“Nn holongrahm,” said Warren.
“Not a very good one.”
“Hnebtre nan mos.”
How did he know it was a hologram and better than most? Ken’s speech impediment masked a brain that was quick and clear. Would she be able to stand the frustration of never getting out what was in her mind except in mangled form?
The drive curved uphill from the gate, flanked on the right by redwoods and on the left by a stone wall overarched with maples in pale green spring leaf picked up by their headlights.
“Nhookit!”
Giselle looked. The edge of her lights showed them massive ghosting hounds; their baying had never stopped.
“Are... are they real?” she asked.
“Nn holongrahms,” said Ken.
“I’m not surprised,” said Giselle. “This place belongs to a Mrs. Rochement. Her son Paul’s designed a revolutionary computer to program all sorts of...”
“Hnthengs?” ventured Ken.
“Exactly. Things. And a big electronics outfit is giving him all the money in the world for his design specifications.”
She grabbed Kens arm. She thought she had seen, through the redwoods, the writhing scaled form of a great dragon.
“Did you see...” She paused, made her voice as much like Ken’s as she could. “Nnoder holongrahm.”
Ken laughed, but by then they had run out of the woods to a huge circular gravel driveway lit by spotlights. On the far side the house was three-stoned, imposing, in an ornate style Giselle believed was called Italianate, with angled flat-topped roofs and twin towers she thought were called mansard. Next to the house was a two-story garage with servants’ quarters above it. Definitely not holograms.
Parked in front of the garage was a spanking new Mercedes SL600 convertible roadster with its top down, despite the chilly spring evening. Giselle’s mind automatically ran the tab on it: it took $130,000 and change to drive that model Mercedes off the showroom floor.
Ken said, “Hntolen?”
“That’s what Stan the Man said. Stolen. That’s supposed to be why he called us in. He didn’t give many details.”
Giselle parked behind the Mercedes, and Ken got out. She followed him over to the car with long, clean-limbed strides, an exquisite blonde who would have owned the runway as a mannequin, except she would have preferred to own the modeling agency. Men who should have known better often looked at her legs and forgot about the brain ticking away beneath that gleaming cap of golden hair.
She began, “Since they already got their car back, maybe they want us to throw a scare into...”
But a front fender was riddled with bullet holes, two tires were flat, the windshield was shattered. Who was scaring whom?
“Somebody doesn’t like somebody very much,” she said. “Maybe I ought to get myself a gun.”
“What kid of a shamus doesn’t own a gun?” said a voice behind her in a Bogart lisp.
He was genus Computerus nerdus personified: late 20s, skinny, scrawny, only partially post-acne, his horn-rims fixed with Scotch tape. A plastic protector crammed with pencils and pens distended the pocket of his white cambric shirt. Chino floods, with cuffs, ended three inches above his shoetops, and he was wearing, for God’s sake, penny loafers!
“The kind of shamus that doesn’t like to get shot at,” said Giselle sweetly.
“What the hell kind of field man is sitting home drinking coffee on the last night of the month?” demanded Dan Kearny.
They were driving out Lincoln Way and Ballard was feeling aggrieved. Man’s sitting there giving him advice, after just being kicked out by his wife. On top of that, after he had graciously agreed to his boss spending a night or two sleeping in his apartment, Kearny had taken the bed and left him the damned couch to sleep on; a couch that was three inches too short for his nearly six feet in length.
He said through almost gritted teeth, “The kind of field man who won’t find any of his subjects home until after the bars close even if it is a weeknight.”
Ballard pulled a left across deserted Lincoln Way and parked on 21st Ave. He started to get out of the car. Kearny opened his door also.
“Ah, this is personal, Dan. I won’t be long...”
“Jesus, nobody wants the old man around,” grumbled Kearny, getting out exactly as if Ballard hadn’t spoken.
Ballard thought, a shotei to the chin, a hiraken across the side of the face, a uraken to the temple, finish off with a basic karate fist smashed down on top of his head... Solve nothing, but leave Ballard feeling great.
Instead, sighing, he walked across the narrow street to the once-failing neighborhood bar that Bev and Danny had upscaled into success with fake Tiffany glass and hanging ferns and their own personalities. Now they sponsored a softball team and did heavy singles-crowd business on the weekends or when a major sporting event was on their big-screen TV.
Tonight there were only three customers. A couple at one of the wooden tables and a lean brunette in black tights and a tank top and a purple sports jacket made out of blanket wool. She had a half-drunk glass of draft balanced on top of the jukebox while she read the selections, cigarette in hand.
Beverly, looking like a size 4 porcelain doll with big blue eyes and blond hair, was manning the bar.
“Thank God!” she exclaimed at the sight of him.
Ballard shushed her with a gesture of his hand Kearny couldn’t see.
“Don’t start in on me now, babe, until I can explain...” He turned as if just remembering Kearny was there. “Dan...”
Kearny grunted and moved away down the stick. As he passed the facsimile Wurlitzer that actually played CDs instead of 45s, the woman studying the selections said aggrievedly, “Jesus, they don’t have anything by Toad the Wett Sprockett!”
“You’re kidding!” exclaimed Kearny.
“You were pretty rude to Dan,” Bev was saying to Ballard.
“You gotta be — early and often. You’re going to ask me to do something for you, and I’m going to end up doing it.” He spoke with a fatalistic gallantry. “If he knows I’m doing something for you he’ll bitch about it being on company time.”
“Will it be on company time?”
“Of course.”
Despite her worry, Bev had to giggle. He had once repossessed her car; their personal relationship had begun shortly after that during the repo of a Maserati Bora coupe from a rock band calling itself Full Moon Madness. It had been madness between them ever since: hot, stormy, and intermittent.
“Any word from Danny yet?” She shook her head. “Okay. As quick and quiet as you can, tell me what he was doing before he disappeared.”
“The usual around here. But you know he was an officer of the bartenders’ union before the merger with Local Three—”
“No, but what difference does it make?”
“He’s been a member of the Executive Council of the consolidated union ever since, and has been a thorn in their side the whole time. Now they’re talking about striking the St. Mark Hotel and there are two factions on the council...”
“Which side is Danny on?”
“I’m not sure, which in itself is pretty weird. Usually we talk over everything that might affect business.”
Three noisy yuppies with designer clothes and extra-wide personalities came in, and Bev went to serve them. Her partner, Jacques Daniel, could be abrasive and opinionated, but he was a nonpolitical — the last person Ballard would have expected to be mixed up in union politics, which were always complicated, often tough, sometimes dangerous.
Danny had been raised in Algiers with foreign legionnaires as role models. Despite his diminutive build he was Larry’s equal in karate and SCUBA diving, his superior in toughness. He could have disappeared for his own reasons, but nobody could have disappeared him without a struggle. So, Larry thought, go slow.