the air around the lieutenant's face.
The lieutenant's eyes glazed over. He yawned. Seemed to frown, as if he was trying to remember something. Then he shrugged. His voice real dull, he said, “Yeah, okay, fellas, well, next time we'll s° want to talk to your witnesses. But I guess it's copa-cetic as is right now. You send over that video, okay?”
“Sure, Lieutenant, no problem.”
The cops were already filing out. Gulcher watched them go, thinking, I took over his mind and made him all sleepy and he just let it go.
This was almost too good to be true. Just a little too good.
***
THIRTY - SIXHOURSLATER : 7 p.m. in New York City, the Lower East Side. Still light out. Still hot and muggy.
Gabriel Bleak was sitting at a table in a plywood booth covered with off-white acoustic fabric, using a computer with a dicey Internet connection, having paid the shop on East Fourteenth for an hour's time. The acoustic fabric was frayed at the corners, exposing the plywood. The guy sitting in the little booth next to him was playing an online first-person shooter, and he kept muttering to himself, cursing his adversaries under his breath. “Die...die.... Come on and...oh, man, that's bullshit. That's...I'll find your ass when I re-spawn...change ordnance...change to rocket launcher, you want to play like that.... Noobie, using your noob-tube on me, suck this! Suck rockets! Yeah!”
Which made it a little hard for Bleak to concentrate on his e-mail. Mostly just spam. A thank-you note from Lost Boys Bail Bonds. And another client, Get Right Out Bail Bonds, had put him on its e-mail list. It appeared, according to their list spam, that now they also cashed checks. Probably give you a check for catching a skip, then offer to cash it for you in the office and use the check-cashing fees to take back part of what they'd paid you.
Bleak wiped sweat from his forehead. Why couldn't this place get air-conditioning?
He wished he'd persuaded Cronin to use e-mail. They'd talked about it but Cronin said the Internet was “bad for a man who wants to think long thoughts.” He missed Cronin, and he missed Muddy. He worried that the dog was pining for him. There—an e-mail inquiry from Second Chance Bail Bonds. Got a skip for you. Please come to office ASAP. Vince.
Wait. He'd never worked with Second Chance. Who was Vince and how'd he get his e-mail? From the other bail outfits? Surprising, they didn't usually share skip tracers. And the guy acted as if Bleak were supposed to know who he was.
He'd check it out anyway. Not good to get paranoid and he needed the work.
It occurred to Bleak, suddenly, that the CCA could be monitoring his e-mail. So maybe it was good he wasn't communicating with Cronin that way. Time he got out of this place.
He did a disk clean, a few other quick moves to blot out his browsing history, and shut the computer down, suddenly feeling as if he might be arrested, here, at any moment.
Bleak got up, hurried out, blinking in the light spearing from the sun low between the buildings. He shaded his eyes, looked around. Didn't see that agent—rolling her name luxuriantly through his mind: Loraine Sarikosca. Was surprised to feel a twinge of disappointment that she wasn't there. Which made no sense at all.
He hurried down East Fourteenth to Avenue A, then downtown, looking for a certain bar where he could get a beer in a cool room and think. A bar with a back way out, where he knew he wouldn't have to bust a hole in a wall if he had to escape.
Maybe we 're all going about this wrong. The ShadowComm—and me too. Maybe we should get lawyers. Challenge CCA right out in the courts. Come out of the closet more.
But he decided that thinking was left over from the days before the terrorist attack on Miami— before President Breslin had invoked National Security Presidential Directive 51, giving his administration special powers in the event of “catastrophic emergency” powers that verged on martial law. The
The lieutenant's eyes glazed over. He yawned. Seemed to frown, as if he was trying to remember something. Then he shrugged. His voice real dull, he said, “Yeah, okay, fellas, well, next time we'll s° want to talk to your witnesses. But I guess it's copa-cetic as is right now. You send over that video, okay?”
“Sure, Lieutenant, no problem.”
The cops were already filing out. Gulcher watched them go, thinking, I took over his mind and made him all sleepy and he just let it go.
This was almost too good to be true. Just a little too good.
***
THIRTY - SIXHOURSLATER : 7 p.m. in New York City, the Lower East Side. Still light out. Still hot and muggy.
Gabriel Bleak was sitting at a table in a plywood booth covered with off-white acoustic fabric, using a computer with a dicey Internet connection, having paid the shop on East Fourteenth for an hour's time. The acoustic fabric was frayed at the corners, exposing the plywood. The guy sitting in the little booth next to him was playing an online first-person shooter, and he kept muttering to himself, cursing his adversaries under his breath. “Die...die.... Come on and...oh, man, that's bullshit. That's...I'll find your ass when I re-spawn...change ordnance...change to rocket launcher, you want to play like that.... Noobie, using your noob-tube on me, suck this! Suck rockets! Yeah!”
Which made it a little hard for Bleak to concentrate on his e-mail. Mostly just spam. A thank-you note from Lost Boys Bail Bonds. And another client, Get Right Out Bail Bonds, had put him on its e-mail list. It appeared, according to their list spam, that now they also cashed checks. Probably give you a check for catching a skip, then offer to cash it for you in the office and use the check-cashing fees to take back part of what they'd paid you.
Bleak wiped sweat from his forehead. Why couldn't this place get air-conditioning?
He wished he'd persuaded Cronin to use e-mail. They'd talked about it but Cronin said the Internet was “bad for a man who wants to think long thoughts.” He missed Cronin, and he missed Muddy. He worried that the dog was pining for him. There—an e-mail inquiry from Second Chance Bail Bonds. Got a skip for you. Please come to office ASAP. Vince.
Wait. He'd never worked with Second Chance. Who was Vince and how'd he get his e-mail? From the other bail outfits? Surprising, they didn't usually share skip tracers. And the guy acted as if Bleak were supposed to know who he was.
He'd check it out anyway. Not good to get paranoid and he needed the work.
It occurred to Bleak, suddenly, that the CCA could be monitoring his e-mail. So maybe it was good he wasn't communicating with Cronin that way. Time he got out of this place.
He did a disk clean, a few other quick moves to blot out his browsing history, and shut the computer down, suddenly feeling as if he might be arrested, here, at any moment.
Bleak got up, hurried out, blinking in the light spearing from the sun low between the buildings. He shaded his eyes, looked around. Didn't see that agent—rolling her name luxuriantly through his mind: Loraine Sarikosca. Was surprised to feel a twinge of disappointment that she wasn't there. Which made no sense at all.
He hurried down East Fourteenth to Avenue A, then downtown, looking for a certain bar where he could get a beer in a cool room and think. A bar with a back way out, where he knew he wouldn't have to bust a hole in a wall if he had to escape.
Maybe we 're all going about this wrong. The ShadowComm—and me too. Maybe we should get lawyers. Challenge CCA right out in the courts. Come out of the closet more.
But he decided that thinking was left over from the days before the terrorist attack on Miami— before President Breslin had invoked National Security Presidential Directive 51, giving his administration special powers in the event of “catastrophic emergency” powers that verged on martial law. The
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