a bad hour to make any kind of unnoticed getaway. Still, he had lived south of the Canal all his life.

He crossed the Canal two miles farther west, almost on the edge of the lake. He saw a party of drunken winos huddled around a furtive fire, several rats, but no cops. By 1:15 A.m. he was cutting across the far edge of the no‑man’s‑land of warehouses, cheap beaneries, and shipping offices on the north side of the Canal. At 1:30 he was surrounded by enough uptowners hopping from one sleazy dive to the next to safely hail a cab.

This time the driver didn’t give him a second look.

“Jetport,” Richards said.

“I’m your man, pal.”

The airthrusters shoved them up into traffic. They were at the airport by 1:50. Richards limped past several cops and security guards who showed no interest in him. He bought a ticket to New York because it came naturally to mind. The I.D. check was routine and uneventful. He was on the 2:20 speed shuttle to New York. There were only forty or so passengers, most of them snoozing businessmen and students. The cop in the Judas hole dozed through the entire trip. After a while, Richards dozed, too.

They touched down at 3:06, and Richards deplaned and left the airport without incident.

At 3:15 the cab was spiraling down the Lindsay Overway. They crossed Central Park on a diagonal, and at 3:20, Ben Richards disappeared into the largest city on the face of the earth.

Date: 2015-04-20; view: 533