Down These Strange Streets (George R.R. Martin) (Kitty Norville 6.50)

“Thank you, Mike,” she said, her voice drowsy.

“Sure, honey. Hey, tell me something?”

“Hmm?”

“How’d you find me? When you came to my office?”

“Saw you in a bar, about six months ago. Someone I was with pointed you out, said you were a private investigator. One look, and I knew.”

“Took you all that time to come up with an excuse to hire me, huh?”

“Hmm,” she mumbled, and a minute later she was snoring into her pillow.

The kiss she’d given me had nothing to do with romance. I knew that. Still, I couldn’t help the memory of it on my mouth as I lay there, staring up at the ceiling, six chaste feet away from her.

THE NEXT DAY, MY FIRST ORDER OF BUSINESS WAS TO STASH MY CLIENT someplace safe. It took me twenty minutes driving in circles before I found that endangered species, a pay phone, but once I’d made a call, it was only a matter of a few hours before one of the two guys I’d trust with my life showed up and took her away. She didn’t want to go, but in the end, she did.

Step two, a public computer.

I’m a big fan of libraries: information, comfort, and safety, all in one place. And over the years, library associations have fought hard for privacy rights, which makes them more secure from snoops than any cyber café. This library even had a coffee bar attached to it, which was good because what I was doing wasn’t going to be quick.

But before the place shut down that night, a targeted ad had popped up on the side of the shiny new WeWeb page for my made-up SalaMan, Julio Rogers. Julio was new to WeWeb for undisclosed but hinted-at reasons (“I been away, if you know what I mean . . .”) and had lousy writing skills, some ill-disguised anger, and a considerable interest in SalaMan rights.

The targeting algorithm had caught Julio’s SalaMan references and sent him an offer for QUICK, UNOBTRUSIVE, PRIVATE cash.

Julio’s offer had gone up to $7,500. Which could mean they had come into serious funding, or that they were getting desperate. Either way was fine with me. It was fine, too, with Julio, who shot off an e-mail to the address.

I slept in a different motel that night, and had a dream about blue eyes.

The next morning I went to another library, logged on to Julio’s page, and sat back with a smile on my face.

Thank you for your interest in SalaMan Research Enterprises (SRE). If you hold SalaMan heritage, welcome! Our researchers are affiliated with the University of California, Stanford, Yale, and other medical schools, and are thoroughly trained in the protection of privacy rights. Our project is aimed at helping the particular health needs of the SalaMan community, and in the preliminary stages requires only a fifteen-minute questionnaire and a simple blood test. If you are interested in hearing about our work and how you can help us, we have public meetings across the country, for which you will be paid to attend, without making a commitment to participate further.

(PLEASE NOTE: Applicants’ DNA will be tested immediately on arrival, before any payment is made. False applicants will be reported to WeWeb.)

The form e-mail was signed by a man with a lot of letters sprinkled after his name, and the list of public meetings included—surprise, surprise—one at two o’clock Saturday afternoon, the day after tomorrow, at a big conference hotel less than thirty miles from the library Julio had been working at.

Julio sent his acceptance of the offer, then logged off and left that library in a hurry, never to return.

I spent the rest of that day and most of Friday moving from one library to another, putting on a lot of miles between each one, as I tried to duplicate Harry’s research about the people whose names ended up in his envelope.

Saturday afternoon I was at the conference hotel, looking forward to that SRE information meeting, wondering whether they intended to pull a gun first, or just go with the tranquilizers.

I HADN’T BEEN ABLE TO GET A CAMERA INSIDE THE MEETING ROOM ITSELF, but the one I’d tucked behind the hallway flower arrangement worked fine. At half past one on Saturday, three men came down the hallway, their faces nice and clear in the camera, their heights marked by a tick I’d put in a picture frame on the wall. Two of them were clearly muscle, one a boss type. One of the big guys carried a notice board with a tripod, which he set up facing the other way, although I’d seen when he was moving around that it was the sort of corporate intro you’d expect to see when you came toward a public meeting room. The other big guy was carrying a carton, no doubt filled with the kind of meaningless forms and equipment that would reassure a sucker and get him inside the doors.

That day’s only sucker, it would appear, was Julio. Whose last act on this earth was to send an e-mail at 2:04 to say that he was sorry, he’d changed his mind, maybe in the future . . .

At 2:12, the three men came out, looking considerably less friendly than they had going in. One carried the carton, now jammed every which way with stuff. They walked away from my viewpoint, and then the boss man jerked his thumb back and the other big guy whirled around and went back for the tripod sign.

If I’d been standing behind the flowers instead of my camera, he’d have smashed the sign over my head.

At 2:14, the three men came out of the hotel’s side doors, dumped their armloads into the trunk of a shiny black car, and drove away. I hit the send button on the laptop I’d been watching all this on, tossed it onto the passenger seat, and put my own car into gear.

Interesting fact: Cops pay attention when you send them traceable evidence of what you claim is a crime in progress. Phone calls can be about anything, post office letters can disappear, but when you tell them you’re sending them an electronic file, and then you send it, that makes a trail they hesitate to ignore entirely.

The e-mail with the video attachment was to Frank, my cop . . . well, maybe not friend, but we’d worked together a couple times, and drunk together a few more times. I liked Frank fine, and I knew he was honest, but I also wanted a little insurance. No cop wants to go into a courtroom against a lawyer who has evidence of a murder the police could have prevented.

Mine, for example.