Alan Dean Foster

  She stared back at him. "That's right. Not much point in denying it, not with my face plastered all over the front of the building."

  "We are with the Los Angeles Police Department."

  She responded with a strange whistling noise. "Gee, I never would've guessed. You both hide it so well."

  Francisco took her sarcasm in stride. It was nothing compared to dealing with Sykes. "This is Detective Sykes, and I am..."

  A look of astonishment crossed her exquisite face before she burst out laughing. "Ss'ai k'ss? Perfect."

  It was Sykes's turn to ignore her comment. "We're looking for your boss, Strader, Not much point in denying who he is, either."

  Her eyes flicked rapidly from the human detective back to his Newcomer partner. Then she shrugged and turned, assuming correctly they would follow.

  The backstage corridor was narrow and unpainted. Cassandra spoke as she led them up the narrow passageway. "Of course he's my boss, but if you're looking to talk to him you're out of luck. He's not here. Why ask me about him, anyway? He just signs my checks. He doesn't keep me posted on his personal itinerary."

  Francisco spoke up. "The young woman at the front said you might know where he is."

  "Did she? Well, she was wrong. That's Mandy. She's wrong a lot of the time, even more so than your usual human female. Now if the two of you will excuse me, I have to change for the next show."

  "No problem," Sykes said casually. "Shouldn't take very long if your new costume's as small as the last one."

  She smiled sardonically, pushed through a door. Sykes followed too closely for her to shut and lock it. Francisco was right behind him.

  It wasn't much of a dressing room and it was anything but private. There were half a dozen stalls, each with light-lined miffor and stool.

  Cassandra grabbed a handful of clothes from a rack and went into one of the empty stalls.

  "Look," Sykes told her as he tried to see around the curtain, "we're not here doing an interview for the school paper. This is a homicide investigation. You're not under suspicion, you're not involved, so why not be nice and cooperate? You've got nothing at risk."

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  " If I'm not under suspicion," she replied from behind the curtain, "then I've got nothing at risk by telling you shit. "

  "On the other hand," Sykes said less politely, "if you don't stop jerkin'

  us around on your boss's whereabouts, I'm ready to start playin'

  hardball. Just because you're not under suspicion now doesn't mean that can't change in the future. In fact, I feel myself gettin' a little suspicious right now. "

  Francisco stood quietly by the door. Sykes motioned silently for him to have a look around while Cassandra was occupied changing clothes. The gesture was wasted on the detective, who responded with a look of anxious bafflement. Sykes grimaced, found himself peering at the stall. The curtain didn't close tightly.

  "Oooh. Hardball," she whispered huskily. A flimsy halter flipped over the curtain rod like a glitter-coated bird settling on its perch. "That sounds interesting. Are you going to strike me? You'd be surprised how similar many of our less-publicized tastes are. You could tie me up and do whatever you want with me. I've got my own ropes. Or you could use your handcuffs. Real police handcuffs. That would be exciting. I think they would fit my wrists. Wouldn't it be fun finding out what fits and what doesn't?"

  Sykes replied while still miming frantically at his partner. "Does that cost extra or do you throw the ropes in free?"

  "You've got me all wrong. I'm a dancer and that's all. I don't charge money for something I myself find pleasurable. What a peculiar concept!

  But you humans are full of many such alien notions."

  That made Sykes think. He'd never considered himself alien, but realized that was how the Newcomer must view all humanity. They were the nonnal ones. The innumerable little ss'loka's were the ones who were strange and abnormal.

  Francisco finally got the idea. He replied much too loudly, in the stagey, uncertain voice of a bad actor. "I am going out to the car. I will meet you there."

  Sykes winced as he watched his partner exit into the corridor, but now wasn't the time for a lecture on believabil-99

  ity. Besides which, Cassandra was just emerging from her stall, having completed her change. She wore a long, stylish low-cut dress that revealed plenty of her spectacular figure. From the neck down it was impossible to tell her from a human--on the outside, anyway. Sykes raised his gaze with an effort, knowing she had to be aware of the effect she was having on him.

