"The next thing to Unitarian," Milt translated. "Let's grab a table and assimilate."
They were moving to join Leon Pebbles at his eager invitation when the front doors exploded inward like a broken dike, loosing a tide of armed Paladin guards. The shock squad fanned out from the entrance, leveling submachine guns and bad dialogue at the startled customers.
"Freeze, mothers!"
"Nobody move!"
"Hold it, turkey - don't even think about it."
"Me?" Woody eased between Charity and the weapon trained on them. "Mind not pointing that thing at me?"
"Shut up, pussy." The gun muzzle swung on a slight movement from Milt. "Don't try it, dogshit. I'll mess you all over the wall."
"Please, not again."
"Everybody over toward the bar. Move."
Charity had a bad feeling that she understood more of this than she wanted to. The next moment proved her dismal theory. Fat little Drumm strutted through the door, flicked his clams-under-glass over her, then the room at large, and motioned to someone outside. Roy Stride stalked into Club Banal in SS black, whip in hand. He took the moment, giving them all, including Charity, the full effect of his absolute power.
"Hi, honey. Said I'd find you. C'mere. Okay, Drumm, everything's cool."
"This is not a general raid," Drumm announced. "We want only Miss Stovall. No one but her abductors will be arrested."
"Come on, Charity." Roy gestured with his coiled whip. "You're rescued."
Charity was sick at the sight of him but more afraid for Woody than herself. These people could hurt him. She started falteringly to obey. Woody's grip tightened on her arm.
"No way," he said.
"Hey, Woody." Roy strode to him, offering his hand. "Didn't know you were here. When you get it?"
Woody ignored the hand. "I got you way back, Roy, just wouldn't face it. Char's going Topside."
"You think so?" Roy smirked confidently. "Where've you been lately? I got those wimps in my pocket, boy. And the Prince. Shit, I ain't seen that sucker since I got here. Nobody fucks with me, Woody." He threw the fact to the room at large. "Nobody! You seen it on TV. Even Topside's playing ball with me."
Chewing on his burrito, Milt Kahane commented: "Hardball."
Roy turned on him, dangerous. "You got something to say?"
"You heard me," Milt said calmly. "And when you fan on your last strike, they're gonna ram the bat up your ass."
Roy looked Milt up and down with a grudging admiration: a badmouth but with guts and . . . somehow familiar. Maybe it was just the superior smile he'd writhed under all his life. In the lethal silence Leon muttered about Judgment and efficiency.
"Who are you?" Roy demanded. "You got a Jew look, boy."
"Me? I'm practically Swedish."
"I don't think so." Roy snapped his fingers. "This one to the camps."
"You always were a fuck-up." Woody stepped out in front of his friends. "Couldn't get out of boot camp without doing bad time. I was Topside when they cut orders on you, Roy, and you are in deep shit already. So take a little advice from the heart. Back off. I mean it."
Woody's still determination stopped Roy for a second before he remembered who had the guns and the power. "That you talking? Old go-along-with-the-program Barnes? Forget it. Charity, let's go."
She shrank back from him, remembering her own horror-filled eyes looking up at a gun barrel. "I can't."
"Charity, I don't wanta get personal in front of all these people, but you're already my wife, if you know what I mean."
Along with the fear, she felt disgust. "That's not personal, just tacky."
"Uh - excuse me, Leader Stride?" A small man with hunched shoulders and a potbelly edged forward from a huddle of his co-workers, hands still up. "If you don't propose to facilitate any arrests, I've really extended my break and have to return back forthwith to my duty station."
"What is this?" Roy's frustration blew up in a vicious crack! of his whip. "You want trouble? You scumbags want arrests?" He whirled on Charity and Woody. "You think I'm shitting you? Okay. Drumm!"
Click! "Sir."
"Every third one to the camps. I don't care - man, woman or queer." Crack! "I'll show you suckers trouble - "
"Ow, there y'are luv!"
Her strident cheer barely diminished by a long troublesome search, Florence Bird shouldered and flounced her way through Paladin guards toward Roy - who went sallower than usual against his SS black at the sight of her. Florence by contrast was an animated Cezanne in a painfully bright flower-print dress with bits and ends that bobbled with the jiggling of her Junoesque proportions, topped off with precisely the wrong hat skewed at a precarious angle. She bore down on the speechless Leader with a bear hug and lipsticky kiss.
"Crikey, dear, been 'avin a butcher's all over Below Stairs for you. Try to get you on the phone, this little pouv" - a contemptuous thumb jerked at Drumm - "says you carn't be disturbed. Not 'arf short wiv me. Y'orta talk t'im about it."
Roy's mouth worked. His eyes tried to deny what they saw even as he realized that dictators like anyone else could be caught with their image down. His colorless complexion went even paler; to Essie Mendel, the whole picture was a contradiction in obscenities.
"You've got to have good coloring to wear black," she whispered to Milt. "He looks like mayonnaise on my cocktail dress."
Roy managed to escape from Florence's possessive grip but found only part of his voice - a sort of squeak. "What the hell - are you crazy coming here?"
"Well may y'arsk, dearie. Got tired of sitting on me Khyber in front of the goggle box all day, nuffin to do but watch me gentleman friend prance all over town."
"Christ, will you cool it?" Roy hissed between clenched teeth. "This is Charity!"
"Not with me, luv," Florence vowed with gale-force lung power.
"Christ, you dumb - it's my fiancee. Charity Stovall."
"Ow, lumme! A course! Where's me "ead?" Forthright and unabashed, Florence strode to Charity, offering her hand. "Sorry, dear. Needn't take on: just business with me and Roy. Cash and carry, hands across the sea and that. Florence Bird. Very pleased to make your acquaintance, I'm sure."
"Oh, that's all right." Charity didn't know what to say, nor did she trust herself to try. "I was just leaving."
"There's nice." Florence beamed. "Lor, what's on in the high street outside? Pushed this way 'n' that by bleedin hordes of telly men, and look at this hat what I bought just yesterday, all bashed in. Lot of right brutes, got no respect for a lady."
"Telly?" Her meaning galvanized Roy Stride. "You mean television?"
"Don't I just?" Ruffled, Florence inspected the damaged hat. "Weren't for that nice Mr. Veigle, wouldn't've got in here 'tall."
Drumm made a sound like a man dying under a curse. "Veigle . . ."