Someplace to Be Flying (43 page)

“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 Cou-teau?”

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. 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 gloom, 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 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?”

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 proteges, 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 onto 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?”

“It’s a confusing subject. Judging by your interest in Dapple’s book, I take it you’re specifically interested in the legends of the crow shapeshifters in the Kickaha Hills?”

“I’m interested in anything I can find out about these animal people. Donna tracked down the title of Professor Dapple’s book for me, so I thought I’d start with it.”

Christy nodded. “It’s a good collection, but it only skims the surface. Most of that sort of thing is still more in the oral tradition-and not simply that of the Kickaha, though theirs is the most thoroughly documented. The problem is, the stories aren’t entirely consistent. There appear to be two main schools of thought here.”

“Which are?”

“Well, Jilly-have you ever met her?”

Lily shook her head. “I’ve just heard you talk about her.”

“I should introduce you to her sometime. Anyway, she’s got a friend named Bones who talks about beings that are part people, part animal. According to him, they originate in the spiritworld-which he says we can visit when we dream. In turn, the spirits visit our world and sometimes inhabit the bodies of people or animals. And sometimes they all get mixed up-people, spirits, animals-and you end up with these odd mythological sorts of creatures. You know, the kind that populate folktales?”

Lily nodded.

“So that’s one take on these beings. But then there’s Jack-you know him, right?”

“Sure,” Lily said. “The storyteller.”

“That’s him. Lives in a school bus on the edge of the Tombs. He says that the animal people were here first-everybody else came later. Regular animals, people, all the trappings of the world. Where exactly these first people came from isn’t so clear, but their existence makes a tidy explanation for the similarity of so much folklore throughout the world, the way certain stories keep turning up in the most unlikely of places, all courtesy of these animal people. He even claims to be one himself.” Christy smiled. “Maybe that’s why he calls himself Jack Daw.”

“So which version is true?” Lily asked.

“I don’t think they’re mutually exclusive. Keep an open mind, I always say. Drives sensible people mad, I know, but what did we ever get from sensible people? Not poetry or art or music, that’s for sure.”

Lily wasn’t so sure she agreed with that. Why couldn’t an artist be both inspired and sensible?

“Anyway,” Christy finished up. “I could probably be of more help if you explained what exactly it is you need to know.”

“I …” Lily could feel her cheeks redden under his curious gaze and had to look away, across the room. “I need to know if they’re real.”

“The animal people.”

She nodded, gaze still fixed on a painting that hung on one side of the door. It was an odd piece, an abstract, all earth colors and subdued tones. Almost monochromic, except when you really focused on it and realized the subtle gradations of color. When Christy didn’t speak, she finally turned to look at him.