Текст книги "The Coming"

Автор книги: Joe William Haldeman

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Sipping coffee, he played the twenty-four bars over and over, using a light pen to isolate four voices. He set the Roland to try different instrumentations, reluctantly admitting that the solo voice couldn't be a cello. Clarinet or even oboe. He played with the phrasing of the oboe and turned it into a parody of Rimsky-Korsakov, which he saved as "Joke 1." Then he returned to the original phrasing, dropped the solo an octave, and tried it with bassoon, and then bass clarinet. Odd but good. He saved it as "BC 1" and got up to stretch and walk around.

Tense. He locked himself in his office, undressed, and gave himself an erection. From a locked drawer he took a VR girdle and goggles and gloves, and a highly illegal, because it was homosexual, compact ring. It was called "Scherherazade"; he'd bought it because the boys reminded him of Qabil Rabin.

He set the CR on the stereo spindle and hurriedly fitted the girdle over his genitals, around his waist, and between his legs. He rolled on the gloves and slipped the goggles over his head. Put the earplugs in and said, "Go!"

It was a harem scene, seven young men lounging naked on silken pillows, chatting, sipping coffee from small cups.

There was a random function that determined which boy would show interest; if the customer wanted a different one, he could say "reset." Norman liked them all.

One of them looked at him and smiled, and said something in Arabic. He set down his coffee and gracefully uncoiled from his supine position, becoming erect as he walked toward Norman.

A part of his mind always marveled at the technology. The boy gently took hold of his penis and cradled his testicles, and drifted to his knees.

Norman stared at the top of the boy's close-cropped head as he gently fellated him. With a couple of words he could switch to anal sex, active or passive, but this was enough for him. He watched the other boys, having fun with each other while they watched him and his virtual partner. (That part felt fake, or at least too staged, since it was always the same, a kind of moving erotic wallpaper.) After a few minutes, he knew he couldn't delay any longer, or his body would lose the illusion and melt, so he pushed a couple of times and ejaculated. The boy stood up while the whole scene faded into gray mist.

He walked into the bathroom with his silly-looking garb and carefully unwrapped the girdle, everted, and scrubbed it. Then he patted it dry with a towel, folded everything together, and returned it to his hiding place. He lay down on the couch and asked the room for Rimsky-Korsakov, and closed his eyes for a few minutes.

He only half slept, thinking about the composition. If a bass clarinet was going to take the melody, he wanted another line, a bass viol in a slow pedal. Doubled with one of the violins here and there. A quiet percussion rattle, like a distant woodpecker, signaling the measures where the two came together, two octaves apart. And a metallic tapping, like a muted triangle, doing 5:4 against their 4:4.

He got up and dressed, running through the changes in his mind. He went back to the great room and snapped on the Roland, but then saw that the phone was blinking. The call hadn't come in while he was napping, thank goodness; he would have lost his train of thought. It had come while he had the earplugs in, getting blown by a ghost. Probably a middle-aged man by now, like Rabin.

He keyed in the bass viol and adjusted the second violin. He couldn't get quite the percussion he wanted, so he left it off and wrote a note over the staff. He'd call Billy Kaye this evening and have him send something over; he stocked a cube of foreign percussion effects. After he was satisfied that he'd written everything down, he went to the phone.

Two calls. The first was a man he didn't recognize. Row upon row of paper books behind him, matched leather bindings identifying them as Florida statutes. A rich lawyer, couldn't be good news.

It was worse than he could have imagined. He smiled politely and nodded. "Professor Bell, I have a client who has something of value to you: silence. About you and a certain policeman. We will be having lunch at the rear table at Alice's Tea Room at noon today. Noon. If you're not there, we'll go to the police.

"You've met my client, Guilliame Capra." That slimeball Willy Joe. "Surprisingly, he has many friends on the police force."

The man disappeared. Norman played it back and it didn't improve. He erased it and sat back to think, but nothing came. Nothing but rising panic.

He went to the kitchen and got a wineglass, then opened the wine cabinet and closed it again. Instead, he poured an inch of brandy. He sat at the breakfast table and took one sip. Then he poured it out and rinsed the glass. No answer there.

What a lovely world this was.

Maybe they were only going to threaten to expose him to Rory. Big surprise. It would take some playacting, but they could simulate an outraged wife and penitant husband.

But no. Not in this day and age. They would threaten his career and Rory's, too.

Could Qabil be behind it? No; he'd lose even more than them. His fellow officers would not be amused.

