Alien Nation #6 - Passing Fancy (22 page)

All this ran through the minds of George and Matthew in the space of a blink—and, once it had, George decided to forget chiding Paul for his expletive altogether. There was a poetic simplicity to the way he’d summed up a complicated situation.

George exchanged a look with Matthew, whose eyes reflected his own concern. A split-second decision was required. Gamble right, they could emerge heroes. Gamble wrong, they became stains on the escutcheon.

But Matthew’s eyes reflected George’s instinct, too. Reinforced by a tight, quick shaking of Matthew’s head back and forth.

George spoke again into the walkie-talkie.

“Do nothing,” he ordered.

Stabilite was a designer drug. And a very specialized one at that. They were gambling that the nature of the drug might indicate the criminal disposition of the dealer—unsavory but not lethal.

“But—”
Paul’s voice began.

“Wait, and proceed as planned,” George said, firmly.

“Roger,” said Paul, tightly, and proceeded to do just that . . . for seven minutes, minutes in which every second held the possibility of Bob Sled’s body on the back room floor, in a growing pool of his own pink blood.

He was starting to wonder if he shouldn’t just say to hell with orders, be a renegade, pull his concealed pistol, save a life while he could—

—when the dealer emerged from the back room—

—alone—

—two seconds later followed by Bob Sled, looking disappointed, but none the worse for wear—

—seen by George and Matthew on the monitor in their cruiser, and heard clearly for the first time, too . . . for as the dealer was leaving, he was saying in full voice, “I’m sorry it couldn’t work out,” and Bob Sled, hand raised in melancholy farewell, replied, “I’m sorry, too.” Unheard by them, Matt, in English, used the same word the young rookie had uttered not eight minutes before.

“It didn’t go down,” he growled. “Son of a
bitch,
it didn’t go down!”

Which was probably true, but nonetheless, George, his mouth poised over the walkie-talkie, barked the word
“Go!”—

—and Paul Bearer moved into action. Looking the other way, he stepped into the aisle the dealer was exiting, and their bodies collided.

“Sorry, man,” Paul mumbled.

It was a brief collision, no harm done, not particularly memorable as pedestrian mishaps go, but the dealer found it a little startling. He was either in a vaguely unpleasant mood or just generally a vaguely unpleasant fellow, for he pointed to Paul’s earphones and said, “You know, if you took those damn things off, you wouldn’t be so oblivious.”

To which Paul lifted an earphone and said “Whut?” as dumbly as he could. Whereupon the dealer made a dismissive gesture at him and continued on his vaguely unpleasant way.

Never suspecting that a small device, no bigger than a cuff button, had been deposited into the inside right breast pocket of his jacket, traditionally the least used pocket of right-handed men (who tended to use their good hand to reach over to the left breast pocket), and therefore the last to be searched or emptied. The device would send a simple signal to a receiver in the car occupied by Detectives Sikes and Francisco. As long as they could stay within ten blocks of the signal, give or take, they would be able to follow the dealer anywhere he went.

Paul Bearer, while growing up on the slave ship, had developed into an expert pickpocket, which was sometimes of benefit to his nearest and dearest—and always a good way to confound the Overseers.

And putting something
into
a pocket was not really so different from taking something
out of
a pocket.

That was the special
thing
Paul could do.

Having done it, he closed in on Bob Sled to find out what had gone awry.

George kept an eye on the monitor while Matt tracked the dealer as he emerged from
See Gurd Nurras,
heading (they hoped) for a nearby car.

“Ask him what happened,” George said into the walkie-talkie.

“I’m ahead of you, Detective,” Bearer said respectfully, and George watched the black-and-white screen as the young rookie walked into the frame, flipped his ID for Bob Sled, who couldn’t have seemed more surprised, and led the little pharmacist over to the shelf that displayed the scalp conditioner box in which the minicam was hidden.

“It’s in there?”
Bob said. “All this time I’ve been on
television?
Hey
-hoo,
Ossifer . . .” Bob leaned into the lens, and George got a good view of his nostrils.

“Just tell Detective Francisco what you told me,” Paul said wearily, pulling the little man back.

