Martinez strides away as Rudy’s voice trails after him. “You going to watch the fight today?”
“Let’s see what the Governor wants to see me about first,” Martinez mumbles, passing out of Rudy’s earshot. “One fucking thing at a time.”
*
It takes Martinez precisely eleven minutes to cross town on foot, pausing a couple of times to kick the asses of workmen loitering in the nooks and crannies of merchant’s row, some of them already passing flasks at two o’clock in the afternoon. By the time Martinez reaches the Governor’s building, the sun has broken through the clouds and turned the day as humid as a steam room.
Sweat breaks out on the big Latino as he slips around back and climbs the wooden decking to the Governor’s back door. He knocks hard on the jamb.
“Get your ass in here,” the Governor greets him, pushing open the storm door.
Martinez feels the flesh on his neck crawling as he enters the sour atmosphere of the kitchen. The place smells of grease and black mold, and something putrid underneath. A pine-scented car deodorizer hangs over the sink. “What’s going on, boss?” Martinez says, putting his assault rifle down, leaning it against a lower cabinet.
“Got a job for you,” the Governor says, running water into a drinking glass. This apartment is one of the few left in Woodbury with working plumbing, although the tap often spews brown, rusty well water. The Governor guzzles the water. He wears a shopworn wifebeater over his sinewy upper body, his camo pants tucked into his combat boots. The bandage on his ear has turned orange from the blood and Betadine. “You want a glass of water?”
“Sure.” Martinez leans against the counter, crossing his muscular arms across his chest to quell the beating of his heart. He already doesn’t like where this is going. In the past, people sent on the Governor’s “special assignments” have ended up in pieces. “Thanks.”
The Governor fills another glass and hands it over. “I want you to go see this Rick character, and I want you to let slip how disgruntled you are with the way things are going around here.”
“Pardon?”
The Governor looks the man in the eyes. “You’re fed up, you understand?”
“Not really.”
The Governor rolls his eyes. “Try to keep up with me, Martinez. I want you to get to know this prick. Gain his confidence. Tell him how dissatisfied you are with the way the town’s being run. I want to take advantage of what’s going on in that fucking infirmary.”
“What’s going on in the infirmary?”
“This prick is wooing Stevens and his little cocker spaniel of a nurse. These strangers seem like decent people to them, they seem nice—but don’t you fucking believe it. They bit my fucking ear off!”
“Right.”
“They fucking attacked me, Martinez. They want our town, they want our resources … and they’ll do anything to fucking get them. Trust me on this. They will do anything. And I will do anything to prevent that from happening.”
Martinez drinks his water, nodding, thinking it over. “I get it, boss.”
The Governor goes over to the back window and peers out at the muggy afternoon. The sky is the color of spoiled milk. No birds are evident anywhere. No birds, no planes, nothing but endless gray sky. “I want you to go in deep,” he says in a low, somber voice. He turns and looks at Martinez. “I want you to try and get them to take you back to this prison they live in.”
“They live in a prison?” This is news to Martinez. “Did one of them talk?”
The Governor gazes back outside. Very softly, in a low voice, he tells him about the prison coveralls on the men, under their riot gear, and the logic of it—the perfect logic. “We got a few jailbirds in town,” he says finally. “I asked around. There are three or four state prisons within a day’s drive, one in Rutledge, one down by Albany, one over in Leesburg. It would be a hell of a lot better if we could pinpoint the location without a bunch of road trips.” He turns and looks at Martinez. “You follow me?”
Martinez nods. “I’ll do what I can, boss.”
The Governor looks away. A beat of silence passes, and the Governor says, “Clock’s ticking, Martinez. Get to work.”
“One question?”
“What is it?”
Martinez measures his words. “Let’s say we find this place…”
“Yeah?”
Martinez shrugs. “Then what?”
The Governor doesn’t answer. He just continues staring out at the empty sky, his expression as mean and desolate as the plague-ridden landscape.
*