He'd talk to Rory after work. First find out what the blackmailer wanted. He realized he couldn't say within a million dollars either way, how much money they had. Better find out before lunch. He checked his watch; two hours.

He went to call the bank and remembered the second message. It was Rory, asking him to call. He punched index-1.

Aurora

Her personal line rang and she punched it. Norman returning her call.

"Company tonight, sweetheart. You remember the Slidells, from Yale?"

He nodded and rubbed his chin. "Vegetarians?"

"You're amazing. He's vegan, I think, Lamar. At least he wears an equals sign on a necklace, Church of Reason."

"Okay." He seemed distracted. "I was going downtown for lunch. Market's not open; I'll see what Publix has."

"No eggs or cheese?"

"Heavens, no. I wouldn't enslave our fellow creatures." He didn't smile.

"There's something wrong?"

"Bad morning. Talk about it later."

"We can talk now. There's no one here."

"No ... no, I have to check some stuff out ... "

"I mean, I'll have the Slidells with me when I come home."

"It's okay. Later." The screen went blank.

She almost called him right back. Something was really bothering him. But the other phone rang, her public line.

"¿ Buenos?" She'd seen the woman before, but couldn't place her.

"Good morning, Dr. Bell. June Clearwater, mayor's office." Of course, the mayor had heard about the anniversary broadcast and wanted some "input." He wanted to be sure that Rory would mention Gainesville, she assumed. He came on-line.

"Mr. Southeby. "Input'?"

He showed a professional number of teeth. "Rory. I just heard about your shooting schedule and wanted—"

"Hold it. You know my schedule and I don't?"

"The camera crew was just here," he said, a little defensive. "They were headed for you next."

"That's wonderful. They were supposed to call." On cue, the call-waiting icon strobed in the corner of the screen. "That's probably them. Talk to you later, Cameron." She punched control-#, to record.

It was Chancellor Barrett, his face all grim furrows. "Rory. Do you remember a young man named Ybor Lopez?"

"As in Ybor City? Sounds vaguely familiar."

"He used to work in Deedee's office."

"Used to ... is he the one who got arrested last month?"

"That's right; data crime. He was nosing through your files, among others. He hasn't been in touch with you, then, since his arrest?"

"Not that I recall. He might have tried—I probably have five or ten people call this number for every one that gets through. I could have someone check the log."

"That would be fine ... um ... the police might be bothering you about this; they just called me. Lopez died in jail this morning, under suspicious circumstances."

"Oh, that's a pity. For a computer crime?"

"I don't know any details. Just thought I'd give you some advance warning."

"Thanks." All we need is a bunch of cops rubbing shoulders with the reporters. "I'll let you know if anything happens. Buenos dias."

Chancellor Barrett

" Buenos." She broke the connection. Busy woman, that cube thing coming up tonight.

There was a maddening lack of information here. Before calling Deedee, he did a quick mental review of what had happened a month before:

He'd come back from that damned meeting, having asked Deedee to use Lopez to snoop on Aurora Bell. He was straightening up before lunch and a bright red flag came up on his screen: a security compromise warning. It said that Ybor Lopez was grinding away at the encryptation of personnel files. So he didn't have as much jaquismoas Deedee had given him credit for.

Although he would have preferred to let Ybor toil away undisturbed, the cat was out of the bag, whatever that actually meant. So he called in a warrant request and said he'd meet the arresting officer down at the physics building.

Then the screwup with the stunning dart. He'd managed to pocket the ejected data crystal. The sergeant saw but shrugged it off.

There was nothing much on the crystal but universes of data about Deedee and Bell. For some reason, Lopez had been pursuing details about a garage door Bell had bought. If they'd come in a few minutes later, there might have been something interesting there. Lopez hadn't gone off in that odd direction for no reason.

He tried to visualize the Bells' garage door. Nothing unusual.

Barrett put his anachronistic glasses down and rubbed his eyes. Had he indirectly murdered this young man by asking Deedee to check up on Bell? He'd only talked to Deedee about it once, right after the arrest. Lopez hadn't had a chance to tell her anything.

His personal line chimed and he swatted the button. It was Deedee, her eyes red and streaming with tears.

Deedee

"My God, Mai. What have we done?"

"The police talked to you, too?"

"No—it's on the goddamned news.Somebody murdered him."

"What? The cop said—"

"Drug overdose; that's what the news said. But you can't overdose on a DD like Jose y Maria, and people who are on it don't takeother drugs. They don't work ... "

"But why would anybody want to kill him? Just a hacker who wasn't as good as he thought he was."

