Elephantom
Chicken Broth Paragon
#1
DAY ONE
JAVIER GAUTHIER
Hoover's payment came early this morning, sent by a courier. The timing was exact: 7:30 AM, morning, the clock's face showed. The man's name was Mr. Shelton Flat, of Peake's Post Service, and he asked for signature. Javier gave him a tip too.
He admitted that it was no charity. The former detective had been hesitant to capitalize on the 1st North Public Security scandal. It'd been quick to blow up in sensationalist magazines (Weekly General News, Examiner, Atlanta-Bangalore Daily), to Hoover and Lane's dismay, as the perpetrator had proved too popular in a few circles. It wasn't an enclosed incident, but a breaking news headliner.
It was the sort worthy of a size-five-width column in a page: GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION IN CITIZEN BLOCKS; POST-SEPT., THE MONTH OF THE DRAGON?; AFTER THE PHARAOH- INTERVIEWS, HOW MANY MORE?; BANGALORE BEDLAM. And he'd written all of them— Gallagher Tempest, an unknown, had written them, sent them by mail, and received compensation too.
The fact that it was a job, that he didn't enjoy it, killed some of the conscience. The target had been simple: Captain Coste's fame, the criminals, the lost guns, and maybe, the government's reputation. The reward was simpler: heft to his wallet and a J.J Balladeer No. 42 Pistol straight from the federal armoury. His last gun, a Copper Special (53 E.N [ERA NOUVEAU, POST-POST-WAR-WAR], branded 42-01, cobalt-blued, no sign of stainless steel) had blown up— as if a cruel joke, the replacement was a hand cannon, as Hoover described it— in a mishap involving an explosive gold-lined and black-cloth suit, a tank of propane, and a sting gone wrong.
He knew it was half his fault and had readied the mental crucifix when Hoover had initially refused to pay for another gun.
Now, a turn of events made it one-fourth a part of his 'occupational benefits'— came with the 'occupational hazards'— alongside life insurance, a free funeral, and coupons and discounts in all government-sponsored services (LasCo, J.J, Prentice, Auto, among others). It reminded him of that gambler who went rogue in Squib's Casino a few days back and was kicked out. He was winning too much, apparently, maybe cheating too. He'd been a regular customer, had good will with the people there, and as his arse was scraping across the hot asphalt, he had enough sense to caress his receipt of 10% discount (entry fee) that the owner forgot to take back. The pain-to-gain equilibrium was disproportionate and useless in the circumstance. Javier felt the same: stuck in a quicksand. The 'sand' was this gun, and the guns to come— violence begets violence, assholes—, and the 'quick' was Hoover.
He spent two of the newly-minted bills to buy the morning Weekly General News on the way to Chiave's. The AutoStand gave him a discount of one monad, on account of his 'occupational benefits', which he took. He checked his wallet: aside from the expired credits, licenses and assorted greeting cards, it was full. He was not poor. The Wax-Colnix pill popper, the pus-drinking hobo, the malnourished dwarf he was now looking to hit on— those had become distant possibilities.
This was his kind of moment. He could stay inside this aperture forever.
He juggled the change in his left pocket, humming the Saint Newszburry tune from the old days. It was a ragtime barely recognized in modern days beyond its skinny-deep merit as a folk song. His teacher had taught it to him when he was younger. That old man, a lucky bastard, died young, born to live in the past. However, it was 132 E.N, he was in Nort Ave., New Atlanta, Georgia, C.S.A . . . the year 1945 or sometime older in a village between London to Normandy as the song liked to claim was distant, and he planned to enjoy the present.
The last new year's eve was spent at his home, holed up, but when Keppen had asked, where were you? he'd said, at Derek Jr.'s party, and I was late out, you hear?
This new year's eve was going to be different. He was sure of it.
