“Mum!” May Carpenter whispered. “That’s not a very nice thing to…”
Ginny waved her into silence. “You can’t tell me anything about those Chinks. I see “em hundreds of times in their corner stores. You know what they do to pass the time?”
“You’ve told us before,” May said wearily, with a flickering glance at the ceiling.
“They keep opening matchboxes and taking one match out of each. Nobody’s going to miss one match out of each, you see. Just standing there all the time — opening matchboxes and taking one match out of each. We wouldn’t do a thing like that, but after they’ve done it fifty times they’ve made the price of an extra box of matches.” Ginny paused, having completed her case, and looked at the others with a mixture of indignation and triumph. “What do you say to that?”
“What do they sell them in?” Hasson said, thinking about Oliver and his insight and compassion.
Ginny frowned. “What do you mean?”
“I mean what do they sell those extra matches in? According to you they’ve got fifty extra matches, but no box to sell them in.” Hasson nodded to Werry. “Did anybody ever sell you a paper bag full of matches?”
“He’s got you there,” Werry shouted gleefully, gripping Ginny’s thigh. “You never thought of that one.”
“Just you listen to me, Al Werry, and I’ll tell you what they do,” she snapped, beating his hand away. She opened her mouth several times, as though prompting it to go ahead and produce an explanation by itself Finally, when it had become obvious to her that no suitable words were forthcoming, she looked at Hasson with eyes which were dulled with hatred.
“I haven’t got time to stand here jawing all night,” she said. “I’m going to make the dinner.”
The ultimate weapon, Hasson thought, but already he felt mildly disappointed in himself for having squared up to a tiny twig of a woman whose aggression was probably a sign of unhappiness.
“I shouldn’t have made that crack about your cooking,” he said, smiling. “I’ll look forward to eating anything you want to conjure up for us.”
“Have a beer, Rob,” Werry put in. “I’m on duty tonight, so I won’t be able to have one with you later.” He stood up, took a can of beer from the refrigerator and led the way into the front room. Hasson winked at Ginny, changing her expression to one of bafflement, and went after Werry. The two men sat for an hour during most of which Werry talked about the difficulties of police work and how much better off he would be in some other occupation. He looked composed and dauntingly immaculate, but there was a new soberness in his eyes which suggested that Buck Morlacher had managed to penetrate his mental armour, and he spoke at length about his renewed efforts to block off the Chinook Hotel to trespassers. His two air patrolmen, Henry Corzyn and Victor Quigg, had been detailed to circle the lofty upper section from before dusk to prevent unauthorised entry. Werry himself had arranged to spell them in four-hour shifts during the night vigil, which was why he was to go on duty as soon as he had eaten dinner.
“The trouble is I’ve been extra busy during the day, as well,” he grumbled, tapping the side of his beer glass to revive the head. “Now that the good flying weather is back, kids are drifting in from all over. The Chinook draws them like a magnet, you see. We keep turning them back or busting them for flight offences, but there’s always another lot on the way and we can’t stop them all. Especially after dark.
“Sometimes I feel like getting hold of a tonne of hidyne and blowing the stick out from under the big lolly. It just isn’t right for most of the city’s police force to be tied up trying to look after one man’s private property.”
“It’s bound to become dangerous with neglect,” Hasson said. “Maybe you could get an order to have it pulled down.”
“Maybe, but it would take years.” Werry gave an introspective sigh. “You can see the attraction it must have for some kids. They can have their own world up there — a world that no adults ever see. They can have their own society up there, with different rules, and no parents butting in to spoil things. The parents can be two or three hundred kilometres away, or more, not even knowing where the kids are, and that’s a bad thing, Rob.”
“I know, but the only way you could hope to link social units together again, the way they were in pre-flight days, would be to implant radio tracers in everybody — and that son of thing isn’t on the cards.”
“I don’t know,” Werry said moodily. “I think it’ll come to that some day. I really do.” He jumped to his feet and did his now- familiar parody of a military salute as May appeared in the doorway to announce that dinner was ready.
Hasson followed him into the kitchen and noted that the table had been set for four. “Where’s Theo tonight?” he said, realising that he had done very little in the past few days to rebuild his relationship with the boy.
“He took some milk and cold cuts up to his room,” May said. “He wants to listen to the radio in peace.”
“Oh?” Hasson recalled an earlier conversation with Theo. “I didn’t know he was keen on radio.”
“He listens quite a lot at night,” Werry said. “It’s a big help to him, having the radio.”
May nodded her agreement. “That’s right — it means a lot to him.”
Hasson sat down, thoughtfully stoking his chin, and turned his attention to the food his stomach so urgently craved. The main course was built around a spiced meat loaf which he found enjoyable, and he further disconcerted Ginny Carpenter by giving it lavish praise. Dessert was gin-flavoured ice cream with lychees, a combination he found slightly sickly, but he asked for a second helping and had developed a comfortable tightness around his middle by the time coffee was served.
“When somebody tells you to build yourself up you don’t fool around,” Werry commented jovially. “It seems to me …” He broke off and muttered with irritation as the police radio on his wrist emitted a shrill bleep. There was a moment of silence, during which he sat shaking his head, then the radio sounded again.
“Sorry, folks.” Werrv touched a button on the communicator and spoke into it. “Reeve Werry here. What’s your problem?”
