He was afraid Del Ray or Jeremiah would see him, and in any case, the place was stony and miserable as a tomb. He hurried back to the elevator.
Calliope Skouros made a face and put the coffee back down. It wasn't so much that it tasted bad, although it did, the steaming product of one of those little flash-brew drink packets, but that she'd downed so much coffee the night before that even after five hours of ineffective sleep she could still feel yesterday's caffeine hustling around in her system like one of those horrible cheery people who live to organize neighborhood events. Calliope was in a pretty good mood, though. While there wasn't exactly sweeping victory on the waitress front, there was definite progress. Elisabetta (bearer of tattoos and all that coffee) had revealed her name, and now dropped by Calliope's table to chat even when an occasional miscalculation of the seat-yourself policy put the detective in another server's section. To her surprise and pleasure, Calliope had discovered that there was more to the young woman than simply her rough, attractive look. She was an art student—of course—but seemed to have a lot on her mind, and was even willing to listen for short stretches when she could be distracted from the eternal waitress complaints of lousy bosses, sore feet, and problems with rent and transportation.
Interestingly, over several nights' worth of fleeting conversation, the other major component of waitress-misery had not come up: so far there had been no mention of lazy, ignorant, or violent boyfriends. In fact, there had been no mention of boyfriends (or girlfriends) of any kind.
This had better turn into something, Calliope thought, considering the prospect of months lurking amid the garish, beach-party ambience of Bondi Baby. Otherwise, the caffeine alone's going to kill me.
"I'd offer a penny for your thoughts, partner mine. . . ." Stan Chan slipped into the narrow, wallscreened place the cops all referred to as "the green room" and threw his coat over the back of a chair; as usual, the tiny room was practically a sauna. "But I'm sure that I'd be undervaluing. You look utterly deep today. What are they worth? Swiss credits? Real estate?" He gazed at the screen, which showed a dark, thin, scar-covered man. The room where the prisoner sat was empty but for an old table and several chairs, the walls a hideously cheerful orange fibramic tile designed to repel graffiti and, it was reputed, blood. "Speaking of valuable things, is this our friend 3Big?"
Stan was occasionally a bit much in the morning, even when Calliope's head wasn't churning with the perfectly legal equivalent of a couple pops of hotwire. "Can you talk a little more quietly? Yeah, that's him. He's been boxed all night, and now we're going to chat with him."
"Lovely." Her partner really was in a frighteningly good mood. She wondered if he'd had another date or something. "Can I be nasty? Is it my turn?"
"Your turn."
"You're a mate." He paused, frowning, and poked her in the ribs. "You're not wearing your flakkie, Skouros."
"In the station?" She hated wearing the gel-filled vest, an item commonly referred to around the office as "bulletproof underwear."
"Regulations. After all, while he was in the holding cell our friend in there might have manufactured a pistol out of soap and floor lint."
"Yeah, right. No wonder you like to wear yours—it makes you look like you actually have muscles. It just makes me look fat."
"I think of you as the husky angel of Justice." His face turned briefly serious. "You really need to wear that thing. Skouros."
"Okay, I will. Now let's do some work, Mr. Nasty."
Stan snapped his fingers to douse the green room lights so that only darkness would show in the doorway behind them as they stepped through into the glare of the orange tiles. The prisoner looked up at them, his face emptied of anything except for a lip-droop of casual disgust. Calliope liked that—she enjoyed it more when they pretended to be hard.
"Good morning, Edward," she said brightly as she and Stan slid into the chairs across from the prisoner. "I'm Detective Skouros, this is Detective Chan."
The dark man did not reply, but brought a finger up to stroke the long scars on his cheek.
Calliope decided to be puzzled. "You are Edward Pike, aren't you? I'm sure this is the right interview room." She turned to Stan. "Guess this one will have to go back to the box while we figure out the mistake."
"Nobody call me Edward but my mother, and she dead two years," he said sullenly. "3Big, that's how I go. 3Big."
"Yeah, this is him, fear not," Stan said. "Ugly little street beast, just picked up carrying six dozen carts of D-jak wipers in a customized flak belt. Retail weight of Indonesian charge—you're going to do ten years for that, 3-boy, and it won't be in one of the nice places either."
"It was for personal use, seen?" The denial was pro forma—everybody knew they were fencing until the public defender showed up. "I need rehabilitation. Got a bad 'diction, me."
Stan made a spitting noise. "That's going to play, yeah. Judge take one look at you, notice that you were within half a kilometer of a school, she's going to recommend we put you in one of the refuse barges and sink you in the ocean."
Calliope sat quietly for a few minutes and watched her partner moving through the formally aggressive steps of the dance. Edward "3Big" Pike was a habitual, so he knew the motions as well as Stan. He wasn't the worst sort they had to deal with—lots of priors for receiving and handling, and one decent stretch in Silverwater for dealing, but as far as she knew he hadn't ever killed anyone who hadn't tried to kill him first, which in Darlinghurst Road terms practically made him Robin Hood. He was known for being a bit smarter than the average King's Cross street beast, and the fact that he'd only gone down once for dealing testified to that. Calliope wondered if there might be a little pride wrapped up in that, another place they could insert the thin end of the wedge.
Stan had the man snarling and defensive, which meant it was about time for her to start her pitch. "Detective Chan?" She made her voice a little harsh. "I don't think this is the right way to deal with the situation. Why don't you go get a drink of water?"
"Nah, I don't think so." Stan gave the prisoner a stare of radiant contempt. "But if you think you can deal with this curb creature, be my guest."
"Look, Mr. Pike," Calliope began, "technically you belong to Street Crime, so we don't have any formal jurisdiction over you. But if you help us out with a little information—and if it's good information—we might be able to get them back down to simple possession. With your priors you'll still do some time, but it won't be anything too bad."
He was interested but trying not to show it, his heavy-lidded eyes burning brightly behind the surprisingly long lashes. "What you want? Not going to roll over on no one, me. Coming out the box early won't mean nothing if I get sixed first time I touch the Darling."
"We just want some information. About an old acquaintance of yours, someone you spent some time with back in Minda Juvenile. Johnny Wulgaru. . . ?"
His face was blank. "Don't know him."
"Also known as Johnny Dark—Johnny Dread?"
Now something did move beneath the stony features, something swift as mercury rolling in a pan. "You talking about John More Dread? Talking about Dread?" A complicated series of emotions ran across him, ending in a nervous scowl. "What you want with him? He's carked it, right? Dead?"
"Supposed to be. Have you heard otherwise?" She looked, but he had fallen back behind the street mask once more. "We're just trying to clear up an old homicide. A girl named Polly Merapanui."
He was on safer ground now. "Don't know her. Never heard nothing about her." He blinked and reconsidered. "She the one that got her eyes cut out?"