Ambient 06 - Going, Going, Gone

someone getting ready to jump
    »Fill me in fast,« I said to Martin, not raising my voice, but not whispering either. Before I could say anything else he put a finger to his lips and reached under the table; peeled away what looked at first like an extra-lumpy piece of chewing gum. Before I could wonder what he wanted with such a disgusting souvenir he pointed to the two small silver wires sticking out of the purple clot. Placing the bottom of his glass on top of it, he pressed down until it chirped a cockroach crunch.
    »This is your own damn fault,« he said, sounding about as angry as I figured I sounded. »Your ultimatum was all the excuse Hamilton needed.«
    I snuck a peek out the window. Sartorius tapped his ear with his hand like he wanted to get the water out of his brain. »Who are you working for now, Martin? Who’ve I been working for? Interior Department or Hamilton? Or the kraut, for that matter –?«
    »Be quiet,« he said, looking like he’d stayed so long at the blood bank that now he was running on empty. »Walter, nothing about this operation is clear-cut. It’s not officially a government action –«
    »Nothing I ever do is.«
    »But with Hamilton involved, it has an ex-officio primatur,« Martin said, and rubbed a hand along his head. Frick and Frack, outside, probably were starting to wonder why they weren’t tuning in to the afternoon broadcast, but didn’t give any indication they were going to head back inside. Sartorius was pointing up at the expressway and frowning, as if he’d spotted patches of Jewish concrete. »I don’t always see what’s being built myself, Walter. Like you, I just drive in the nails I’m given –«
    »I’m thinking this time we’re driving them into our coffins,« I said. »How’d that little punk Benbo get promoted so fast?«
    »Within the bureaucratic structure he’s still my associate,« Martin said. »But he’s been all peaches and cream with Hamilton ever since they met.«
    »What a sob sister.«
    »And what happened, he was in my office when you called. Overheard my first reaction.« Which had been explosive, granted. »He ran off and got ahold of Hamilton while we were still on the line. Half hour after you hung up Hamilton called. Gave me a real line. Said that considering the fruitful working relationship you and I had had for so many years that as the operation moved into step two it’d be preferable to have a more disinterested hand on the wheel, as he put it.«
    »Bennett’ll steer me off the first bridge we come to.«
    »I know, you know, for all I know Hamilton knows. Doesn’t matter.« He leaned closer towards me, and in his deep brown eyes I saw all the way down to the pit of his heart. »Walter, I’m begging you. Don’t run out now. I think Bennett’s got ahold of something.«
    »There’s nothing on me,« I said. »I’ve seen to that.«
    He shook his head. »My grandmother was octoroon.« I nodded; mine was quad, but they’d been mixing it up in my line all the way back to Charleston, which had blessed me with my pale, pale face. »She was born in Jamaica. The British were bad as the Germans, they kept everything. Her records are still down there, Walter,« he said. »Or were, until Che and his boys rolled into Montego Bay.« Martin moaned; he sounded like a ghost, although not the ones I knew. »You know Commies, they’d’ve sold Lenin to the Nazis if there’d been a way to make a profit by it. Ten to one the Germans have already dug in to see what they could turn up, just to have on hand when times get tough.«
    That was the problem with the silent treatment; it only worked if everybody kept silent. The biggest, darkest Masai warrior could have been under-Secretary of State as long as he didn’t make noise about it and as long as his usefulness was such that the ones he worked with, and for, refrained from pointing it out. But let the first shoe drop, the first hint turn up somewhere down the line, and as soon as some kind of proof on paper could be run down, that’d be that. If you were passing and got caught, you were dead gone, even if the offending ancestor had been a seventh cousin twice removed. If you were over thirty, and got officially nabbed (which was the only way to be found out, Sophia help you if some local nitwit got it into his head to set the dogs loose), you’d be sent off to sunny Guatemala, or Costa Rica, or one of those welcoming Central American countries; but during the past couple of years, if