“Al, this is Henry Corzyn,” the radio said in a thin, urgent voice. “I’m at the Chinook. You’d better get over here as fast as you can.”
“Henry, I said I’d be there nine o’clock. Can’t you wait till I…”
“This won’t wait, Al. There’s been some kind of explosion on the bottom floor of the hotel section — and I think there’s a fire starting.”
“A fire?” Werry looked around the table with arched brows. “There’s nothing to burn up there, is there?”
“The place is full of lumber and scaffolding and partitions, Al. The contractor just walked off and left the place full of stuff”
“Well, have you called the fire service?”
“Victor did that, but it isn’t going to help. The hotel’s four hundred metres up, and our hoses and sonics haven’t got a hope in hell of reaching that far.”
“You’re right! Know something, Henry? You’re dead right!” Unexpectedly, a peaceful, beatific smile spread across Werry’s features. “Do you think we stand any chance of saying goodbye to our local landmark?”
There was a pause before Corzyn spoke again, and this time his voice was curiously hesitant. “I don’t know about that, Al — I only saw a bit of a flare-up and it might die down again, for all I know.”
“We’ll just have to hope for the best,” Werry said.
“This is serious, Al,” the radio came back. “It looks like some people have been hurt bad.”
“People?” Werry sat up straight. “What in hell are you talking about? What people?”
“I told you there was an explosion, Al. Leastways, that’s what it seemed like to me. Some kid got blown right out of an elevator shaft and he’s hurt pretty bad.”
“Christ Almighty!” Werry sprang to his feet, sending his chair tumbling behind him, snatched his tunic from another chair and ran to the door. Hasson saw May staring after him, both hands pressed to her mouth, then he too was out in the hail and running behind Werry. They burst out into the breezy, star-crowned darkness surrounding the house and sprinted for Werry’s cruiser parked in the street.
Hasson paused at the car as an unnerving idea occurred to him. “Al, are you flying or driving?”
“I was going to fly.” Werry glanced into the car where his harness lay on the rear seat. “Hell, by the time I get strapped up I could be three-quarter way to the Chinook. Jump in!”
Hasson slid into the front passenger seat and in a few seconds the car was broadsiding out on to the main road which ran to-. wards the centre of Tripletree and the south side. As it plunged towards the massed lights and the whorls of glowing aerial highways Werry called up Corzyn on the car radio.
“I’m on my way, Henry,” he said briskly. “Give me that again about somebody falling out of an elevator shaft. Is he dead?”
“He isn’t dead, Al — broke up a bit and concussed. I’ve called an ambulance for him.”
“But if he fell four hundred metres…”
“No, he was up there when the explosion happened — sounds like a bomb to me, Al — and as far as I can tell he got blasted into the elevator shaft and hit the wall. Lucky for him his CG unit was all right and he had enough savvy left to switch it on. He was floating down the wind like a soap bubble when Victor and me put a line on him and brought him down.”
“Get an ID on him as soon as you can.” Werry drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “How did he get in there, anyway?”
There was a sputtering silence. “Well … Victor and me got cold up there and we didn’t see any harm in calling in at Ronnie’s place for a cup of something to warm us up. I guess he could have got in then.”
“That’s wonderful,” Werry said. “That’s really wonderful, Henry.”
“Al, there’s fourteen Goddamn floors in the Chinook and it’s four or five hundred metres all round. Two of us flitting around in the dark can’t seal up a place that big. There could be a whole Goddamn procession going in and out, for all we would know about it.” Corzyn sounded hurt and aggrieved.
“All right, all right.” Werry glanced at Hasson and pulled a face. “What’s all this about a bomb?”
“That’s what it seems like to me, Al. What else would cause an explosion? I found out there’s a lot of paint stored on some of the floors, but that would only burn, wouldn’t it? It wouldn’t blow up.
“You could be right. Do you think the kid who got hurt was fooling around with explosives and blew himself up by accident?”
“He’s out cold now, Al, but it doesn’t look that way to me.”
“What do you say, then?”
There was an even longer crackling pause. “Victor saw Buck Morlacher at the hotel this morning.”
“Aw, no,” Werry groaned, shaking his head. “Henry, don’t say things like that over the air. In fact, don’t say them at all. Hang on-I’ll be there in a couple of minutes.”
Werry accelerated past a group of slow-moving cars and the dark hulk of Weisner’s furniture store came into view ahead. The bilaser projector on its roof had created a gigantic dining table which glowed against the night sky. The sight of it caused an uneasy stirring in Hasson’s memory, but his thoughts were completely dominated by the conversation he had just heard. On the night of the barbecue Morlacher had seemed dangerously near his limit of control, and from what Hasson knew of the big man it seemed entirely possible that he would go as far as planting booby traps to clear his property of what he regarded as vermin.
“I don’t like the sound of this, Rob,” Werry said thoughtfully. “I don’t like it one bit.”
Hasson gave him a sympathetic glance. “You think Morlacher would have gone that far?”
“Buck thinks he can get away with anything.”
“So what’l1 you do?”
“Who says I’ve got to do anything?” Werry demanded, hunching his shoulders like a man warding off blows. “We don’t even know that Buck had anything to do with this. It seems to rue that I’ve got to have some kind of proof before I think about arresting a man like Buck.”
