Lydecker stepped back to allow the dealer to sit up, and compose himself; the man was touching his face — really, there were just a few cuts and welts, his forehead crying tears of blood onto his yellow sweater. Awkwardly, the dealer started to get up.
But Rush put a hand on Bryant’s shoulder, holding him down. “Interview’s not over.”
Bryant glared back at Rush, who shook his head. Lydecker took this to mean the dealer and these cops had an arrangement... but this matter was not covered by it.
The dealer sat down again, his hands going automatically to the keyboard — but no more noodling.
Lydecker gave the man a handkerchief and Bryant dabbed blood from his forehead, saying to the man who’d caused the wounds, “Thanks.”
“Would you mind taking another look?” Lydecker asked.
The dealer swallowed and looked at the photo Lydecker was holding up. “Yeah, now that I take a closer gander... turns out I have seen him before.”
“Do you remember where?”
“Yeah... yeah, I can help you in that area. Glad to cooperate.”
Lydecker twitched a sort of smile, patted the dealer’s shoulder, gently. “Always a pleasure to meet a civic-minded citizen.”
Bryant said, “If... if I tell you where he lives, will that be the end of it?”
“For you, yes,” Lydecker said.
And with any luck, he thought, for that rebel X5, too.
Seth was still snoring on the guest room bed when Logan came in with the news.
Logan turned on the bedside lamp and carefully shook the boy to wakefulness, trying not to startle him — he would not like to be the alarm clock this sleeper took a swipe at.
“Com... computers come through?” Seth asked groggily, sitting up, yawning again.
“Patience has its rewards.” He gave Seth a sideways grin. “So does bitchin’ software.”
Seth was alert, wide-awake now. “What did you find out?”
Within seconds, they were sitting in the living room, on the leather couch, Logan holding up a sheaf of papers. “When you copied that disc, my friend, you got us everything.”
“Everything? What everything is that?”
“Smoking-gun everything.” Logan tossed the papers on the coffee table. “The kind that includes dates, times, paintings, amounts... every damn criminal thing Sterling and Kafelnikov have been doing together.”
“No shit?”
“It’s all here, Seth — every sleazy transaction... including the next one.”
Seth’s eyes widened. “You know what they’re going to do next?”
“We know, Seth.”
“Where and when?”
“That’s right. It’s just a matter of calling the FBI now.”
Seth’s eyes tightened to slits. “Say what?”
Logan shrugged. “American Masterpieces Act violation — we’ll call in the feds, have them arrested.”
“Logan, you can’t be serious.”
“Why not?”
“Eyes Only cooperate with the feds? They’re fuckin’ corrupt — you always say so yourself.”
“There’s corruption,” Logan allowed. “Widespread. But I have contacts with honest individuals in federal law enforcement.”
“Yeah, and I’ll introduce you to the virgins down at the strip club.” Seth shook his head. “Listen, Logan, we got the chance to do two things here. We can stop these creeps Sterling and Kafelnikov, and we can come away with the nest egg I need.”
“The last time you ‘stopped’ a ‘creep,’ Seth... you killed him.”
“So that’s what this is about... Logan, I wouldn’t whack either of these guys, not right now, anyway — they’re our Manticore connection. And anyway, Jesus! Manticore is the federal government — Lydecker is a goddamn fed!”
Logan knew Seth was right; but the blood on the cyberjournalist’s hands, from their last episode together, was still clinging and damp.
“Look,” Seth was saying, “we intervene when their next deal goes down, save some great slice of Americana for your conscience, Eyes Only exposes the racket with a big bad bulletin, and we help ourselves to a major contribution to the Seth Survival Telethon.”
Logan, shaking his head, rose and plopped into one of the side chairs. “You lose your head again, I’ll be responsible for another death... maybe more than one.”
Seth leapt to his feet, gestured to himself. “You don’t get it, do you? You’re not responsible if I kill someone — I am!”
“We’re ‘partners,’ remember?”
Seth snorted. “Well, let’s dissolve that as of now. From here on out, I work for myself. When we have shared interests, you might throw me a friggin’ bone.”
“A bone like the details from the disc?”
“The disc I stole for you... Logan, you can stop these guys or not — you decide.”
With the biggest sigh he had ever heaved, Logan said, “All right... Do what you have to do... short of homicide. Then you bring me the painting, and keep the cash.”
“How much is that thing worth?” Seth asked, trying unsuccessfully to keep the question casual.
Logan read the sheet aloud. “Cow’s Skull Red, White, and Blue by Georgia O’Keeffe. The buyers are Korean and the price is supposed to be a million-one.”
Seth fell back onto the sofa and grinned like a kid contemplating a double-dip cone. “That’ll do the trick, man. That’ll do the trick.”
“You’ve decided to disappear, then? What about Manticore?”
“Let me count my money first, and get back to you. Where and when does the deal go down?”
Logan’s eyes returned to the printout. “Top of the Space Needle...” he looked at his watch. “... in about four hours.”
“About time I took in the tourist sights,” Seth said.
“Needle hasn’t been a tourist site in some time.”
“Whatever... meantime, I gotta get back to my crib, get prepped.”
Rising, Logan faced the X5, who stood and the two men exchanged smiles that had embarrassment and maybe, just maybe, some affection in them.
“Good luck,” Logan said. “Partner.”
“Thanks, bro.”
Seth arrived at his tiny apartment forty minutes later. Little more than a cell with a cheap blackout curtain over the single window, the apartment had a mattress, dresser, minifridge, hot plate, microwave, two chairs, card table, minuscule closet, and a small bathroom with a tub you could shower in but not bathe. A dozen or so books lay in a couple of haphazard piles near the head of the bed, mostly a mix of pre-Pulse horror fiction and weapons/martial-arts manuals.
This was, Seth knew, not quite as nice as Logan’s pad.
After changing into his work clothes — black fatigues and black boots — he also laid out a black jacket, gloves, and stocking cap. The weather had turned nasty on his way home, a driving rain rolling in like it planned to stay a while.
It hadn’t rained in over a week — which was a drought in Seattle — and it seemed that just when Seth needed a dark, starless night, he was going to get one. What he didn’t need, though, were these relentless sheets of torrential rain. He hoped it would let up before he had to go out.
With some time left, he picked one of the books out of the pile. An old travel guide of the city, it helped him to quickly learn about the Space Needle.
Built in 1962 for the World’s Fair, the Needle rose 605 feet, was protected by twenty-five lightning rods, and, at the time of its construction, was the tallest building west of the Mississippi River. Three elevators led up to the observation deck and the revolving restaurant below. One hundred feet up, the Needle had a banquet facility, and on the ground floor a gift shop. It wasn’t a lot of information — the guide had been written in the heyday of the now dead tourist attraction — but it was more than he’d had.