“He insisted we go into the back to talk in private. So I knew somethin’ was different. I tried to argue with him that someone had to watch the store, but he was gettin’ steamed, and I knew if I pushed him too far, he’d get suspicious. So into the back we went. That’s where he told me he was reconsidering some of his outlets. Our arrangement was over, thank you very much, and he appreciated our brief, but fruitful association.”

As Bob was talking, Paul removed the earphones from his head and positioned the earpiece between himself and the druggist so that both could hear George’s questions.

“Did he indicate why? Did he feel there was any heat or pressure to—”

“He didn’t say, and you can just bet I tried to ask him.”

“And he evidenced no fear that you would try to blackmail him or turn him in?”

“With what leverage? I
still
dunno who the hell he is, and I was in on it, too.”

“George,” Matthew interrupted, an alert informing his tone of voice.

George shifted his gaze from the TV monitor to the street. The dealer was getting into a powder blue midsize ’93 Mazda.

George turned on the ignition of their cruiser, let it idle as they waited for the dealer to pull away from the curb. Into the walkie-talkie, he said, “Close down the store, collect the electronics, and take Mr. Sled into custody. You performed nobly, Officer Bearer, and it will be duly noted on your record.”

“Hey-hoo,” said the young rookie wryly, and George turned off the monitor just as Bob Sled was giving his police guardian a comic look of surprise.

At that same instant, Matthew was activating the tracer. The beep it sounded was frequent, strong. The dealer’s car pulled out into traffic. After a respectable pause, George did the same.

“Boy, I do not wanna go belly-up on this one in the worst way, George.”

“I feel the same, Matthew. We can only hope the ‘gentleman’ leads us where we’d like to go.”

“Question is, what the hell are we gonna do when we get there?
If
we get there? We got nuthin’ to go on here. No probable cause, nuthin’.”

“Except your conviction from the start that it needed doing. That is not nothing, Matthew.”

Matthew looked sideways at him. “Thank you, George,” he said with an unusual gentleness. And then, adjusting his tone quickly, “So you think that means I’ve earned the right to hear that damned anagram?”

“What, you mean the reworking of
See Gurd Nurras?”

“Yes.”

“Taken from Tenctonese and translated into English?”

“Yes.”

“The dirty one? There are several oth—”

“Yes,
George, the
dirty
one!”

George told him.

Matthew’s face paled a bit.

“Jesus, George, that really is disgusting.”

George kept driving, smiling.

W
HEN
C
ATHY THOUGHT
back on it, she supposed there was probably a reason why she’d forgotten to take off her shoes, a subconscious instinct that made her want to have something with her that was hard, that could do damage. She couldn’t imagine, in the end, that it had been total coincidence, negligence, or even a simple, mortal mistake. The kind of efficiency her life-style and her career required, she didn’t
make
those kinds of mistakes.

She’d spent the night on her cot in the nurses’ dorm, as she had the previous night. She’d gotten to sleep shortly after dinner, which she’d had down in the cafeteria. A slow and carefully eaten dinner it had been, too, Cathy mentally battling the sympathetic nausea that lingered faintly from her last session with Fran. The symptom being psychosomatic, she was determined, while she could, to be stronger than
it
was. And because she had been concentrating so hard, dinner had hardly been pleasant . . . but it had stayed down. As it would have to. She needed, would be needing, the fuel.

She slept lightly and never for more than one or two hours at a time. Twice she stirred awake, sensing that Fran had done the same. Groggy-headed as she was, the simple act of putting on shoes seemed the most onerous of chores, but it would have to be done. Exhaustedly, she would sit on the edge of the cot, holding her head as she bent down to reach for and strap on her high heels—the only shoes she had, not having been home since her night at the theatre—and then, zombielike, she’d go dutifully click-clacking down the hallway, into the elevator and, finally, down
that
corridor on the fifth floor to look through the window into Fran’s cubicle.

But both times she arrived, Fran was curled up, asleep. It looked to be a sleep of dark dreams, but it was sleep nonetheless.

Either Cathy was being oversensitive (responding to signals that weren’t Fran’s or that were wholly products of Cathy’s imagination), or Fran’s periods of wakefulness simply weren’t sustaining for very long.

