Read Online Hardscrabble Road by Jane Haddam - Free Book Online Page B
Authors: Jane Haddam
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“But I don’t want you to go to bed tonight without thinking about this. Thinking about
what you want to do. Come in in the morning and be ready to give me my marching orders on our next step. If you don’t, we’re
all going to be out of work in eighteen months.”
“And killing what’s his name isn’t really an option, I take it?”
Marla would have said no, but it seemed superfluous, so she just went on stacking papers. She wished there was something she
could do to change the world so that Frank could have the rock ’n’ roll radio network he’d always wanted, and she could run
it.
Instead, she was going to have to go home with the car radio tuned in tothis station, and listen to one more good old boy with a down-home accent ranting about liberal elitists, pinko abortionists,
and the homosexual agenda.
7
R ay Dean Ballard had spent most of the evening looking out his window and wishing for snow, but the best the weather had been able to do was a
few ice crystals around five o’clock. Most of the time, Ray Dean hated snow. Snow meant the benches in the parks would be
wet as soon as anybody lay down on them. Snow meant too much traffic in the streets and too many car accidents. Snow meant
yet another story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about some homeless person somewhere pissing on the tires of a Volvo some doctor
had parked at the curb while he ran into the store for the paper and hot coffee. From a public relations standpoint, extreme
cold was much better than snow. In extreme cold, the story in the Philadelphia Inquirer was always about some homeless person
who had frozen to death under a bridge because there wasn’t enough room for him in the shelters.
There really wasn’t enough room in the shelters for nights like this, but Ray Dean knew that the homeless person who died
under the bridge tonight would not be there because he had been refused a bed. Ray Dean was twenty-six years old. He had been
out of Vanderbilt for less than half a decade, and at work in this organization for even less time than that, and he already
knew more than he wanted to about the homeless problem in America’s cities. At least, he assumed it was the same homeless
problem in all of America’s cities. Part of the problem with being young and on your first job was that you lacked the breadth
of experience you needed to judge whether your situation was atypical or not. He didn’t think Philadelphia was atypical, but
he knew he was. He couldn’t imagine a bigger difference between this place and the place he grew up. He didn’t know what it
said about him that he was fourteen years old before he rode in a car without a uniformed driver.
Why exactly he’d majored in English literature, he didn’t know. Maybe it was because he got more of an insight into the things
he was dealing with by reading Dickens than by going to lectures in sociology and social work, which always seemed to assume
that the homeless were not only a problem but a “problem,” and something to be solved.
He looked up at the chart on his wall and the arrows he’d been drawing on it all day, from the parks to the shelters, from
the soup kitchens to the shelters, from the alleys to the … where? The fact was, if they hid out in the alleys, they didn’t
want to go into the shelters. They weren’t even happy going into the soup kitchens, for fear someone would force them into
theshelters. There was, out there in America, a wave of paranoia the like of which he had never suspected—even though he’d been
sitting in Nashville, the very heart of it. It wasn’t just the homeless people who were defensive and afraid. It was everybody.
If one half of Congress proposed the institution of a universal health care system, the other half was sure the first half
were only doing it so that they could spy on the private lives of ordinary people and force them to eat wine and Brie instead
of cheeseburgers and
what you want to do. Come in in the morning and be ready to give me my marching orders on our next step. If you don’t, we’re
all going to be out of work in eighteen months.”
“And killing what’s his name isn’t really an option, I take it?”
Marla would have said no, but it seemed superfluous, so she just went on stacking papers. She wished there was something she
could do to change the world so that Frank could have the rock ’n’ roll radio network he’d always wanted, and she could run
it.
Instead, she was going to have to go home with the car radio tuned in tothis station, and listen to one more good old boy with a down-home accent ranting about liberal elitists, pinko abortionists,
and the homosexual agenda.
7
R ay Dean Ballard had spent most of the evening looking out his window and wishing for snow, but the best the weather had been able to do was a
few ice crystals around five o’clock. Most of the time, Ray Dean hated snow. Snow meant the benches in the parks would be
wet as soon as anybody lay down on them. Snow meant too much traffic in the streets and too many car accidents. Snow meant
yet another story in the Philadelphia Inquirer about some homeless person somewhere pissing on the tires of a Volvo some doctor
had parked at the curb while he ran into the store for the paper and hot coffee. From a public relations standpoint, extreme
cold was much better than snow. In extreme cold, the story in the Philadelphia Inquirer was always about some homeless person
who had frozen to death under a bridge because there wasn’t enough room for him in the shelters.
There really wasn’t enough room in the shelters for nights like this, but Ray Dean knew that the homeless person who died
under the bridge tonight would not be there because he had been refused a bed. Ray Dean was twenty-six years old. He had been
out of Vanderbilt for less than half a decade, and at work in this organization for even less time than that, and he already
knew more than he wanted to about the homeless problem in America’s cities. At least, he assumed it was the same homeless
problem in all of America’s cities. Part of the problem with being young and on your first job was that you lacked the breadth
of experience you needed to judge whether your situation was atypical or not. He didn’t think Philadelphia was atypical, but
he knew he was. He couldn’t imagine a bigger difference between this place and the place he grew up. He didn’t know what it
said about him that he was fourteen years old before he rode in a car without a uniformed driver.
Why exactly he’d majored in English literature, he didn’t know. Maybe it was because he got more of an insight into the things
he was dealing with by reading Dickens than by going to lectures in sociology and social work, which always seemed to assume
that the homeless were not only a problem but a “problem,” and something to be solved.
He looked up at the chart on his wall and the arrows he’d been drawing on it all day, from the parks to the shelters, from
the soup kitchens to the shelters, from the alleys to the … where? The fact was, if they hid out in the alleys, they didn’t
want to go into the shelters. They weren’t even happy going into the soup kitchens, for fear someone would force them into
theshelters. There was, out there in America, a wave of paranoia the like of which he had never suspected—even though he’d been
sitting in Nashville, the very heart of it. It wasn’t just the homeless people who were defensive and afraid. It was everybody.
If one half of Congress proposed the institution of a universal health care system, the other half was sure the first half
were only doing it so that they could spy on the private lives of ordinary people and force them to eat wine and Brie instead
of cheeseburgers and
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