Blood Engines(14)
Marla snorted. “That’s just because we’ve got frogs on the brain.”
“It’s a frog,” the cop said. “They told me. Some kind of frog-monster. It has mouths on its knees and elbows. And fangs.”
“See?” Rondeau said smugly.
“I’ve never heard of a frog with fangs,” Marla muttered.
“You’ve got a poisonous frog in your purse,” Rondeau said. “It doesn’t have fangs in reality, but it sort of does metaphorically.”
“Give me your cell phone,” Marla said, handing Rondeau the photocopy.
Rondeau took a tiny silver phone from his coat pocket and passed it to Marla. She speed-dialed, and the phone on the other end was picked up on the second ring. “This is Hamil,” he said, voice oiled and urbane.
“Marla here. I need you to look up a frog-monster, with fangs, and mouths on its elbows and knees, maybe Mexican or Central American.”
“I take it you don’t yet have the Cornerstone, then,” Hamil said.
“I’m working on it,” she said, flipping the phone closed and putting it in her bag. “Okay, Officer—” she squinted at his nametag “—Whitney, thanks for your help. I’ll keep the photocopy. You just lost it somewhere, okay? One other thing—was anyone hurt in this break-in?”
“No,” he said.
Marla nodded. So apparently the frogs weren’t always used as a weapon—sometimes they were just around. She supposed it was possible the dead frog was a coincidence, that the theft of the statue was unrelated to Lao Tsung’s death, but it seemed unlikely; it was too many frogs in too short a time.
“Let’s go,” she said, and strode off, Rondeau following. The cop stood by the sawhorses for a long moment, his mind recovering from Marla’s manhandling, before he shook himself and wandered back into the gallery.
“We’re doing the detective thing now?” Rondeau said. “He’s a smooth-talking con man with a past, she’s a no-nonsense dame in a world she never made? They fight crime?”
“I just want to get the Cornerstone,” Marla said. “If that takes detectiving, so be it. But you know me—I’m an information magpie, always interested in shiny bits of intel. I’ve never gotten in trouble because of knowing too much.”
“So this doesn’t have anything to do with avenging Lao Tsung’s murder, if it was murder? I know you two were close….” Rondeau raised an eyebrow.
“Let’s put it this way: I won’t go out of my way to avenge Lao Tsung. But if, in the course of doing my business, I happen to find the person who loosed those frogs on him…I’ve got a frog of my own now, and maybe I’d like to see how far I can shove it down the murderer’s throat.”
“While wearing rubber gloves, I assume.”
“You know I always play safely.” Marla looked around, then stopped walking. “Someone’s watching me,” she said, squinting toward an alleyway between two galleries. Was it the person she’d sensed following her? But, no, this guy was in front of her. “Hey!” she shouted. “Who’s there? What are you looking at?”
A man walked slowly out of the alley, wearing a beige overcoat that hung below his knees and a black knit cap pulled down low on his forehead. He was shorter than Rondeau and Marla both, and several days’ stubble darkened his chin and cheeks.
“Just some homeless guy,” Marla said, and started to walk on.
“Holy shit,” Rondeau said. “Are you Bradley Bowman?”
The man nodded, flashing a surprisingly bright smile. “Yeah. I used to be. You can call me B.”
“Why do you want to call him anything?” Marla said, looking the man over more carefully. She didn’t see much that she hadn’t seen before—just that he was in pretty good shape, in a wiry way, something she’d overlooked in light of his slovenliness and slouching, and that his eyes were a startlingly crisp shade of blue. “Who is he?”
“He’s a movie star,” Rondeau said. “He was in The Glass Harp! I love that movie.”
“Me, too,” Bowman—B—said. “The residuals from Glass Harp pay my rent and buy my sedatives.”
“But you don’t work anymore, right?” Rondeau said. “Because you tried to strangle that director or whatever?”
“That’s the story,” B said, and he was definitely amused now. “I don’t work in the movies anymore, but I keep busy.”