Double damn on a silver platter with a side of Jesus Christs.I hate cases where you aren’t allowed to see all the evidence andnobody even whispers about motivation.
“Any idea what he was carrying?”
Cash shrugged and looked around as if she’d find answersspray-painted on the walls or burned into the rusting structural steel. Ofcourse, looking around was a lot easier on the stomach than staring at “RobertSmith.”
Then she focused on me again. “Look, the Colonel wants me toremind you — there’s a set of captain’s bars waiting for you, any time you wantto raise your right hand. We needyou.”
The Colonel, capitalized, that was the head of the Departmentof Public Safety — State Patrol, Fire Marshal, Liquor Enforcement, MarinePatrol, you name it. The Man. And as captain, I’d be the boss of the wholeProfessional Licensing and Regulation unit. Cash’s boss.
I shook my head. “Sorry. You need someone who still sleeps atnight.”
She just stood there, spit-shined toe of her boot inches fromthat butchered courier’s left kidney, scowling at me like I was a captureddeserter from a losing war.
“Someone has tocatch this guy. You’re our best bet. The only way he beat you last time was bydying. You gonna let that stop you?”
I remembered the things Al Kratz had done, twenty years ago.News reports damn near threw the whole state back into the hysteria ofwitch-hunts and bonfires roasting human flesh alive. I remembered the cop outside,when he realized who, what, I had to be. Wizards and witches stillwalked a thin line in public tolerance. Wouldn’t take much to cut the thread. . . .
“I’ll work on it on my own, okay?”
She nodded, slowly, obviously reluctant.
Hell of it was, Al Kratz had been a total bug-fuck nutcase. Idon’t use those words lightly, given the things I’ve seen. But he’d stuck tocommon crime, stuck close to the money. The Kratz I remembered would only hitthat courier if the man was carrying uncut diamonds or bearer bonds or blankpassports or the like. Something valuable and hard to trace. Nothing political,nothing like diplomacy or espionage.
I wondered what the guy hadbeen carrying. And if anyone would ever tell me. “Diplomatic immunity” pops upin some strange places. I remember a car crash that dumped ten kilos of uncutheroin on the pavement. We had to give it back to the embassy involved. Thatpart never made the news.
~~~
Cash had dragged me into this ugly case late thatafternoon. I’d just about decided to lock up my office and stop in at Charlie’sfor a beer or three on my walk home. If I’d headed out fifteen minutes earlier,the world might be a different place today. Better or worse, who knows?
Or Cash might have tracked me down even if I’d left. She usedto drink in Charlie’s, too.
“John Patterson,” the gold lettering says on the office door.Under it, “Member, ASFT.” That’s all. If a person is looking for my office, healready knows what I do. If he’s not looking for me, there’s no reason for himto find the place. I don’t make my beer money on walk-in browsers, and I canlive on my pension. I opened the office to give me something to do with mydays.
The initials stand for American Society of Forensic andResearch Thaumaturgists. They left out the “R” on purpose, hoping to avoid theobvious nickname. It still gets called ass-farts in cop-shop slang, ormass-farts if you insist on the “Member” to your title. With the implicationthat you’re about as welcome as a fart in church. Most straight cops getnervous around us, even when they need us. It’s that magic thing. It spookspeople, makes the hair stand up on the back of their necks. Cops tend to be menand women who don’t like being spooked. It messes with their self-image.
I’m out of that now. I’ve got this one-room oak-paneled officeon the fourth floor with a private toilet about as big as phone booths used tobe when phone booths still existed, with a view across a back courtyard topigeons bobbling and cooing on the cornice ledges of an equally-grimy old brickoffice block on the next street.
The place offers comforts no cop shop ever gave — a Faradayshield in the walls, for one thing. It blocks most spells and a lot of themental buzz that guys like me can’t actually listen to but can’t ignore. Thenthere’s the telephone I’m allowed to turn off or tell to go fuck itself if Ifeel the urge. And I don’t have to put up with pink-cheeked Detective Newboyfarting his lunch chili at the next desk and then having the gall to complainabout the Sobranie tobacco in my pipe.
Plus, I can spring for a chair that fits my butt and nevergroans like it’s about to collapse under me. Yeah, I’m fat. Three hundredpounds on good days, give or take a few. Most wizards are fat. It’s called fuel. Reserves. Wizards, witches, mages,thaumaturges, whatever you call us, we can’t make something out of nothing. I’velost twenty pounds in a single day, not sweat but fat burned up by my work, anddamn near stewed my liver with the waste heat. Thermodynamics, entropy, thereain’t no free lunch. Even magic doesn’t change that.
That heft also comes in damned useful when you need to talksome mass into violating Newton’s Laws. That’s more physics — leverage, equaland opposite reaction stuff. Even the girls learn that, put on weight and sayto hell with movie-star skinny, if they ever want to get anywhere in the magicbusiness. First time you have to stop a .44 slug in midair before it musses upyour new hairdo, you quit worrying about that big butt.
I shouldn’t have to worry about .44 slugs anymore. Twenty-someyears on the force, I get that pension to go with the bad dreams. I turned inmy badge after the thing with Maggie. That was the last straw. I did what I hadto do to satisfy my oath and then told them where they could put their issueColt and tin shield and I didn’t care how much K-Y lube they had to use.
Maggie, plus I just got burned out tasting crime-scene bloodto
