sure Young was trying to torch, judging by the volume, close to everything in the Binder campaign finance records —and the accidental combustion Young had initiated. Something would have survived. Apparently he hadn't been the only one to think so. He walked up to the spot
where the garage used to be. The charred remains were in piles that were much too neat, and it looked like someone had gone through the ashes with a rake. 'Damn it.'
'What's the prob?'
Nohar waved at the garage, and expanded the gesture to take in the entire backyard. The rear lawn had been turfed by truck tires to the point that no grass was left. 'Someone beat me here. Whoever it was, shoveled up everything Young didn't torch.'
Nohar wasn't expecting to find the piece of evi-
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dence, but it would have been nice to find something. Angel was walking around the backyard, wide feet slapping in the mud. When he had looked for clothing for her, Nohar couldn't find a damn thing that even resembled a shoe for a rabbit.
'What am I looking for?'
Nohar was surprised Angel wanted to help. He supposed she was bored. 'It was mostly paper. Some might have blown to the edges of the property where our trash-pickers missed it.'
That was a bit of wishful thinking. The plot was bare of even normal garbage. Nohar supposed the people with the truck had grabbed everything that had even a slight chance of having been part of the records. They had a full weekend to work in. They were very thorough. Nohar wondered if they'd been the cops, or Binder's people, or MLI, or—
Nohar looked up from the edge of the driveway he was examining. 'Angel? Do the Zips have any workings with a congressman named Binder?'
Angel's laugh was somewhat condescending. 'Must be kidding. Zips and politics? Me becoming president'd happen sooner. All Zips want is a free hand to deal their flush.'
Nohar shrugged. A connection seemed unlikely, but he couldn't deny the fact that there was a connection— somewhere. Hassan was involved with the Zips, and it looked like Hassan killed Johnson. But Hassan wasn't working for the Zips. If anything, it looked like the other way around.
'Were the run-ins with the other gangs because of the drugs?''
'Don't know about other folks, but my clutch was into protection— When you do, you have to protect people you charge. Both Zips and flush were pretty dangerous.' She sighed. Her ears drooped. 'Too dangerous for us.'
She turned to face him. Her scar was fighting the FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
frown she wore. 'Could've used someone like you back then, Kit.'
Nohar didn't have a response for that. So he went back to his fruitless search.
By nine they had combed every inch of the property at least twice. The only result was part of a letter-fax Angel had found halfway across the street. It had been written by a gentleman named Wilson Scott, presumably to Binder or someone in the campaign. They only had the bottom half, so Nohar didn't know. It could be totally unrelated.
The letter went into detail on 'the late morey violence.' ' It got pretty down on the moreys, talking about moreys offing pinks, moreys taking hostages, morey air terrorism, and other generally alarmist topics.
Sounded like something somebody wrote during the riots. It was dated the tenth of August. Nohar wished he had a year to go with it. He also wished Scott didn't have a habit of writing in sweeping generalities.
With just half a hysterical polemic, the morning seemed to have been a waste of time. They didn't even have an address for Scott.
Nohar took Angel to his office with him. He wanted to make a few phone calls, now that people in the Binder campaign weren't on vacation. He would have liked the less-cramped atmosphere of his apartment. However, he figured the more he kept Angel away from Moreytown, the better off they both would be.
Even with Angel, the office wasn't any more cramped. He lifted her up, and she fit on top of the filing cabinet, out of the way—and out of view of the comm.
Not that he intended to use the video pickup. He was going to try and bull through to the one living member of the Bowling Green gang of four he had yet to talk to. Edwin Harrison, the legal counsel.
Nohar's funeral picture had him sitting right next to Binder, front row, center. With Daryl Johnson's death,
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Harnson would be the most powerful man in the Binder organization, after Binder himself. In fact, No-har remembered news off the comm had him as the current acting campaign manager.
The top, or close to it.
He killed the video pickup and hoped he could reach Harnson before anyone realized who was calling. No-har also engaged in a slight electronic legerdemain. The outgoing calls he had been placing from his apartment had all been piped through his comm in his office. This was the listed one, his professional voice, so to speak. This was the comm everyone was locking out. However, the process worked in reverse. He could pipe calls from the office through the unlisted comm at his home. They wouldn't be locking that out—yet. It turned out to be easier than Nohar had expected. The strained voice and the strained expression on the secretary—from the obvious makeup, and the hair perfect as injection-molded plastic, she would fall into Stephie's category of window dressing—made it obvious she'd been operating the phones too long.
Nohar could see lights blinking on the periphery of the screen. She had at least a dozen calls coming in. The way her eyes darted, she had at least four on the screen.
Nohar asked for Harrison. Her only response was, 'Hold on, I'll transfer you.' The screen fed him the Binder campaign logo and dry synth music as he waited for Harrison's secretary to pick up the phone. It was a long wait and Nohar had to restrain the urge to claw something.
The call was finally answered, not by a secretary, but by Harrison himself. Edwin Harrison had to be the same age as Young and Johnson. They had all been contemporaries out of college about the same time. But Nohar knew pink markings well enough to see the graying at the temples and the receding hair as some indication of premature aging. Harrison bore the slight scars of corrective OP-FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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tical surgery—Nohar had a brief wish his rotten day-vision could be corrected as easily—distorting his eyes. Under a nose that had been broken at least once, he had a salt-and-pepper brush of a mustache. There was no real way to estimate height over the comm, but Harrison looked small.
Harrison's shirt was unbuttoned and his face looked damp. The man was rubbing his cheek with one hand. Nohar figured he'd been shaving, a pink concept the moreau didn't understand.
Nohar found his polite voice. 'Mr. Harrison—'
Harrison sat down in front of his comm. 'Whoever you are, if you want to talk to me, you better turn on your video pickup. I can tell the difference between a voice-only phone and someone with a full comm who just doesn't want to be seen. I have no desire to spend a conversation with a test pattern when you can see me perfectly well.'
So much for polite.
Nohar just hoped the guy was too long-winded to hang up immediately. He did as requested.
Harrison's reaction was immediate. In the same, level, conversational tone of voice, he said, 'Holy mother of God, it's a hair-job.'
Hair-job?
Nohar hadn't heard moreys referred to as hair-jobs in nearly a decade. 'Can we talk?' 'Mr. Raghastan, correct?'
Nohar hated it when people mispronounced his name, even if it was only a generic label for that particular generation of tigers. Nohar nodded.
'I am sorry, but I have a very busy schedule. If you could make an appointment—'
So you can ignore me at your leisure, Nohar thought. Not without a fight. 'I only have a few questions about Johnson and the campaign's financial records.' Harrison seemed to be indecisive about whether he wanted to be
