"Inspector Fisher, that warrant was a farce, which you must realize as well as I. Had you fully implemented all its provisions-"
"But I didn't," I answered sharply. "And, in case you have a Listener on this call, I make no such admission about the warrant. It was duly issued in reaction to a perceived threat to the environment from the Devonshire dump. And surely you, sir, must admit examining dump records is not unreasonable in light of evidence showing, among other things, increased birth defects in the community surrounding the dump."
"I deny the land management consortium is in any way responsible for this statistical aberration," Dill replied, as I'd known he would.
I pressed him: "Do you deny the need to investigate the matter?" When he didn't answer right away, I pressed harder: "Do you deny that the EPA has the authority to check records to evaluate possible safety hazards?"
By now, I ought to be old enough to know better than to expect straight answers from lawyers. What I got instead was about a five-minute speech. No, Dill didn't deny our right to investigate, but he did deny that the dump (not that he ever called it a dump, not even once) could possibly be responsible for anything, even, it sounded like, the shadow the containment fence cast. He also kept coming back to the scope of the warrant under which I'd conducted the search.
Blast Maximum Ruhollah. That warrant was the juristic equivalent of performing necromancy to get someone to tie your shoelaces for you. I said, "Counselor, let me ask you again: do you think my taking the documents I took was in any way exceptionable?"
I got back another speech, but what it boiled down to was no. Dill finished, "I want to put you on notice that the Devonshire Land Management Consortium will not under any circumstances tolerate your use of that outrageous warrant to conduct fishing expeditions through our records."
"I understand your concern," I said, which shut him up without conceding anything. He finally got off the phone, and I put the second-generation changes into that worthless Hydra-headed report. I was about halfway through letting the access spirit scan it when the phone yowled again.
I said something I hoped nobody (and Nobody) noticed before I answered it. Turned out to be Tony Sudakis. He said, "I just wanted to let you know my people aren't too happy about my turning records over to you yesterday."
"They've made me aware of that already, as a matter of fact," I said, and told him about the phone call from the Consortiums lawyer. "I hope I haven't gotten you into a pickle over this."
"I'll survive," he said. "However much they want to, they can't send me to perdition for obeying the law. If you push that warrant too hard, though, things'!! get more complicated than anybody really wants."
"Yeah," I said, still puzzled about where he was coming from. The contemptuous way he dismissed higher management made me guess he'd worked his little charm with the amulet again, but the message he delivered wasn't that different from Dill's. I'd got somewhere pushing Dill, so I decided to push Sudakis a little, too: "You aren't having any kind of trouble out there, are you?"
But Sudakis didn't push. "Perkunas, no!" he exclaimed, an oath I didn't recognize. "Everything's fine here… except for your ugly numbers."
"Believe me, I don't like those any better than you do," I said, "but they're there, and we need to find out why."
"Yeah, okay" He suddenly turned abrupt. "Listen, I gotta go. 'Bye." He probably had done his little charm, then, and run out of time on it.
I pulled out my Handbook of Coetics and Metapsychics to see what it had to say about Perkunas. I found out he was a Lithuanian thunder-god. Was Sudakis a Lithuanian name? I didn't know. The Lithuanians, I read, had been about the last European people to come to terms with Christianity, and a lot of them also remained on familiar terms with their old gods. Tony Sudakis certainly sounded as if he was.
Grunting, I put the handbook back on the shelf. Anybody who uses it a lot develops shoulders like an Olympiadic weighdshifters - if you hung two copies on opposite ends of a barbell, you could sure train with 'em.
I'd just started my third stab at revising that blinking report when the phone went off again. I thought hard about ordering the imp to answer that I wasn't there, but integrity won. A moment later, I wished it hadn't "Inspector Fisher?
Pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. I am Colleen Pfeiffer, of the legal staff of the Demondyne Consortium."
"Yes?" I said, not wanting to give her any more rope than she had already.
"Inspector Fisher, I have been informed that you are investigating the sorcerous byproducts Demondyne deposits in the Devonshire containment area."
"Among others, that's correct, Counselor. May I ask who told you?" I'd expected calls from some of the consortia that dumped at Devonshire (I'd also expected nobody's lawyer would say anything so bald as that), but I hadn't expected to get the first one by half past nine of the morning after I searched.
Like any lawyer worth a prayer, Mistress Pfeiffer was better at asking questions than answering them. She went on as if I hadn't spoken: "I want you to note two areas of concern of Demondyne's, Inspector Fisher. First, as you must be aware, byproduct information can be valuable to competitors. Second, much of our work is defense-related. Some of the information you have in your possession might prove of great interest to foreign governments. An appropriate security regime is indicated by both these considerations." "Thank you for expressing your concern, Counselor," I said. "I have never had any reason to believe the EPAs security precautions don't do the job. The parchments to which you refer have not left my office."
"I am relieved to hear that," she said. "May I assume your policy will remain unchanged, and make note of this for the rest of the legal staff and other consortium officials?"
Such an innocent-sounding question, to have so many teeth in it I answered cautiously: "You can assume I'll do my best to keep your parchments safe and confidential. I'm not in a position to make promises about where they'll be at any given moment."
"Your response is not altogether satisfactory," she said.
Too bad, I thought. Out loud, I said, "Counselor, I'm afraid it's the best I can do, given my own responsibilities and oaths." Let her make something of that.
My phone imp reproduced a sigh. Maybe I wasn't the only one who thought I was having a bad day. Colleen Pfeiffer said, "I will transmit what you say, Inspector Fisher.
Thank you for your time."
I'd just reached for the fumigants report - I still hadn't had the chance to let our access spirit finish looking at it - when the phone yarped again. I took in vain the names of several Christian saints in whose intercession I don't believe.
Then I lifted the handset It was, after all, part of my job, even if I was growing ever more convinced I wasn't going to get around to any other parts today. No, you're wrong - it wasn't another lawyer. It was the owner of Slow Jinn Fizz, an excitable fellow named Ramzan Durani. I'd noted that as one of the smaller companies that used the Devonshire dump; evidently it wasn't big enough to keep lawyers on staff just to sic them on people. But the owner had the same concerns the woman from Demondyne and the fellow from the Devonshire Land Management Consortium had had. For some reason or other, I began to suspect a trend.
Then I found myself with another irate proprietor trying to scream in my ear, this one a certain Jorge Vasquez, who ran an outfit called Chocolate Weasel. I tried to distract him by asking - out of genuine curiosity, I assure you - just what Chocolate Weasel did, but he was in no mood to be distracted. He seemed sure every secret he had was about to be published in the dailies and put out over the ethemet.