Not that he intended to use the video pickup. He was going to try and bull through to the one living member of the Bowling Green gang of four he had yet to talk to. Edwin Harrison, the legal counsel.
Nohar's funeral picture had him sitting right next to Binder, front row, center. With Daryl Johnson's death,
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Harnson would be the most powerful man in the Binder organization, after Binder himself. In fact, No-har remembered news off the comm had him as the current acting campaign manager.
The top, or close to it.
He killed the video pickup and hoped he could reach Harnson before anyone realized who was calling. No-har also engaged in a slight electronic legerdemain. The outgoing calls he had been placing from his apartment had all been piped through his comm in his office. This was the listed one, his professional voice, so to speak. This was the comm everyone was locking out. However, the process worked in reverse. He could pipe calls from the office through the unlisted comm at his home. They wouldn't be locking that out—yet. It turned out to be easier than Nohar had expected. The strained voice and the strained expression on the secretary—from the obvious makeup, and the hair perfect as injection-molded plastic, she would fall into Stephie's category of window dressing—made it obvious she'd been operating the phones too long.
Nohar could see lights blinking on the periphery of the screen. She had at least a dozen calls coming in. The way her eyes darted, she had at least four on the screen.
Nohar asked for Harrison. Her only response was, "Hold on, I'll transfer you." The screen fed him the Binder campaign logo and dry synth music as he waited for Harrison's secretary to pick up the phone. It was a long wait and Nohar had to restrain the urge to claw something.
The call was finally answered, not by a secretary, but by Harrison himself. Edwin Harrison had to be the same age as Young and Johnson. They had all been contemporaries out of college about the same time. But Nohar knew pink markings well enough to see the graying at the temples and the receding hair as some indication of premature aging. Harrison bore the slight scars of corrective OP-FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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tical surgery—Nohar had a brief wish his rotten day-vision could be corrected as easily—distorting his eyes. Under a nose that had been broken at least once, he had a salt-and-pepper brush of a mustache. There was no real way to estimate height over the comm, but Harrison looked small.
Harrison's shirt was unbuttoned and his face looked damp. The man was rubbing his cheek with one hand. Nohar figured he'd been shaving, a pink concept the moreau didn't understand.
Nohar found his polite voice. "Mr. Harrison—"
Harrison sat down in front of his comm. "Whoever you are, if you want to talk to me, you better turn on your video pickup. I can tell the difference between a voice-only phone and someone with a full comm who just doesn't want to be seen. I have no desire to spend a conversation with a test pattern when you can see me perfectly well."
So much for polite.
Nohar just hoped the guy was too long-winded to hang up immediately. He did as requested.
Harrison's reaction was immediate. In the same, level, conversational tone of voice, he said, "Holy mother of God, it's a hair-job."
Hair-job?
Nohar hadn't heard moreys referred to as hair-jobs in nearly a decade. "Can we talk?" "Mr. Raghastan, correct?"
Nohar hated it when people mispronounced his name, even if it was only a generic label for that particular generation of tigers. Nohar nodded.
"I am sorry, but I have a very busy schedule. If you could make an appointment—"
So you can ignore me at your leisure, Nohar thought. Not without a fight. "I only have a few questions about Johnson and the campaign's financial records." Harrison seemed to be indecisive about whether he wanted to be evasive or simply hang up. "I am sure you know any financial information that isn't a matter
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of public record is confidential. I can refer you to our press secretary. I am sure he can—"
—brush me off as well as anyone in the campaign, Nohar thought. "No, you don't understand. I don't want specifics.'' A lie, Nohar thought, but there's little chance of getting specifics out of you, right? Right. "I was just wondering how thorough Young was in torching the records."
Harrison looked pained. "I am afraid I can't discuss Young. We are still dealing with the police on-that matter."
Probably true. Trying to cover things up, no doubt. "Your headquarters was closed down last week. I suppose Young just waltzed in and took what he wanted?"
From Harrison's expression, Young fozrfjust walked in. It also looked like Young had done a lot of damage. "How many years back, five? Ten? Fifteen?"
From Harrison's face, fifteen.
"How much were you able to salvage?"
Harrison looked puzzled. "Salvage?"
Binder wasn't the one with the trucks. Nohar supposed there was little harm in telling the lawyer, and it might jar something loose. "I was under the impression you were in charge of the trucks that carted away the remains of the fire."
That got Harrison. "I am sorry. I really must go—"
/ bet you must, Nohar thought to himself. He wondered exactly what kind of illegal crap was in those records that could turn Harrison that white.
Harrison regained his composure. "I should tell you. Stay out of this—it doesn't involve you, or your kind.' *
As the connection broke, Nohar said, "But it does. More than you know, you little pink bottom feeder."
If he could pick up that much from Harrison's face, Nohar decided the lawyer would never win a jury trial.
There was a snore, and Nohar saw that Angel had fallen asleep on top of the filing cabinet. Instead of FORESTS OF THE NIGHT 127
waking her up and leaving, he leaned against the wall and thought.
All that talk—well, all his talk—about Young had shaken loose a doubt. He was missing something, a big something.
Young's motivation.
It just wasn't your standard grief reaction to torch the finance records of your employer. Nohar could, even with Stephie's doubts, believe Young blew himself up over lost love. But why the records?
Slowly, it began to dawn on Nohar that he was missing the obvious.
True, Johnson and Young had been lovers, fifteen years, above average for any relationship, pink or otherwise. Young saw Johnson's killer—the morey canine Nugoya called Hassan—he probably saw Johnson get shot. But Young never called the cops.
Not only didn't he call the cops, but Young actually covered for the missing Johnson. Stephie said Young had mentioned Johnson was out with "some bigwig contributor.''
Then, after a few weeks, he blows himself up.
Someone very purposefully removed almost every trace of the records Young had torched. If the motive for Johnson's assassination was in those records, the odds were they had been carted away by the people responsible for Johnson's death. There were four ways they could have known what Young had been trying to destroy. Binder's people, Young himself, or the cops could have told them. All unlikely.
Or, they told Young to destroy the records.
"You're not going to do me like you did Derry."
Fear. Young was scared when he said that. He was talking paranoid. "You're all with them." Moreys, he was talking moreys and—something else. Franks? MLI? Whoever they were, they were in charge of Johnson's death—and Young.
Young was afraid of them. Young was also pathological about Daryl Johnson taking the fall for something.
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"Derry didn't know he was helping them—what they were. When he found out he was going to stop. . . . People will say he was working for them.''
Why that fear for Johnson's rep? If Young cared that much, why wasn't he at the funeral?