gander… turns out I have seen him before.”
“Do you remember where?”
“Yeah… yeah, I can help you in that area. Glad to cooperate.”
Lydecker twitched a sort of smile, patted the dealer's shoulder, gently. “Always a pleasure to meet a civic- minded citizen.”
Bryant said, “If… if I tell you where he lives, will that be the end of it?”
“For you, yes,” Lydecker said.
he thought,
LOGAN CALE'S APARTMENT
SEATTLE, WASHINGTON, 2019
Seth was still snoring on the guest room bed when Logan came in with the news.
Logan turned on the bedside lamp and carefully shook the boy to wakefulness, trying not to startle him— he would not like to be the alarm clock this sleeper took a swipe at.
“Com… computers come through?” Seth asked groggily, sitting up, yawning again.
“Patience has its rewards.” He gave Seth a sideways grin. “So does bitchin' software.”
Seth was alert, wide-awake now. “What did you find out?”
Within seconds, they were sitting in the living room, on the leather couch, Logan holding up a sheaf of papers. “When you copied that disc, my friend, you got us
”
“Everything? What everything is that?”
“Smoking-gun everything.” Logan tossed the papers on the coffee table. “The kind that includes dates, times, paintings, amounts… every damn criminal thing Sterling and Kafelnikov have been doing together.”
“No shit?”
“It's all here, Seth— every sleazy transaction… including the next one.”
Seth's eyes widened. “You know what they're going to do next?”
“
know, Seth.”
“Where and when?”
“That's right. It's just a matter of calling the FBI now.”
Seth's eyes tightened to slits. “Say
”
Logan shrugged. “American Masterpieces Act violation— we'll call in the feds, have them arrested.”
“Logan, you can't be serious.”
“Why not?”
“Eyes Only cooperate with the feds? They're fuckin' corrupt— you always say so yourself.”
“There's corruption,” Logan allowed. “Widespread. But I have contacts with honest individuals in federal law enforcement.”
“Yeah, and I'll introduce you to the virgins down at the strip club.” Seth shook his head. “Listen, Logan, we got the chance to do two things here. We can stop these creeps Sterling and Kafelnikov,
we can come away with the nest egg I need.”
“The last time you ‘stopped' a ‘creep,' Seth… you killed him.”
“So that's what this is about… Logan, I wouldn't whack either of these guys, not right now, anyway— they're our
connection. And anyway, Jesus! Manticore
the federal government—
is a goddamn fed!”
Logan knew Seth was right; but the blood on the cyberjournalist's hands, from their last episode together, was still clinging and damp.
“Look,” Seth was saying, “we intervene when their next deal goes down, save some great slice of Americana for your conscience, Eyes Only exposes the racket with a big bad bulletin, and we help ourselves to a major contribution to the Seth Survival Telethon.”
Logan, shaking his head, rose and plopped into one of the side chairs. “You lose your head again, I'll be responsible for another death… maybe
than one.”
Seth leapt to his feet, gestured to himself. “You don't get it, do you? You're not responsible if I kill someone —
am!”
“We're ‘partners,' remember?”
Seth snorted. “Well, let's dissolve that as of now. From here on out, I work for myself. When we have shared interests, you might throw me a friggin' bone.”
“A bone like the details from the disc?”
“The disc
stole for you… Logan, you can stop these guys or not— you decide.”
With the biggest sigh he had ever heaved, Logan said, “All right… Do what you have to do… short of homicide. Then you bring me the painting, and keep the cash.”
“How much is that thing worth?” Seth asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep the question casual.
Logan read the sheet aloud. “
by Georgia O'Keeffe. The buyers are Korean and the price is supposed to be a million-one.”
Seth fell back onto the sofa and grinned like a kid contemplating a double-dip cone. “That'll do the trick, man. That'll do the trick.”
“You've decided to disappear, then? What about Manticore?”
“Let me count my money first, and get back to you. Where and when does the deal go down?”
Logan's eyes returned to the printout. “Top of the Space Needle… ” he looked at his watch. “… in about four hours.”
“About time I took in the tourist sights,” Seth said.
“Needle hasn't been a tourist site in some time.”
“Whatever… meantime, I gotta get back to my crib, get prepped.”
Rising, Logan faced the X5, who stood and the two men exchanged smiles that had embarrassment and maybe, just maybe, some affection in them.
“Good luck,” Logan said. “Partner.”
“Thanks, bro.”
Seth arrived at his tiny apartment forty minutes later. Little more than a cell with a cheap blackout curtain over the single window, the apartment had a mattress, dresser, minifridge, hot plate, microwave, two chairs, card table, minuscule closet, and a small bathroom with a tub you could shower in but not bathe. A dozen or so books lay in a couple of haphazard piles near the head of the bed, mostly a mix of pre-Pulse horror fiction and weapons/martial-arts manuals.
