Authors: Finder
Where was that bike now?
I groped in the dark for my clothes and pulled them on. Then I thundered down the front stairs to the street and turned north toward Chrystoble. I could find Sunny Rico, but depending on what incredibly stupid hour it was, she might not appreciate that. At the station I could tell them my news, and they could take responsibility for waking her up. Then she or someone like her could come along to help follow the invisible string that already stretched taut before me in the dark.
stretched taut before me in the dark.
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Sentiment Street to Chrystoble is a long walk. I had plenty of time to wish I was back in bed, and to congratulate myself for not dashing off alone to track down the mystery bike. Tick-Tick would be so proud of me; she'd once described me as the sort of person who'd try to sell magazine subscriptions where angels fear to tread.
I could feel the bike, though: My brain seemed to be leaning outward, yearning toward something off the port bow. I had real trouble keeping myself moving in the direction of the copshop. Also, not being
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able to scratch th
e ongoing itch gave the issue an artificial urgency I couldn't shake. Reasonably
spea
king, I could have gone back to sleep 'til noon, then trotted uptown to tell Rico (who would also have gotten a whole night's rest), and we'd still have found our next clue waiting for us when we got there. After all, why suddenly dispose of the bike three days after the deed was done? Particularly, why dispose of it in the only way I could think of that would keep me from finding it again: namely,
destroying it entirely? Assuming the motorcycle had anything more to do with Charlie than having been reflected off his retinas the day he died.
As I said, that's reasonably speaking. My talent doesn't care how reasonably it's spoken to,
unfortunately. I'd never have gotten back to sleep anyway.
For all the bustle and activity around the Chrystoble Street Station that particular middle of the night, it might still have been a library. I went up the broad concrete steps two at a time, which got me through the big front doors at a sufficient clip that the copper on front desk graveyard shift jumped out of his chair and dropped his book.
So I opened with "Sorry," and segued into, "I don't suppose I'm lucky enough to find Sunny Rico here?"
He sat back down, warily. "If she was still here, neither of us would be lucky. She was on until two a.m., and when she left, the whole shift believed in the Evil Eye."
I added it up for myself. If Rico had gotten up just in time for our noon meeting, she'd been awake for fourteen hours. Not so bad, if she hadn't spent all of them working. I hadn't really expected to find her there, but it would have been so easy if I had; and suddenly I wished things were a little easier. I dropped into the nearest chair, a straight one drawn up to one of the long oak tables by the wall, and hoped that my strength would catch up to me. Must have left it out on the steps.
"I'm sort of… I'm helping Rico with this thing she's working on." It occurred to me that she could be working on more than one thing, but the cop on duty nodded. "I've got something that might be a lead.
So I thought I'd let you guys know, and you could take it from there."
"I can take a statement, but…" He made a paper-tossing gesture with both hands. "I've got three people out sick tonight, and I've got to hold down dispatch. I hope like hell it's not an emergency."
"It won't spoil," I assured him. I really
should
have let it wait until morning.
This guy was part of the proof that there's no such thing as a typical B-town cop. He would have looked right at home in the clothes of a working cowboy, except that his hair might have spoiled the effect when he took off his hat. Even that, I wouldn't have sworn to. For all I know, lots of cowboys have black hair an inch long, except for the horizontal strip at each temple left long and braided with seed beads close to the scalp, from the hairline to the back of the head. There was no gray in his hair, but his face had been crossed by a lot of weather. If I ran that sort of carnival booth, I'd have guessed his age at someplace in the late twenties.
"You're Orient, right?" asked the point man on the dawn patrol.
I nodded, a little surprised that he knew.
"Toby Saquash. Pleased to meet you. A lot more pleased if you help solve this fucker before Rico reams us all new assholes." I must have looked startled. He shrugged. "Sorry. She got in my face last night, is
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all, so
it's kind of fresh. But she's been going off like a pushbutton lighter for the last couple weeks."
"I don't think I'll be much help with that."
"Maybe not. She should take a goddamn vacation. Ah, it's not that bad. Sorry, if she's a friend of yours…"
I had the feeling this had all been weighing heavily on his chest. "Not exactly."
"Yeah. She and I haven't ever been buddies, but she's okay. She's a good cop."
That hit my ears with the force of novelty. "Good cop" wasn't a phrase in heavy rotation in Bordertown, and even Saquash used it as if he didn't use it much.
"Good, how?" I asked.
He seemed momentarily baffled. "Well… you know. You do your job—once you figure out what it is.
It's not like there's a police academy in B-town. And you stay straight."
