“I’ve got what you see behind me,” the bartender said, waving at two shelves of dusty bottles.
“Come on,” Horn scoffed.
“I don’t know you. For strangers, what you see is what you get.”
Horn peeled off another bill. “How many do I have to put down before we’re not strangers?”
The bartender’s eyes were drawn to the money like rats to a sewer. Finally he said, “Look, I don’t sell anything like that. I run a completely legit business, you understand? But what I can do is make referrals.”
“Referrals?”
“Right. There’s a guy in the back, wider than he is tall, named Snorky. He might be able to help you out. And there’s Pritt.”
“What’s he got?”
“Nothing. But he knows people. People looking for companionship. He’s a kind of …matchmaker, right?”
“Right. Sorry, I don’t want any of that stuff. Anyway, what if I’m a cop?”
“Then go introduce yourself. Snorky loves cops.”
“Scary guy, huh?”
“Uh-huh,” the bartender said.
He broke the ensuing silence by going off to serve a new arrival at the other end of the bar. Horn watched him go, then picked up his shot glass and drained it. The bourbon was cheap stuff, too sweet for Horn’s taste. He was glad that this job didn’t require him to pretend to like it for long. He set the empty shot glass down on the bar.
The bartender came back, and Horn said, “Another.”
“I thought you weren’t running a tab.”
“Things change,” Horn said. “If I can’t get what I came for, I might as well get what I can.”
The statement drew a curious look from the bartender. He poured Horn another shot and asked, “What did you come here for?”
“The answer to a question.”
“What kind of question?”
Horn took a swallow of the bourbon before answering. The bartender’s curiosity was piqued now; a little delay would serve to draw him in further. “A simple one. A question of identity.”
“I don’t give out names.”
“What about Snorky and Pritt? Those names came out pretty easy.”
The bartender scowled. “They can take care of themselves. They come in here to do business five or six nights a week; they like it when I point people their way.”
“Respected regulars, I can tell,” said Horn. “Don’t worry, you won’t have to name anybody.”
“What do you want, then?”
Horn reached into his inside coat pocket and pulled out the picture of Henrik Morten that Levin had sent him earlier from Geneva. He unfolded it and spread it out on the counter. “A simple yes or no—did you see this man talking with Tony Delgado anytime recently?”
The bartender studied it, frowning. “Yes. I don’t know who he is, just that he isn’t one of our regulars and probably isn’t a local, either. But he and Tony were here once or twice. Tony never introduced me. Your boy never seemed too comfortable, always seemed antsy to move on.”
Horn refolded the picture and put it away. “Thanks.”
“You going to let me know who it is?”
“I don’t believe I am,” said Horn, rising to leave. “And you can keep the change.”
The late-night air outside the Cloverleaf Bar was chill and crisp. Horn breathed deeply, clearing his lungs of the Cloverleaf’s smoke-fouled atmosphere. The stars overhead were sharp and there was a ring around the moon: high ice crystals, he thought, and maybe the prospect of snow.
He thought about the photograph of Henrik Morten, now tucked back inside his coat. The bartender had identified the man in that picture as someone who had been seen with Delgado earlier.
He’d read the stream of information Levin had sent him about Morten. And now he had directly connected him to the attempt to intimidate, or harm, Elena Ruiz.
It was time to stop beating around the bush. They had enough to go after the rabbit himself.
29
First Stop Bar, Geneva
Terra, Prefecture X
12 December 3134
From time to time, Jonah Levin experienced moments of gratitude that, unlike most of his fellow Paladins, he was not a physically memorable person. He didn’t have the striking, Clan-bred looks of a Tyrina Drummond or a Meraj Jorgensson, both of whom were the products of generations of selective breeding for strength and symmetry and commanding appearance. And unlike Gareth Sinclair or Maya Avellar, he lacked the easy assurance that came of being born into wealth and high position.
He was only a man of average height and average weight, with hair and eyes a nondescript shade of average dark brown and a face that could have belonged to a hundred other men of the same general age and ethnicity. In much-laundered street clothes a year or so behind the fashion, he could sit in a workingman’s bar drinking beer with a whisky chaser, and none of the observers would recognize him as a Paladin of the Sphere.
The sharper-eyed ones among them might have frowned for a moment, puzzled, before going so far as to remark, “Say, did anyone ever tell you that you look a lot like that guy What’s-his-name—you know, the Paladin from Kervil?”
And Jonah would say, “Yeah… lots of times,” in tones of bored resignation, and that would be that.
This functional anonymity allowed him to nurse his drink and eat salted peanuts at a back table in the First Stop Bar, undisturbed by the comings and goings of the shift workers and truck drivers who made up the greater portion of the First Stop’s boisterous clientele. Left alone at his vantage point, he watched the front door of the bar and waited to see if the man he had contacted would show up.
He didn’t have to wait for long. The time was still an hour short of midnight when the door opened to admit a broad, heavy-shouldered man who walked with a distinct limp. The man’s long-sleeved shirt and denim jacket couldn’t disguise the fact that his right arm was a prosthetic attachment.
The man’s worn face lit up at his first sight of Jonah, and his lurching gait became faster. Jonah stood up to greet him, and the two men shared a handshake that turned into a quick hug. They sat down together at the table. The other man spoke first.
“Captain.”
“Sergeant,” Jonah replied. “You’re looking well.”
“You’re not looking too bad yourself.” Wilson Turk’s gravelly voice hadn’t lost its Hesperus accent after all these years on Terra. “Married life still agreeing with you?”
“I’d sooner be at home on Kervil than working here in Geneva—but you and I both know life doesn’t always give us what we want.”
“Ain’t that the truth.”
The waitress came over from the bar. Turk nodded toward Jonah and said, “I’ll have one of whatever he’s having.”
She left and Turk turned back to Jonah, all business now. “I came as soon as I could when I got your call. Whatever you need, Captain, I’ll do it. Or try my damnedest, anyhow.”
“It shouldn’t be difficult.”
Jonah finished his drink and contemplated ordering another. He decided against it. He had no fondness for drunkenness for its own sake, and he didn’t have either the stamina or the constitution of the young militia captain he’d been when he learned to drink beer with whisky chasers during the campaign on Kurragin.
“I don’t know if all of what I’m about to tell you has made it out onto the streets or not,” he said, after the waitress had brought Turk his whisky-and-chaser. “It’s probably safest to assume that if you haven’t yet heard something similar on one of the major news feeds, then you don’t officially know about it until you do.”
Turk looked unsurprised. “I didn’t know you were doing intel work these days.”
“You’d be surprised,” said Jonah. He moved on to the business at hand. “To begin with—how much do you know about the death of Victor Steiner-Davion?”