Authors: Finder
Hawthorn checked my pulse in fine professional style. "Have you had reactions like this to alcohol before?"
"Ye gods, it had better not be a reaction to alcohol. No. Maybe I'm allergic to something. Maybe it's just that I was so short of sleep."
He shook his head. "I suppose it could be. Look, there's only an hour or two before Rico comes in. At this point, I think the best thing for you to do is go home and get a little more rest. I'll send her to you as soon as she comes in."
"I don't know. I…" To be honest, I was a little scared. Those of us who are rarely sick are inclined to panic whenever our bodies let us down. But somewhere out there (I didn't ask for it; I was careful not to) was a motorcycle. It might not have anything to do with anything. Except, except—Oh, hell. Hawthorn had spoken with the Wise Voice of Benevolent Authority, and besides, he was right. I would wait for Rico at home.
I stood up. "As soon as she gets in, okay?" I said.
Hawthorn nodded. "Immediately. She'll say you did exactly the right thing."
"I hope so," I muttered. As I went out the door, I made an acknowledging gesture at the other three cops.
The two new ones raised their teacups to me. Vic said,
"See ya, Mutant Boy." I blew him a kiss, but I didn't have the nerve to wait for a reaction.
A B B YY.c
Dawn was just about to
spill over the edge of the horizon. The sky was battleship gray, and if there
wasn't yet enough light to read by, there soon would be. T
he air was moist with a little cutti
ng edge of
coolness. It was like menthol in my throat and lungs, and I took in lots of it. That, and the exercise of walking, brought me closer to awake. The more awake I was, of course, the more the sense of unfinished business nagged at me.
I
had
to go find the damn motorcycle. If I found it, I could give Rico the address when she came 'round to my place, and go back to sleep. I wouldn't do anything about it by myself; in fact, I would try not to be seen in the vicinity of the bike, for fear someone would get nervous and make the thing disappear before the cops got there. Nothing too demanding. Just locate it and go home. That seemed to dispose of every objection I could think of. I hoped it covered the ones that Rico or the Ticker might have, on the grounds of either good police work or my personal safety.
Now, where… ah. Thataway. I turned off Chrystoble, following my muse. I felt better already.
I know, I know. Any reasonable person (and even I, now) will look at the decision to go find the bike and think, "Hey, what was that funny noise? Guess I'll go down into the dark basement alone and check it out." And that's not the only decision I've ever made that would cause one to think that. In this case, I plead exhaustion and obsession, and can only tell you that it seemed like a swell idea at the time.
It was a long walk. Still, I'd had some food, and by whatever cause, I'd had some sleep. I felt a little drowsy and inattentive, but even that was fading away. So I hiked into what was once the warehouse district, before Faerie came back and changed everything about who lived in B-town, and where, and for what reasons. I was passing under one of the old freeway ramps, looking up through a hole in the
concrete at the pearly gray of the sky, when I realized I'd seen that hole before. Tick-Tick and I had come this way, in search of her stolen wrench. How long ago? A couple of days?
The further I went on the string that tied me to the black-and-red motorcycle, the more things I
recognized.
Nah, couldn't be
, I thought, just before I turned the corner and stopped in sight of Walt Felkin's bunker-like house.
Well, how unlikely was it? One unsavory Townie (Charlie) had associated himself with Rico's
illusionist. Why not another one? Especially one like Walt, with a reported eye for the main chance and the fast buck, and no reported qualms about anything that might have to be done to lay hands on them.
In short, a lot like Charlie.
While I thought about all that, I did have the sense to step off the pavement into a pass-through between two buildings, across the street from Felkin's place. I'd resolved not to be obvious about this, after all.
I leaned against the bricks under a broken fire escape. Water ran down the middle of the passage, headed for a storm drain in the street. Too much to be left over from night-before-last's rainstorm; someone on the block was emptying a holding tank. That meant someone was around, and awake, and I should be
careful about being seen.
Of course, I couldn't be sure that Walt had any direct contact with the illusionist. He might be fencing the bike for a friend of a friend. He might be repairing it, or repainting it. He might have bought it from someone. Hell, the blasted thing might just be parked next to his property. An actual sight of the bike might tell me more. And whatever Walt's relationship to Rico's case, he was at least a real, live person who could answer questions.
A B B YY.c
I went further down the
pass-through. There was a sort of courtyard, that was r
eally only a widening of
the alley, a
t the heart of the block. Old loading docks yawned open above the str
eet, their doors long ago
broken down, their head-high concrete aprons crumbling. The only signs of habitation were three
cardboard boxes of empty beer bottles stacked in one doorway, and the water, which was rushing out a drainpipe that climbed the side of the building to a tank at the edge of the roof. I stayed close to the wall, in case someone was up there and attentive.