"I don't know. Maybe he was hacking for someone besides me, besides us. And he found out something dangerous."

"Yeah. I doubt it was Rory Bell."

"The damned drug mighthave been involved. You don't buy it at Eckerd's." She blotted her eyes with a tissue. "If he had a source in jail, they could have killed him easily by putting poison in his dose."

"So maybe they were oversimplifying for the press, when they said overdose."

"Or covering up. If he was getting it in jail, he was probably getting it from the police."

Malachi winced. "Deedee! Maybe we shouldn't talk about such matters over the phone. Can I meet you somewhere?"

She looked at the clock. Lecture in ninety minutes, but she could do it in her sleep. "Down at the mercado? The coffee end? As soon as you can get there."

"I'll be right over." His image faded to black. She hung up and turned off the privacy shield and looked around; nobody else in the office. She got the makeup kit out of her purse and worked on her eyes and sharpened up the tattoo. It would take Mai ten minutes to huff and puff his way to the mercado.

Somewhat fixed, she grabbed a sun hat and her lecture notes and went down the hall to the stairs. A little exercise, not using the elevator, and smaller probability of running into someone.

It was already hot and muggy, under a sky like polished metal. She remembered a New York childhood when sometimes it would have snowed in October, at least by Halloween. But New York was hotter now, too. Her parents' weekend place on Long Island under water for the past decade.

She got an iced coffee from a black kid wearing an Italian peasant outfit, and sat at a picnic table in the shade, pretending to study her notes.

Poor Ybor. She already hated herself for having set him up for jail. And he'd been loyal during the trial, not implicating her. Had he kept that silence in jail? Did the people who killed him know that she was an accomplice?

Accomplice, hell. She was the criminal, and Ybor was just a convenient tool. Or she and Malachi shared the guilt; didn't he start it?

He sat down heavily across from her, mopping the back of his neck and his various chins.

"No hat, Mai?"

"Forgot it till I was outside. So it couldn't have been an overdose?"

"No; that's impossible with bioreflexive DDs. If you shot yourself up ten times, the effect would be the same intensity and duration as one dose. I suppose your penis would hurt more."

He made a face. "I asked for a copy of the police report. That's legitimate. We're still his employer of record. But I doubt it will have anything of interest."

"Better hope it doesn't. Anything of interest probably would point back to us. Or at least to me."

"It might be me as well. During the confusion of the arrest, I picked up the crystal he'd been working on. The policeman saw me do it, or do something, and asked about it later. I sort of bulled my way through it. But if that was on his report, they might come around asking questions."

"Probably not. A prison drug death, they probably just cleaned out his cell for the next guy, and closed his file. Could you read the crystal?"

Malachi nodded and wiped his face with the damp white handkerchief. "You're on there as well as Aurora. Did you ask him to do that?"

"No." That was interesting. "I suppose he was trying to find something on me, for future use. Did he?"

"Oh, I didn't read through it," he said slowly. "The file on Aurora is ten times as big; it took me a week of evenings. Nothing there, as far as I can see."

"You might not be devious enough. Let me see a copy." |

He brought a cube from a side pocket and set it between them. "Take the original. I don't have any use for it."

She rolled the crystal between her thumb and forefinger. "I think this is where we vow not to betray one another."

"I trust you, Deedee."

"A good thing, too." She removed her sunglasses and looked straight into his eyes. "I could hang your ass so high ... "

"Is the coffee good?"

Deedee turned around, startled. It was that crazy woman who pushed the grocery cart around. "Yes. Yes, it's good."

"I'm sorry someone died." She leaned into the cart and rattled past. "Get my coffee, too."

Suzy Q.

Funny how you can always tell, somebody died and they both feel guilty. He's some bigwig, I seen him give speeches. She's a teacher and real serious about it. Wonder if they killed somebody like I killed Jack. Who would they both not like enough to do that? Maybe they're in love and it was her husband or his wife, or both—Where would you put the bodies nowadays? With that new mall over the swamp. On top of old Jack, him lying there looking up the little girls' dresses while they walk over him, and he can't do a damn thing about it.

That's a nice thought, him all bones but still can see. And a bone down there but no juice to go with it. He who lives by the bone shall die by the bone, or the frying pan. That was a mess on the rug, good thing we had so many cats.

