to the fiery death of his boss.
I put both hands in my jacket pockets. I closed my right hand around
the Glock.
Manuel and I were friends. I wouldn’t feel comfortable pointing a gun
at him, and I certainly couldn’t shoot him. Unless he was not Manuel
anymore. Unless, like Stevenson, he had become someone else.
He stopped eight or ten feet from us. In the annealing flame’s
coruscating orange glow, which pierced the nearby window, I could see
that Manuel was wearing his khaki uniform. His service pistol was
holstered on his right hip. Although he stood with his thumbs hooked
in his gun belt, he would be able to draw his weapon at least as
quickly as I could pull the Glock from my jacket.
“Your shift over already?” I asked, although I knew it wasn’t.
Instead of answering me, he said, “I hope You’re not expecting beer,
tamales, and Jackie Chan movies at this hour.”
“I just stopped by to say hello to Toby if he happened to be between
jobs.”
Manuel’s face, too worn with care for his forty years, had a naturally
friendly aspect. Even in this Halloween light, his smile was still
engaging, reassuring. As far as I could see, the only luminosity in
his eyes was the reflected light from the studio window.
Of course, that reflection might mask the same transient flickers of
animal eyeshine that I’d seen in Lewis Stevenson.
Orson was reassured enough to ease out of his crouch. But he remained
wary.
Manuel exhibited none of Stevenson’s simmering rage or electric
energy.
As always, his voice was soft and almost musical. “You never did come
around to the station after You called.”
I considered my answer and decided to go with the truth. “Yes, I
did.”
“So when You phoned me, You were already close,” he guessed.
“Right around the corner. Who’s the bald guy with the earring?”
Manuel mulled over his answer and followed my lead with some truth of
his own. “His name’s Carl Scorso.”
“But who is he?”
“A total dirtbag. How far are You going to carry this?”
“Nowhere.”
He was silent, disbelieving.
“It started out a crusade,” I admitted. “But I know when I’m
beaten.”
“That sure would be a new Chris Snow.”
“Even if I could contact an outside authority or the media, I don’t
understand the situation well enough to convince them of anything.”
“And You have no proof.”
“Nothing substantive. Anyway, I don’t think I’d be allowed to make
that contact. If I could get someone to come investigate, I don’t
think I or any of my friends would be alive to greet them when they got
here.”
Manuel didn’t reply, but his silence was all the answer I needed.
He might still be a baseball fan. He might still like country music,
Abbott and Costello. He still understood as much as I did about
limitations and still felt the hand of fate as I did. He might even
still like me-but he was no longer my friend. If he wouldn’t be
sufficiently treacherous to pull the trigger on me himself, he would
watch as someone else did.
Sadness pooled in my heart, a greasy despondency that I’d never felt
before, akin to nausea. “The entire police department has been
coopted, hasn’t it?”
His smile had faded. He looked tired.
When I saw weariness in him rather than anger, I knew that he was going
to tell me more than he should. Riven by guilt, he would not be able
to keep all his secrets.
I already suspected that I knew one of the revelations he would make
about my mother. I was so loath to hear it that I almost walked
away.
Almost.
“Yes,” he said. “The entire department.”
“Even You.”
“Oh, mi amigo, especially me.”
“Are You infected by whatever bug came out of Wyvern?”
‘Infection’ isn’t quite the word.”
“But close enough.”
“Everyone else in the department has it. But not me. Not that I
know.
Not yet.”
“So maybe they had no choice. You did.”
“I decided to cooperate because there might be a lot more good that
comes from this than bad.”
“From the end of the worl&” “They’re working to undo what’s