(no subject)
Last night's rain was becoming a grey haze that made it painful to look at the sky. At the moment this wasn't a problem: I had been watching a dark Crown Vic in the rearview mirror for about five minutes now as we were making our way northward. I didn't know who had been after me last night, but I've lived long enough to know that with an interceptor following you you're always a couple seconds away from four to seven.
My wait's over, though... a couple of kids who seem to think they're racers go flying by and get pulled over for their troubles. I love the stupidity of strangers.
Next exit there's a truck stop, so I pull over and fish enough change out of the ashtray for a stale doughnut and some coffee, and use the phone in my booth to call a partner from a few years back.
"Hey, Cantor..."
"Don't say anything. You're supposed to be dead. Get a pen."
Cantor is paranoid. Not like the guys who think there was a second gunman, like the guys who think the entire assassination was a brilliant cover for whatever was inhabiting JFK to return to its home planet. It's a handy attribute in my line of work, but you have learn to excuse yourself pretty quick if he starts a rant in public. I hear him pick up the reciever again:
"78153... 16634... 71097... 55109... 03487..."
He continues like this for a while, then hangs up. We both have crypto programs in our cell phones left over from the last job together, but he doesn't know mine's been stolen. I was the one who wrote it, though, and the key hadn't changed. The decrypt fills up the backs of three paper placemats, but when I'm done there's a name and a city that I vaguely remember.
I get a bad feeling when I figure out why it sounds familiar. A couple months ago it started going around that the babies in that town were being born with an entirely unorthodox number of limbs.
Bloody hell.
My wait's over, though... a couple of kids who seem to think they're racers go flying by and get pulled over for their troubles. I love the stupidity of strangers.
Next exit there's a truck stop, so I pull over and fish enough change out of the ashtray for a stale doughnut and some coffee, and use the phone in my booth to call a partner from a few years back.
"Hey, Cantor..."
"Don't say anything. You're supposed to be dead. Get a pen."
Cantor is paranoid. Not like the guys who think there was a second gunman, like the guys who think the entire assassination was a brilliant cover for whatever was inhabiting JFK to return to its home planet. It's a handy attribute in my line of work, but you have learn to excuse yourself pretty quick if he starts a rant in public. I hear him pick up the reciever again:
"78153... 16634... 71097... 55109... 03487..."
He continues like this for a while, then hangs up. We both have crypto programs in our cell phones left over from the last job together, but he doesn't know mine's been stolen. I was the one who wrote it, though, and the key hadn't changed. The decrypt fills up the backs of three paper placemats, but when I'm done there's a name and a city that I vaguely remember.
I get a bad feeling when I figure out why it sounds familiar. A couple months ago it started going around that the babies in that town were being born with an entirely unorthodox number of limbs.
Bloody hell.