Javier's present destination was the apartment of one Chiave di Sento— one, as in, special. The people called it Chaive's or Hoover's Midget's place. He was a unique man: a dwarf scared of death but not much more than that; a proud anti-intellectual, holding a few bones to pick with all sorts of institutional organizations excepting the one he was in; and short, a tree stump as tall as the pile of books often near him— when asked, he'd say they were for burning, but Javier always did suspect he was a poseur.
Chiave opened the door with a grunt. “Who's knocking?” he said. He was a mess: eyes squinting, forehead scrunched, and somehow seeming even shorter than he was usually.
“It's me.”
He was dressed in a bathrobe, a pink woollen bathrobe, looped around his pot belly with a loose knot. “Fuck,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Derek?”
“Javier,” he said, straightening the lapels of his coat.
A brief pause. “Why are you here?”
He forced the paper onto the midget's hands. “The weekly newspaper. You said you'd have me over for tea.”
Chiave yawned. “You got an aspirin?”
“I don't—”
“Heroin?”
Javier pursed his lips. “No.”
He slapped his head with the newspaper. “Ah, hell.”
“You want me to come later?”
“I want you to come never,” he snapped.
“You—”
“But since you've got the newspaper and all,” he pulled him inside, with a sigh too at that, “come in, come in.”
“If you don't mind my presence now . . . ” Javier entered the room after the little man, closing the door behind him.
In typical Chiavine fashion, the room was top-brim with junk: his mother's portrait hung lopsided over a slanted five-feet shelf a head taller than him, full of flower pots, broken antique pottery, and empty bottles of rum; books, papers, manuscripts covered the floor, library passes long expired, some clinging on to blue screens and digital life; the lights above flickered occasionally, accompanying the cheap portable fan in the right corner of the living room with its broken motor; propped next to the cheap decade-old television set, there was a luggage rack with an assortment of wires and electronic machines docked to its frame, hooked to the wall sockets behind. The last one was for his cousin's thesis, the midget said, and it was supposed to be a hoverboard. There was an emphasis on supposed.
“I don't know what he's made for himself,” he said, sitting down on a sofa before the wood-and-glass coffee table in front of the TV. “Nobody's gonna ride that.”
Javier took the seat opposite the midget. “The way I see it, it's a board for midgets.”
Chiave's glare had edge.
It only made him smirk. “Runs in the family?”
“Fuck you.”
He raised his hands, surrendering. “You've got problems with your cousin's junk,” he said. “Why not scrap them?”
“I don't care.”
“You can't reach the shelf, can you?”
Chiave clenched his fists. “For fuck's sake—”
“Take a minute, think about it, Chiave. There's a quality of life. If Hoover finds out—”
“He won't. You planning to snitch?”
Javier's smirk grew teeth. “No, no, I don't think so.”
Chiave muttered something. The wood-saw buzz of the electric fan kept him from hearing it. His expression screamed, Fuck you, whoreson. A minute passsed by.
“How's Keppen?” the midget asked.
“The firm had a case last Sunday and he had to go off the street, hats on” Javier said briskly, tapping his own hat. “I didn't see what he was working on but it was a special case. Hoover ran me off to Lane. She had me on this new fiasco. I had to waste a few days chasing after rats.”
“A waste of time.”
“You ought to know why.”
“I don't.”
“He didn't tell you about it?”
“It's Lane's business and we work for Hoover.”
“Pity.”
“She's on her own ballgame, we're on ours.”
“Hoover or Lane? Why flip a coin? We're both on the same side.”
Chiave gave a laugh. “The way you say it,” he said, “it's a surprise.”
Javier shrugged.
The midget continued: “Honest, Javier, you've been a jobless freeloader.”
“Jobless? Freeloader? I receive a monthly pension—”
Chiave snorted. “A beggar's salary.”
“I don't mooch off of welfare.” Javier shook his head. “I work for Hoover. I freelance sometimes—”
Chiave laughed again. “Freelance what? With those fucking degrees? You're a bloody mercenary.”
“You—”
“Don't kid yourself.”
