Crashed

that?”

“Well …” The man hesitated. “Because of who you were, was the way I heard it.”

“Don’t we live in interesting times?” Thistle asked. “Imagine. I’d rather be with a bunch of cops who are busting me than hanging around with the guardians of free speech. And you know why? Because cops need evidence. You guys, you guys can turn a whisper in the fucking woods, fourth-hand hearsay, into a minute of gospel truth that makes everybody go Oh my God, and then they miss it when you retract it three days later. Is it any wonder I prefer cops?”

“But about the drugs,” the reporter said.

“I never put anything harmful into my system,” Thistle said, “without a qualified medical opinion.” She pointed at a guy at the back of the room. “Over to you.”

“I have two questions,” said the woman with the orange makeup whom I’d pushed over in the parking lot.

“And you can keep them, pumpkin-face,” Thistle said. “I wasn’t pointing at-”

“The first question is how you’ll feel when I sue you because your thug punched me.”

“I’ll be proud of him,” Thistle said. “I wish I’d punched you.”

“Hang on,” I said. “You put your goddamn spike heel on her tennis shoe. She had to get through that crowd and you pinned her down. She may have a broken bone in her-”

“I did not,” the woman said. “I never-”

“Thistle,” I said. “Show the awful orange lady your shoe.”

Thistle yanked off the shoe and held it up. She slipped her hand into it, poked a finger through the hole I’d made, and wiggled it. Then she said, “By the way, ow.”

“I did not do that,” the woman from World Entertainment News said.

“You’d say that, of course,” Thistle said. “I did not do that,” and suddenly she sounded and looked exactly like the woman she was talking to. It was even more striking than the way she’d done Trey. She continued, in the woman’s voice: “It’s not much of a surprise, is it? I mean, since you wouldn’t recognize the truth if someone handed it to you on a chest x-ray.” A murmur ran around the room.

“How does it feel,” the woman said, between her teeth, “to be doing porn?”

“I haven’t done it yet,” Thistle said in precisely the same voice. Then she became Thistle again. “So you’d know as much about it as I do.” She gave the woman her sweetest smile and added, “Or maybe more.”

I leaned down and whispered in her ear. “Okay,” she said. She turned to Trey. “Just a couple more. Let’s see whether anybody can be more awful than her.”

“Fine,” Trey said, obviously relieved to have gotten this much. Headlines were guaranteed.

Thistle did what I’d told her to do, pointed at a short guy in the second row. All the print guys had neat little reporters’ notebooks, but the best Louie the Lost had managed in the minutes since I’d called him was a bright yellow legal pad as big and conspicuous as a semaphore.

“You,” Thistle said. “The handsomest man here.”

“My question is for Miss Annunziato,” Louie said. He made a sweeping gesture that encompassed the entire stage. “Look at those pictures, would you? That’s a little kid up there. So here’s my question. Your family has been in organized crime for decades, but not like this. How do you think your father would like you taking his organization into kiddie porn?”

26

Like imitating a hand puppet

“Well, that went well,” Thistle said as we stepped into the hallway. “Do you think there was one person there I didn’t piss off?”

“I’m pretty sure Trey was happy,” I said. “Until about ninety seconds ago.”

I could hear the reporters shouting questions at Trey. The volume dropped as the door swung closed behind us and then grew louder again as it opened, and Thistle’s eyes darted past me and widened into circles, and two arms wrapped themselves around my neck, clamped tight, and lifted me off my feet.

I got both hands over the upper arm and pulled, kicking back with my heels at his shins, but no go: whoever it was, he’d grabbed the sleeves of his jacket-a plaid that looked familiar-with both hands and was hanging on tight. Then, as I began to choke, he pivoted so I was facing the door that had just swung closed again, and ran me, face- first, into it.

I saw some neurologically expensive special effects and said something along the lines of “Owww,” and then the guy who was strangling me topped me by saying, “OOOOOWWWWW!” and dropped me. I put a hand against the wall for support and swiveled to see Hacker backing away in his awful plaid suit, his hands cupped over his groin, as Thistle pulled back her foot and launched another kick. This one missed, and she staggered back, flailing her arms to keep from going over backward, but I caught her. The three of us stood there, Thistle panting in my arms, Hacker red-faced and trying not to groan, and me suddenly weak-kneed, a late reaction to near strangulation.

“What the hell was that?” I demanded.

“You’re … finished,” Hacker said. He sounded like he had a stone the size of a loaf of bread lodged in his throat. “Wattles and me … we’re going to feed you to the dogs ourselves.”

“That’s a figure of speech, right?” Thistle said. “Tell me that’s a figure of speech.”

“This asshole isn’t smart enough to use a figure of speech. What’s got you upset, Hacker? Some kind of clampdown on police corruption?”

“You … you just wait.”

“What would make more sense than me just waiting would be you starting at the beginning and telling me what the hell you’re talking about. Presumably, you’re here to deliver some sort of message. And unless you’ve got something really fundamental wrong, which wouldn’t surprise me, feeding me to the dogs is the or else part of it. See, or else should come second.”

Thistle said, “What dogs?”

“Tell you later, but they’re not that much worse than those piranhas you just finished with. What about it, Hacker? Aren’t you supposed to be trying to get me to do something?”

“I saw that, in there,” Hacker said, still breathing hard.

“Gee, I guess they let just anybody in.”

“I saw Louie, and don’t you try to tell me you didn’t bring him in.”

I said, “Louie who?”

“You even told her,” he said, lifting his chin at Thistle, “to call on him.”

“He did not,” Thistle said. “He told me it was time to get out of there. I was getting too loaded.”

“He’s a cop,” I told her.

Thistle brought her hands to the center of her chest and wrung them. “Oh, my poor little heart, it’s pounding so hard.”

“Keep it up, you little junkie bitch,” Hacker said. “When this movie is over, you won’t be so fucking immune.”

“… is over, you won’t be so fucking immune,” Thistle said, doing Hacker to perfection.

For a moment, Hacker froze. Then he said, “And if you think I’m kidding-”

“… think I’m kidding,” Thistle said, half a syllable behind him.

“Cut that out,” Hacker said.

“Cut that out,” Thistle said. Her tone matched his exactly, and her voice was almost as low as his. Her arms hung loose, the fists semi-balled, shoulders high, chin forward, feet planted wide, corners of the mouth pointed down. Hacker to the quarter-inch.

Hacker’s right arm came up, a pointed index finger at the end of it, and Thistle’s movement mirrored his