Dust City by Robert Paul Weston Read Free Book Online

her face calm. When I’m finished, she says, “You two were close, weren’t you? You and the Doc?”
    “I guess,” I tell her. “It’s hard not to be when they make you see him every week.”
    She turns her head in a broad circle and her back cracks up and down, a spineful of arthritic knuckles. “Losing friends left and right these days, that’s what I hear.”
    “What do you mean?”
    “Your friend Jack disappeared, too.”
    “So?”
    White pulls out a chair and straddles it backward, folding her arms over the backrest. “Guess you’re having a bad week.” Her hands hang from her wrists like the branches of a dead tree, hard and rough, her fingers encrusted with fresh scabs. When she notices how I’m staring, she holds up a fist. “Admiring my manicure?” She picks off a scab and lets it flake to the floor. “That’s what you get for spending half the day interrogating muscle for the mob.” She points a thumb over her shoulder, over at Gunther. “You think he’s big, you oughta see the guys Skinner’s got working for him.”
    Gunther frowns. “You?” he says to White. “They had you interrogating one of Skinner’s guys?”
    “Two of them, actually.”
    Skinner. I know that name. I remember it from my father’s trial.
    “No way,” says Gunther.
    White smiles mischievously. “You wanna bet?”
    Cindy wrings her hands. “Gunther, please.”
    White tightens a loose screw on the chair’s headrest. “Not everybody knows this about me,” she says, “but I never had a family. Not a real one anyway. I was raised by miners. Seven of them. When a girl grows up in a situation like that—well, let’s just say she learns how to take care of herself.”
    Gunther laughs, but the volume’s turned low. “So what? Doesn’t mean you can take on a glob. And never one of Skinner’s guys.”
    “You wanna bet?”
    “What do I get if I win?”
    White looks up at him and smiles. “Respect.”
    “You got a deal.” Gunther stretches out his meaty hand. “But how you gonna prove it?”
    “Like this.” She grabs his thumb and jerks it back toward his wrist. Gunther’s face flashes with shock and his knees buckle. White yanks on the pinioned digit, and the arm it’s connected to noodles up behind the goblin’s back. In a flash of leverage, she’s got him curled on the floor, whimpering like a cub with a fatty jowl glued to the linoleum.
    She clears her throat. “Convinced?”
    Gunther yawps in anger, but it’s about all he can do.
    White tweaks the thumb a little harder. “I asked you a question.”
    “Okay, okay, you win! I’m convinced! You’re gonna break my arm!”
    “So pay up already.”
    Gunther’s eyes go knuckle-white with fear. “But we didn’t even bet anything!”
    “Sure we did. All you gotta do is say it.”
    “Okayokayokay! I re spect you! I do, I really do!”
    Fast as before, White releases Gunther and returns to the chair. She straddles it again and shrugs. “It’s all math, really. Physics. Put the fulcrum in the right place and you can move the world. Or at least some big, dumb glob.” She squints at me. “You study math?”
    I shake my head. “Words are more my thing.”
    “You oughta do some math.”
    Cindy gives Gunther a look of concern. “Maybe you ought to wait outside.”
    “You sure, Ms. Rella?”
    She nods and Gunther backs into the corridor, glowering at White the whole way. He’s got his one sore arm cradled in the other like a newborn.
    “Now then,” says White. “Where were we? Ah, yes—Doctor Grey. He once gave a talk at the academy, all about rehabilitating the usual suspects. Harmony between the species and all that. Made it sound convincing. I nearlybelieved it could happen. Then I actually started doing the job. Hoofing the beat in Darkforest, or down in Dockside.” She pauses. “Now, when I say ‘hoofing,’ please understand it’s just an expression. No offense.”
    I squint at her. “I’m a wolf. Hooves are for mules and