Javier sighed. “I'm a human yo-yo, Chiave. I don't stay in one place for too long. That doesn't mean I'm a lying, traitorous sonuvabitch.”
The midget snickered. “An artefact of the past.”
Javier waved the comment away. “The past is important.”
“Have you ever seen a yo-yo before?”
Javier scratched his head. “Well, not really . . .”
“Then shut up.”
“Yet—”
“Shut up.”
Javier stared at the midget and exhaled. “Hoover's been on edge for a while and he decided to get me back on the game. Our ballgame. Her ballgame.” He chuckled. “Not on an official capacity, but still.”
Chiave gave him a sideways glance. “Hoover still going on about the Pharaoh?”
Javier slacked back on the chair. “His last strike was just that. A casement full of severed limbs,” he said, “but—”
“Ironic. We're psychics ourselves.”
“We're still cogs of this society, the real world. This is not Comic 66, Chiave. That's what he is. A clown playing villain. There's a difference.”
“I'd find a better analogy if I were you,” he said. “You know, they weren't even in their teens, Javier.”
“I know, I know it. He's crazy in the head.”
“Shit, I don't care. Why do you care?”
Javier licked his lips. “You remember last year, don't you?”
“I do.”
“He's going for another streak, Chiave.”
“We won't get our paycheck,” he murmured to himself.
Javier didn't say anything. He glanced at the entrance, steel door, psuedo-concrete walls, and a buzzer ten feet away from the door and next to the kitchen where it shouldn't be. A box of silent, stainless steel. The architecture was cheap all around.
“Forget it,” Chiave said. “Was the incident about him?”
He shook his head. “The perpetrator was a newly commissioned officer, working with the pathologists. They were his own buddy mates, right in the North Avenue station here, born and bred in these streets.”
“Is this classified info?”
“The weekly paper, Chiave.”
He picked up the paper. “What happened?”
Javier slipped a Col. Nilson— red and blue, premium edition, whatever it meant— from his coat and gestured the lid toward the midget. “Mind if I light a smoke?”
Chiave frowned, flipping through the pages. “You plan on- wait, you wrote this column?”
“Freelance,” Javier said, pocketing the pack. “I gotta fill my pot.”
“Fill the pot with gold, you mean. There's your name here.”
“Journalism.” A long pause, a faked cough, then he spoke again: “The clown's off the radar now- three months, was it? But Hoover's still bugged. He wants everything clean and tidy here, so he got me—”
“North Avenue?”
“Everywhere- yes, North Avenue.”
The midget rolled his eyes. “Big surprise. Why?”
“I don't know,” Javier said, hesitating. “We're Hoover's trump cards, last resort, one-of-a-kind shaved knuckle in the hole—”
“Or living jokes.”
“He's the comedian, we are- what? The punchline?”
“Forget it.”
”Well, the case was was a week back and you know I tend to forget the details—”
The midget slapped his thighs. “We all know it. Get on with it.”
“Only on a superficial basis.”
“How does one forget superficially?”
“Suppose, it's still in my head.”
“Then—”
“Why bother?
“Continue.”
“It was a week ago, a week and half a day ago. Hoover wanted me to check this unit out, saying guns were dropping out from the evidence room. He told me he'd give me a raise, a new gun- the old one busted its barrel—”
“You a sharpshooter these days?”
“Circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“Forget it. So, I think, I was strapped for cash back then. I don't why he came to that conclusion, but he told me the Pharaoh could be involved. He was anxious. Afternoon, five-thirty, he phoned me personally, told me he'd pay me if I went and checked out that simpering idiot, names classified—
“Captain Coste?”
Javier faked a cough again. “The area's been down under for a while, just a few roads up the criminal hierarchy.”
“Garuda's turf.”
“I poke my nose around, turn over a few stones. It wasn't that hard. They thought they'd get away with it. I don't blame their attitude. The commissioner's been easy on them. Hell. They were still dealing street treason behind the captain's back.”
“Coste's was the last forensics unit in the station.”
