Someplace to Be Flying

by Charles de Lint

  "I don't know the secret password."

  She'd grinned. "So you see how safe I'll be."

  "But—"

  "I won't do anything stupid, Hank. But I've got to get these color rolls developed this morning, pick up some replacement chemicals for what those guys trashed in my darkroom, and then develop all my black and whites. I promised Kenny I'd have them to him by five this afternoon."

  So he'd let her convince him, but no sooner had she driven off than he began to worry. He was cursed with an overactive imagination. Most of the time he could shut it off, but that didn't work as well when he was worrying about someone else. And it didn't work at all this morning. To try to get his mind off it, he took their dirty dishes upstairs and washed them, then called Paris's apartment. She wasn't home and neither was she at the Buzz when he tried to get her there. Finally he called the junkyard.

  "Anita says she was staying at Jack's last night in case anyone showed up there," Moth told him.

  "So there's still no word?"

  "Nothing."

  Hank sighed. It was past time to stop by the house on Stanton Street where Katy had told him her sister was living. But what would he say to the woman? I know you've disbelieved your sister out of existence. Yeah, right.

  "Did you talk to Eddie for me?" he asked.

  "He wouldn't go for it."

  "But—"

  "It's not that he doesn't want to help us," Moth said. "But he said setting up a meet with the Couteaus is like taking a gun and sticking it in your own mouth. They don't negotiate."

  "That bad."

  "Worse. But Eddie wanted you to know that he's going to fix things up for you. 'Tell Hank his problems are all going away,' is how he put it."

  Hank didn't like the sound of that at all.

  "What do you think he meant by that?" he said.

  "Beats me," Moth said. "I didn't want to ask."

  Hank carried the phone over to the window and looked out at the unfamiliar view. The quiet street was as alien to him as the junkyard would be to Lily.

  "How'd our lives get so complicated all of a sudden?" he said.

  "By not minding our own business."

  "It's not like I could've walked away from any of this."

  "I suppose," Moth said, but Hank could tell from the tone of his voice that he didn't agree. "One more thing. Tony wants you to know that Marty Caine's been trying to get hold of you all morning."

  "Great. More unfinished business."

  "That's what happens when you fill your whole dance card, kid. Tony says he's called the store maybe a half-dozen times and sounds pissed. What'd you do? Send him a book of lawyer jokes?"

  "I was heading over to Stanton Street to have a talk with Katy's sister," Hank said, "but I guess I'll stop by Marty's office on the way."

  "You don't have to take any crap from him."

  "Marty's not like that."

  "Yeah, but you're not his pet dog either. He says jump, are you going to start asking how high?"

  "Give it a rest," Hank told him.

  He shifted his view from the houses across the street to the VW parked in front of Lily's building.

  "Those plates on Anita's bug," he asked. "Are they legit?"

  He could almost see Moth shrug. "Good as. Just don't run any red lights while you're driving it."

  Perfect. Neither Moth nor Anita liked to give the government any more than they had to—neither money nor paperwork. He didn't blame them. It made life a lot easier when you didn't exist on paper. But all he needed now was to get stopped by some overzealous traffic cop having a slow day.

  "I'll talk to you later," he said into the phone.

  Naturally, there were no parking spaces anywhere near the Sovereign Building, so Hank had to park the VW a half-dozen blocks away and hike back to Marty's office. He stopped in at Mac's deli to buy three coffees and took them upstairs with him. During the day there was no need to be buzzed into the building, but you had to enter Marty's office by way of the front office, where his secretary, Robbie Norton, held court. Robbie was a big man, solidly built. More like a linebacker or a bodyguard than Hank's expectations of a legal secretary. He had fingers like fat sausages and it always fascinated Hank to watch how delicately they could work a computer keyboard.

  Robbie looked up when Hank came in and smiled his thanks for the coffee Hank handed him.

  "Marty in?" Hank asked.

  Robbie nodded. "You wearing a flak vest?"

  "He's that mad?"

