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recording machine as it spun. When the door burst open he jumped again, then stopped stock still with his
hands in plain sight.
Captain McLeish was there, with half a dozen uniforms. They all had their automatics out, trained
on him and Jesus.
"Freeze! Freeze right there!" McLeish bellowed. His gun jerked to follow Jesus's movements, and
the younger detective laid his own weapon down with elaborate care.
McLeish looked down at Laureano's body. "Shit on fire, Carmaggio," he said softly. "I didn't think
even you would pull something like this right in the precinct house."
***
"That videotape saved your ass, Carmaggio," Captain McLeish said.
"Yessir."
Henry watched Laureano die again, watched Jesus and his own image dance around the
interrogation room while the body flopped like a gaffed fish. His mouth felt papery dry at the sight, at the
memory that came flooding back like a great wave crashing over a seawall and sweeping away men and
samothracian patterns,
the instrument said.
the works of men. The grainy image was too coarse to show the thing crawling out on the dead man's
tongue. That was something to be thankful for.
"That and the autopsy. So you didn't shoot the little spic. Not unless one of your bullets has teeth
and burrowed from his asshole out his throat, chewing its way along. But you did it somehow. I've known
for years there's something weird about your and your faithful fucking Tonto too. If Internal Affairs doesn't
pin this on you, I will—one way or another."
At any other time, that might have been a serious threat. Carmaggio stared sightlessly at the
pictures on the Captain's walls. The words bellowed at him were no more real, less real than the politicians
and their smiles.
"You're on suspension—your badge and gun stay here, motherfucker. And that goes for your
partner, when they let him out of the hospital. Don't think you can go whining to the union. You had a
suspect die on your hands. Don't try the press, either, or you'll regret it even more."
"No, sir," Henry said tonelessly.
Badges belonged to the old world, where metallic insects didn't burrow through men's flesh, eating
them out from the inside. Right now that was the least of his worries. A gun he could get anytime he
needed one. Last night he'd half-seriously considered putting one in his mouth, just for an instant.
"Get out of here, and don't come back until we call you. Get out of this building, get out of my life."
"Yessir."
He walked numbly out of the office, over to his own, went through the motions of getting the
essentials out of his desk and responding to the bewildered sympathy of his friends.
Then his hands stopped. Jenny. Christ, it'd been bad enough before. And she was working with
the thing who'd sent the . . . things.
"I've got to get her away from there."
CHAPTER NINETEEN
"What's the matter with you, Henry? You'd think I was taking you to an execution, not a party."
"Yeah, well . . . I've been sort of nervous lately."
"I know," Jennifer said quietly, and put a hand on his arm.
He'd told her that Laureano died in a fit. The papers had that much; what was more, she'd believed
him without a moment's hesitation. The Post was hinting darkly at conspiracies . . . .
If they only knew, he thought, as the taxi passed 61st and pulled up in front of the hotel. A
doorman hustled out with an umbrella.
He bit back a silent whistle as they went into the lobby. Upper East Side with a vengeance, he
thought, jarred a little out of his introspection and welcoming the distraction from the icy bile taste of fear.
An Art Deco space, full of evening dress and furs as the guests arrived for the reception in the upper
ballroom. Brass, cream-colored marble, and bowing flunkies everywhere.
"Come on, it won't be so bad," Jennifer teased gently.
No, it wouldn't, if it was only social stress anxiety, he thought. Right now he felt like one of the
guys in those old stories, going into a monsters den with only a bronze sword, and smelling the rot of those
who'd tried before. There was a monster waiting for him. He had backup—the black button deep in his
right ear—but it was still as dangerous as anything he'd ever done.
Everything okay? he asked subvocally, as they walked up the curving staircase.
Standing by, Lafarge whispered. In theory Ingolfsson shouldn't be able to eavesdrop; the
Samothracian's equipment had been designed to evade detection back on her home world, where the Draka
had every sort of equipment. That was some comfort.
He shook loose his shoulders as they walked into the ballroom; no point in shouting how tense he
was. His eyes took in the crowd with a jumping, flickering intensity. Financial types; he'd gotten more
familiar with them since he'd become involved with Jenny. Old-fashioned portly ones, often with trophy
wives several decades junior. Younger ones, male and female, lean and hungry-looking. Hangers-on from
the Wall Street equivalent of the paparazzi.
"Why, if it isn't Jenny and her new friend," a voice said.
Time seemed to freeze as he turned. The voice was like nothing he'd ever heard, like a musical
instrument with an undertone of vibrating bronze. She was taller than him, long-limbed and supple. The face
he remembered from the pictures, but alive, it seemed to glow somehow from within, more alive than
anyone else. Leaf-green eyes narrowed in mocking amusement, full of an ancient, innocent evil. Meeting
them was a palpable shock, a physical tingling that ran down to gut and scrotum. Overlaid on it was the
memory of insects vomiting out of a dead man's mouth.
He took the offered hand automatically. She smiled as she squeezed. Just enough to hurt a little; it
was like having your hand in a velvet-padded clamp of braided metal wires.
"I've been looking forward to meeting you," she said.
"Yeah, I bet you have, Ms. Ingolfsson," Henry said.
"Gwen," she said. "Any friend of Jennifer's . . . And there's every reason we should cooperate to
our mutual benefit."
Jennifer was looking from one to the other. "Is there something I should know about?" she said,
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| Cytat |
Dobre pomysły nie mają przeszłości, mają tylko przyszłość. Robert Mallet
De minimis - o najmniejszych rzeczach.
Dobroć jest ważniejsza niż mądrość, a uznanie tej prawdy to pierwszy krok do mądrości. Theodore Isaac Rubin
Dobro to tylko to, co szlachetne, zło to tylko to, co haniebne.
Dla człowieka nie tylko świat otaczający jest zagadką; jest on nią sam dla siebie. I z obu tajemnic bardziej dręczącą wydaje się ta druga. Antoni Kępiński (1918-1972)
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