“Tell you what, Mr. Bell. I say it’s a hoax. If I’m right, you owe me a hundred bucks. If I’m wrong… you and me gotta trade jobs for a day.”
“What, you can play the cello?”
“Maybe. Never tried.”
Norman laughed. “It’s tempting, but I’ll pass. Never was much of a pastry chef.” He pointed. “Oh, yeah. Rory wanted a slice of spanakopita.”
“Sure thing. Fresh this morning.”
A small dark man came in and let the door slam behind him. He was in formal evening wear and looked as if he’d been up all night. “¿Qué pasa, Professor?”
“Not much,” Norman said. The man had called him Professor ever since he found out his wife outranked him. “Invasion from outer space.”
“Yeah, right. Lay ya odds.”
“Better talk to Nick about that. Thanks.” Norman took the spinach pie, paid, and left.
Willy Joe
“What the hell he’s talkin’ about?” Him and Nick probably been in the back room, coupla fuckin’ mariposas, everybody knows about Greeks, and the musicians, hell, do anything. Take turns down the ol’ dirt track. Otherwise why’s he always here in the morning? Half the time, anyhow.
“They got some weird radio thing at the observatory. Had his old lady on the news.”
“It’s always somethin’, ain’t it?”
“Siempre.” Nick brought out a small cup of strong coffee, a sausage pastry, and a glass of retsina wine. He set them down in front of Willy Joe with a neatly folded five-hundred-dollar bill under the saucer. “So how’s business?”
Willy Joe palmed the bill and took a sip of coffee. “Always good, first of the month. Runnin’ me ragged, though.”
“Pobrecito,” Nick muttered as he walked back to the pastry counter.
“So what’s that mean?” he snapped. “What the fuck you mean by that?”
“Just an expression.”
“Yeah, I know what it means. You watch your fuckin’ mouth.” Willy Joe shifted, slumping back in the chair. The new belt holster was uncomfortable in the small of his back. He didn’t have to carry a gun on these collection rounds, anyhow. Who’d fuck with him? Not to mention Bobby the Bad and Solo out in the car.
Got this fuckin’ town by the nose, now the new mayor’s in. Bought an’ paid for before the Commission election back in ’40. The bitch last year was hard to handle. She found out what it was to push on Willy Joe, though. Might as well piss in the sea, bitch. Nothin’s gonna change.
He unfolded his list and checked off the Athens. It was the last twenty-four-hour joint; the others wouldn’t be open for a while. He took the phone wand out of his pocket and said, “Car.”
“Solo here.”
“Look, we’re ahead. You guys go do what you want till quarter to nine. Make it nine, outside Mario’s.” He put his thumb on the hang-up button while he drained the retsina. “Sanchez.”
“Buenos.”
“Willy Joe. Where you at?”
“Second and North Main, like you said.”
“Okay; you try and keep up with Solo. Black and red Westing-house limo pullin’ out from the Athens.”
“No problema if he stays in town.” Sanchez was on a bicycle. With the ATC going in the morning, you could keep up with traffic on foot without overexerting yourself.
The limo moved smoothly in a diagonal from the curb, between two cars and into the left lane. Headed for the ghetto, interesting. Bobby the Bad was okay but a little dumb. Solo was new; friend of a friend in Tampa. He acted a little too tough. Willy Joe would love to get something on him. Someday he might need a little lesson in who’s boss.
“Nick.” He held up the empty wineglass. “Another retsina. You got the sports page?”
“Get you one.” He brought the bottle over and then put a buck in the paper machine.
Willy Joe snatched the sports section. “See if I got any money left.” He took a leatherbound notebook from an inside pocket and checked his bets against the columns of results: Thoroughbreds at Hialeah, dogs at Tampa, jai alai in town. He knew from last night’s news that he’d lost his biggest wager: convicted murderer Sally Anne Busby chose the wrong door and was electrocuted. The bitch. He’d played a hunch and put a thousand on lethal injection.
Won a dog trifecta, though. All told, he was down $378. So he’d bet double that today. He spent twenty minutes drawing up a list distributing the $756 among safe bets and long shots, and then called his bookie.
The cube had some black broad talking to the professor’s wife. “Did you ever expect this sort of thing to happen?” she asked. “Is there any precedent?”
“Nick, you wanna put somethin’ else on the cube? Enough about the fuckin’ president.”
Marya Washington
“Nothing I’d call a precedent,” Professor Bell said. “As you certainly know, there have been ambiguous SETI results—”
“Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence,” Marya supplied for her audience.
“Yes… that may come from other intelligent species, or they may be radio signals generated by some natural process we don’t completely understand.”
“Like intelligence,” Marya said.
“Quite so.” She smiled broadly at the younger woman. “But in more than twenty years of analysis, we haven’t gotten any clear semantic content from the three suspect sources. This one is as plain as a slap in the face.”
“And as aggressive?” She held up two fingers in front of her chest, out of sight of the camera.
“That’s not clear. If they were attacking us, why announce that they were on their way? Why not just sneak up?”
“On the other hand,” Marya said, “if their intent is benevolent, why don’t they say more than ‘ready or not, here we come’?” One finger.
“Well, they have three months to go. This first signal might just have been to get our attention.”
“They certainly have done that. Thank you so much, Dr. Bell, for taking time here at the University of Florida to explain this interesting new development to our audience at home; this is Marya Washington reporting live from Gainesville, Florida; we now return you to your local stations.” She smiled into the large camera until it clicked twice. Then she leaned back in the chair and yawned hugely.
“Caramba. I guess astronomers always discover things at ungodly hours.”
“Used to be. It’s around the clock now.”
“I suppose. Well… thanks, Aurora—can I call you Aurora?”
“Rory.”
“Thanks for your patience. I wish we’d had more time, but we’re competing with some big hard news.” She laughed. “As if a police station being blown up was anything compared to this.”
“Oh, my. Was anyone hurt?”
“Eleven dead they know of. It was leveled.”
“Funny I didn’t hear the explosion.”
“Oh, no, no. It was up in Detroit. It may not have been directed at the police, either. They were holding some Mafia guy who was going to sing to the grand jury on Monday… You didn’t know about any of this, did you?”
“No, I—I’m afraid I don’t pay much attention to the news.”
“Me neither, for a reporter. Since I specialize in science stories. My big newsmagazine is Nature.”
Rory picked up a beige crystal. “Astrophysical Review Letters. All the latest gossip.” She tapped it on the table, thinking. “So what about this special? What will you want me to do?”