“Hoover had to rope in the county medical examiners to replace pretty-boy and friends' arse.”
“Are they even qualified?”
“Who knows? They were the only ones willing to work on quick order.”
“How'd you find that out about the underdeals?”
“I had a confidential informant's dossier. Even a crook has some uses.”
“And?”
“The rest, well, they're not public news yet, I think. Hoover won't take it pretty, even if it's you.”
“How's it connected with the Pharaoh?”
“Ask Hoover. He thinks they're all connected.”
“Why's he so jacked up over this?”
Is this a bloody interrogation? Hunter fucking hunted. Javier rubbed his chin. “The Pharaoh struck in January, a year ago, Maple Mall, the November Tenement blocks. For two or three—”
“Three months? Too short.”
“Then he went down on the low, except—”
“A pile of little arms.”
“He has yet to give up.” Javier grunted. “A pile of little arms. That's gotten our Dick Tracy here fussing over everything.”
“Hoover's too quick on his feet, is he?”
“He wants no repeat on that incident. Might keep both of us on active duty.”
“Why?”
Interrogator's instinct. What the fuck? “You ought to know better than me.”
Chiave grimaced. “Send a psychic to get a psycho.”
“Right on, Chivvy.”
“Ah, hell.”
“Easy, boy.”
“Fucking headache,” he groaned. “You go now, Javier, before I bust a lip.”
Tea? You forgot the tea, tea, tea. For fuck's sake. Javier shuffled in that cheap sofa— fake leather, hard as cardboard— and got up.
“Right, right.” Javier glanced around the room one last time. “Farewell, man, I'll take my leave now.”
He walked away, closed the door— only partially, leaving it ajar—, and halfway down the stairs, he checked his memo: another party at Derek Jr.'s, and after that, a dinner at Monterrey's with that blind date. What blind date? He had no willpower left for another communique. He cancelled the reservation, turned off the blue screen, and shoved the device into one of his pockets.
It was a good day, but it probably wasn't going to be for long.
DAY ONE
JAVIER GAUTHIER
Hoover's payment came early this morning, sent by a courier. The timing was exact: 7:30 AM, morning, the clock's face showed. The man's name was Mr. Shelton Flat, of Peake's Post Service, and he asked for signature. Javier gave him a tip too.
He admitted that it was no charity. The former detective had been hesitant to capitalize on the 1st North Public Security scandal. It'd been quick to blow up in sensationalist magazines (Weekly General News, Examiner, Atlanta-Bangalore Daily), to Hoover and Lane's dismay, as the perpetrator had proved too popular in a few circles. It wasn't an enclosed incident, but a breaking news headliner.
It was the sort worthy of a size-five-width column in a page: GOVERNMENT CORRUPTION IN CITIZEN BLOCKS; POST-SEPT., THE MONTH OF THE DRAGON?; AFTER THE PHARAOH- INTERVIEWS, HOW MANY MORE?; BANGALORE BEDLAM. And he'd written all of them— Gallagher Tempest, an unknown, had written them, sent them by mail, and received compensation too.
The fact that it was a job, that he didn't enjoy it, killed some of the conscience. The target had been simple: Captain Coste's fame, the criminals, the lost guns, and maybe, the government's reputation. The reward was simpler: heft to his wallet and a J.J Balladeer No. 42 Pistol straight from the federal armoury. His last gun, a Copper Special (53 E.N [ERA NOUVEAU, POST-POST-WAR-WAR], branded 42-01, cobalt-blued, no sign of stainless steel) had blown up— as if a cruel joke, the replacement was a hand cannon, as Hoover described it— in a mishap involving an explosive gold-lined and black-cloth suit, a tank of propane, and a sting gone wrong.
He knew it was half his fault and had readied the mental crucifix when Hoover had initially refused to pay for another gun.
