The Return of Triton
Page 6
you’ll ever see him again,” she said, like a criminal sticking to an idiotic, if unbreakable, alibi, although she may have been right on that account. Danny hadn’t seen Hermann in quite a while already and Hermann had seemed to be staying pretty dead. But ooh that Hermann. “You’re lying,” she said then. “Five different people? Nonsense.”
“Grace, if I know anything, I know lines. What are finger prints but curvy lines? Geometric clues. I bet we find five more people if we look at his other hand. And you arranged for him to come here. Spill.”
“Oh, oh no. I did nothing of the sort.”
“She struck me as surprised when I mentioned it, too,” said Hjalmar. “I don’t think she knew.” Danny looked at Hjalmar as if he didn’t recognize him. “Law of inconceivability, right?” asked Hjalmar. Oh yes, now Danny recognized him.
“You are such imbeciles,” Grace bemoaned, bending at the knees.
“You’re here per my proof,” said Danny. “Prove it not!”
|m|*
As luck might have had it, one of the fingerprints belonged to Emilee Spo. “So that’s what happened to it,” Em said amusedly. “I never even missed it. No worries, I have nine more.”
“Do you really?” asked Danny.
Grace hadn’t given up information on Triton, didn’t even have much, and more defiantly was left challenged and to grouse over proving where she wasn’t, which she wasn’t inclined to do. That was Pete Strand territory and Danny turned to him for a first look-see to see if he could look and locate Emilee. He had the time, he had the budget, and Danny had a feeling Mulligan’s had her.
Emilee came forward on her own soon enough, too soon for Pete to find her, on day seven when Triton was finally up and at ‘em and out of there, leaving behind a bed-full of dust. He hadn’t fully slept seven days, but he lolled around his room when he wasn’t fully sleeping, if lolled was the word for it.
Danny was waiting for Emilee, as he had Grace, but he didn’t arrive until it was time for Triton to leave, thinking Emilee might wait until the last minute. Had Emilee showed up earlier Hjalmar would have called him. That’s what you call planning.
“I heard you were looking for me,” she said to Danny when Danny introduced himself.
“How could that be?” he asked. He knew Pete wasn’t enough of a bungler to have revealed he was searching for her, let alone Danny’s interest. Not that quickly.
“You ask around about me, I ask around about you,” she said. That argument may not have held water, but it was symmetrical. “You’re curious about Triton, and ordinarily I wouldn’t talk about him, but you’re you and Grace is back on don’t-be status with Mulligan’s. She is such a bad girl. One can’t help but dish, it’s understood and expected.” Emilee cast a glance at the empty, unmade bed. “He is gone?”
“Nothing but dust,” said Danny. “Was he even here?”
“I don’t know. I came to find out. I never knew him to be more than rumor.”
“So tell me about this Triton,” said Danny. “What’s the rumor?”
“Tell you what? I’m not going to tell you everything, but I might tell you anything. Depends how you ask.”
Danny reflectively scratched his head. “Is he human?”
“What? I don’t know. What’s a rumor supposed to be?”
“What the hell?”
“It would seem he has finger prints.”
“Yours.”
“I’m human.” Danny didn’t reply immediately and seemed to be boiling up something nasty to say, so Emilee struck first. “To my way of thinking he’s a personification of a time piece that traveled far and fast. We all know how that goes.”
“What the hell is that supposed to mean?” asked Danny, but he liked the idea by the time he finished his question.
“He’s like something from the passed . . . ,” Emilee started, and stopped. “I shouldn’t tell you so much. I’ll finish this thought but you have to do something for me.”
“Oh?” asked Danny. If Emilee was even just half as smart as Grace she could come up with a doozy of a request.
“Lose those finger prints and forget about them.” So maybe she was two-fifths as smart.
“I could lose them,” said Danny. He had no plans for them, no one he was going confer with about them, at least not anyone he already hadn’t. “Forgetting could be problematic. Do-able, but not isolate-able.”
“Hmm. Well, your saying it that way tells me you know what you’re talking about. Just do what you can.”
“I always do,” he said, “right along with what I will.”
Emilee’s eyes narrowed. The dust. If Danny had enough awareness of where-ness and who-ness to check Triton’s finger prints, he would have checked out his dust. “And the dust?”
“What?” said Danny, with a bright smile. “What’s it going to be? Lose the finger prints or tell you about the dust?”
“You can suck on that dust all you like, for as long as you can,” said Emilee, smiling back. “What do you know about NO and GO?”
“Oh?”
“Oh?”
“Oh.”
“Okay with the oh’s already. It so seems we’ve found an open seam of some sort to communicate across. Talk to me.”
Danny only smiled tightly. Seems a certain seam was not so much open as already sewn together.
|
v
-- > STOP < --
^
|