I wanted to tell him, no, I didn't know, but we were interrupted. The front door swung wide on the newcomer in regulation silver. He wasn't big, but the outline of him, on first glance, suggested he worked out. The second glance supplied a little softness around the belt and under the chin, but I still thought I wouldn't want to hit him in either place. Over his brown hair he wore a black baseball cap with no insignia. The hair was tied up in a ponytail that poked through the opening at the back of the cap. His face was sunburned.
"It was a tree branch," he said, in a tone of deep disgust. "Jesus Christ."
"Well, you gotta check," said Saquash.
"Hell with
I
gotta check. Let
them
check once. Practically hidin' under the counter with that goddamn empty shotgun when I got there."
"If they were that scared, you oughta be glad it was empty. They might have shot you otherwise."
"Probably would've shot themselves. And good riddance."
That was when he noticed me. A quick flush came up under the sunburn, which produced a really
impressive color on his nose. Then he gave me a harder look, and turned to Saquash. "You been out bustin' 'em, or did this one turn himself in?"
Saquash shot me an apologetic glance. He replied, "He's working with Rico on her drug shake."
The sunburned cop came over and squinted at me as if I were an illegible postcard. For want of anything else to do, I stared back. He had very pale blue eyes, and the shiny streak of a scar running from the right side of his nose to the corner of his mouth. He turned back to Saquash and asked, "Snitch?"
"Jeez, Vickie, mind your manners and get a brain. Informers don't hang around at the police station."
"Goddammit, don't call me Vickie," he said mildly, as if he'd had to do it a few times before this.
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"Pleas
ed to meet you," I told the sunburned cop, in as neutral a voice as I could manage. "I'm O
rient."
His brows drew together. "Ori—wait a sec. You're the mutant who finds stuff, right? How 'bout finding me a blonde babe about 38-24—"
" 'Fraid not," I said. "It doesn't work that way." The awful thing was, it did work that way. I hadn't had to field that particular joke since back in the World, when I'd had an arsenal of snappy comebacks to it.
Just as well I couldn't remember any; I was sure one or two of them had gotten me hit in the face.
"Jeez, I bet Rico's even paying you. You do this for money, or dope, or what? I bet you'd find me a blonde for enough dope."
I gave up. "I'm holding out for gold, spices, and slaves. Are there more at home like you, or did your parents replace the lead water pipes?"
He thought about taking offense; I watched him do it. In the end, he laughed. "You punks down south should be more careful. Some cops don't have a sense of humor like I do."
I wanted to tell him I was relieved about that, but Saquash intervened. Probably just as well for the sake of my appealing profile.
"Vic," he said, "if you don't haul ass, you're gonna be late on the dock check. And I don't want to hear about it from Apollonius."
Vic scowled. "Pointy-eared tightwad. Wish he'd hire a security guard."
"He did. Us. Be glad it's not raining."
"Jesus. Why don't you go?"
"Because I'm catching tonight, and you're on patrol. Next week you can sit here and listen to me whine about my job, okay?"
Vic blew through his lips like a horse and tramped back toward the door. He turned when he got there and waved to me. " 'Bye, Mutant Boy. Give my love to Sunny-honey."
I thought of a good many observations I could make to Saquash, but once the door closed behind Vic, I found I was too tired to make them. I propped my forehead up in both hands.
"You okay?" Saquash asked.
"Tired. Guess I used up my second wind getting mad."
"He might have been taking it out on you; he's scared shitless of Sunny."
I would have answered, but I was occupied with a huge yawn and a violent shiver.
Saquash leaned over the table to give me a close look. I didn't feel like a postcard this time. "When did you last eat?"
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I thought back. "
Oh," I said wisely.
"Sheesh." He shook his head. "I'll be right back."
He swung through the door that I knew led back to that deer track of offices and the morgue. Now that I'd been reminded to add it up, I noticed that since Sunny Rico had walked into the Hard Luck, oh, maybe thirty-six hours ago, I'd had a total of seven hours' sleep and one meal. Next time I saw her, I was going to ask if she was required to display a Surgeon General's warning.
The motorcycle was now behind and to the left of me. Its nudge for my attention was beginning to feel less like a nudge than a scrape.
I was involved in some elaborate eye-and-bridge-of-nose massaging and missed his entrance; but when I opened my eyes, the tall, fatherly elf with the tightly braided hair, the one I'd seen here on my original visit with Rico, was sitting across the table. He wore a classic furrowed-brow Fred MacMurray nice-guy expression, and the immaculate silver jacket.
"Hawthorn," I said. I was pleased with myself for remembering his name. Then I was a little alarmed, thinking that there had been a rank attached that I couldn't remember. But Kathy Hong had said that they never really used them—no, she'd said they did, up on the Tooth, which was where Hawthorn hailed