Maybe he couldn't see so good, his eyes hanging out like that. I remember when I drag him from the trunk of the Chevy into the swamp, I almost turn him over so he look down into hell, then thought no, make him look up at God and Jesus and Mary. Now he looks up the dresses of little girls. That's funny. And here comes my favorite little girl, with her coffee and bread for me.

Sara

"Here you go, Suzy Q. Sweet stuff today; a couple of almond rolls left over."

"You sweet stuff you'self. Thank you kindly." She carefully lined up the rolls and coffee on the cart's fold-out shelf.

She was wearing several layers of clothes in the gathering heat, her face red and sweating. "You don't have to wear all that, do you, Suzy Q.? You look so hot."

She nodded. "I don' mind being hot, and it keep the rays out. Came down here to get hot, but that was before the rays. Don't want the cancer."

Sara adjusted her hat. "That's a point."

"You know," she went on, "I could leave the extra clothes somewhere, and nobody would take them. I know that, even though the town's full of murderers, but the problem is, I might not remember where I put them. Come winter I'd get awful cold."

"It's already November, Suzy Q. It doesn't get real cold anymore."

She laughed, a nasal wheeze. "That's what they say, all right. You watch out, though." She took a sip of coffee and pushed on. "Watch out for them murderers."

Always good advice, Sara thought, watching her rattle away, waiting for her to say it. She stopped and turned. "You know it snowed the day I was born?"

"No kidding!" Suzy Q. nodded slowly and pushed on. Sara went back into the place.

Jose was cross-slicing onions. "That's probably enough. It's too damn hot." The onion flowers really sold when it cooled off. This year, it looked like the aliens would get here before winter did.

And here comes Senor Alien himself, resident alien, Pepe Parker. "What'll it be, Pepe?"

" Cafe con leche, por favor." He sat down at the bar. "And a date, if you dance."

"What?"

"New club opening in Alachua tonight. Old stuff—tango, samba. New club, new girl, what do you say?"

She smiled and put a cup of milk in the microwave.

"Pepe, I haven't danced in years. I had an accident, and I'm still an operation away from the dance floor." The bell rang and she took the milk out. "Thanks for asking, though."

"Professor Bell told me about that ... horrible thing. They ever catch who did it?"

"No." She stirred a heaping spoon of Bustelo into the cup and brought it over with the sugar. "I think I know. But I could never prove it."

" Gracias. Who?"

She looked around. The two customers had left and Jose was buried in his tabloid. She lowered her voice. "You're no Boy Scout, are you, Pepe? I mean, you know how the world works."

"As much as anybody, 1 suppose."

"We have to pay protection, to keep the cafe from getting gang-banged. Is that shocking?"

"No. Sad, but no."

"There's a slimeball comes in here at noon today, every first of the month, to pick up his five hundred bucks. He calls himself 'Mr. Smith,' but everybody knows he's Willy Joe Capra."

"He did it?"

She nodded. "Or at least knows who did it. He's made that pretty clear."

"And you can't go to the police?"

She shook her head wordlessly for a moment, and then knuckled at tears, her mouth in a tight scowl.

Pepe

He handed her the napkin that she'd just handed him. "The bastard."

She pressed it to her eyes. "I, maybe I should. But what I'm afraid of, I go to the police, they pick him up, he gets off. And a week or a month or a year later, I'll have another accident. During which, Willy Joe will be in church or talking to the Lions Club or something."

"The devil never forgets a face. People like him eventually get what they deserve."

"No." She balled up the napkin and stuck it in her pocket. "This is the real world, remember?"

Pepe poured sugar into his coffee and stirred it slowly. "Nothing people like you or me could do. Shoot the bastard, we wind up choosing the door."

"Instead of getting a medal." She wiped the clean counter in front of him. "You want something to eat with that?"

"No, thanks. Just had breakfast." He'd skipped it, actually, needing to lose a few pounds. He only had one suitcase of clothes, and wanted them to last another couple of months. The kilt and trousers were getting tight around the waist, and suspenders had gone out of fashion last year.

He drank the coffee fast enough to get a little buzz. It would be nice if he could do something about this Willy Joe character.

He allowed himself an adolescent fantasy about Sara's gratitude. But that sort of thing wasn't really in his job description.

He put a ten under the saucer and waved adiosto Sara and her partner. Not for the first time, he wondered whether they had something going. Their mutual affection was obvious.

Her body would be unusual. But that could be an attraction.

In that erotic frame of mind, he stepped out of the cafe and stopped dead in his tracks, paralyzed by a woman. She was dressed like any other student, jeans and halter and sun hat. But she had a classic chiseled beauty and perfect carriage, and she radiated sex.

