Bamboo and Blood by James Church

give me information. “Very well, though I don’t recall your doing anything for me lately.”

    “Are you going to make me pull your cousin’s file again? Selling copper from downed electric lines is still a capital crime.”

    “What is it I can do for you, Inspector?”

    “I need a few facts, that’s all.”

    He was impassive. Finally, he stirred. “If I can.”

    Just then the lights flickered again, but this time the heater stayed on. “It’s the wiring,” he said. “The heater draws too much power. You know what they say about this ministry—more heat than light. I’ll have to jiggle something.”

    Maybe people said that about every ministry. “Forget the wires and the cute slogans. I need a woman.”

    The liaison man looked up, presumably to where Miss Ban sat. “You’ll have to get in line, Inspector.”

    “No, I need information on a woman, a particular woman. She worked in the embassy in Pakistan until recently. Or possibly her husband did. One of them did, anyway. Before that she was in New York.” Admittedly, I still didn’t know for sure she had even been in Pakistan, but I felt as sure as I could be based on nothing more than a hunch. What I needed was a piece of paper that had it down in black and white. It didno harm to offer up what I thought I knew. If I was wrong, this man would be happy to say so. If I was wrong, I wanted him to smirk and jump in to correct me before he had a chance to realize that maybe it wasn’t something he was supposed to do. It was different with the old general. They were like two trees that reacted differently to the same breeze.

    “She has a name, I assume.”

    I wrote it down and pushed it over the desk. He looked, then blew out a puff of air. “A person of interest, apparently. Someone already came and took away her file.”

    “You saw it before it disappeared?”

    “I didn’t read it.”

    “You looked at it; it happened to open as you were retrieving it, and you happened to see something?”

    “Some files have clasps on them. This one didn’t.”

    I nodded. “What about the husband?”

    “That will take me a while. It’s hard to search files when the lights go on and off.”

    “Give me a call when you find something. If you don’t call, I’ll be back when you don’t expect me, and I might have some wire cutters with me next time.” He recoiled slightly. “Find a flashlight somewhere in this building. There’s enough light to see the files with that. Maybe Miss Ban can help.”

    He looked up at the ceiling, but I couldn’t see his expression because the lights flickered again and then gave way to the dark. I saw myself out.

    10

    “Are you actually so at ease with yourself, Inspector? I wonder if you are; or is it that you are as completely empty as always, void of all feeling?” My old friend the acting chief of personnel sat in my office. She didn’t have the air of someone who had the hots for me. Her question might have been the start of a late-night argument, just like old times, but it was only noon. It should have been a warning when she calledand said she needed to come over. So why did I ignore the warning, the ominous tingle in my spine? Maybe I was distracted by the glare of the sun off the snow on the street outside my window. If I had been wearing my sunglasses, the glare wouldn’t have bothered me. If I’d had on my sunglasses when she walked in and sat down, I could have looked directly in her face and she couldn’t have seen into my soul, where I was surprised to discover she still lurked. I would have had time to stop myself, to keep my mouth shut. “Me? Ill at ease?” I turned and did the only thing I could. I laughed.

    She smiled, and I suddenly remembered she had several. One of them was real, pure starlight and moonbeams. This wasn’t it. “Happy to see me again so soon?” She could keep her tone eerily even, the same calm surface that killer sharks love to cruise beneath. She did it before