Finally I sighed and picked up the Mean Ol’ Broad, spinning the cylinder before slipping her in the holster under my arm. I pulled on my flogger and placed my Bogart on my head, tilting it just the way I liked it.
With my hands in my pockets, I slipped out of the office into the drizzle and the darkness.
The city swallowed me as soon as I stepped outside. I hang my Bogart in the Flats, which is full of towering buildings once inhabited by the crème of New Haven. That particular brand vacated for the Uppers, where flying traffic transported the fur-and-feathers crowd to the more pristine parts of town. The new city grew like tree branches from the dead trunks of the old, leaving the streets and tenements for the lower class to claw over.
I rumbled through the slick streets in the comforting confines of Maxine, my sleek wheeler fashioned after the Duesenberg Ghost of long ago. I’d inherited her from a gangster who no longer had a use for her, as he’d caught a case of the New Haven Blues. Maxine was fully upgraded with a top of the line Tesla fusion engine, auto-defense system, and was configured to my DNA, making her near impossible to boost. I left the steering to Maxine’s autodrive and pulled up some information on the dash console. I figured there had to be something the brass had overlooked in their investigation. The main problem with coppers is that they think like cops.
I’m pretty sure they drew up the usual suspects: relatives, known child molesters, gang members, pimps, suspected murders and rapists. They’d canvas their investigation, spreading their forces out to close the net, ruling out those who had airtight alibis, and tightening the screws on those that didn’t. It had been over two weeks with no arrests, which meant a lot of punks had sore heads while a lot of coppers had bruised knuckles and no results. The mood in town was downright ugly, and no end was in sight so long as Maimie Mannering remained missing. Times like that tend to force the riffraff to lay dormy and keep their heads down, but with the brass buzzing like angry hornets, the city was a powder keg that only needed a spark to explode.
I was pretty sure I could check into an angle the brass had disregarded. When it comes to kids in trouble, grownups can be rather unreliable digging for answers. Adults expect kids to stick to a certain pattern of behavior, and when the pattern is bucked they can’t figure out what happened. But there was one group of folks who were sure to know a few things the rest of us didn’t.
Other kids.
“Yo, Johnny Booster.”
Johnny turned from his post against the siding of the pockmarked tenement on the alley corner. He was a bucktoothed, freckle-dusted, butt ugly orphaned kid all of twelve years old, and a professional thief. His specialty was wheelers. He could override most systems thrown at him and boost the crate in about sixty seconds or less. His age got him past most suspicions, so he hustled for Timmy Two-Fingers and kept a tenth of what he hauled in.
Johnny was dressed in hand-me-down rags too big for him, like a kid trying out his big brother’s clothing. He pushed the newsboy cap back on his head and whistled as he eyed Maxine in insultingly vulgar fashion.
“Yo, Mick. When ya gonna lemme take a ride in dat baby?”
“When you trade in your rags for choir boy robes, kid. What are you doing in the streets this time of night?”
Johnny waltzed over and leaned through the car window with a serious look on his unsightly mug. “Working, Mick. Whaddya think?”
“Yeah, I bet. Listen, I thought I’d check with those big ears of yours and see if you heard anything on the wire about the Mannering girl disappearance.”
Johnny’s expression darkened. “Why would I know something ‘bout that? I boost wheelers, Mick. I don’t bag bodies.”
“I know that, kid. But I figure the fuzz has overlooked a certain section of the populace, though. I’m talking about your age group. You know, the brat pack.”
He screwed up his face, which didn’t do his looks any favors. “Whaddya take me for, a chump? I don’t roll with no kiddies, Mick. I’m busy puttin’ in man work.”
I put on my most disinterested expression. “That’s a shame, Johnny. Cause I know a rich ol’ codger who could use a slice of humble pie. You know, the butter-and-egg type of Joe who’s always tossing berries like he owns the whole patch. Problem is, he’s big on mistreating dames. Likes to leave ‘em with bruises and trips to the body shop. Just the kind of loser I like to take down a notch or two. So it’d be a real shame if someone boosted the vintage Bugatti wheeler he likes to show off on Sundays. I figure he just might keel over and croak from a heart attack or something.”
Johnny’s eyes lit up. “How vintage we talkin’?”
“Pre-Cataclysm. Certified boiler with its original parts, never customized for Tesla cells. The baby runs on diesel, my man. We’re talking the kind of snatch most boosters only pull off in their dreams.”
I watched the temptation work its way through Johnny’s system. He practically salivated at the thought of the payday he’d pull from that score. “The more berries the tighter the bull circuit, right? I might be young, but I ain’t no rube, Mick.” He jerked a thumb at his ugly mug. “Dis face is too pretty to be catching slugs with, and I ain’t trying to get nabbed in no bracelets, either.”
“That’s where I come in, kid. Every Sunday the codger pulls that boiler into the Gaiden to tip back a few cocktails and get a private room with a few of the chippies. The lug who runs the garage security owes me a favor. I give the word, he turns a blind eye, you work your magic. Catch my drift?”
“Ya know what? I like you, Mick.” Johnny’s enormous teeth eclipsed his entire face when he grinned. “You know how to do bizness.”
“Depends on what you deliver, kid.” I gave him a meaningful glance. “I do for you if you do for me, right?”
Johnny cast an exaggerated glance around before leaning back in. “All right, Mick. Here’s the news: you should look into the Lost Boys.”
“Who the hell are they?”
Johnny shrugged. “Runaways and kids nobody wants. Don’t wanna cool their heels inna orphanage or the kiddie meat locker, so Pan looks after ‘em, keeps their noses clean, you know?”
I pulled out a gasper and lit it. “Street gang, sounds like. The Flats and the Docks are full of ‘em. What makes this Pan kid so special?”
Johnny’s eyebrows rose. “You ain’t heard of the Pan? He runs the show in the Gardens. Keeps the riffraff out and runs his operation from the inside. It’s pretty much locked down, so unless you’re a Lost Boy, you ain’t getting in.”
I exhaled a casual puff of smoke. “You’re still not spilling on what makes this of any interest to my investigation.”
Johnny gave me an exasperated look. “Cool your jets, Mick. I’m getting to that part. Way I hears it, Pan gave his boys a surprise a couple weeks back. A little white bird, he calls it. But I heard one of the boys say the bird is a dame. Their own mudder.”
“A mother, huh?” I considered the implications. “Right about the time the Mannering girl took a powder.”
He shrugged. “I dunno. Hadn’t thought about that angle.”
“That’s ‘cause I do the heavy thinking around here, kid. You be at the Gaiden at two a.m. sharp Sunday. Don’t be stupid, either. Best if you get help on this score.”
“Do I look like a stooge to you?” Johnny said, looking just like one.
“Just keep it simple, kid.” I reached out and seized his hand. “And quit trying to boost my wheels.”
Johnny grinned without an ounce of shame when I yanked the synch card from his grip. It was the tool of trade for boosters, able to hack most security systems and override them in seconds. The whole time we’d been talking, he’d been trying to use it on Maxine so he could try to boost her later. I was more irritated than worried. Maxine was customized by the best to evade New Haven Transit Control, a system a lot more complex than a synch card.