  "Let's just say that bringing him a coffee's not going to come close to smoothing this over."

  "What's it all about?"

  Robbie shook his head. "I'm not getting in the middle of this." He pushed the "Talk" button on the intercom and said, "Hank's here."

  Marty's voice came back, holding the cool terseness he usually reserved for somebody he didn't respect. A crooked cop. A client who'd lied to him. "Send him in."

  Hank glanced at Robbie, eyebrows raised.

  "Good luck," Robbie said.

  He really didn't need this on top of everything else that was going down, Hank thought as he opened the door to Marty's office and stepped in. Marty gave him a look that held as much sadness as it did anger.

  "The good news," he said before Hank could speak, "is that Sandy's out of jail, all charges dropped."

  "What's the bad news?"

  Marty tossed an envelope on the desk. "Here's your money."

  "That's the bad news?"

  "I won't be using your services anymore," Marty said.

  Hank set the two Styrofoam cups of coffee on the edge of the desk and sat down.

  "There's really nothing more to discuss," Marty told him.

  He was using his no-give lawyer's voice. Cold. Impersonal. Like he was talking to the press. Or to a staff sergeant at a precinct where one of his clients had "tripped in his cell" and now required stitches and a stay in the hospital.

  "Bullshit," Hank said. "You want to tell me what the hell's going on here?"

  "I just don't do business your way."

  "Well, let's see." Hank counted the items off on his fingers. "So far I've interviewed your client and spent a day visiting every tattoo parlor in the city. Seems like pretty straightforward investigative work to me. You planning to use psychics or something now?"

  "Do you think I'm stupid?"

  Hank gave him a steady look. "Never thought so before, but you're doing a good job of changing my mind."

  Marty returned his gaze, anger barely kept in check. Hank waited him out.

  "Cute," Marty said finally. "But we both know there's no way Bloom would've backed off the way he did unless you leaned on him."

  "I leaned on him?"

  "I don't know what you dug up on him, but I know scared, and he was terrified when I saw him this morning."

  This made no sense at all.

  "You're telling me that the D.A.'s office is dropping the charges on your client because somebody leaned on the prosecutor who's handling the case?"

  "I told you, Hank. Don't play me for a mark."

  But then Hank got it. He sighed. This was the work of Eddie Prio, doing a "favor." Now he knew what the message Moth had passed on meant. He wondered what other surprises Eddie had for him.

  "I had nothing to do with leaning on Bloom," he said. "At least not directly."

  Marty waited for him to explain.

  "It's complicated," Hank said. "Remember what I told you about Couteau?"

  Marty nodded.

  "Well, his family's involved in some other business I'm trying to deal with, so I asked Eddie Prio to set up a meet with them."

  "You deal with Prio?" Marty asked.

  "It's not like you're thinking. He uses the cab to transport his bank deposits from the club. I figured with his connections, he'd be able to get them to listen."

  "So what happened?"

  Hank shrugged. "I got the message this morning that he won't do it. Too dangerous, he says. The Couteaus don't negotiate. Then
he told my partner to tell me that all my problems were going to go away."

  "You didn't ask him to get involved?"

  "Come on, Marty. Do I look that stupid? Setting up a meet's one thing. Dealing with Bloom the way he did would've put me deep into his pocket and I don't work that way with anybody."

  Marty didn't say anything for a long moment, but then he reached across the desk and took one of the coffees.

  "I should've talked to you first," he said.

  "Yeah, you should have."

  "It's just …" Marty sighed. "I never liked Bloom. And I never liked his private agenda. But you should have seen his face. The man is seriously screwed up about this. Whatever Prio's got on him, it's deep."

  "If you're dirty, Eddie'd be the man to know about it. He's got his fingers in everything."

  "But that's not the way to deal with someone like Bloom," Marty said. "It makes us no better than him."

  Hank shrugged. That all depended. He wouldn't have asked Eddie to do anything on a stranger's account. But if it had been a matter of his family or Bloom, he wouldn't have hesitated.

  "So what're you going to do?" Hank asked. "Set the record straight?"

