“Hey, thanks, Skeeve. I’m sorry you couldn’t find your friend.”
“That’s the way it goes sometimes,” I shrugged. “Take care of yourself, Edvick. If you ever make it to Deva, look me up and I’ll show you around my dimension for a change.”
“I just might take you up on that,” the cabbie waved as I let myself out onto the street.
Pookie had popped out of the taxi as soon as we stopped, so it seemed I was going to have to settle accounts with her out in the open.
“Pookie, I . . .”
“Heads up, Skeeve,” she murmured, not looking at me. “I think we’ve got problems.”
I followed her gaze with my eyes. Two uniformed policemen were bracketing the door to my hotel. At the sight of me, they started forward with expressions of grim determination on their faces.
Chapter Nineteen:
“I am not a crook!”
—ANY CROOK
“ZAT EES HEEM! Ze third from ze right!” Even with the floodlights full in my face, I had no difficulty recognizing the voice which floated up to me from the unseen area in the room beyond the lights. It was the waiter I had clashed with the first night I was on Perv. The one who claimed I had tried to avoid paying for my meal by fainting.
I wasn’t surprised by his ability to identify me in the lineup. First of all, I had no reason to suspect his powers of observation and recall were lacking. More important, of all the individuals in the line up, I was the only one who wasn’t a Pervect. What’s more, all the others were uniformed policemen! Nothing like a nice, impartial setup, and this was just that . . . nothing like a nice, impartial setup.