turned around to face me. I recognized him.
'Eakins -?' Every time I met him he was a different age. This time he had silver highlights in his hair, but he still looked young.
'Sit.' He pointed. I sat.
'Your real name is Harris?'
He sat down behind the desk. 'My real name is Eakins. There is no Harris. But I'm him. When I need to be. Today, I need to be.'
'All right, that makes as much sense as anything-'
'Shut up.' I shut.
He had a folder on his desk. He tapped it. 'This case you're working on-the lost boys…?'
'I'm making progress. There's a common connection among the victims.'
'Tell me.'
'There's a gay teen club on Melrose. I think the perp is finding them there. It's in my reports. There's also a secondary location - '
'You have to drop the case.'
'Eh?'
'Is there something wrong with your hearing? Drop the case.'
'May I ask why?'
His voice was dispassionate. 'No.'
'But these boys are going to die - '
'That can't be your concern.'
'It already is.'
Eakins took a breath, one of those I'm-about-to-say-something-important inhalation/exhalations. He leaned across the desk and fixed me with an intense glare. 'Listen to me. Life is empty and meaningless. It doesn't mean anything - and it doesn't mean anything that it doesn't mean anything. Drop the case.'
'That's not an answer.'
'It's the only answer you're ever going to get. This conversation is over.' He started to rise -
I stayed sat. 'No.'
He stopped, half out of his chair. 'I gave you an instruction. I expect you to follow it.'
'No.'
'I wasn't asking you for an argument.'
'Well, you're getting one. I'm not abandoning those boys to die. I need something more from you.'
He sank back down into the chair. 'There are things you don't know. There are things you don't understand. That's the way it is. That's the way it has to be.'
'I made a promise to one of those boys that nothing's going to happen to him.'
'You got involved -?'
'I made a promise.'
'Which boy?'
'Number two.'
Eakins opened the folder. Turned pages. 'This one?' He held up Matty's picture. I nodded. Eakins dropped the picture on the desk, leaned back in his chair. Held up the other pictures. 'He's not part of this case.'
'Eh?'
'The others are part of this case. That one isn't.'
'I don't understand.'
'And I'm not going to explain it. The case is over. Disengage. We'll send you somewhere else. Georgia's got a courier job up in the Bay Area - '
'I don't want it.'
'That wasn't a request. You'll take the courier job and we won't say anything about where you were Sunday night.'
'No.'
'We're paying you a lot of money-'
'You're renting my judgment, not buying my soul. That's why you're paying so much.'
Eakins hesitated-not because he was uncertain, but because he was annoyed. He glanced away, as if checking a cue card, then came back to me. 'I knew you were going to refuse. But we still had to have the conversation.'
'Is that it?' I put my hands on the arms of the chair, preparing to rise.
'Not quite. This ends your employment here. Georgia has your severance check. We'll expect the return of all materials related to this case by the end of business today.'
'You think that'll accomplish anything? You can't stop me from saving their lives as a private citizen.'
Eakins didn't respond to that. He was already sorting files on his desk, as if looking for the next piece of business to attend to. 'Close the door on your way out, will you?'
Georgia was waiting for me. Her face was tight. I knew that look. There was a lot she wanted to say, but she couldn't, she wasn't allowed. Instead, she held out an envelope. 'The apartment and the car are in your name, we've subtracted the cost from your check. The bank book has your ancillary earnings. You'll be all right. Oh -and I'll need your ID card.'
I took it out of my wallet and passed it over. 'You knew, didn't you?'
'There was never any doubt.'
'You know me that well?'
'No. But I know that part of you.' She pressed the envelope into my hands. Pressed close enough for me to tell that she still wore the same sweet perfume.
Went down the stairs slowly. Stopped to have my shoes shined one last time while I looked through the contents of the envelope. A fat wad of cash, a hefty check, a surprisingly healthy bank account, several other bits of necessary paperwork-and a scrap of paper with a hastily written note. 'Musso amp; Frank's. IS minutes.' I sniffed the paper, recognized the perfume, nodded, tipped Roy a fiver, and started west on the boulevard. I'd get there just in time.
I asked for a table in the back, she came in a few minutes later, sat down opposite me without a word. I waited. She held up a finger to catch the waiter's eye, ordered two shots of Glenfiddich, then looked straight across to me. 'Eakins is a first-class prick.'
Shook my head. 'Nah, he's only a second-class prick.'
She considered it. 'Not even that high. He's a dildo.'
My silence was agreement. 'So…?'
She opened her purse, took out another envelope, laid it on the table. 'You weren't supposed to get this case. No one was. When he found out I'd assigned it to you, he almost fired me. He might still.'
'I don't think so. You're still there as far uptime as I've been.'
She shook her head as if that weren't important now. 'The whole thing is… it doesn't make sense. Why would he abrogate a contract? Anyway-' She pushed the envelope across. 'Here. See what you can make out of this.'
'What is it?'
'I have no idea. He disappears for days, weeks, months at a time. Then he shows up as if not a day has passed. I started xeroxing stuff from his desk, a few years ago. I don't know why. I thought-I thought maybe it would give me some insights. There's things that… I don't know what they are. There's pictures. Like this thing-' She shuffled through the photos. '-I think it's a telephone. It's got buttons like a phone, but it looks like something from Star Trek, it flips open-but it doesn't work, it just says 'no service.' And this other thing, it looks like a poker chip, one side is sticky, you can stick it to a wall, the other side is all black-is it a bug of some kind? A microphone? A camera? Or maybe it's a chronosensor? And then there are these silver disks, five inches wide, what the hell are they? They look like diffraction gratings. Some of them say Memorex on the back. Are they some kind of recording tape, only without the tape? And there's all these different kinds of pills. I tried looking up the names, but they're not listed in any medical encyclopedia. What the hell is Tagamet? Or Viagra? Or Xylamis? Or any of these others?'
'Are there dates on any of this material?'
