The Puppet Master

other one left, or if he'd just gone to the rest room. One of the two gave me a glance, but that was all, and I told myself that if there'd been any danger, it was past. We went out to her car and drove to the movie.

15

INDIAN'S STORY

A couple of days later I stopped at Morey's for breakfast, and while I was eating, a guy called Indian came in. He'd taken to wearing his hair in a Mohawk, exposing the skull patches he'd had put on for electronic brain stimulation. Indian's a Loonie who works as a casual for Yitzhak's Transit, just down the street from Morey's. As a casual, some days he works and some days he doesn't. He turns up at Yitzhak's at 7:10 for muster, and if they don't have a job for him that morning, he stops in at Morey's for coffee and a glazed doughnut. He's been doing that for at least as long as Prudential's been in the new building.

He's a big, rawboned Angeleno, not an Indian, though he claims to be a quarter Chippewa. His hair's sort of sandy brown, and his mustache is red, but if you dyed his face and hair, he might pass.

He saw me when he came in, and when he'd gotten his coffee and doughnut, he came over. 'Hey, Martti!' he said. 'I ain't seen you lately! You're looking good, man! Like the spirits are bein' good to you!'

I told him Tuuli and I had gotten out of town last weekend and it had done us both a lot of good.

'I seen you and her a couple days ago at that pie place on Hillhurst. Me and Moonbeam were across the street in the ticket line at SF Adventures, to see Time Drifters. And I seen a little red Ford parked at the pie place, and I said to Moonbeam that it's the kind your wife drives; I wonder if they're havin' supper there? And a little later, sure enough! You came out and drove away.'

'Yeah,' I told him, 'we went to the WorldWide to see a movie.'

He broke his doughnut in half, dunked a piece, and took a bite. 'You know what else I saw?'

He said that quietly, looking around, which caught my interest. It was out of character for him; Indian's usually very open. 'Right after I first saw your car, some New Gnu in uniform came out and stopped behind it. And wrote down your license number.'

Yitzhak's a New Gnu, a politer term for Gnostie, and most of the people who work for him are New Gnus. According to Indian, they're a good bunch to work for and with, but they don't have any tolerance at all for outsiders talking about the church, because it catches so much bad-mouth.

'Writing down our license number?'

'That's how it looked. He stopped behind it and it looked to me like he was writing it down in a pocket notebook or something.'

That actually gave me a cold chill. 'Huh! That's weird. Why would he do that?' Because there was no way he could have known it was ours. He couldn't have seen us get out of it from where they'd been sitting. 'Maybe he was getting the number of the car next to it,' I suggested.

'Might be. Couldn't be sure from where we were.'

* * *

I spent most of the day on other things, and before lunch took time for an hour's workout. I seemed to be dead in the water on the Christman case.

That afternoon I got a phone call from Molly Cadigan. 'You alone, Sweetbuns?' she asked. I told her I was; actually Carlos was in my office at the time.

'I had a lunch date this afternoon with a friend of mine. In the Saints' Deli. The Gnostie hangout on Winderly, across from the Campus. While I was waiting for her, I looked at the notice board.' She paused for effect. 'And saw your picture.'

'My picture?!'

She held it in front of her vidcam, a printed church circular with a composite computer sketch of me. A pretty good one. 'I recognized you right away,' she said. I couldn't read much of it on the screen, only the heading: Security Division. FOR IN-HOUSE DISTRIBUTION ONLY. 'It orders anyone who recognizes you to notify church security,' she told me.

I thought, Judas Priest! What does this mean?

'It says In-House Distribution Only, which is ominous by itself,' she went on. 'If they didn't have something unpleasant in mind, they wouldn't have said that. Obviously some dimwit on church staff posted it in the Saints' anyway. So I took it down.'

Obviously she had. 'Wasn't that sticking your neck out?' I asked her.

'Sweetbuns, my neck's been out so far for so long . . . But if anyone had noticed, they'd have squawked. And I'd have jumped all over them, because the thing says In-House Only.' She paused. 'What'd you do to stir them up?'

'I'm not sure,' I told her. 'I did get an interview with Lon Thomas. Under an assumed name. I told him I was writing a book.'

'Hah!' She barked the sound. 'I'll bet he had someone research the name and found out you weren't legit! Look, Sweetbuns, take my advice. Stay well away from the Campus. Lon Thomas doesn't play with a full deck. He's smart, but he's crackers, too.'

She didn't have to convince me. When we'd disconnected, I sat back wondering if one of those might get posted in Yitzhak's. Not likely, but . . . Occasionally there was a guy or two from Yitzhak's besides Indian that ate at Morey's, and they'd recognize the picture.

'Sweetbuns?' Carlos said. One eyebrow was cocked halfway up his forehead. He couldn't see my phone screen from where he sat.

'It's just something she says,' I told him. 'She's twenty years older and twenty pounds heavier than me.'

He grinned. 'If you say so. You're wondering about Yitzhak's now, right?'