Gentleman Takes a Chance (33 page)

"No. Not the police people!" Old Joe looked aggrieved, like they were both very dense. "The other woman. She came by, after the police left, with a guy. She left without the guy."

"You mean . . ." Rafiel took a step towards the aquarium, but Tom held his wrist. He couldn't say anything. He wasn't about to cast aspersions on what Old Joe was saying right in front of Old Joe, but he held Rafiel's wrist and said, "Wait."

Then to Old Joe, he said, "And you haven't seen Dire again? He hasn't talked to you again? Tried to find out things about us?"

That embarrassed look that he suspected meant Old Joe was lying, flitted across the alligator's face again. "Well," he said. "He came and he did ask me some questions. Like, what had happened at the castle, and all, but he . . ." He shrugged. "I didn't tell him anything that could hurt you. I swear I didn't. And then I ran away so I didn't have to tell him anything else." He looked at Tom, a look much like a glare from under his fringe of hair. "That's all I know. Can I go now?" And without waiting for permission, he shifted, and ran—in alligator form—back under the bridge, in a clacking of teeth, much like a fugitive snicker.

"We've got to go to the aquarium," Rafiel said.

Which meant, Tom thought, that he wasn't thinking at all. How was he going to get in? And if he did, how was he going to justify going into the aquarium to look for a body just now? Tom was fairly sure his friend hadn't thought this through.

"Wait. Let's go to your car and discuss this first," he told Rafiel.

"But—"

"Wait."

In the car, Rafiel turned on the gas to start warming up the motor, so they could have heat soon.

"Rafiel, you can't go in there," Tom said. "You just can't."

"What do you mean, I can't?" Rafiel said. He reached for his phone, ready to call McKnight and ask him to come and process the scene.

"I meant, you can't." Tom looked very grave and slightly sad, which was very odd. If Rafiel didn't know him better, if Rafiel weren't sure this was one dragon who didn't go about pushing people into aquariums . . . 

"Why not?" he asked belligerently, while behind his rational mind, there ran thoughts he wouldn't even acknowledge, much less express, such as that dragons were aquatic creatures and that, as aquatic creatures, they might have some craving or other relating to water and pushing people in it. "You know it's my duty. I'm a policeman. If there's a body in there—"

"
If
," Tom said. "But beyond that, Rafiel, how are you going to tell them you heard about it? Who are you going to say informed you? And how are you going to say you got in?"

Rafiel tapped his fingers on the seat beside him. "But . . . time is of the essence," he said. "If there is a corpse, the more complete it is, the better the picture we will get. I mean, with the other ones, we don't even know if they were already dead when they were dumped in. And if we're dealing with shifters . . ."

"Yes. Of course. Perhaps an anonymous phone call? From one of the phone booths remaining, at a convenience store not on Fairfax?" Tom said. "One of the ones in the less busy areas? You can park at the back, or even farther away than that, and I can call and tell the police that there is a corpse in the aquarium. But it has to be to the central station. And I can't be identified."

"Yeah," Rafiel said, thinking. "So long as you don't stay on the line. They'll try to keep you on the line, so that they can get to you. You must not do that. Say your piece and run, and we'll get out of there fast." As he spoke, he thought of the convenience store to go to, on Fer de Lance Street. Between the local pioneer museum and a high school, the place was guaranteed to be deserted today.

He started off, headed that way, by the shortest route possible. "Well, at least what Old Joe says," Rafiel said, "sort of narrows it down to a female employee of the aquarium. I had a list of names of male employees to interview, but now . . ."

"No," Tom said, seriously. His features were set in such a way that they seemed to be carved, and a muscle played on the side of his face, giving the impression that he was about to have a nervous breakdown or something. "No, don't be so sure. What you're not thinking about, Rafiel, is that . . . well . . . Old Joe is not the best of witnesses, you know? He often . . ." He shrugged.

"He often what? Drinks? Does drugs?"

Tom shook his head, emphatically. "No. Nothing like that. At least, not that I know, and I think I'd have been able to tell. No. But he sometimes seems to be . . . not quite anchored to reality, if you know what I mean?"

