Blue Genes - By Val McDermid Page 0,67

ate and digested what we'd been saying. "I need your help, Richard," I said.

He stopped eating. He actually stopped eating to look at me and consider what I'd just said. When Richard and I first got together, we'd both been wary, like experimental mice who have learned that certain activities result in pain and damage. Somehow, we'd managed to build a relation¬ship that felt equal. We gave each other space, neither preventing the other from doing the things we felt were important. It had taken real strength from both of us not to interfere with the other's life when we felt we knew better, but mostly we'd managed it. Then a year before, I'd had to call in every favor anybody ever owed me to get him out of jail. He'd been stripped of power, reliant on me, my skills and my contacts. Since then, our relation¬ship had been off balance. His last attempt to square things between us had nearly cost us the relationship and driven me into someone else's arms. Maybe I finally had a real opportunity to let him take the first step toward evening the scores. "What is it you think I can do for you?" he asked, his voice giving nothing away.

"You know everybody in the rock business in this town. Half of them must owe you. I need you to call in a couple of favors and get me some kind of a lead into who's pulling the strings here."

He shrugged and started eating again. "If the Weasel doesn't know, I don't know who will. He's got the best grapevine in town."

"I can't believe it's better than yours," I said, meaning it. "Besides, there must be people who wouldn't lose any sleep at the thought of Devlin and the Weasel getting a hard time. They might be keeping their mouths shut out of pure Schadenfreude."

"Or fear," Richard pointed out.

"Or fear. But they're not necessarily going to be afraid of talking to you off the record, are they? If they trust you as much as you seem to think, they'll have slipped you unattributable stuff before without any comebacks. So they know in advance that you're not going to drop them in the shit with the Weasel or with Devlin himself."

Richard ran a hand along his jaw and I heard the faint rasp of the day's stubble. Normally, it's a sound I find irre¬sistibly erotic, but for once it had no effect. There was too much going on under the surface of this conversation.

"Sure, I've covered their backs before. But I've never asked questions like this before. It's a bit different from getting the latest scuttlebutt on who's signing deals with whom. Nosing into stuff like this is your business, not mine. If I put the word around that I'm looking for info on the cowboy fly-posters, I'm the one the finger will point at when you clear up the shit. I need to keep peo¬ple's confidence or I don't get the exclusive stories and if I don't get the stories, I don't eat."

"You think I don't understand about keeping contacts cultivated? Look, based on what I've dug up so far, I've drawn up a list of places and people who have been hit. You must know somebody on the list who trusts you enough to tell you what they know about who's behind this business." I took the paper out of my pocket, unfolded it, and preferred it across the table. It was so tense between us that if a car had backfired outside, we'd both have hit the deck.

Without taking it from me, Richard read the list. He tapped one name with a chopstick. "Manassas. I've known the manager there for years. We were mates in London together before we both came up here. Yeah, I could talk to him. He knows I won't drop him in it." He took a deep breath and let it out in a slow sigh. "Okay, Brannigan, I'll talk to him tomorrow." "I'll come along."

He scowled. "Don't you trust me? He's not going to open up if I've got company, you know."

"Of course I trust you. But I need to hear what he's got to say for myself. Like you said, these are my kind of questions, not yours. Treat me like a bimbo all you want, but you have to take me with you."

Richard looked at me for a long minute, then he nod¬ded gravely. "Okay. I'll be happy to help." He grinned and the tension