Supposedly there were opportunities if you traveled deep enough into the country. Factories where things still got made, plants where they struggled to process and stretch the thin food resources.
Jack had resigned himself to this life.
The money wasn’t bad. Sooner or later, he might get posted to Manhattan, a desk job. Just had to hang the hell in there.
But Christie didn’t buy any of it.
“Quiet tonight?” she asked.
“So far. Fingers crossed.”
A longer pause this time. “Okay. Be safe.”
“Always do the best I can. Now you—”
A little laugh from his wife. “I’m going, I’m going.” She took a breath. “Good night.”
“Good night,” Jack said, feeling terribly alone when the line went dead.
He hit the keyboard of the ancient computer on his desk, a true dinosaur, and began scrolling through the still-empty fields of information that had to be filled out.
An hour later.
The screen in front of Jack had long turned into a sleepy blur as he lost the fight to keep his eyes open.
A few minutes… he had told himself.
Everyone did it. As they waited—or hoped that the morning would come without anything happening. But then the alarm began ringing. A door slammed. Jack’s eyes opened. Instantly awake.
He looked up at the precinct map on the station-house wall. One spot glowed bright red.
Rodriguez was already suited up. “Breakthrough, Jackie. Red Hook. Same fuckin’ building as last week.”
Jack stood up, and started for the locker room with Rodriguez at his shoulder.
“Same building? Jeezus.” Jack said.
“Yeah. Sorry man.”
Jack knew the building well. Most of the old Red Hook section of Brooklyn had been fenced off. A few government warehouses sat there, not much else. But there were still a few apartment buildings with people in them, fortified with some security and really the only option for the poor slobs who lived in them.
Nowhere else to put them. And they didn’t have much of a voice in any decision about their fate.