“This won’t do you any good.” Moody’s fingers slipped slowly toward his inside jacket pocket. These kids were not only nervous, they were also dangerous and dumb, he decided.
Well, maybe not so dumb. The speaker snapped at him.
“Pause it right there. I just wanted directions. I’ll do the digging. Put your hands on top of your head and lock your fat fingers.”
Moody obliged, standing motionless as the kid began roughly rifling his pockets. The detective’s wallet he found almost immediately.
When he came to the police ID, he and his buddies would react in one of two ways: either they’d run like hell or they’d fry him on the spot. Probably there wasn’t enough of a charge in the lith cell to do any real damage, but neither did he relish acting as temporary home for a few thousand volts with nothing better to do.
“Hey, I told you you’re wasting your time. I don’t carry our credit cards. My wife does.” Abruptly he looked streetward and shouted at the top of his lungs, “Run, Millie!” The big kid in back made a strangled sound and glanced across the road. For an instant, so did his companions. In that instant Moody, who was much quicker than any man his size not employed in professional sports had a right to be, reached out and grabbed the shockwand just above the uninsulated tip, simultaneously bringing his left leg up in a straight front kick. The punk wielding the device let go of it with alacrity, choosing to grab hold of something else instead.
Yelling, the big kid lunged, a real knife clutched in his right hand. Moody blocked the wild stab and brought the butt end of the shockwand down on his assailant’s head, busting the device all to hell and not doing the punk’s skull any good either. It began to bleed profusely, as head wounds are wont to do. He stumbled away, uttering scattershot obscenities as blood filled his eyes.
The one who’d done all the talking had drawn his own knife and adopted a combative pose. Moody was already relaxing. Unless he’d badly misjudged their cortexal condition, the fight was already over.
“I’m going to cut you, bilagaanna!” Moody put a foot on his wallet, which had been dropped in the fighting, and advanced the other. “You might. On the other hand, if you’d had time to look through that”—and he nodded down at his wallet—“you’d see that I’m from out of town but that it doesn’t matter, because police from different departments always cooperate with each other.”
From nearby, the big kid cursed in Japanese. “He’s a goddamn cop, Ree! You would pick a cop to jump.”
“Skeel up, man! Don’t you know better than to use names?”
Moody’s attention was on. the one he’d kicked, who was concluding a brief period of concentrated retching without having paid any attention whatsoever to the preceding conversation.
“Take your woman and get out of here. Y’all better look into another line of work. You’re not real good at this.”
The speaker and his companion warily helped the third member of the unlucky trio to his feet. Moody tracked them with his eyes as they lurched up the street. Curious pedestrians gave him the eye as they strolled by, looking away fast when he glanced in their direction.
He checked and repocketed his wallet, making sure the pickpocket seal was intact, while chiding himself for taking it too easy. Ganado might be a lot smaller than Tampa, but it still had its share of mean streets. Usually his size was enough to discourage punks like these, but this part of the country seemed to be chock full of contradictions and sudden surprises.
Back on the main avenue he located a public phone, intending to call a cab. Then he remembered the number Ooljee had provided and punched it in instead. He didn’t want the sergeant worrying and waiting up for him.
It was Lisa Ooljee’s face which appeared on the screen above the speaker. The detective thought she looked not worried, but concerned.
“Hello, Ms. Ooljee.”
“Mr. Moody.” She was trying to see behind him. “Paul’s not with you?”
“No.” Moody frowned. “He’s not back yet? He dropped me off downtown. I thought he was going straight home from here.”
“He must have gone to the office. He’ll do that sometimes. Just for a few minutes, to check on some little detail, he says.” Her tone was tired, as if she’d been through this many times before.
“So call him there.”
“I’ve already tried. His phone doesn’t respond and nobody’s seen him. When he’s working really hard he’ll shut himself away someplace with his research, so he won’t be interrupted. But I would like to know. Maybe I should run down and look for him. That always upsets him, though.” She looked into Moody’s eyes. “He’s become so absorbed with this case the two of you are working on. I’d just like to know that he’s busy at the station and not out wandering the streets somewhere. He’s been known to do that when he’s preoccupied.”
Like me, Moody mused. It was hard for him to envision the ever-alert sergeant stumbling through back alleys, wandering blindly down dark lanes.
“Don’t worry, Ms. Ooljee. I was going to head back there, but I’ll go by the station and have a look for him myself. No reason for you to leave the kids. If he’s locked himself away somewhere, I’ll kick the door in and tell him to get his self-indulgent butt to the nearest phone.”
She smiled gratefully. “That is very good of you, Mr. Moody. I appreciate it.” She moved to disconnect and he hurried to ask her a final question.
“Ms. Ooljee, what does bilagaanna mean? Is it Navaho?”
Lisa Ooljee hesitated. “Could you say it again, please?” Moody complied, trying to repronounce the word exactly as he’d heard it. “It means ‘white person.’ Why?”
“Just trying to enlarge my vocabulary. Doo ahashyaa da, right?”
She looked as if she might want to say something else, but he figured on doing her more good by hustling over to Ooljee’s station and hunting him down for her. Let him do any requisite reassuring.
He plugged his spinner into the phone, called a cab on a local frequency, and waited the necessary minutes until it homed in on his signal. The driver grunted acknowledgment of the address and slid away from the curb. Moody could have made use of police transport, but he didn’t want to pull some cop off duty just to run him to the station.
As it was, the operator of the cab displayed a distinct lack of urgency in taking him across town.
CHAPTER 10
There were few people on the street by the time he reached the station. It was late, cold, and moonless; not the best night for a casual stroll in a sometimes dangerous city. Only the glittering, strobing, relentless ads were unchanged from downtown.
His police ident card admitted him, utilizing the visitor’s code he’d been authorized. Tired night-shift personnel didn’t spare him a second look. The station was spacious and busy.
Ooljee’s office was locked and empty. Inquiries as to the sergeant’s whereabouts met with blank stares or negatives, though that wasn’t so surprising: Ooljee was day shift. Moody wondered if he ought to try his home again. Maybe he’d already returned. But if he hadn’t, then a call would only worry his wife further. So he kept asking around, and was soon glad he had.
“He’s downstairs.” The young Hispanic woman deftly juggled an armful of folders. “Playin’ around, probably. I’ve seen him come in other times and do that, sometimes all night. I think Paul shoulda been a programmer or nexus jammer instead of a street cop. But he claims he’d rather work with people.”
“How do I get there?”
Her directions led him to an elevator which descended to a level twenty feet below the street. It was a strange sensation to someone coming from greater Tampa, where there was a distinct dearth of basements due to the fact that the water level lay only an inch or two below one’s feet. Here it made sense to locate the department’s most sensitive electronics and communications equipment underground, where electronic interference could be minimized and climate control made easier.