  She confirmed his thoughts, cooing, "Why, Detective Sykes, is this part of normal police procedure?"

  "Can it. We're just here for information.-

  She sighed and let loose with an elaborate shrug, all sliding movement, that sent his blood pressure up fifteen points. "Look, I'm sorry, but I don't know where Mr. Strader is. He comes and he goes - I just do my routines and pick up my check each week and go home. I'm not interested in what he does when he's not around to watch. If he has a special lady he confides in, it's someone other than me. I I Sykes's eyes kept trying to fall from her face and he had to fight to keep them level with hers. It was a development he hadn't anticipated and it was making him acutely uncomfortable.. He wished now he hadn't sent Francisco out searching. It was warmer in the room than when they'd entered.

  "The girl out front mentioned Strader's assistant, somebody named Watson.

  Maybe he'd know."

  She tensed unexpectedly. You couldn't miss the reaction, and Sykes didn't. He was instantly on alert.

  "Mandy loves to babble, doesn't she? The trouble is, she never has anything to say. That would be Todd. Todd doesn't know where Mr. Strader is, either."

  "Now how would you know that?"

  "Because Mr. Strader is a very private person." She'd moved closer, now reached for him with a long arm. Her fingers worked the lapel of his coat. "I know what. Why don't you hang around for a while and let me entertain you? There are a lot of things I'd like to learn about men and I'm sure you could think of one or two questions to ask me, if you can stop being so professional for a couple of minutes.

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  Can you do that, Detective Sykes? Ten minutes? Five? If you can forget who you are for five minutes, I guarantee I can make you forget everything else."

  He should have stepped back, should have pushed her hand away, but there was too much body too close, too much heat in the cramped dressing room, and maybe he was just a tad too curious. Her eyes gleamed.

  She grabbed the other lapel with her free hand. Now he would have had a hard time retreating if he'd wanted to. He didn't want to.

  "Now tell me the truth," she purred. He said nothing, losing himself in those faraway eyes- "Have you ever made it with one of us?"

  Sykes swallowed hard. "Not unless I got real drunk and nobody told me about it afterward."

  She threw back her head and laughed. "That answers my question, because if you had, nobody would've had to remind you. You would've remembered." She was staring at him hungrily. "A virgin. I find that very arousing. Do you know what one of us is capable of when we're really aroused'?"

  He tried to take a step backward, discovered he could not. Or maybe he didn't try all that hard.

  Francisco could move very quietly despite his bulk. It was a useful talent he'd discovered early in his police training and one which he cultivated assiduously. It was not a particular Newcomer trait. Plenty of his people were awkward and clumsy in their movements.

  He'd made it up to the second floor without being seen. Now he walked softly up the corridor, taking in everything, keeping an eye on the shadows behind him. Music filtered up through the floor from the stage somewhere below, occasionally interrupted by enthusiastic shouts or hoots of delight.

  He ignored it, listening for voices and footsteps. There were none. To all outward appearances this floor was deserted.

  He put massive fingers around a door knob and twisted, found it locked.
r />   Letting it slip quietly back to its original 101

  position, he continued down the hall and tried the next one. This time the door opened to his touch. He eased it open a few inches and peered into the darkened room beyond. Entering, fie was careful to close the door quietly behind him.

  A human would immediately have bumped into the furniture. Francisco had no such problem in the dim light, finding his way without trouble around chairs and a filing cabinet. He was in an office. A desk sat off to the right, near a shaded side window. The blotter atop the plastic was buried beneath papers and small notebooks. The detective started riffling through the pile, careful to place each paper and booklet back exactly where he'd found it.

  It was all very commonplace: letters of application from prospective employees, resumes from dancers looking for work, customer complaint forms, order sheets, business forms. He finished and started to leave when he spotted something sticking out from beneath a pile of computer paper. It was inconspicuous, but something about the shape piqued his curiosity.

