Chapter 5: Personal Services
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"I see." She reached for a packet of cigarettes and shook one loose and reached for it with her lips. I held a flame for her, a match gripped at the tips of my fingers. She thanked me, leaned back again and regarded me through smoke. She said carefully: "You wish to know what he looks like and you don't want to interview him?" "He's not there," I said. "I presume he will be. After all, it's his store." "I don't want to interview him just yet," I said. She looked out through the open doorway again. I said: "Know anything about rare old books?" "You could try me." "Would you have a Ben Hur, 1860, third edition, the one with the duplicated line on page 116?" She pushed her aged yellow law book to one side and reached a modern hand-held net terminal onto the desk. She prodded the screen a few times, found her page and studied it. "Nobody would," she said without looking up, "There isn't one."
"What in the worlds are you driving at?" "The girl in Geiger's Counter didn't know that." She looked up. "I see. You interest me. Rather vaguely." "I'm a private detective on a case. Perhaps I ask too much. It didn't seem much to me somehow." She blew a soft grey smoke ring and poked her finger through. It came to pieces in frail wisps. She spoke smoothly, indifferently. "In his mid first century, I should judge. Medium height, fattish. Would weigh seventy-five kilos. Fat face, Charlie Chan moustache, thick soft neck. Soft all over. Well dressed, affects a knowledge of twentieth-century books, computers and games, and hasn't any. Oh yes. His left eye is prosthetic." "You'd make a good cop," I said. She put the terminal back on an open shelf at the end of her desk, and opened the aging law book again. "I hope not," she said. She put her glasses on.
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"Right."
Part 1