Gabrielle

It barely registered that the handsome Cuban took one look at her and stood like a deer caught in headlights. Whenever she walked through campus she was caressed by eyes. Did any of them ever recognize her from the films? Not likely. She'd only had face parts twice.

She hated physics, but couldn't put it off any longer. She had to take a chemistry elective next semester, and the only ones she could take required physics.

So they were doing fluid dynamics today. A doctor does need to know about fluids. In her other persona, she knew plenty about them. Semen stings your eyes and makes your eyelashes look as if semen has dried on them. But it was better than the fake stuff Harry sometimes squirted on her. Soap solution and glycerine and some white powder. It stung the eyes even worse, and made you smell like a cheap whorehouse.

That was one of her father's favorite observations: You smell like a cheap whorehouse. Just before she left home, she was able to make the obvious rejoinder: You would know, Dad, wouldn't you? Someday she'd have to find a cheap whorehouse and go in for a sniff.

One nice thing about physics was the building, air-conditioned to the max. She went through the door and it was like walking into a refrigerator. She put her books and hat down on a table and patted the sweat from her face and hair with a handkerchief.

A carefully beautiful woman walked in and gave her a familiar look: appraisal, hostility, neutrality. Blue cancer tattoo on her cheek, Dr. Whittier.

Deedee

"Oh, hi. You're in 101."

The beautiful girl nodded. "Gabrielle Campins."

She put the name and the face together. Pre-med, having trouble with the math. "See you there."

Trying to act normal just after learning you killed a man. Killed him by blackmailing him into illegal activity. Directed against a friend and colleague.

The door to Rory's office was open. On impulse, she tapped and stepped through the little entryway. Rory looked up from a journal.

"Hi, Rory. You ready for His Holiness?"

Aurora

"His ass-holiness. Ready as I'll ever be." They had a meeting with Reverend Kale and some of his minions tomorrow. "I heard about Ybor Lopez. I'm sorry."

Deedee trembled for a moment and a chill ran down her back.

Could there have been something between them? The phone chimed, saved by the bell.

"Gotta teach," Deedee said, voice quavering. "See you later."

" Hasta luego." She picked up the phone.

It was Marya Washington. Could they come by in twenty or thirty minutes? Rory said sure, and put the "Do Not Disturb the Bitch" sign on her office door. How much of an article could she read in twenty minutes?

She actually got through the first page of an Astrophysical Reviewarticle by a friend at Texas, who had found a consistent correlation between galactic latitude and duration of one class of short-term gamma-ray bursters. That could imply local origin; at least not extragalactic. Or hopeful mathematics, anyhow.

Security called up and she took the sign off her door, and ushered in the young woman and her "crew," one man shepherding three cameras. "So welcome to Gainesville, Marya. How's New York?"

"God, don't ask. It's a miracle we got out." A two-day blizzard had just stopped. "We were able to get an old chopper into JFK this morning. Otherwise we'd still be in traffic. If you can call something 'traffic' that doesn't move."

The cameraman suggested where to place the cameras and Marya nodded. "I know there aren't any revelations," she said, "but do you have anything new? Or that I can pretend is new?"

"Any time now," the cameraman said. "Just be natural, ma'am; we'll edit later."

"Well, Marya ... this isn't newexactly; it's from last week. But I'm not sure anybody got the whole story."

"You mean the bounce-back from the thing."

"Exactly." How to phrase this diplomatically? "You reported it, and so did others. But it was more important than you gave it credit for being."

She smiled. "Okay. Words of one syllable?"

"We sent them a message and they sent it back. Can I say 'message'?"

"So far so good.'

"It came back with absolutely no distortion. We couldn't do that. Period."

Marya shut her eyes and pinched the bridge of her nose. "Yeah, right. I remember." She waggled a hand in front of one of the cameras. "Off the record, Rory, we couldn't really punch that up."

"They intercepted a signal that was 'way blue-shifted, in a relativistically accelerated frame of reference. They recorded it and re-broadcast it with exactly compensating distortion. The signal we got back was absolutelythe same as the one we'd sent."

Marya laughed and shook her head. "Jesus, Rory. Would you come join the world for a minute? The real world?"

"Okay." Rory smiled, too. "So you couldn't 'punch it up.' "

"Look. It's worse than that. We have to think of counterstory. We run your version and three out of six tabloids are on us like clothes from Kmart. 'We got exactly the same signal.' So where do you think they'll say it came from? Outer space?"