  Picking it up, he saw that it was a small plastic container, a thumb-operated dispenser of some kind. After examining it intently, he popped the top and studied the interior. It contained a trace of some dark, viscous substance. There was barely enough left to stain his finger.

  Bringing it cautiously to his nose, he inhaled deeply. The sample was so tiny it was impossible to tell for sure what it might have been. But coupled with the type of container it had come from, it aroused his suspicions about what it could be.

  He stood silently in the darkened office where no one could see the concern and worry on his face. Or the fear.

  Cassandra was as close to Sykes as she could get without being inside his shirt. One hand pressed against the small of his back. She was using the other to guide his imprisoned fingers over her facial ridges, shuddering with delight as cohtact was made with sensitive nerve points. Though it 102

  was comfortably cool in the dressing room, Sykes found himself starting to perspire.

  "There're a lot of things I haven't done," he heard himself mumbling feebly, "but this ain't high on my list. Don't take it personally. At heart I'm just a conservative kind of guy. -

  "I don't believe you," she whispered softly. "I think you're just a little scared right now, about what you might find once the I ights go out. A little scared, and a lot curious. Aren't police made detectives because they're the curious type'? Maybe you're more curious than you want to admit to yourself. I can understand that. But doesn't that turn you on a little, all that curiosity and wonder swishing around inside you together? I know it does me - - Her lips were close to his ear now. "Just relax and let it happen. Think of it as broadening your horizons."

  He struggled in her grasp. "I like my horizons narrow, thanks. Easier to keep track of where you're going that way.-

  She kept pressing herself into him. "Your voice is saying no, but your body is saying yes. -

  Finally he managed to give her a serious push and disengage himself. "My voice, body, and everything else is saying I'll be back in two hours looking for Strader, and he damn well better be here."

  He fumbled with his wallet until he located a business card and shoved it toward her. She took it indifferently, obviously diKtppointed.

  "You're making a big mistake," she told him.

  "Yeah, that's the story of my life. One big mistake after another." He left the dressing room with as much decorum as possible.

  Once safely outside he paused to take a long, deep breath, closing his eyes and standing motionless for half a minute. Then he blinked and headed up the hallway.

  Behind him, Cassandra's disappointed look gave way to one of concern. She studied the card Sykes had passed her before turning and hurrying to the wall phone. It doubled as

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  an intercom, and that was the half of the device she activated.

  Francisco was looking through a cabinet when he heard the intercom buzz in the room next to the office he was searching. The walls were thin, the building having been repeatedly and inefficiently subdivided during the previous twenty years of its existence. Walking over to the wall, he pressed his head to the wood and found he could hear the conversation on the other side clearly. Meanwhile he blessed the inventor of speakerphones, who enabled him to overhear both ends of the conversation.

  A male voice answering: "Yes?"

  Then a woman replying, her voice distorted by the speakerphone but still unmistakably that of the exotic dancer they'd just been interviewing.

  "Todd, it's me." Francisco thought she sounded worried. "The police were just here, looking for Strader. And asking about you."

  Amazing, Francisco mused, how rapidly connections could be made with the aid of one little overheard conversation, just a couple of sentences. He drew his gun as he edged along the wall toward the door that led to the adjoining office. The floorboards were warped with age and squeaked despite his caution. fie kept moving.

  The connecting door was unlocked. He found himself torn between the need to move fast and the need to move quietly. The door opened silently to his touch and he peered through the gap.

  The next office was much more elaborately decorated than the one he'd been searching. Obviously this was the owner or manager's inner sanctum. The speakerphone sat on the desk, next to a small flexiamp. A cigarette smoked in an ostentatious crystal ashtray. But the chair behind the desk was unoccupied. Either the room's occupant had already fled, or he'd gone through still another connecting door on the far side of the room from the one Francisco was peering through. A bathroom, perhaps. The detective opened the door wider and stepped into the room.