Rafiel quirked an eyebrow. Sometimes he wondered how anchored to reality they all were. Considering what they were, and what they could do, it would be a wonder if they didn't sometimes feel unmoored and adrift. "Okay," he said.

He pulled up behind the store, on Fer de Lance. Actually behind and on the other side of the street, so that no one associated him with the phone call. There wasn't anyone around, in any case. The high school was closed, as was the pioneer museum. The rest of the block had the sort of empty feel that areas of town had that aren't flourishing. Like the last houses that had stood there had just been bulldozed, and they hadn't come up with anything else to replace them. The vacant lots didn't even have trees or proper plants. Just a sort of scrubby grass, now completely covered by snow.

"What are you doing?" he said, realizing Tom was throwing himself over the front seat and towards the back.

Tom, now fully in the back seat, gave him a grin. "Getting out on the driver's side," he said. "It's towards the school, and that's firmly closed, so no one will see me."

He had the hood firmly pulled over his head, and started to open the door, then stopped. "Do you have a quarter? Because I can't use a credit card on this. It would be way too obvious."

Rafiel grabbed a quarter from the drink holder, where he normally kept parking-meter fodder. He flipped it at Tom, who grabbed it out of the air. Good to know he was getting the feeling in his hands back.

He watched Tom get out of the car, very quickly, cross the high school campus semidiagonally, so that any witness would say he came out of the school. Sometimes—he thought, as he watched Tom cross the street and run, hell-bent for leather, towards the convenience store, so fast that he wasn't any more than a brief dark blur amid the snow—it was easy to believe the things Tom told him about his teenage years. Casual juvenile delinquence would impart that sort of knowledge. How to trick the police, 101.

In less time than seemed possible, for what he needed to do, Tom was back, coming into the car through the back door and saying, "Drive, drive, drive."

Rafiel drove. "Who answered?"

"I think just the receptionist or dispatcher, or whatever. She told me she would transfer me to someone else, but I hung up." He grinned at Rafiel, a feral grin, and leaned forward on the seat. "I grabbed the phone with my sleeve. And I wiped the coin before putting it in."

Rafiel sighed. "Probably overkill," he said. "We are not exactly the most advanced scientific police in the world." He took a bunch of turns, very fast, not so much seeking to be physically far away from the convenience store, as seeking to be in a place no one would associate with the convenience store. In no time at all, it seemed, he was driving through an upscale neighborhood of the type that used to be a suburb in the days when the main form of commuting was the trolley car. Eight blocks or so, in a direct shot from downtown Goldport, this neighborhood was all shaded, set-back, two- and three-floor houses, which managed to look much like Christmas cards under the snow. "As long as they don't catch you in the act of putting the coin in, or dialing them up, that's pretty much it. Oh, if it's anyone but McKnight, they'll exert due diligence, too, by going to the clerk and asking if they saw someone call."

"Unlikely," Tom said. "I was at the back of the store the whole time. Unless he can see through brick walls . . ."

"Yes," Rafiel said, and then, because the way that Tom was leaning forward over the seats was starting to give him visions of suddenly hitting a tree and ending up with Tom splattered all over his dashboard, "You know, we have laws about seat belts, in this state. As a policeman—"

Tom didn't answer. He just leaned back and buckled the seat belt. Then he made a sudden startled sound. "Kyrie," he said. "I haven't called Kyrie."

Kyrie was bargaining with fate. She was working, steadily, as if nothing had happened, but behind her smile, her ready quips at the customers, she was bargaining with fate.

She had started from the point of view that if Tom were to walk in, right then, she would only tell him how worried she'd been. She wouldn't make a big deal at all out of it. But since then, as the minutes passed and she heard neither from him nor from Rafiel, she'd started bargaining.

Okay, okay, if Tom walks in right now,
she told herself,
I'll just smile and tell him how glad I am that he's alive.
Aware that she'd actually paused to listen for the sound of the back door opening up, she let out a hiss of frustration at herself. It wasn't sane, and it wasn't rational, but the thing was that she'd been expecting Tom to come in in response to her silent concession. She sighed at her own stupidity, and looked at the wall. Okay, he'd been gone more than two hours. What if he was frozen by the side of the road?

