z66 ) ‘Because that’s what my father does,’ she said, end of :onversation, and she never did bring it up again~ But he’d thought about that, driving Gunhead for IntenSecure, because that was like being a top except it wasn’t. The people you were there to help didn’t even give enough of a shit to lie to you, mostly, because they were the ones paying the bill. And here he was, out on this bridge, craw~ing out from under a fruitstand to follow this girl that ~Varbaby and Freddie-who Rydell was coming to decide lie didn’t trust worth a rat’s ass-claimed had butchered that German or whatever he was up in that hotel. And stolen these glasses Rydell was supposed to get back, ones like Wa:baby’s. But if she’d stolen them before, how come she’d gone back to kill the guy later? But the real question was, what did that have to do with anything, or even with watching Cops in Trouble all those times with his father? And the answer, he guessed, was that he, like anybody else in his position, was just trying to make a living. Solid streams of rain were coming down cut of various points in all that jackstraw stuff upstairs, sphshing on the deck. There was a pink flash, like lightning, off down the bridge. He thought he saw her fling something t the side, but if he stopped to check it out he might lose her. She was moving now, avoiding the waterfalls. Street-surveillance technique wasn’t something you got much training in, at the Academy, not unless yu looked like such good detective material that they streamlined you right into the Advanced CI courses. But Rydell bad gone and bought the textbook anyway. Trouble was, because of that he knew you pretty well needed at least one partnei to do it with, and that was assuming you had a radio link anc some citizens going about their business to give you a little uver. I)oing it this way, how he had to do it now, about the best you could hope for was just to sneak along behind her. 167 He knew it was her because of that crazy hair, that ponytail ;tuck up in the back like one of those fat Japanese wrestlers. The wasn’t fat, though. Her legs, sticking out of a big old biker jacket that might’ve been hanging in a barn for a couple of years, looked like she must work out a lot. They were covered with some tight shiny black stuff, like Kevin’s micropore outfits from Just Blow Me, and they went down into some kind of dark boots or high-top shoes. Paying that much attention to her, and trying to stay out of sight in case she turned around, he managed to walk right under one of those waterfalls. Right down the back of his neck. Just then he heard somebody call to her, ‘Chev, that you?’ and he went down on one knee in a puddle, behind this stack of salvaged lumber, two-by-fours with soggy plaster sticking to them. ID positive. The waterfall behind him was making too much noise for him to hear what was said then, but he could see them: a young guy with a black leather jacket, a lot newer than hers, and somebody else in something black, with a hood pulled up. They were sitting up on a cooler or something, and the guy with the leather was dragging on a cigarette. Had his hair combed up in sort of a crest; good trick, in that rain. The cigarette arced out and winked off in the wet, and the guy got down from there and seemed to be talking to the girl. The one with the black hood got down, too, moving like a spider. It was a sweatshirt, Rydell saw, with sleeves that hung down six inches past his hands. He looked like a floppy shadow from some old movie Rydell had seen once, where shadows got separated from people and you had to catch them and sew them back on. Probably Sublett could tell him what that was called. He worked hard on not moving, kneeling there in that puddle, and then they were moving, the two of them on either side of her and the shadow glancing hack to check behind them. He caught a fraction of white face and a pair of hard, careful eyes.