Cathy didn’t even remove her shoes the second time she climbed back into bed. If Fran needed her, she’d just be ready to go. And Cathy fully expected a third wake-up call.

As it turned out, ironically, Fran didn’t stir for the remainder of the night—at least according to the night nurse at the desk who periodically checked the monitor—and come morning, Cathy woke before her charge, which left her the option of trying to grab either a few minutes more of rest or a quick breakfast. Feeling about as rested as she expected to be—not very, but enough—she opted for the latter, keeping it simple, dry cereal topped with fruit juice.

She was on her last bite when she felt a tightness in her chest, a sensation more like heat than pain; it was compounded by a vague woolliness at the back of her skull. And now she had no doubt. Fran Delaney was
absolutely
awake. Experiencing a drug-deprivation “hangover.”

Cathy sat an extra minute at the cafeteria table, closing her eyes and waiting with dread for the sympathetic feelings to spread to her stomach, but they stayed where they were. Good. Breakfast, like dinner before it, was safe, and she’d be fortified for the trial to come. Maybe.

She arrived at the door to the detox cubicle, punched in her code, opened the door, entered as it shut behind her—and toppled face forward onto the floor mat.

“Damn,” she muttered over the sound of Fran’s laughter, which sounded irksomely cruel this morning.

“Fantastic entrance there, Cath! Not much use for Ibsen, but wait’ll they see you in Feydeau.”

“You sound altogether too chipper for a woman who feels rotten,” Cathy said. She struggled into a sitting position and shook her head slightly at her feet.

“I takes my entertainment as I gets it,” Fran quipped, and laughed again.

Cathy unstrapped her shoes. She’d forgotten about the high heels; upon contact with the floor’s rubber padding, they’d sunk right in and unbalanced her. She placed them by the wall behind her, under the keypad, not even pausing to consider her usual routine of leaving them without.

She slid over to Fran.

“How did you sleep?”

Fran smiled the charismatic smile of one possessed.

“You should
kno-
ow.”

The mischievous inflection conveyed an ugly implication: that Fran, aware of the bond between them, had been deliberately disrupting Cathy’s sleep pattern through the previous night. Why? To keep Cathy from being as fully rested and completely alert as she might be. To take
advantage.

The notion that Fran would do something so malicious angered Cathy. Considering all she was
doing
for this woman, how
could
she—

Careful,
a little voice reminded her,
careful. Fran’s withdrawing from a drug, her erratic sleep pattern was entirely normal, no more consciously induced than breathing. She just wants you to
think
she did it on purpose. She wants to throw you off guard, get the upper hand,
manipulate
your emotions. Fully in keeping with that temporary psychosis Steinbach warned you about. Remember what he told you about this phase of it: “The only power she has is the power you
give
her.”

Cathy decided it was best not to banter with Fran, to avoid anything that smacked of competition, not that she had the patience if she’d felt otherwise.

“Nice try, Fran,” was all she said.

Fran’s face betrayed no disappointment.

“And you can’t blame a girl for trying,” she said airily.

So far, Cathy thought she had met two Fran Delaneys: a smart, sensitive artist and an embittered woman, too angry for her years. The actress swung from one extreme to the other, sometimes without segue or warning, and Cathy knew that was a result of the withdrawal and its concomitant depression. But the truth of who Fran Delaney
really
was lay in some combination of the two. Cathy wondered what the natural proportions were . . . wondered if she could possibly even
like
this actress-being once she was whole again (assuming she was
ever
whole again) . . . wondered what Matt saw of value in her besides artistry, which, alas, was not the sole province of nice people . . . found herself, for the first time, fighting a twinge of jealousy.

“I don’t know what I can blame you for,” Cathy said suddenly. “I don’t know how much of your behavior is due to the withdrawal and how much is just plain old mean spiritedness. I don’t know what my rights are here. I don’t know when I’m entitled to be angry—or if—or when I’m supposed to make allowances for your condition. I only know that I don’t like being treated badly. And I wish you’d stop and think about that. You may not be entirely responsible for everything that has happened or will happen—but you’re alert enough right now.”