Timothy Hallinan - Everything but the Squeal

It took nine of the ten disks I'd bought to copy the contents of Birdie's diskette file. Then, just to make sure, I copied his DOS diskette, which I found in the back of the holder, as well. DOS doesn't take up an entire diskette, and who knew what else he had hidden there? I finished up by labeling all the diskettes. Birdie had just numbered them, one through nine plus DOS, so I copied his system. Then I put back everything I'd touched.

With the diskettes tucked back into the box I'd bought them in, a thick square of cold hard cardboard pressing up against my stomach beneath the belt of my jeans, I went over the office again in search of the secret passkey to the Flash Gordon door. Still no deal. Feeling defeated, I went back out through the front and into the fog of the evening.

L.A. glittered at me like the jewels in the Seven Dwarfs' mine as I drove back west toward the ocean. Somewhere out there, socked away among the semiprecious stones, was Aimee Sorrell. Or maybe not. What had Mrs. Brussels asked me about Jessica? Was she free to travel? Something like that. Travel how far? I wondered. Rio? Japan? Saudi Arabia? The white slave trade, I knew, extended into all the black, brown, yellow, and coffee-colored countries. And into the white countries as well.

Great, I thought as I killed Alice at the foot of my driveway and climbed up the hill, I'd eliminated none of the world's continents except Antarctica. And if anyone lived on Antarctica, it would still be on my list. Good work.

When I opened the door of my house, it was just as I'd left it, only colder. I pulled a sixteen-ounce bottle of Singha out of the refrigerator, and sat down in my only chair, feeling sorry for Aimee, and a little sorry for myself. Coyotes howled in the distance, and I went out onto the deck and howled back. The clouds had cleared briefly and the full moon shone down like a cue for Lon Chaney Jr. to appear and start mumbling. I was absolutely getting a little old for all this, I thought. I'd gone back inside to put the diskettes into the computer when I noticed that the light on the answering machine was blinking. If Eleanor had been in America, or anyplace closer than Nanjing, China, I would have noticed it earlier. I always checked the machine when Eleanor was around.

I pushed the button marked Replay. First came some garbage: a tape-recorded voice asking me whether I had ever thought about gold futures, followed by a kid who asked me if my refrigerator were running. I skipped the part where he (or she) told me that I'd better go out into the street and chase it, and got Mrs. Sorrell's voice.

“Mr. Grist?” it said. “Are you home?” The voice waited, and in the background I could hear horns honking. “If not,” she said, “just listen to me. Stop looking for Aimee. Don't do anything more. Just forget it. Send me a bill. If you have to talk to me about this, don't call at night. And don't do anything , do you hear me? It's all going to be all right. I've paid the ransom, and it's all going to be all right.”

She hung up. I took the plastic box of diskettes out of the front of my pants and tossed it onto the floor, next to the wadded-up motel stationery. So she'd paid the ransom, I thought, knocking back about three inches of Singha. So it's going to be all right.

Somehow, I didn't think so.

“Don't you listen?” she snapped, long-distance from Kansas City. She sounded like Aurora's imitation of an adult talking to a child. “I said that you weren't to do anything.” I'd awakened late, but even in Kansas it was only noon, so it was safe for me to call: the Pork King couldn't be home.

“You paid the ransom,” I said. “What does that mean?”

“It means that I mailed the money. Please, Mr. Grist, just send me a bill and forget about it.”

“Mailed it?” I asked. I was pretty sure that she was speaking English, but to me it didn't make any more cognitive sense than running water. “Mailed it where?”

“To an address he gave me. In Los Angeles. Now, please, leave us alone.”

“Hold it, hold it,” I said. “Park and idle for a minute. He gave you an address ?”

“Yes.”

“In Los Angeles.”

“I believe I just said so.”

“Mrs. Sorrell,” I said. I was developing a headache. “Kidnappers don't give out their addresses.”

“This one did,” she said in the tone of a threatened child. “Ask Aurora.”

“I don't want to ask Aurora. Aurora's a kid and Aimee's her sister. What do you mean, he gave you an address? Was it a he?” I asked, backtracking.

“You heard him on the tape. And when I say he gave me an address, I mean a number and a street and a zip code, all the things that usually make up an address.”

“What is it?”

“I'm not going to tell you that,” she said. “Just send me a bill.”

“How long are you supposed to wait?”

“Four days. Aimee will be home in four days.”

“She won't,” I said, without thinking.

“Oh, yes she will. And listen, you, don't do anything. This is my daughter's life you're fooling around with.” She hung up. When I called back there was no answer. I noodled around with the phone for a few minutes, dialing numbers at random and hanging up when they started to ring. I didn't like any of it, and I needed to do something meaningless while my subconscious sorted it out and came up with something for me to do.

So I didn't have a client anymore. So bill the client. I made out a bill for a few days' work, addressed it, remembered to add the receipts from the Sleep-Eze, and slogged down the unpaved muddy driveway to the mailbox. I raised the red flag to get the attention of my brain-damaged mailman. Then I stuck the letter halfway out and closed the mailbox on it to get a little more of his attention. After twenty years of sizzling his neurons with anything he could buy cheap, his attention needed a lot of getting.

So, there. I'd done something.

The house, as usual, was a mess. I sort of cleaned it, wondering how Eleanor was, all those watery miles away in China. Then I went outside and sort of weeded my root garden. The radishes looked good; you can't discourage a radish. The onions were up, and the potatoes were probably rotting after the cold snap and the rain. I dug one out, and it looked fine. Little, but fine. It wasn't something you could put back, so I went inside and washed and sliced it. Then I fried it in butter for a few minutes and wrapped it into the center of a nice breakfast omelet. Then I threw the omelet away. I hate breakfast.

So now what was I supposed to do? I made some more coffee that I didn't want and sat around, counting my toes through my shoes. When I got to ten for the second time, I remembered that I was scheduled to see Mrs. Brussels at ten, or tennish, or something. I called to cancel.

“We've been trying and trying to reach you at the motel,” Birdie said waspishly. “They said you weren't there.”

“And we're not,” I said. “We're at the Free Clinic. Jewel has the flu.”

“Oh, my God,” Birdie gasped, “and she was in here only yesterday.”

“She's okay,” I said.

“Who cares about her ?” Birdie said. “She was probably absolutely redolent with germs. That's why the flu spreads, you know, because you're most contagious before the symptoms appear. I hope it's not one that dogs can get.”

“In fact,” I said spitefully, “it is. It's called the Bowser flu. It's decimated the canine population of Hong Kong.”

“Oh, heavens. Poor Woofers. I'll have to wear a surgical mask when I get home. That will upset her. She loves to see me smile.”

“Whatever you do, don't smile. This virus coats the surface of the teeth. A smile could be lethal. You'll know she's got it if her tail starts to droop.”