Now, a turn of events made it one-fourth a part of his 'occupational benefits'— came with the 'occupational hazards'— alongside life insurance, a free funeral, and coupons and discounts in all government-sponsored services (LasCo, J.J, Prentice, Auto, among others). It reminded him of that gambler who went rogue in Squib's Casino a few days back and was kicked out. He was winning too much, apparently, maybe cheating too. He'd been a regular customer, had good will with the people there, and as his arse was scraping across the hot asphalt, he had enough sense to caress his receipt of 10% discount (entry fee) that the owner forgot to take back. The pain-to-gain equilibrium was disproportionate and useless in the circumstance. Javier felt the same: stuck in a quicksand. The 'sand' was this gun, and the guns to come— violence begets violence, assholes—, and the 'quick' was Hoover.
He spent two of the newly-minted bills to buy the morning Weekly General News on the way to Chiave's. The AutoStand gave him a discount of one monad, on account of his 'occupational benefits', which he took. He checked his wallet: aside from the expired credits, licenses and assorted greeting cards, it was full. He was not poor. The Wax-Colnix pill popper, the pus-drinking hobo, the malnourished dwarf he was now looking to hit on— those had become distant possibilities.
This was his kind of moment. He could stay inside this aperture forever.
He juggled the change in his left pocket, humming the Saint Newszburry tune from the old days. It was a ragtime barely recognized in modern days beyond its skinny-deep merit as a folk song. His teacher had taught it to him when he was younger. That old man, a lucky bastard, died young, born to live in the past. However, it was 132 E.N, he was in Nort Ave., New Atlanta, Georgia, C.S.A . . . the year 1945 or sometime older in a village between London to Normandy as the song liked to claim was distant, and he planned to enjoy the present.
The last new year's eve was spent at his home, holed up, but when Keppen had asked, where were you? he'd said, at Derek Jr.'s party, and I was late out, you hear?
This new year's eve was going to be different. He was sure of it.
Javier's present destination was the apartment of one Chiave di Sento— one, as in, special. The people called it Chaive's or Hoover's Midget's place. He was a unique man: a dwarf scared of death but not much more than that; a proud anti-intellectual, holding a few bones to pick with all sorts of institutional organizations excepting the one he was in; and short, a tree stump as tall as the pile of books often near him— when asked, he'd say they were for burning, but Javier always did suspect he was a poseur.
Chiave opened the door with a grunt. “Who's knocking?” he said. He was a mess: eyes squinting, forehead scrunched, and somehow seeming even shorter than he was usually.
“It's me.”
He was dressed in a bathrobe, a pink woollen bathrobe, looped around his pot belly with a loose knot. “Fuck,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Derek?”
“Javier,” he said, straightening the lapels of his coat.
A brief pause. “Why are you here?”
He forced the paper onto the midget's hands. “The weekly newspaper. You said you'd have me over for tea.”
Chiave yawned. “You got an aspirin?”
“I don't—”
“Heroin?”
Javier pursed his lips. “No.”
He slapped his head with the newspaper. “Ah, hell.”
“You want me to come later?”
“I want you to come never,” he snapped.
“You—”
“But since you've got the newspaper and all,” he pulled him inside, with a sigh too at that, “come in, come in.”
“If you don't mind my presence now . . . ” Javier entered the room after the little man, closing the door behind him.
In typical Chiavine fashion, the room was top-brim with junk: his mother's portrait hung lopsided over a slanted five-feet shelf a head taller than him, full of flower pots, broken antique pottery, and empty bottles of rum; books, papers, manuscripts covered the floor, library passes long expired, some clinging on to blue screens and digital life; the lights above flickered occasionally, accompanying the cheap portable fan in the right corner of the living room with its broken motor; propped next to the cheap decade-old television set, there was a luggage rack with an assortment of wires and electronic machines docked to its frame, hooked to the wall sockets behind. The last one was for his cousin's thesis, the midget said, and it was supposed to be a hoverboard. There was an emphasis on supposed.
“I don't know what he's made for himself,” he said, sitting down on a sofa before the wood-and-glass coffee table in front of the TV. “Nobody's gonna ride that.”