She could call Rafiel. She should call Rafiel. But what if Rafiel hadn't found him, yet? Or worse, what if Rafiel had found him? And he wasn't alive? In that case, the longer she took to find out about it, the better, right?

No. No. She was being stupid. It was unlikely he'd be dead, and if he was ill or severely hypothermic, of course she wanted to know. Needed to know. She set down the latest batch of orders and nudged Conan, who was getting much better at tending tables, but who, despite lots of coffee, looked like death warmed over.

"Take over my tables for a little while, okay?" she asked.

He nodded. His gaze turned to her, said what he could not say in full voice. And it was something that Kyrie simply didn't want to hear.
What if he's dead? What if I left him and then the Ancient Ones killed him?

Kyrie shook her head at him, slightly, denying her own misgivings as well as his. And then she stepped behind the counter and reached for the phone on the wall, trying to figure out how she could ask Rafiel questions without either giving away the shifter thing, or alarming Anthony, who was looking at her curiously. She was sure he had decided that she and Tom had had a spat. He was giving her that look of concern and gentle enquiry friends give you when they don't want to stick themselves in the middle of your marital disputes.

She took a deep breath. She could just ask Rafiel how it was going.

The phone rang, so suddenly and loudly that it made her jump. She fumbled for it, almost dropped it, managed to get it to her ear and say, "Hello?"

"Is that how you answer the phone for a business?" Tom's gently teasing voice was such a relief to hear that Kyrie felt her knees go weak, and tears sting behind her eyes.

"Idiot," she said.

"Um . . . that's also not the approved . . ." Tom said. She could see him grin as he spoke. And then, as though realizing he could only push his luck so far, he said, "Look, everything is okay. Sorry to take so long to call back, but we found Old Joe—"

"Old Joe?" Nothing could be further from her mind than the transient alligator shifter. She saw Anthony give her an odd look. Clearly that had also not figured in his speculation.

"Yeah. I'll explain when I get back. Look, it might be easier . . . if you can leave Anthony and Conan in charge and join us in the room at the bed-and-breakfast?" He chuckled softly. "I'd like to add girls to the repertoire of odd visitors I shower with."

"Idiot," she said again, very softly.

"Yes, I am. Conan made it back okay, right?"

"Yeah. Conan is fine. He's getting better at waiting tables, too." Again, Kyrie was conscious of Anthony's baffled look at her. She did her best to brazen it out, as she asked, "So you met Rafiel?" At least she assumed so, unless he had now taken to using the royal we.

"Yeah. He'll be coming back with me. We're going by a doughnut place first, though, apparently."

"What?"

"I don't know," Tom said. Kyrie could hear another voice in the background, that she had to assume was Rafiel talking. "He says they have a tracker in his car, and if he doesn't go by a doughnut place at least once a week they kick him out of the force."

"Ha ha," Kyrie said.

"Yeah, I told him it was lame, too, but at least he's making an effort at making fun of himself. A few more years and he should be human. Hey. Stop hitting me. Police brutality. So, do you think you can make it to the room? In about fifteen minutes?"

"I'll manage," Kyrie said.

"All right. And, listen . . . I'm an idiot. Sorry if I worried you."

She tried to deny that he worried her at all, but her mouth refused to form quite that big a lie. "It's okay," she said, instead, because she had bargained with fate, and she'd promised not to kill him, not to maim him even slightly, and finally that she wasn't even going to yell at him. "It's okay."

Tom thought the place must have been a Dunkin' Doughnuts in a previous life, but it had now become—according to the sign hastily painted on a facade in which the Dunkin' Doughnuts name was still readable from the too-white shadow of the letters that used to cover it—good morning doughnuts.

The whole place had the sort of look of someone in limited circumstances and hiding out under a false name to avoid embarrassing the family. On the door, a hand-lettered sign read cash only please, which gave the impression that the people running it were planning to escape to South America at any moment, taking their ill-gotten gains with them.

But inside, it was surprisingly cozy, with aged but well-scrubbed formica tables, around which gathered bevies of retirees and housewives. This was clearly a gathering spot for a working-class neighborhood.