"Yeah?"
"Maybe I was wrong."
He found himself unbuttoning her blouse before she had quite pulled him into the bedroom. He had heard it wasn't difficult, after the first time. It was easier. He still seemed to weigh too much- the dinner was only part of that.
It wasn't that there was any difficulty. She seemed pleased, and that alone was enough to make him feel good. But something wasn't quite there: the Wild Hunt didn't ride, and he knew that she knew it. Still she sighed happily, and laughed, and held him all night.
Still, he knew what was locked up in his thoughts, and hoped desperately that she did not.
Monday night the usual poker crowd met at the Rush Street Grill. They sat over Flats Montoya's wonderful burgers with an uneasy quiet; Doc kept thinking of the Hopper painting, the diner at midnight. It was a relief to go back to the poker room, where quiet and blank looks were part of the game.
The Fox's game was way off form, and it threw everyone else's play off as well. After an hour, Kitsune tossed in her cards-an ace flipped upright-and said, "That's all. Good night, everybody."
Carmen said, "I'll get the box."
"Just say I'm tapped." She hurried out.
Stagger Lee counted Kitsune's chips. "Everyone agree we'll hold her share out?"
They did. "Who'll see her first? Lucius?"
"I'll take it to the Mirada. Shaker can hold the stake."
After another hour the raid alarm went off, and everyone went through the ritual of tossing in and covering up.
It wasn't the usual Copperbutton squad. It was Rico and Linn, with two very worried-looking Coppers trailing behind.
"Hello, Officers," Flats said. "Can I offer you something hot on a cold night?"
"Don't you love it?" Rico said. "Everybody here's the Welcome Wagon. Linn."
The elf went to the table where Doc and company were sitting. He looked at the people, then took a lens-shaped blue crystal from his belt. He gave it a snap of the wrist and it hung, spinning, in the air above the table, casting an electric-blue light. The tabletop turned transparent, showing the bucket of cards and chips beneath, the sitters' legs, a glimpse of their leg bones. Linn snatched the stone from the air with an easy movement and a tight little smile. He tucked it away.
Rico said, "The stuff that passes for cop work around here."
Carmen said, "We've got a seat open, Lieutenant. Maybe you'd like to sit in? There's room for two."
"Maybe some other time, honey."
"You mean that?"
"Yeah. I mean that."
"Look forward to it."
The police went out. The patrons dug into their pie and brandy.
A burst of gunfire came from the front of the restaurant, and a long crash of glass. Someone screamed. Stagger Lee, with a completely artificial calm, said, "Somebody's wa\ off script."
Doc was on his feet by instinct, grabbing his bag. "Keep do**, dammit," Lucius yelled, and Doc dropped into a booth-high crouch.
Just as he got to the front room, there was a brilliant white Hare from outside, and the front of the restaurant blew in. The shock knocked Doc down; he huddled for a few breaths against debris and any second detonation, but the booth wall had protected him well enough. He got up.
The room was smoky, and smelled of hot metal and burning. People were groaning, but not screaming now. There was some blood, but no immediately apparent critical cases. The front windows were pretty well demolished, and the oak front door was a jagged strip of bare wood.
Lieutenant Linn came in, breathing mist. His white wand was out, floating between his open hands; a black nimbus of negative light surrounded it. He looked at Doc, who went outside.
Rico was on the sidewalk outside, sitting up against the front of the building. Her left leg looked chewed, and her mirrorshades hung broken from one ear.
Doc snipped away her trouser leg, sponged blood off. The wounds were fairly minor; no heavy bleeders, bones intact. He got some dressings on. "You should be okay. Got any drug allergies?"
"Yeah. To needles. Go ahead, kid."
"People usually call me Doc."
"Yeah. Shit, that's cold."
"That's thorncast salve. It'll pull any fragments out. Did you hit your head?"
"Other end. Linn saw the bikes coming, got a ward up. Any sign of our so-called backups, Linn?"
Doc was conscious of Lt. Linn standing behind him, but missed any reply. He looked at Lt. Rico's pupils: they were even, but dilated. He pulled off her glasses-carefully, around a bad bruise on her cheek-shone a light on one eye.
"Watch it! Those used to be Night Owls."
"Sorry."
" 'S'okay. Doc."
"Lieutenant Linn, would you help me get her inside?"
Linn picked Rico up, carried her in to a bench. Doc saw to the other injured. Through some combination of luck and Linn's spell, nobody had caught a bullet or major fragment.
There was no question of going on with the games. The place cleared out quickly. Carmen left with Stagger Lee, and then it was just Doc, Lucius, Rico and Linn, and Flats, who brought out real coffee with Kahlua and cream.
"You said they were on bikes?" Doc said.
"Did I say that? I must have been delirious."
Doc glanced at Lucius, who raised an eyebrow and half of his mouth.
Flats said, "How about you, Linn? You ever talk?"
Linn shook his head.
"You gotta have something," Rico said. "When you're trying to do a job nobody wants done, by flaky rules, in a hostile country, among people who don't want you there in the first place, you've got to have some way of knowing who you are. That or go dinky-dau."
"What?"
"Crazy. Something my dad used to say."
Doc said, "You'll be sore for a while."
"I've been torn up before, Doc. I'll make it."
Doc nodded. "Take you home, Lucius?"
"Don't mind, Doctor."
"Hey, Doc," Rico said. "Thanks. And hey, Jake Lingle."
Lucius said, "Yes, Lieutenant, ma'am?"
"I read your column all the time. Nice to meet you."
"Thank you very kindly, Lieutenant."
"Don't get killed."
Lucius snapped a salute. They went outside, their shoes crunching on broken glass.
"So which way's home?" Doc said.
"Drop me at the Mirada. I've got to give Shaker the Fox's stake, remember?"
"Yeah." Doc thought about Kitsune's behavior, about speaking of it. But he didn't. Instead he said, "Who's Jake Lingle?"
"Famed local reporter, from the real gangland days. The Ca-pone boys shot him dead one day."
"Oh."
"There was a rule back then, never shoot three sorts of people: cops, judges, and reporters. Too much hear, you see. And what do you know but that Jake's paper raised a row that eventual!) did help bring Al down." He turned his head. "You know Capone's Four Deuces club-that was the street address, two-two-two-two- was just over there a couple of blocks."
"You will be careful, won't you, Lucius?"
"I haven't gotten to the punch line yet, Doc. Jake Lingle, mob martyr, was taking fifty thousand Depression dollars a year from Capone. It's an ill wind, eh, Doctor?"
He let Lucius off at the club, knowing that things were no better than they had been a week ago. Maybe worse. and the house barber had restyled his hair to conceal the wound and Doc's chopping.
That afternoon Doc went to Patrise's office, intending finally to ask what the lead mining was for. Once there, however, in the glare of light on wood and metal, with Mr. Patrise-who had never wronged him, never, so far as he knew, lied-seated calmly at a side table, reading an old leatherbound book, Doc choked on the question. He managed to get out, "There's something-I have to know. About, well, magic, I guess…"
Mr. Patrise shut his book. "Are you afraid of the sources of power?" He stood up, sat against the edge of his enormous desk. "Do you think that someday you will open a door, like Bluebeard's wife, and find the sort of place you saw under the streets?"