Last Call 03: Earthquake Weather by Powers Tim

Author:Powers, Tim [Powers, Tim]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fantasy, Novel, Fiction
ISBN: 9780575117792
Publisher: Gollancz
Published: 1997-09-29T07:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

TROILUS: What offends you, lady?

CRESSIDA: Sir, mine own company.

TROILUS: You cannot shun yourself

CRESSIDA: Let me go and try.

—William Shakespeare,

Troilus and Cressida

COCHRAN said he’s been walking and taking the cable cars to get down here into Chinatown,” said Archimedes Mavranos. “Maybe the cable cars were full today, and he’s gotta hike the whole way.”

Shadows from a slow ceiling fan far overhead swept rhythmically over the red Formica tabletop.

“He might have sold us out,” said Kootie. “Maybe bad guys are just about to come busting in here.” He had asked for a straw with his Coke, and now he glanced over his shoulder; the bartender was looking at the television in the corner above the bar so Kootie stuck his straw into Angelica’s glass of Chardonnay and took a sip of it. “It’s sacramental,” he explained to his foster-mother when she frowned at him. “The king needs a sip at noon, especially if bad guys are due.”

“I don’t need Coke in my wine,” Angelica said.

“If bad guys want to open a hand in a no-limit game like this,” said Mavranos with more confidence than he felt, touching the front of his denim jacket and glancing at Angelica’s purse, “they’re liable to see some powerful raises.”

Pete Sullivan was sitting beside Angelica at the table by the stairs that led down to the rest rooms, and he was deftly, one-handed, cartwheeling a cigarette over the backs of the knuckles of his right hand; it had been unlit, fresh from the pack, when he’d started, but the tip was glowing when he flipped it into the air off his last knuckle and caught it by the filter in his lips.

“Wow,” said Mavranos.

“Yeah, wow,” agreed Pete irritably as he puffed smoke from the cigarette. “Magic tricks. But if I try to hold a weapon, my hands are no good at all. Even a pair of scissors I drop, if I think about stabbing somebody.” He wiggled his fingers. “Houdini made sure his mask wouldn’t be capable of hurting anybody.”

Kootie grinned wanly. “He can’t even play video games,” the boy told Mavranos “The hands think he’s really trying to shoot down enemy pilots.”

Mavranos opened his mouth to say something, then focussed past Kootie toward the front door of the bar. “Heads up,” he said.

Sid Cochran had just stumbled in from the street, and Mavranos felt his face tighten in a smile to see the blond Plumtree woman lurching along right behind him.

Mavranos pushed his chair back and stood up. “I was afraid we weren’t ever going to see you again, ma’am,” he said to Plumtree.

Plumtree’s hair was wet, and Mavranos thought she looked like someone going through heroin withdrawal as she collapsed into the chair beside Kootie. There were cuts under her chin and at one corner of her mouth, and her face had a puffy, bruised look. “Shove it, man,” she said hoarsely. “I’m an accessory to a murder today. More than anything else in the world, I want not to be. Soon, please God.”

“A murder today?” asked Kootie.

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