worked for them. In the age of the microchip, Johnny said, the world was one
small town, and you could sit in San Clemente—or Oshkosh— and pick someone’s
pocket in New York City.
Johnny dropped into a high-backed black leather chair equipped with rubber
wheels, in which he could roll swiftly from one computer to the next. He said,
“So! What can the Silicon Sorcerer do for you, Vince?”
“Can you tap into police computers?”
“It’s a snap.”
“I need to know if, since last Tuesday, any police agency in the county has
opened a file on any particularly strange murders.”
“Who’re the victims?”
“I don’t know. I’m just looking for strange murders.”
“Strange in what way?”
“I’m not exactly sure. Maybe . . . somebody with his throat torn out. Somebody
ripped to pieces. Somebody all chewed up and gouged by an animal.”
Johnny gave him a peculiar look. “That’s strange, all right. Something like that
would be in the newspapers.”
“Maybe not,” Vince said, thinking of the army of government security agents that
would be working diligently to keep the press in the dark about the Francis
Project and to conceal the dangerous developments on Tuesday at the Banodyne
labs. “The murders might be in the news, but the police will probably be
suppressing the gory details, making them look like ordinary homicides. So from
what the papers print, I won’t be able to tell which victims are the ones I’m
interested in.”
“All right. Can do.”
“You’d also better prowl around at the County Animal Control Authority to see if
they’re getting any reports of unusual attacks by coyotes or cougars or other
predators. And not just attacks on people, but on livestock—cows, sheep. There
might even be some neighborhood, probably on the eastern
edge of the county, where a lot of family pets are disappearing or being chewed
up real bad by something wild. If you run across that, I want to know.”
Johnny grinned and said, “You tracking down a werewolf?”
It was a joke; he did not expect or want an answer. He had not asked why this
information was needed, and he would never ask, because people in their line of
work did not poke into each other’s business. Johnny might be curious, but Vince
knew that The Wire would never indulge his curiosity.
Vince was unnerved not by the question but by the grin. The green light from the
computer screens was reflected by Johnny’s eyes and by the saliva on his teeth
and, to a lesser extent, by his wiry copper-colored hair. As ugly as he was to
begin with, the eerie luminescence made him look like a revived corpse in a
Romero film.
Vince said, “Another thing. I need to know if any police agency in the county is
running a quiet search for a golden retriever.”
“A dog?”
“Yeah.”
“Cops don’t usually look for lost dogs.”
“I know,” Vince said.
“This dog got a name?”
“No name.”
“I’ll check it out. Anything else?”
“That’s it. When can you put it together?”
“I’ll call you in the morning. Early.”
Vince nodded. “And depending on what you turn up, I might need you to keep
tracking these things on a daily basis.”
“Child’s play,” Johnny said, spinning around once in his black leather chair,
then jumping to his feet with a grin. “Now, I’m gonna fuck Samantha. Hey! You
want to join in? Two studs like us, going at her at the same time, we could
reduce that bitch to a little pile of jelly, have her begging for mercy. How
about it?”
Vince was glad for the weird green lighting because it covered the fact that he
had gone ghost-pale. The idea of messing around with that infected slut, that
diseased whore, that rotting and festering round-heeled pump, was enough to make
him sick. He said, “Got an appointment I can’t break.”
“Too bad,” Johnny said.
Vince forced himself to say, “Would’ve been fun.”
“Maybe next time.”
The very idea of the three of them going at it . . . well, it made Vince feel
unclean. He was overcome by a desire for a steaming-hot shower.
6
Sunday night, pleasantly tired from a long day in Solvang, Travis thought he