  The chair that hit him did not break. It was solid, heavy, 104

  and connected with his shoulder and the side of his head. Francisco went down hard, the gun slipping from his grasp to go skittering across the carpet.

  He was down, but not out. Dazed, he rolled instinctively away from the blow, as he'd been taught to do at the Academy, trying to put space between himself and his assailant. Warm weight landed on his side and a fist struck him hard in the face. He turned, trying to fight while shielding his eyes, his vision blurring. He might lose, but he'd damn well get a good look at his attacker.

  Whoever had ambushed him was strong but not particularly skilled at fighting. If he could hang on to consciousness until he recovered a little, he might get in a strike to a vulnerable area. At the same time he became aware that his assailant was no longer trying to hit him as much as he was attempting to disengage so he could reach the .38 which lay on the carpet a few yards away. Francisco absorbed one punch and kick after another while clinging determinedly to his opponent.

  Sykes was prowling the second-floor corridor in search of his partner when he heard the sounds of fighting from behind the closed door on his left. When he tried the knob and found it locked he didn't waste time requesting admittance. There wasn't much room in the hall to get up speed, but he managed. The lock gave on the third try and the door flew inward. He had the Casull out and aimed before he came to a complete stop.

  "FREEZE! NOW!"

  The individual atop Francisco complied, his frightened gaze taking in Sykes and the big handgun simultaneously. He was battered and breathing hard, but still in control. Now he rose slowly, hands in the air, keeping his eyes on the muzzle of the small cannon Sykes held firmly in his grasp. Francisco caught his breath and staggered to his feet.

  Something hot and heavy hit Sykes from behind, knocking him sideways.

  Perfume and flesh: Cassandra. Sykes fought to recover his balance.

  Seizing the opportunity, Watson gave the off-balance and 105

  still dazed Francisco a shove that sent the detective careening into the desk, sending papers flying. He sprinted through the open door and turned up the hallway.

  There was a window at the far end. Wrenching it open, he clambered out onto the fire escape outside. Sykes tried to keep an eye on him while he wrestled with Cassandra.
She wasn't trying to seduce him now, but while she was nearly as strong as he was, she knew little about fighting, and nothing about fighting human males. She kept jabbing him under his right arm, looking frustrated and surprised when he didn't react.

  A disheveled Francisco appeared in the doorway, ready to give chase but ignorant of the path their quarry had taken. Sykes yelled at him while trying to knock Cassandra's legs out from under her.

  "Fire escape! End of the hall!" She hit him in the stomach and he winced as he tried to pin her arms.

  Francisco nodded tersely as he took off up the corridor. The window at the far end was small, but he managed to squeeze through the opening, found himself on a steel platform outside.

  Meanwhile Sykes managed to get one handcuff on Cassandra's wrist, the other around a pipe sticking out of the wall. She was screeching and cursing in her own language as he collected the Casull and rushed off in his partner's wake. He left her with a few parting words.

  "Sony, sweetheart, but you're wasting your breath. It all sounds like a broken boiler to me." He grinned mirthlessly. "What are you so upset about anyway? I thought the idea of being handcuffed was supposed to turn you on?"

  She added something undoubtedly vile and insulting, sounding like a cross between a stiffed hooker and a berserk python.

  Francisco was moving like a runaway eighteen-wheeler as he pounded down the fire escape. He saw Watson reach the lower level, shinny down the bottom ladder, and take off fast toward the parking lot. Muttering under his breath, the detective ignored the ladder and vaulted over the final 106

  railing. He hit the ground hard and the shock went all the way up into his hips. But everything still worked. Shutting out the pain, he took off in pursuit.

  Watson looked back, saw the huge detective closing in on him. He zigzagged desperately through the parked cars. Francisco followed silently, occasionally cutting across rows as he tried to make up ground between them. Once, he vaulted a Corvette's hood, but Watson turned a different direction and he actually lost ground.