Joe turned the subject over in his mind, not for the first time. Feathers, Hawk, Falcon. There was certainly an association there, even a progression of sorts. “A falcon’s a kind of hawk,” he said. “Isn’t it?”
“Yeah. Well, with or without a real name he ain’t much as a star witness. But maybe he can put us onto something if he can recognize this castle where he claims he was. Some of Carados’ people from New Orleans are still runnin’ loose somewhere, that much we do know. Including the one you shot at and hit down the alley. There was a good blood trail there and I thought we had ’im. But then the trail just cut off. How come your gun was loaded with silver bullets?”
“What?” said Joe, weakly. Then understanding, of a sort, came, a few seconds after shock.
“You heard me, man. Silver. The bullets that you fired. The ones we could find, anyway. You emptied your piece and we found three, two in Carados and one ricochet all flattened out of shape, on the alley pavement.” Charley didn’t sound really perturbed. More as if silver bullets were something you were likely to run into maybe once a year.
There was one man Joe would have liked to be able to consult before he had to discuss this subject any more, but that man didn’t happen to be available. Somewhat to Joe’s surprise, he found himself wishing that there’d been a vampire in the hospital last night, to give him a nocturnal briefing.
But he was going to have to answer on his own. “Suppose,” he said carefully, “I say I don’t know what in hell you’re talking about?”
“Then,” said Charley, “we would have to hypothesize.” He brought the word out in carefully polished tones, but nonchalantly, as if he thought that coming from him it might have a certain surprise value. “And what we hypothesize is something like this: some unknown friend of yours was in that alley too, and carrying a piece, and his just happened to be loaded in that silvery and unorthodox style. And after your friend had departed, taking with him all his spent cartridge cases, we found some of his bullets but none of yours. This theory, however, however attractive it maybe , fails when we hear from the lab that the silver bullets were all fired from your gun, don’t bullshit me, man.”
And all the time Charley, unperturbed, drove on quietly and safely through spattering rain. Not looking at Joe, he waited for an answer.
For years now Joe had been expecting the arrival of some moment like this one, when he would have to try to make such things as vampires and magic a part of some official record. He’d even had bad dreams about it a few times. He wasn’t ready to face the moment yet, if there was any way at all in which it could be avoided.
He said: “No regulation that I know of against loading silver.”
“And your old lady can afford it, if you can’t. Oh shit, man, don’t come on to me now with regulations.” At last Charley was irritated. “Off the record, now. Nobody in the Department really gives a damn if you fired diamonds or moneymarket certificates at that cat, long as you wasted him. I don’t think any reporters gonna get their hands on any of that silver. But—well, I didn’t figure you for going to fortune tellers, any of that jazz.”
“No,” Joe sighed. So far the reporters had been put off effectively, but sooner or later they’d have to talk to the hero who’d shot Carados. That would be another thing to face. “I didn’t figure myself that way either. Can we talk about all this later?”
“Sure. But you’re gonna have to talk about it pretty soon, with some people a lot higher up in the Department than me.”
“Thanks for the warning.”
Their arranged rendezvous with the other lawmen was at a state police station in a western suburb. They reached the place a little after three o’clock, and Joe was introduced to FBI, State’s Attorney, State Police; they all gave him looks of large respect, somewhat tinged with envy. He was the wounded waster of Carados.
And they had Falcon with them, and were of course watching the old man continuously if casually. It was the first glimpse Joe had had of the old man since they’d both been carried out of the alley the night before. The old guy was unhurt, dressed now in a fresh issue of jail clothes, though not officially under arrest, and appeared to be much wrapped up in his own thoughts. When the large all-male party had been reshuffled and dealt out into four cars for the long drive, Joe found himself in the back seat of a CPD vehicle. Falcon sat at his left side, with Charley on the other side of Falcon. Christoffel, another Homicide detective, was doing the driving, with a man from Intelligence, whose name Joe hadn’t really caught, beside him.
When they had got under way, Joe asked conversationally: “How’s it going, Mr. Falcon?”
The old man hardly turned his head, and didn’t really answer. With a worried expression he appeared to be contemplating his own right thumbnail, which stuck up from his hand clasped in his lap. The car was heading now for an entrance to the westbound/northwestbound interstate, the three other cars of the convoy with it, two ahead and one behind.
Joe’s wounded arm hurt. He eased it out of the sling, and tried to arrange support for it by crossing his legs. “Or have you decided to change your name again?” It wasn’t a jeer, but a