"Of course it came from outer space."

"No way in hell. It came from you."

"What?"

"You're trying to stay in the spotlight. So you generate a story."

"God, can you fear yourself? That's so ridiculous."

"It's not, Dr. Bell," the cameraman said. "People want to think conspiracy. Want to be on the inside. You can sell any goddamn thing if it's against the establishment."

" I'mthe establishment?"

"You're authority," Marya said. "Bobby's right. Best way for you to get that story out would have been to let somebody else announce it and you hotly deny it."

Rory realized she was standing, and sat down. "It's so Alice in Wonderland.So what do we do?"

"Just what we've done here. We didn't punch it up, so when we repeat it next week, it's backstory. It's routine, so it must be true."

"That'swhen people point out how important it is," Bobby said. "Do it all the time, in politics."

"As if I, or we, didn't understand how important it was at the time."

"You don't have to go that far," Marya said. "Just don't punch it up for now, and later it'll look like you've been cautious. Conservative."

"Okay. You're the boss."

Marya smiled and nodded to the cameraman. "Good evening. It's exactly one month since the discovery of the Coming, and so we've left the blizzards of New York to revisit Dr. Aurora Bell at the University of Florida ... "

Marya

The interview went pretty well, though they had to ask Rory to repeat some things in simpler and simpler terms. They got out by ten, though; only fifteen minutes later than they'd expected.

And about two minutes late on the parking meter. Marya saw the big white tow truck from half a block away, checked her watch, and broke into a run.

It was a heavy-duty floater with a bed big enough to hold a large passenger car. It could park parallel to a car and, using a kind of built-in forklift, pick it straight up and haul it aboard in no time.

Marya got to him just as he was raising the car. He was a young black man. Her intuition weighed charm versus indignation as she ran up to the driver's-side window. "I'm sorry, mister. I got held up just a minute or two."

The man looked down at her wearily. "You're gonna get held up, you oughta park on campus. Park on the street and I get the call soon as your time's up, automatically. You didn't know that."

"No. I'm from New York."

"Well, enjoy the sunshine. You can pick up your car at the police lot anytime after twelve. Bring four hundred bucks and be prepared to spend a couple hours."

"Oh." She smiled. "The press card on the windshield doesn't ... "

He gave a little start of recognition. "No, Miz Washington. Nobody escapes the wrath of the Gainesville Police Department."

The cameraman had caught up with her. "Couldn't we just pay the fine here, and be on our way?"

"What, is that the way they do it in New York?"

"No," he said. "In New York we pay a little extra."

"Like five instead of four," Marya said. She folded up a single bill and offered it.

The driver looked up and down the street, and then pushed forward on a big lever between the seats, and the car eased back down to the ground. He took the bill and slipped it into his shirt pocket.

He picked up a wand from the dashboard. "Give me dispatch."

Rabin

Sergeant Rabin walked up to the dispatcher's desk. The woman was grinning and shaking her head while she talked. "Yeah, some of those meters. It's a crime. Hasta luego." She took off her headset and tossed it on the desk. "Those tow-truck guys make more than the mayor."

"You know it. Got a gun for me?"

"Down here." She opened a drawer and lifted out a white box labeled evidence. "What's the story?"

He opened the box and took out the pistol. "Murder weapon, probably. Tossed in Lake Alice." Bright chrome revolver, maybe fifty years old. "Some kids in a biology class saw it in the shallows and fished it out."

He pointed at the short barrel, a duller metal, slightly rusted. "This is cute. Forensics says it's a homemade barrel, smooth bore, a little bigger than the .44 Magnum bullet."

"So you couldn't trace it?"

"Maybe, but it doesn't make sense. We find a .44 bullet in somebody that doesn't show any trace of rifling, we know it came from this gun."

"Have a body?"

"Not yet. But this thing wasn't in the water more than a day or two. So we're looking."

" Buena suerte."

"Yeah. Meanwhile, I get to take this around to the local dealers and pawnshops, see if anyone says, "Oh, sure, I sold that to John Smith last week.' "

"Sounds like a fun job."

"I think 'shit job' is the technical term. But maybe I can do some Christmas shopping in the pawnshop. Buy the kids a couple of matching pistols."

"Start 'em out right." Rabin had four-year-old twin daughters. The phone rang and he waved good-bye.

There were two pawnshops just a few blocks down Sixth, so he decided to leave the squad car and walk. Get lunch down there, too.