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Within a few blocks, the carnival gave way to the dumping ground for the homeless and the disenfranchised. Sidewalk sleepers erected their boxes and tents in pitiful little communities of despair. Those with beggar’s licenses, and many without them, wandered across town to shill enough credit tokens to buy a bottle of home brew to get them through another night.
Those who didn’t make it through the night would be transported to the morgue by the NYPSD unit not-so-affectionately known as the Sidewalk Scoopers.
No matter how many were loaded up, cremated at city expense, more came to replace them.
It was a cycle no one, particularly the city fathers, seemed to be able to break. And it was here, in the midst of the filth and despair, that Louise Dimatto ran the Canal Street Clinic. She didn’t break the cycle either, Eve thought, but she made the spin on it a little less painful for some.
In an area where the shoes on your feet were considered fair game, it was a risky business to park a car unless you then surrounded it by droids wearing body armor and hefting rocket lasers. Patrol cars were manned by exactly that.
The good news was, parking places were plentiful.
Eve pulled to the curb behind what might have been a sedan at one time. But since all that was left of it was part of a chassis and a broken windshield, she couldn’t be sure.
She stepped out, and in the hot, stinking steam that gushed up from a subway vent, engaged all locks, activated all alarms. Then she stood on the sidewalk, scanned the street in all directions. There were a few loiterers hulking in doorways and one pitifully skinny street LC trying to drum up customers.
“I’m Lieutenant Dallas, NYPSD.” She didn’t shout it, but raised her voice enough to cause faces to shift in her direction. “This piece of shit is my official city vehicle. If said piece of shit is not in this exact spot, in this exact condition when I come back, I’ll bring a squad of door-bangers down here to roust every living soul in a five-block radius, along with illegals-sniffer dogs who will find and confiscate all the goodies you’ve got stashed. I guarantee it will be a very unpleasant experience.”
“Bitch cop!”
Tracking the direction of the comment, Eve lifted her gaze to a third-floor window in a building across the street. “Officer Peabody, will you verify the asshole’s opinion?”
“Yes, sir, Lieutenant, the asshole is correct. You are the supreme bitch cop.”
“And what will happen if anyone lays hands on my vehicle?”
> “You will make their life a living hell. You will make their friends’ lives a living hell, their family’s lives a living hell. And, sir, you will make people’s lives who are complete strangers to them a living hell.”
“Yes,” Eve said with a cold and satisfied smile. “Yes, I will.” She turned away and walked to the door of the clinic.
“And you’ll enjoy it.”
“Okay, Peabody, point made.” She pulled open the door, stepped inside.
For an instant she thought she’d walked into the wrong door. From her visits over the past winter, she remembered the jammed waiting room, the dingy walls, the tattered, inadequate furniture. Here instead was a wide space partitioned by a low wall where glossy green plants thrived in simple clay pots. Chairs and sofas were ranged on either side, and though nearly every seat was taken, there was a sense of order.
The walls were a pale, pretty green decorated with framed pictures obviously drawn by children.
There was the hacking, wheezing, the soft whimpering of the ill and the injured. But there was not, as there had been the previous winter, an underlying sense of anger and hopelessness.
Even as she scanned the room a woman in a jumpsuit the same color as the walls came through a doorway. “Mrs. Lasio, the doctor will see you now.”
At the shift in patients, Eve crossed over to the reception window. Through it she could see updated equipment and the same sense of ordered efficiency that permeated the waiting areas.
There was a young man at the station with a face as cheerful and harmless as a daisy. He couldn’t have been more than twenty, Eve thought as he beamed up at her.
“Good afternoon. How can we help you today?”
“I need to see Doctor Dimatto.”
“Yes, ma’am. I’m afraid Doctor Dimatto is fully booked for the rest of this afternoon. If this is a medical emergency—”
“It’s personal business.” Eve laid her badge on the counter. “Official business. If she’s tied up, have her contact me when she’s free. Lieutenant Dallas, Cop Central.”
“Oh, Lieutenant Dallas. Doctor Dimatto said you might come by. She’s with a patient, but if you don’t mind waiting just a few minutes? You can wait in her office, and I’ll tell her you’re here.”
“Fine.”
He buzzed her through the door. She saw what she assumed were examining rooms on either side of a hallway, and the hallway opened into a wide pass-through where lab equipment stood on counters. From somewhere nearby, she heard a child laughing.