  "Christ, you're kidding me, right? It's too late to play innocent now. And what worries me is, the D.A.'s office is going to think I'm connected to Prio. Or maybe next thing you know, he'll be calling me up for payback."

  "There's worse things could happen," Hank said.

  "Like what?"

  "Like having Eddie pissed at you."

  Marty shook his head. "I run a clean office. It's going to take more than Eddie Prio to change that. I just don't need the grief."

  "I'll talk to him."

  "No. If it comes up, I can deal with it."

  Hank stood up. "Well, if you change your mind …"

  "I won't." Marty pushed the envelope of money across the desk. "You're forgetting something."

  Hank pocketed the envelope. "We're square?"

  "We're square. Only next time, don't get my business involved with Prio."

  "I've got no argument with that."

  Marty called him back again as he started for the door. "This other problem you've got … you need any help with it?"

  "No."

  "But if you do?"

  Hank smiled. "Trust me. I'll call."

  "You're good," Robbie said when Hank stepped out of Marty's office and closed the door behind him. "I don't know many people who can calm him down when he's that mad."

  "Comes from clean living."

  "Uh-huh."

  "I'll see you, Robbie."

  "Hang on there," Robbie called after him. "There was a call for you while you were talking to Marty."

  Hank paused at the door and turned.

  "Someone named Anita," Robbie went on. "Said you're needed at the junkyard."

  Hank's pulse quickened. Now what?

  "Thanks," he told Robbie.

  "And she also wanted you to know that Moth—you know someone who calls himself Moth?"

  Hank nodded.

  "Well, she says Moth was pulling your leg. That make sense?" Hank smiled. So the plates were legit. "Perfect sense," Hank said. "Thanks."

  "Moth," Robbie repeated as Hank left the office. "What kind of a name is that?"

  17.

  Lily might have put up a brave front to Hank, but she was nervous as she dropped off her film at Kiko's Kwick Print and then drove on to the library. Nervous and happy, which made for an odd mix of emotion. She couldn't stop looking for suspicious characters, or constantly checking her rearview mirror, as she followed the familiar route from her apartment to Kiko's, then back to the library in Lower Crowsea. At the same time she was positively beaming with a happy glow from how things were working out with Hank. She was sure that the goofy grin she couldn't quite erase was telling everyone exactly how she'd spent the latter part of her night. In bed, making deliriously wonderful love.

  Oh, let them just be jealous, she decided.

  There was a small parking lot behind the library, but she found a space on the street and parked there instead. The lot was too secluded, too cut off from the view of the main street for her to be comfortable leaving her car there. She didn't feel entirely safe until the large oak-and-beveled-glass doors of the library had closed behind her and she was crossing the wide wooden floor of the foyer, camera bag a familiar weight as it hung from her shoulder.

  She stopped by the bank of computers near the circulation desk and sat down. The library's search program took her through a half-dozen different menus before it finally came up with the information that Professor Dapple's book wasn't available.

  "Excuse me," she asked the young woman at the circulation desk, "but can you tell me when you expect this book back?"

  She handed over the slip of paper on which she'd written the title and author.

  "Oh, it's one of the professor's books," the librarian said.

  She had the faint trace of a British accent and a peaches-and-cream complexion to match. With her long brown hair done up in a loose bun, and lovely large eyes, she made Lily think of those Pre-Raphaelite women immortalized by Burne-Jones and Rossetti. Her name tag read, "Ms. Pierson" and while Lily had never really spoken to her before, they'd often exchanged smiles as they each went about their business.

  "Do you know him, Ms. Pierson?" Lily asked.

  "Oh, please. Call me Harriet." She smiled. "Bernard makes us wear these tags with our surnames on them because, well, he's very old school. Given names would be so unprofessional."

  Bernard, Lily assumed, would be the head librarian, a rather stern-looking older man she sometimes saw lurking about, keeping what she thought was far too close an eye on his staff. She wouldn't like to work for anyone who was that particular.

