Dead Man s Hand Page 0,14

we've got yours, hers, Elmo's, Sascha's, Lupo's, you name it. What we're not finding are the files."

"Ah," said Jay noncommittally.

"There's such a thing as knowing too much for your own good. Kant thinks our motive is somewhere in those secret files."

"Real good," Jay said, watching a very nice rear end in a tight leather miniskirt sway past. "For a lizard." He was turning back to Maseryk when he noticed a hooded shape standing in the mouth of an alley half a block away.

"I'll tell him you said that," Maseryk said, with the barest hint of a smile.

"The thing of it is," Jay said, "if Kant finds that cache of information, he may get more than he bargained for. Motives are like fingerprints, too many are as bad as none at all." He glanced back toward the alley. The hooded man stood in shadow, watching the Palace. His head turned, and Jay caught a brief flash of metal as the light reflected off the steel-mesh fencing mask beneath the hood.

"I'm sure he'll be grateful for that hint. Any other words of advice you want me to pass on to him?"

"Yeah," Jay said. "Tell him it's not Elmo." He looked back at Maseryk again. "Sascha at home?"

"He's rooming with his mother until we're done going over the building. Not that it's any business of yours. Didn't Ellis tell you to stay the hell away from this?"

"I'm staying away," Jay said. He caught a hint of motion out of the corner of his eye and glanced aside just in time to see the hooded man melt back into the shadows of the alley. "All the good clues are inside," he continued without missing a beat. "You see me going inside?" Jay held up his hands, palms out. "But hey, I'm easy. In fact, I'm going. See? Bye, now."

Maseryk frowned at him as he backed off, then shrugged, turned, and went back inside the Crystal Palace. When he was gone, Jay spun and elbowed his way through the crowd to the alley.

He was too late. The man in the fencing mask and black hood was gone. Except "man" wasn't quite right. Under that dusky black cloth, the talk on the street said, the massive body of the Oddity was male and female both.

But whatever else the joker was, one thing was certain. It was strong.

8:00 P.M.

A little old woman, tiny as an ancient sparrow, opened the door a crack when Brennan knocked.

"Is Sascha in?" Brennan asked. "No."

Brennan put his foot in the door, holding it open as she pushed to close it. He had seen a flash of movement in the room beyond the door, and he knew who it was.

"Sascha, I don't want to hurt you," he called out. "I just want to talk."

The old woman struggled to close the door, pushing valiantly but uselessly against Brennan's weight, then a weary voice called out, "It's all right, Ma. Let him in." There was a long sigh, then Sascha added, "I couldn't hide from him for very long, anyway."

Sascha's mother backed away from the door and let him enter. She had a worried expression on her wrinkled face as she glanced from Sascha, who'd collapsed on the living-room sofa, back to Brennan.

"It's all right, Ma. Why don't you go brew some tea?" She nodded and bustled off to the kitchen as Brennan looked at Sascha with concern. The bartender had always been thin, but now he was no more than muscle and bone. He looked deathly tired and his face was lined and pale. "What's going on?" Brennan asked.

"Not a damn thing." Sascha shook his head tiredly. There was pain and loss in his voice, and an unconcealed bitterness that Brennan had never heard before.

"Why are you hiding out? Did you recognize Chrysalis's murderer telepathically?"

Sascha just sat there. For a while Brennan thought he wouldn't say. anything, but then he nodded. "I heard someone," he finally said.

"Who?"

"That PI, that Popinjay character."

Jay Ackroyd, Brennan thought. He'd had a run-in with the ace before, but he couldn't conceive of him as a murderer. "What was he doing at the Palace?"

Sascha said nothing, just shrugged. "What about Elmo?" Brennan asked.

The bartender shook his head. "She'd sent him out late the night before on some kind of secret errand. Didn't tell me anything about it." The bitterness came back, this time edged with fear. "He never got back to the Palace. I heard that the cops are looking for him."

"Do they think he did it?"

Sascha laughed. "Maybe. What