Emma Bull (4 page)
Authors: Finder
Rico nodded. "Victimless crime. We don't care who they sleep with, either, or whether they charge 'em for it. Though if they ask, we'll tell 'em it's a bad idea."
"Are you having fun?" I asked. "Tell us a story. Detective."
Rico took off the Peepers and folded them, set them on the table. She studied me before she spoke, as if she were seeing something or someone who wasn't me. "Humans can't get into the Elflands; maybe the Wall recognizes them. But what if someone gave you a vial of blue stuff to shoot and said it'd change you, make you just enough like an elf that you could step over the Border into Faerie?"
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Wolf
boy watched Rico, narrow-eyed. His lip twitched on one side, not quite a snarl, but maybe the
poss
ibility of one. He was a little ahead of the Ticker and me, I think, in following the idea to its consequences; he usually is. Tick-Tick frowned at Rico. "It wouldn't be possible," she said at last, but warily.
"Isn't it? There are plenty of substances that shuffle chromosomes. They use 'em out in the World for bioengineering."
"Leaving aside that the Elflands are overrated," the Ticker said, "I'd guess a great deal of money could be made with a product like that. If it has any effect."
"Oh, it has an effect. It brings on hallucinations and euphoria. At first, that's all it does. With repeated use, it cranks up or damps down certain glands. You have a growth spurt, you lose weight. It seems to break down melanin; skin color fades. Hallucinations become increasingly intense." She picked up the Peepers and sighted down the earpieces. "And then it kills you."
If that was what Wolfboy had guessed ahead to, I understood the snarl. I thought of the runaways in Soho who wanted to see the Elflands—which was all of them. Or the less-than-halfbreeds who felt the pull of their elven heritage. Or dumb Jewish boys who'd arrived in Bordertown willing to do anything to stop being what they were, how they were. A shiver ran down my arms.
"I've hit the wall on this," Rico said. "Charlie was a mule for the person or people behind the stuff. I found out that much, and we were on him like polish on a shoe for maybe twenty-four hours. Twenty-four God-damned hours later, he's dead, with nothing to connect him to his bosses. Whoever it is I'm after might as well be an illusion."
She paused to toy with her Night Peepers again, as if her next line didn't come easily. Tick-Tick made a non-commital sympathetic noise, and Wolfboy grunted, which was probably the same thing.
Rico raised her head and stared at me. "Then I remembered how you tracked down the killer in the Danceland murder."
I remembered it, too. Normal people can take only so much of that. That's what people like Rico are there for. I wanted to look around the table, at my friends, to see whether they'd known that was coming, whether they'd seen what Rico had meant to do. Oh, lord, I should have understood. She wanted me, but she'd been careful to explain herself to them, to do this in front of them, to put my friends on her side.
"I am not a public utility," I said.
Rico raised her eyebrows. "I'll pay the going rate."
"Then you can make me mayor and the King of Elf-land. I wouldn't do it for less."
"Why not?"
I drank off the last of my beer with a ferocious snap. Then I rose and leaned over her, so I could look into her face, and said, "Because I tracked down the Danceland killer."
I straightened up, smiling like a plastic mask. "I'm gonna get another. Anybody else?"
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"Me," said T
ick-Tick. She understood: Have another beer, business as usual, because the matter is
closed
. Wolfboy shook his head. Rico sat where she was, like a woman prepared to wait.
I picked up the empties and turned. I was two good strides away before Rico raised her voice and said it, like the answer to a question.
"Richard Paul Weineman."
I took another step. One of the beer bottles slipped out of my fingers and shattered on the floor. I turned around and said, my voice unstrung, "I beg your pardon?" but it was too little, too late.
Rico was leaning back in her chair and staring at the ceiling. The Ticker was alarmed, by my face, I think. Wolfboy looked at me and turned to Rico, lips pulled back in a full-fledged snarl. He didn't know how it had been done, but someone had just hit a friend of his, and he was ready to fight back.
Rico had even pronounced all three syllables of the last name.
She gestured me back to the booth with a jerk of her head. I came as if on a leash. The sound of breaking glass had stopped the conversations around us; now they started back up. I wondered if anyone but us had caught that name. When I was seated again Rico said, "The Suits have had a file on him for a few years. He'd be, oh, twenty-ish now."
I watched her lips move. Mine felt like glaciers—cold, slow, and inclined to break around the edges.
Rico went on, "Five-foot-ten—maybe about six feet by now. Black hair, dark blue eyes. Good-looking kid. A lot like you. You okay? You're a little green."
My fingers were tight around the remaining bottle. I let go of it and laid my hands flat on the table instead.
"Charged with grand theft auto, back in the World," Rico concluded. She folded the Peepers with a click. "And murder."
I thought the Ticker's shoulders moved. I was afraid to look at Wolfboy.
"If I found him," Rico said, eyeing the wall above the booth, "I'd have to extradite him. If B-town got in the habit of harboring fugitives, we'd never be able to keep the damn real cops—the ones from the World, I meanùout of here. Nobody wants that."
I scrabbled up enough self-control to speak. "What do you want me to do?"
"Help me find Charlie's boss."
"It's not that easy. One of us needs to know who I'm looking for."
"I've got to try." For an instant, Rico looked hunted and hungry. That's right, she'd been on the street.
She'd imagine her friends falling to this. She put the Peepers on again. "Can you start now?"
"He doesn't want to." Tick-Tick, in her fine, measured voice, like a reciting poet or a courtroom lawyer.
"Nor does he have to. He's committed no crime—" I saw the stop in her thoughts mirrored in her eyes,
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when she wondered if I
had
committed a crime. "And if he has, arrest him. Where is
it written that mere
author
ity allows you these liberties with another person's life?"
The smooth silver curve of the Night Peepers was opaque; all I could see there was the room, my face, the Ticker's, and Wolfboy's unreadable one over his clenched, black-clawed fingers.
I pried my hands loose from the table and stood up. "Isn't that what authority is?"
Rico had the grace to flinch.
I smiled stiffly at Tick-Tick. "Tell Peach to eat my chowder and think of me."
"Heartbreaker," she said, as if it hurt her. Wolfboy made a quick, impatient gesture, then seemed to stop himself. I wondered what he would have said, if he could.
I led the way out of the Hard Luck, for the sake of my self-respect. Rico, for whatever reason, let me do it.
Chance of a Ghost
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To hate a part of yourself is to hate
yourself
, and I know no blacker feeling. The Ticker had helped me come to terms with my talent—we were business people, she always said. We made our living in B-town from the things that made our old lives hell. We were proud to take payment for what we did: fixing things, in her case; finding stuff in mine. You can live in Bordertown without actually supporting yourself. You can scavenge or bum or steal—but that's a hard life, harder every year you live it. Tick-Tick showed me that, with the ability I hated and feared, I could do better.
I hadn't hated my talent like this for years.
Rico had a car. They're not common in Bordertown, because a motorcycle is so much easier to spell-power, and rarer still in Soho because they're expensive. This one was close to the ground, shaped in needle points and glossy curves. It looked as if it ate road surface for breakfast. I got in the passenger side.
"Triumph Spitfire," Rico said, pride in her voice. "Older than I am—hell, way older. When anything breaks, I have to find somebody to build the part. Belt up."
I was sitting in a nest of nylon webbing that I finally realized was a racing harness: lap belt and straps over both shoulders, fastened by one quick-release. Then I realized that the arc of metal over the top of the car was a roll bar, and I shot a look at Rico. "Do I need a fire suit?"
"I drive like an idiot," she said, embarrassed.