  "And yes, I do know Professor Dapple," Harriet said. Her fingers danced across the keyboard of the computer on her side of the wooden counter. "He used to be quite the regular fixture in this branch."

  "Used to be? He's not … ?"

  "Dead? Oh, no. Though he's certainly getting on in years. No, he and Bernard had something of a falling out a few years ago. Now the professor only comes by on Bernard's day off." She smiled. "It's all so terribly political."

  Lily raised her eyebrows.

  "Literary circles political," Harriet explained. "They had a huge blowout one day over the literary merits of one of the professor's protégés, which subsequently carried on in the letters pages of various literary journals." She gave Lily another of her ready smiles. "I don't know why I'm telling you all of this. It must seem ever so boring."

  "Not at—"

  "Oh, here we are," Harriet said. She gave the screen a small frown. "That's odd. It's supposed to be kept in the Newford Room and shouldn't be out on loan." She copied a number down on Lily's slip of paper. "Let's go have a look and see if someone's made a mistake, shall we? It might well still be on the shelf where it's supposed to be."

  "I appreciate all your trouble."

  "It's no bother at all," Harriet said as she led the way through the main room of the library and up the stairs to the reference section. "It's lovely to be walking around in here without a huge armload of books."

  The Newford Room was near the front of the building, just off the main reference room. Three of the walls were lined with floor-to-ceiling bookcases, one of them separated by two large bay windows with window seats. The fourth wall held a rotating display of local artwork that was managed by the Newford School of Art. Under the hung art was a glass cabinet displaying manuscripts and diaries by notable Newford writers. A long oak table sat in the center of the room, surrounded by high-backed wooden chairs. Four club chairs completed the furnishings, one of them occupied by a man reading a newspaper.

  Harriet went straight to one section of the bookcases.

  "This is so odd," she said as she ran a finger along the spines of a dozen or so of the professor's other books. "I can't imagine where it could be."

  There was the sound of
a newspaper being lowered, followed by a familiar voice asking, "Where what could be?"

  Lily and Harriet glanced toward the club chair and Lily smiled. She hadn't seen Christy Riddell in ages, but he looked the same as always. Clothes slightly rumpled, hair a bird's nest of brown tangles, dark eyes alert and curious.

  "One of the professor's books," Harriet said. "Kickaha Wings."

  "Now why would you want a copy of that, Lily?" Christy asked.

  "Hello, yourself," Lily said.

  Harriet looked from one to the other. "You know each other? Well, yes, of course," she added before either could respond. "It's obvious that you do."

  "Was it something in the book you needed?" Christy asked Lily. "Or did you just want to have a look at it?"

  "A bit of both, actually."

  "I'll tell you what," Harriet said. "I'll let Christy bend your ear while I go back downstairs and see if I can't get to the bottom of this little mystery."

  "Put Bernard on to it," Christy said. "That should keep him out of your hair for at least a week or two."

  "You're a nasty man," Harriet said, but she was smiling. She turned back to Lily. "Stop by at the desk on your way out and I'll let you know what I've found out."

  "Thanks again."

  "Not at all. I'll see you in a bit."

  When Harriet left, Lily crossed the room to where Christy was sitting. She put her camera bag down on the floor and took the chair beside his.

  "Kickaha Wings," Christy said. "Now there's an obscure book to be looking for. I think there were only a few hundred copies published in the first place. Where did you hear about it?"

  "It's sort of an odd story."

  "Then I'm your man."

  This was certainly true, Lily thought. Christy's own writing was about equally divided between fairy tales that took place in the modern world and his more popular collections of urban myths, hauntings, and odd facts.

  "I've gotten interested in—" She hesitated. "I suppose animal people would be the best way to put it."

  "Animal people. Like shapeshifters, you mean?"

  Lily nodded. "I suppose. Or beings that—oh, I don't know exactly—appear to be what we expect them to be, but that's not necessarily what they actually are. We just see them that way. But they're really animals, not people at all." She sighed. "I'm not being very clear, am I?"