Puppets by Daniel Hecht Page A

some ongoing dental problems. He and Mo were pretty close for a while but had drifted apart in the last few years, Mo wasn't sure why.
    Mo got to Pho Bang before Ty did, taking a table near the front and ordering an iced lychee-nut tea to tide him over. It was just five, a little early for the dinner rush, and the place was mostly empty. When Ty came through the door, he moved into the room like the shadow of a rain cloud, dark and a little menacing. Mo thought he'd aged a lot since he'd last seen him, six months ago.
    Ty pulled back a chair and put himself in it, already slouching before his pants hit the seat. "Hey,"he said.
    "Looking good," Mo told him.
    Ty grunted and grabbed a menu. Mo took it as a cue to look at his own.
    "I just spent an hour and a half with your buddy Biedermann," Mo said after a few minutes. He had explained the Howdy Doody copycat when he'd first called.
    "Lucky guy," Ty said. He grabbed a handful of chow mein noodles from the bowl in front of him, tipped his head back, poured them into his mouth. A waiter came to put ice water and a teapot on the table.
    "Fun to work with?" Mo asked. At Ty's flat-eyed look, he asked,"You think it's just his style, or has he got a particular bug up his butt about Howdy Doody?"
    "Both."
    Ty was often surly and closemouthed, but this was extreme even for him, Mo decided."Hey, Ty," he said, "if this is a bad day for you to talk about this stuff, we could—"
    "Nah." Ty brushed the idea away with the back of his hand. "It's just Howdy Doody wasn't a lot of fun, I'd just as soon not deal with it anymore than I have to. I'll do what I have to to see it to trial and then be glad to see its backside."
    "What was so bad?Biedermann?"
    "Biedermann's a dick head, yeah, but there's other stuff, complex, made it hard to work the case. I like my serial killers neat."
    "You want to tell me?"
    But the waiter had come back. They both ordered. Mo chose a bowl of noodle soup, Ty several dishes he ordered in Vietnamese. Two smartly dressed young couples came in and took one of the circular tables.
    Ty waited until the waiter was back in the kitchen. "Yeah,I'll tell you, but it's all pretty vague. I'm not sure what the shit is." His face took on a perplexed look, forehead lines turning into crevasses. "There's something working behind the scenes. Everybody knows it, nobody knows what it is. I mean, besides the thing with Biedermann and the shrink, that profiler they brought in."
    Mo felt a stab of some strong emotion."What was that?" he croaked.
    "It was understood, you didn't mention it, but sometimes it complicated things to pretend it didn't interfere. Not technically professional misconduct, I don't think, she's a civilian. Good-looking, can't blame Biedermann. Not sure if they're still an item, but him pressuring her to be used for bait, that had to put some kind of strain on 'em." Ty poured himself a cup of steaming tea and gulped down the tiny cupful in one scalding swallow. He set the cup down and frowned at the pot.
    That explained a lot about Biedermann's and Dr. Ingalls's attitudes toward each other, Mo thought. He agreed with Ty: If they were still an item, it was strained. Serial killers did that to you. But whatever their current relationship, he couldn't deny that, yeah, they'd make a good match: two big, handsome, confident, Anglo-looking, upwardly mobile professionals. Real equality in the marketability factor there. He felt an irrational disappointment and hated himself for it.
    "What else?" he prodded.
    "There's something with the investigation, like another layer that we're not supposed to know about. You'd see it all the time, the way information would be shared or mostly not shared. The way Biedermann would put a lid on this line of inquiry or that and meanwhile be whipping your ass for progress in another area. I tried to figure it out, then just said what the fuck, what do I care, I'll just domy bit, close the case and get out. Another thing, one day I'm chatting