Javier took the seat opposite the midget. “The way I see it, it's a board for midgets.”
Chiave's glare had edge.
It only made him smirk. “Runs in the family?”
“Fuck you.”
He raised his hands, surrendering. “You've got problems with your cousin's junk,” he said. “Why not scrap them?”
“I don't care.”
“You can't reach the shelf, can you?”
Chiave clenched his fists. “For fuck's sake—”
“Take a minute, think about it, Chiave. There's a quality of life. If Hoover finds out—”
“He won't. You planning to snitch?”
Javier's smirk grew teeth. “No, no, I don't think so.”
Chiave muttered something. The wood-saw buzz of the electric fan kept him from hearing it. His expression screamed, Fuck you, whoreson. A minute passsed by.
“How's Keppen?” the midget asked.
“The firm had a case last Sunday and he had to go off the street, hats on” Javier said briskly, tapping his own hat. “I didn't see what he was working on but it was a special case. Hoover ran me off to Lane. She had me on this new fiasco. I had to waste a few days chasing after rats.”
“A waste of time.”
“You ought to know why.”
“I don't.”
“He didn't tell you about it?”
“It's Lane's business and we work for Hoover.”
“Pity.”
“She's on her own ballgame, we're on ours.”
“Hoover or Lane? Why flip a coin? We're both on the same side.”
Chiave gave a laugh. “The way you say it,” he said, “it's a surprise.”
Javier shrugged.
The midget continued: “Honest, Javier, you've been a jobless freeloader.”
“Jobless? Freeloader? I receive a monthly pension—”
Chiave snorted. “A beggar's salary.”
“I don't mooch off of welfare.” Javier shook his head. “I work for Hoover. I freelance sometimes—”
Chiave laughed again. “Freelance what? With those fucking degrees? You're a bloody mercenary.”
“You—”
“Don't kid yourself.”
Javier sighed. “I'm a human yo-yo, Chiave. I don't stay in one place for too long. That doesn't mean I'm a lying, traitorous sonuvabitch.”
The midget snickered. “An artefact of the past.”
Javier waved the comment away. “The past is important.”
“Have you ever seen a yo-yo before?”
Javier scratched his head. “Well, not really . . .”
“Then shut up.”
“Yet—”
“Shut up.”
Javier stared at the midget and exhaled. “Hoover's been on edge for a while and he decided to get me back on the game. Our ballgame. Her ballgame.” He chuckled. “Not on an official capacity, but still.”
Chiave gave him a sideways glance. “Hoover still going on about the Pharaoh?”
Javier slacked back on the chair. “His last strike was just that. A casement full of severed limbs,” he said, “but—”
“Ironic. We're psychics ourselves.”
“We're still cogs of this society, the real world. This is not Comic 66, Chiave. That's what he is. A clown playing villain. There's a difference.”
“I'd find a better analogy if I were you,” he said. “You know, they weren't even in their teens, Javier.”
“I know, I know it. He's crazy in the head.”
“Shit, I don't care. Why do you care?”
Javier licked his lips. “You remember last year, don't you?”
“I do.”
“He's going for another streak, Chiave.”
“We won't get our paycheck,” he murmured to himself.
Javier didn't say anything. He glanced at the entrance, steel door, psuedo-concrete walls, and a buzzer ten feet away from the door and next to the kitchen where it shouldn't be. A box of silent, stainless steel. The architecture was cheap all around.
“Forget it,” Chiave said. “Was the incident about him?”
He shook his head. “The perpetrator was a newly commissioned officer, working with the pathologists. They were his own buddy mates, right in the North Avenue station here, born and bred in these streets.”
“Is this classified info?”
“The weekly paper, Chiave.”
He picked up the paper. “What happened?”
Javier slipped a Col. Nilson— red and blue, premium edition, whatever it meant— from his coat and gestured the lid toward the midget. “Mind if I light a smoke?”
