Jason opened his mouth. I touched his arm. "That's fine."
"And the gun stays out here," he said. I didn't want to give up the gun, but it made me think better of Maiden that he'd spotted it.
"Sure," I said. I pulled the Browning out from under the jacket. I hit the slide and spilled the clip into my other hand. I jacked the gun open to show the chamber was empty and handed the whole shooting match to Maiden.
"Didn't trust me to unload it for you?"
"I figured the Browning might be too small for your hands. Requires fine motor skills."
"You giving me shit?" he said.
I nodded. "Yeah, I'm giving you shit."
He smiled then. He looked the Browning over before he put it in a desk drawer along with the clip. "Not a bad gun if you can't handle anything bigger." He locked the drawer -- another brownie point for Maiden.
"It's not size that counts, Maiden. It's performance."
His smile widened to a grin. "Your friend still has to wait out here."
"I said that was fine. I meant it."
Maiden nodded and led the way back through the door that Belisarius had come out of. There were two doors in the middle of the long, white hallway. One said, Ladies, the other, Men.
"I'd hoped you coming out of this door meant you were visiting Richard."
"I'm afraid not. Mr. Zeeman has not relented."
"Relented," Maiden said, "relented. Now, that's a nice lawyer word."
"Reading improves your vocabulary, Officer Maiden. You should try it sometime. Though I suppose you can get by with just looking at the pictures."
"Ooh, I'm cut to the quick on that one," Maiden said.
"If you cut us, do we not bleed?" Belisarius asked.
Maiden shocked the hell out of me by giving the next line: "If you tickle us, do we not laugh?"
Belisarius clapped softly. "Touche, Officer Maiden."
"Big and well read," I said. "I'm impressed."
He pulled a chain out of his pocket with keys on the end of it. "Don't tell the other cops. They'd think I was a sissy."
I looked up at him, all the way up at him. "It's not reading Shakespeare that makes you a sissy, Maiden. It's that damn gun. Only pansies carry that much hardware."
He unlocked the door at the end of the hallway. "Got to carry something big, Ms. Blake. Balances me out when I run."
That made me laugh. He opened the door and ushered us through. He locked the door behind us and went down a long white stretch of hallway with two closed doors on either side. "Wait here. I'll go make sure your boyfriend is ready to see you."
"He's not my boyfriend," I said. It was becoming automatic, like an involuntary reflex.
Maiden smiled and unlocked the door at the far end. He vanished through it. "You and Officer Maiden seem to have hit it off, Ms. Blake."
"Cops dish out a lot of shit. Trick is, don't take it personally, and dish back."
"I'll remember that next time."
I looked up Belisarius. "It might not work for you. You're a lawyer, and you're wealthy."