Hunters Run Page 0,114

sort of thing he was doing. It was a reason to be, a reason to die a good death, if that's what it meant. And maybe he had a thing for lost causes. Like that guy in the telenovela.

And then there were also long stretches when Ramon knew that if anyone had asked at that particular moment, he'd have told them anything. Everything. Just as long as they'd let him go. As the hours passed, he came to fix Maneck's chances at maybe sixty-forty against. Depending on what part of its cycle of heroism and cowardice his mind was in when they came, and whether they pissed him off enough that he'd be willing to sacrifice himself out of spite. When the door opened and the guards stepped in, the supervisor was with them. He'd changed his suit, so Ramon figured at least a day had passed since he'd been hauled into the cell. That seemed plausible.

Once he was shackled, the guards marched him - one before, two behind, and all of them with electric batons out and charged - to a small meeting chamber. It was nicely appointed. None of the slaughterhouse feel that the rest of the station maintained. The Enye from before, or else one enough like it to fool Ramon, stood against one wall, its slick tongue darting contentedly over its body. The governor was there, and, to Ramon's surprise, the woman from the bar. The supervisor had the guards lead Ramon to a chair bolted to the floor and chain him to it. The governor looked at him with a mixture of disgust and shrewd evaluation. The woman glanced at him once, her expression profoundly bored, and turned back to her datapad.

This is all your fucking fault. He projected the thought toward the woman. If you had stood up for yourself instead of counting on us to do your fighting for you, I wouldn't be in this fucked-up situation.

"Okay," the governor said, sounding annoyed. "Can we get this over with?"

"They're just getting her into the interrogation room now, sir," the supervisor said.

"Who?" Ramon asked. "What the fuck's going on?"

"What I told you, hijo," the supervisor said. "End of the line."

A wall screen popped once and then hummed to life. The hellish little interrogation room came into being, canted at a disturbing angle. He could see the back of the constable's head and the place where the man was just starting to bald. Across from him, Elena was looking annoyed and fidgeting with a cigarette. Ramon coughed.

"Hey! Hey, wait. No fucking way. No way! I just broke it off with her. She's fucking loca! You can't believe a thing she says!"

The governor shot a glance at the supervisor. The Enye's wet oyster eyes seemed to flicker as it considered Ramon. The woman pretended she hadn't heard him.

"Se?or Espejo," the supervisor said. "Extradition hearing needs the governor, a representative of the foreign power, a representative of the police, and the accused. That's you. Doesn't say a goddamn thing about the accused getting to talk. With all due respect for your rights as a citizen, this is your chance to shut the fuck up before I gag you. Okay?"

On the screen, the constable and Elena were going through the motions - stating her name and address, whether she knew Ramon Espejo.

"But she's a liar!" Ramon said, embarrassed to hear the whine in his voice.

"I known that ass-wipe for seven years," Elena said from the screen. "Whenever he comes to town, he stays with me. Eats my food, leaves his crap on my floor. I even washed his pinche clothes, you believe that? I got a good job, and I'm spending my time off-shift making sure that slack-ass cabron has clean socks!"

"So you would call your relationship with Se?or Espejo an intimate one?"

Elena glanced at the constable, then down at the floor, shrugging.

"I guess," she said. "I mean. Yeah. We were intimate."

"In your time with Se?or Espejo - seven years, you said? You washed his laundry often?"

"Sure," Elena said.

"She never - " Ramon began. The supervisor shook his head once - left, right, stop - with a sense of threat that made Ramon go quiet.

"And in that time," the constable said, "did you ever come across this garment?"

With a flourish, he produced the robe. Ramon looked over at the Enye. Its gaze was on the screen, its tongue moving restlessly, darting in and out of its mouth, the fringe of chartreuse cilia that lined its body squirming like worms.

I've