Chiave frowned, flipping through the pages. “You plan on- wait, you wrote this column?”
“Freelance,” Javier said, pocketing the pack. “I gotta fill my pot.”
“Fill the pot with gold, you mean. There's your name here.”
“Journalism.” A long pause, a faked cough, then he spoke again: “The clown's off the radar now- three months, was it? But Hoover's still bugged. He wants everything clean and tidy here, so he got me—”
“North Avenue?”
“Everywhere- yes, North Avenue.”
The midget rolled his eyes. “Big surprise. Why?”
“I don't know,” Javier said, hesitating. “We're Hoover's trump cards, last resort, one-of-a-kind shaved knuckle in the hole—”
“Or living jokes.”
“He's the comedian, we are- what? The punchline?”
“Forget it.”
”Well, the case was was a week back and you know I tend to forget the details—”
The midget slapped his thighs. “We all know it. Get on with it.”
“Only on a superficial basis.”
“How does one forget superficially?”
“Suppose, it's still in my head.”
“Then—”
“Why bother?
“Continue.”
“It was a week ago, a week and half a day ago. Hoover wanted me to check this unit out, saying guns were dropping out from the evidence room. He told me he'd give me a raise, a new gun- the old one busted its barrel—”
“You a sharpshooter these days?”
“Circumstances.”
“What circumstances?”
“Forget it. So, I think, I was strapped for cash back then. I don't why he came to that conclusion, but he told me the Pharaoh could be involved. He was anxious. Afternoon, five-thirty, he phoned me personally, told me he'd pay me if I went and checked out that simpering idiot, names classified—
“Captain Coste?”
Javier faked a cough again. “The area's been down under for a while, just a few roads up the criminal hierarchy.”
“Garuda's turf.”
“I poke my nose around, turn over a few stones. It wasn't that hard. They thought they'd get away with it. I don't blame their attitude. The commissioner's been easy on them. Hell. They were still dealing street treason behind the captain's back.”
“Coste's was the last forensics unit in the station.”
“Hoover had to rope in the county medical examiners to replace pretty-boy and friends' arse.”
“Are they even qualified?”
“Who knows? They were the only ones willing to work on quick order.”
“How'd you find that out about the underdeals?”
“I had a confidential informant's dossier. Even a crook has some uses.”
“And?”
“The rest, well, they're not public news yet, I think. Hoover won't take it pretty, even if it's you.”
“How's it connected with the Pharaoh?”
“Ask Hoover. He thinks they're all connected.”
“Why's he so jacked up over this?”
Is this a bloody interrogation? Hunter fucking hunted. Javier rubbed his chin. “The Pharaoh struck in January, a year ago, Maple Mall, the November Tenement blocks. For two or three—”
“Three months? Too short.”
“Then he went down on the low, except—”
“A pile of little arms.”
“He has yet to give up.” Javier grunted. “A pile of little arms. That's gotten our Dick Tracy here fussing over everything.”
“Hoover's too quick on his feet, is he?”
“He wants no repeat on that incident. Might keep both of us on active duty.”
“Why?”
Interrogator's instinct. What the fuck? “You ought to know better than me.”
Chiave grimaced. “Send a psychic to get a psycho.”
“Right on, Chivvy.”
“Ah, hell.”
“Easy, boy.”
“Fucking headache,” he groaned. “You go now, Javier, before I bust a lip.”
Tea? You forgot the tea, tea, tea. For fuck's sake. Javier shuffled in that cheap sofa— fake leather, hard as cardboard— and got up.
“Right, right.” Javier glanced around the room one last time. “Farewell, man, I'll take my leave now.”
He walked away, closed the door— only partially, leaving it ajar—, and halfway down the stairs, he checked his memo: another party at Derek Jr.'s, and after that, a dinner at Monterrey's with that blind date. What blind date? He had no willpower left for another communique. He cancelled the reservation, turned off the blue screen, and shoved the device into one of his pockets.
It was a good day, but it probably wasn't going to be for long.
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