Dead Man's Hand by Richard Levesque Read Free Book Online Page A

wasn’t proof that something had happened to the
van, but I had to re-evaluate my accident theory.
    I stood up and looked around, turning a full
circle and then back again. Then a smile broke out on my face, and
I crossed to the other side of the street. A little red car was
parked there. It had a small dent in its front fender and the turn
signal’s plastic lens was gone. When I got closer to it, I saw a
scrape of white paint in the middle of the dented fender. And next
to the dent, the car’s emblem read “Getabout.”
    “ Well, how about that,” I
said to the car, patting its bruised fender.
    After shining a light into the windows for
any signs of life and coming up with nothing, I headed back to my
car with my phone out and Pixel’s number already on the screen.
    She answered on the third ring. “Ace! Have
you got it worked out?”
    “ Not yet,” I
said.
    “ This thing isn’t getting
any fresher.”
    “ I’m sure. Look, this is
complicated, getting more so by the minute.”
    “ Is it going to work
out?”
    “ It’s conceivable. I need
your help, though.”
    A moment’s hesitation, then, “How?”
    “ Do you have Pete’s number,
or can you get it?”
    “ I’ve got it. Why? You want
to call him?”
    “ No. And don’t you call
him. I don’t want him knowing I’m interested in what he’s doing.
But can you use some of your toys to track him, tell me where he is
right now?”
    “ I should be able to. But I
don’t—”
    “ You don’t need to
understand. Like I said, it’s complicated. The less you know at
this point, probably the better. Just tell me where he is right
now, okay?”
    “ Okay.” She sounded
chastised, which wasn’t what I’d intended, but if it got her to
stop asking questions that weren’t going to help either of us, so
much the better.
    I waited on the line while she worked, could
hear the clicking of her keyboard. Then there was a rustling sound
as she picked up her phone again.
    “ 838 South Harbor,” she
said.
    “ You know it?”
    “ No. But…satellite shows
it’s a in a row of buildings just north of downtown. Doesn’t look
like a nightlife area, more industrial.”
    “ All right.
Thanks.”
    “ You going
there?”
    “ I might.”
    “ You don’t trust
me.”
    “ I don’t trust anybody
right now, Pixel. Don’t take it personally.”
    “ Whatever you
say.”
    “ Good.” I was in my car by
now but hadn’t started it yet. “Hey, one more thing. Did you tell
Pete your plan about the hand, why you wanted it?”
    She hesitated. All the answer I needed. “I
didn’t tell him everything, not about what I’d do once I got it
re-animated. Was that bad?”
    “ Not necessarily,” I lied.
“I gotta go. I’ll call if I get anywhere with this.”
    I clicked off before she had a chance to try
to change my mind. Soon, the Getabout was far behind me and I was
letting my Nav guide me to 838 South Harbor. Neat Pete may have
filled in the blanks on Pixel’s plan or he may have gotten help
thinking it through. Regardless of how it had gone, though, I knew
for certain that he’d spilled at least some of the details to one
of Clancy’s boys; otherwise, they wouldn’t have been snooping
around Drea’s and asking questions about re-animating hands. It was
possible Pete had a partner, somebody maybe a little smarter, a
little savvier than him, and the two of them had cooked up a plan
to get the second hand away from Drea. And it was also possible
that Pete was being shadowed, that Pete’s interest in the first
hand had awoken Clancy’s suspicions. If that was the case, I might
not be the only one on Pete’s trail. Not for the first time in my
career, I wished I owned a gun.
    Not ten minutes later, I was cruising past
the address Pixel had given me. A chain link fence ran around the
perimeter, its gate padlocked shut. The building was dark, but
since no windows faced the street that didn’t tell me much. The
place had big roll-up doors at its front, the kind it