conforming to his angles.
"Hey," he said, and came in. Lucia shut the door behind him, locks and all. "I went by the hospital."
"She's out," Lucia said simply.
"So I heard. The words against medical advice came up - " He spotted Jazz sitting at the table, and stopped dead in his conversational tracks.
"Counselor," she said. "Nice of you to drop by. What, no flowers?"
"No, I brought a card," he said. He reached into his jacket and came out with a red envelope, exactly the size and shape of a holiday card. Maybe not Valentine's Day after all. Maybe something left over from Christmas instead.
He handed it to Lucia.
"What's this?" she asked. She knew, though. She'd gotten a red envelope before.
"Your first case," he said. "Nothing too demanding, considering Jazz has a thirty-two-caliber disability. But something to start you off. Listen, I'd stay to chat, but my flight's leaving soon. Try not to get yourselves killed before we can get your paperwork finished, okay?"
He moved to the door, threw back the dead bolts, and didn't look at Jazz directly at all.
"Borden," Jazz said. He froze but didn't turn to look at her. "Sorry. Listen, you're being careful, right?"
"Always," he said neutrally. "You should try it sometime. Might cut down on the scarring."
He opened the door and left. Lucia relocked the bolts before saying, eyebrows raised, "Forgive me for noticing, but we've barely started and you're already having a problem with our benefactors."
"No," Jazz sighed. "I'm having a problem with lawyers. Specifically, that one."
Lucia sounded amused. "Are you really? Because that's not how it looks from over here."
"Shut up, will you? And open that thing, if you're going to do it."
Lucia took an elegant-looking pocketknife out and zipped it through paper with a hiss to open the envelope. She shook out two things: a Polaroid photograph and a folded sheet of paper. She looked at the picture for a few seconds, then passed it over to Jazz.
It was a photo of a young woman, maybe twenty-five. Blond, tall, walking with a load of books in her arms. Mod-looking glasses and a blunt haircut. Rounded shoulders. That, and the fluffy pink cardigan, screamed librarian. The camera had caught her frowning, looking three-quarters toward the lens, as if a sound had startled her. It had been taken on the street, in full sunlight. Going to work, maybe? The outfit didn't look like casual wear, although it wasn't a business suit, either.
No ring on her finger. Not a lot of jewelry, period, although there was a diamond glint in her ear.
Lucia was studying the piece of paper.
"What?" Jazz asked.
"We're supposed to go to this address, sit in a car and watch her load up her van," Lucia said. "Take some pictures. That's it."
"That's it?" Jazz examined the picture again. "Does she look like a criminal to you?"
"How do criminals look? I've busted seventy-year-old grandmothers running counterfeit operations out of their garages," Lucia said. "Sure, she looks like a grade-school teacher. Doesn't mean anything. Maybe she's hiding an Uzi under the cardigan."
Which was an odd enough image to make Jazz laugh. She reached for the paper. Lucia passed it over. She hadn't misstated; that was all it said. It gave an address, a time, no names or other information. Just directions on what to do and how long to do it.
Watch her load the van. Document with still and video photography. Forward all records and reports to James D. Borden at Gabriel, Pike & Laskins.
Okay. No problem. At least it would be easy work. The notation at the bottom - in Borden's handwriting, Jazz felt sure - said that the fee would be two thousand dollars, but that both of them were required to be there, since Jazz was, quote, "impaired." Get your leather-jacket ass back here, I'll show you impaired, she thought, smoldering, and handed it back. Lucia folded it and stuck it back in the envelope, along with the photograph, which they'd both handled carefully, without getting their prints on it. Jazz felt warm and fuzzy over the fact that they hadn't even had to talk about it.
"Manny?" Lucia asked.
"Just the photo," Jazz said. "Have him run the prints and do an image recognition search through his databases. See what turns up."
It was a little amazing, really, that they were thinking along the same lines. Lucia seemed to think so, too. They exchanged a slow smile, broken by Jazz clapping a hand to her forehead and then wincing at the hot pull along her side