I followed the alley out to the street, and followed that to circle around Walt's place. The house itself, I decided, might have been a garage originally. It was a single-storey building with a flat roof and a few long narrow windows set too high in the walls to look into, their glass painted white. It also had a big paved area in back, walled with ten-foot chainlink and two strands of barbed wire. On the oil-stained paving I could see untidy stacks of old tires, rusting heaps of auto body components, and piled lumber warping in the weather.
I also saw a black-and-red motorcycle parked inside the fence, by the back door. The string connecting us dissolved.
As ambivalent as I was about my talent, I had to admit there were times when a find gave me a near-adrenal rush. This was one of them. My grin was involuntary, my whispered "Gotcha!" nearly so. There was an empty building next door, with a back yard full of scrub trees and high grass. I declared that
"cover," and moved in closer. I should have known I wouldn't be able to get my motorcycle sighting and go home. Too much cat in my ancestry.
I'd expected the black finish on the rod frame to be primer, from my dream glimpse. Instead, it was either dense matte-black paint or some kind of rubberized coating. It looked phenomenally expensive. It was the metal-flake red on the teardrop tank that seemed a little cheesy; it didn't have the depth or gloss of the pearlescent midnight-blue lacquer on Tick-Tick's bike, and was a little battle-scarred, besides.
Where most bikes would sport chrome, this one had black anodized metal. "The Stealth Chopper," I muttered, and realized that, whether functional or attitudinal, that's exactly what it was. Except for the gas tank. A replacement, waiting for a new paint job? Or were the black parts left over from better days and a previous owner?
It was a shaft-driven bike, which was surprising; chain drives are cheaper, and easier to fix, which means they're more common in Bordertown. The Ticker could have given me a rough idea of the engine size just by looking. Lacking her presence, I guessed 750 cc or larger. I couldn't tell how recently it had been driven, but the engine wasn't hot right then; there was no telltale ticking from cooling metal. There was what looked like a custom security cable running from the ignition, under the gas tank, and
connected to something in the high weeds along the pavement's edge.
Unfortunately, there was no monogram on the seat upholstery, no tag that read, "If lost, please return to," and no way to tell if the bike belonged in Walt Felkin's back lot. It was not, in other words, as easy as I'd hoped.
That was Rico's problem, I acknowledged irritably. I pulled the cigarette out of my breast pocket and lit it while I thought. Rico would have to push past Felkin's front door manners (I tried to imagine her using a piece of tailpipe, and couldn't; possibly I didn't know her well enough) and ask him lots of questions about illegal things. And Walt, from what I knew, would close up as if he'd been welded shut. The Ticker had been confident that the mere naming of me would get her wrench out of him, but that was different. We were Townies, after our own. We weren't cops.
A B B YY.c
So. I c
rouched in the long, dew-wet grass behind the building next door, stared at Walt F
elkin's painted-
over windows
, smoked my herbal tig, and let my stupid idea hatch. Maybe I was even less awake
than I
thought I was. Still, it seemed good then, and better the more I looked at it: Walt knew who I was. A Soho fixture, a friend of Tick-Tick's, an adamant neutral in the choosing of sides that went on among gangs and races in the territory south of Ho street. I began to compose my line of innocent enquiry. I didn't stub out my cigarette in the dirt and rise up out of the undergrowth until it was nicely polished.
Walt's front door was actually at the corner of the structure, recessed a little under a projection just big enough to keep the weather off while one fumbled for the key. One would have to, every time; there was a lock, but no doorknob. The door faced the wrong way for morning sunlight, but the current owner didn't strike me as the sort to have noticed. Though it was still barely dawn, the difference in the light between the back of the building and the front was enough to make the porch seem dark. I knocked with enough enthusiasm to wake someone up, which I knew I was doing.
And when I was done, my eyes had adjusted to the gloom. Now I could see the roughly twisted strands of wire taped to the doorframe, the connector that would separate when the door opened, the cardboard box set against the doorsill, big enough to hold a basketball, to which the wires ran. The last vestige of fog left my brain in a great cold rush.
Prom beyond the door came the sound of something falling over.
"
Don't open the door
!" I screamed. A steel door full of insulation; could he hear the words? "Walt, this is Orient! Don't open the door!"
"What the fuck?" If I could hear him, then he could hear me. Thank you, God.
"There's a bomb wired to your door! It'll go off if you open it. Stay there until I get someone to disarm it!"
"There's a
what
?"
"A bomb—don't touch the door! The cops'll have somebody who can dismantle it. Walt, do you hear me?"
He was right next to the door now. "Is this a joke? Did that goddamn elf broad put you up to this?"
"What?" Oh, he meant Tick-Tick. "It's not a joke; there's a box out here big enough to—I don't know.
Just don't open the door. It's got something to do with the motorcycle around back."
There was no comment from the other side of the door.
"Walt?"
"Who sent you?"
"Nobody. Walt—"
"Who the fuck sent you?" He'd stepped back a little.
"Walt, calm down—"