The Long Way Down (Daniel Faust #1)(43)

That was what worried me, but I was having too much fun to let my better judgment get in the way.

“So how long have you lived here?” I asked.

“I was appointed as the prince’s hound in the mid-eighties. Wonderful time. Still have my leg warmers somewhere. I’d been to Earth a few times before, but…much earlier.”

“It was an interesting decade. Good music, too.”

“The best music,” Caitlin said. “Duran Duran, Howard Jones—”

“Howard Jones was great. How about Tears for Fears?”

“Saw them in concert!”

I laughed. “I bet you’re fun at concerts. So is it all work and no play for you these days, or do you actually get to relax once in a while?”

“What do you call this?” she said with a grin. “I’m always on duty, but I find little ways to amuse myself. What about you? How do you make ends meet?”

“A little of this, a little of that. Some jobs I’m more proud of than others. If I’m ever really low on cash, I can go down to Fremont and do my busker routine for a few hours. I do a little magic. Not magic-magic, I mean. Sleight of hand.”

Caitlin leaned back in her chair, arms crossed, a lopsided smile on her lips. “Show me.”

“Seriously? It’s not very impressive compared to the real thing.”

“Show me anyway.”

“If the lady insists,” I said, dipping into my pocket and holding up my car keys. I gave them a jingle. “I need to borrow your napkin.”

“I’m going to want that back,” she said, handing it over to me. Our fingers brushed with an electric tingle. I folded the keys up in the middle of the linen napkin, tying them into a bundle as I explained.

“Like most people, I have trouble with losing my car keys from time to time. They just go missing, like they’ve got a mind of their own. One day I thought I’d fix that by tying them down, like so.” I trapped the keys at the bottom of an elaborate knot and held it up, shaking it so Caitlin could hear them jingle inside their napkin prison. I offered it to her. “Here, hold it just under the knot.”

“All right,” she said, the bundle dangling from her fingertips, “what now?”

“Well, now I go back to the drawing board, because it didn’t work at all. Go ahead, take a look.”

She looked dubious, untying the bundle, then laughed as she shook out an empty napkin. The waitress brought me the check in a slim folio.

“All right, so where did the keys go?” she said.

“Your guess is as good as—” I started to say, then opened the folio. The keys tumbled out, clattering on the table. “Oh. I guess they wanted to go home with the waitress.”

“Naughty keys.”

“I know, terrible date etiquette.” I paused. “Er, that is, are we…are we on a date?”





Twenty-Two



Caitlin smiled brightly, but the expression faded just as fast, like a bouquet of flowers left out in the desert sun.

“It doesn’t,” she started, hesitant, “it just doesn’t work. We can’t, I mean…it’s just dinner.”

I bit my lip, feeling like an ass. “Of course, right. So, uh, I’m going to follow up on Sheldon Kaufman. I want to know what his scheme’s all about. With his brother and Carl Holt dead, I figure it’s pretty much all over, but desperate people make stupid moves.”

“We can only hope,” Caitlin said. “Don’t underestimate him, Daniel. He’s not like his brother.”

I thought about the high-end wards in his office, and the gun in his desk, as I padded the check folio with cash and set it on the table. “He hasn’t met me yet.”

“I’m serious. It’s been a while since I’ve been able to have a decent conversation with someone who wasn’t, well…someone who wasn’t either afraid of me or scheming against me, or both. Don’t go getting yourself killed before we have a chance at another.”

“Count on it. Hey, I was wondering something when you crashed the party back at the factory. Where’d you get the name Wingtaker?”

Caitlin dabbed her scarlet lips with her napkin.

“It’s a very long story,” she said, “and you wouldn’t like how it ends. Suffice to say it’s how I earned my position.”

She was half right, earlier. I wasn’t scheming, but was I afraid of her? Standing next to Caitlin was like walking into a lioness’ den wearing a suit made of T-bone steaks. No amount of infatuation could make me forget what she was, or drown out the memory of Artie Kaufman’s dying screams.

So why did I linger on the steps outside the restaurant, flirting around the edges of a goodnight kiss like a teenager? In the end, she just rested her hand on my shoulder and favored me with a smile. I took a taxi home.

I dug out an old Howard Jones CD and played it on my laptop. I lay back on my bed, hands clasped behind my head, letting the music carry me back in time. A fresh bottle of Jack waited on the end table, but for the first time in weeks I didn’t feel the need to pour a nightcap. The music was better.

? ? ?

I set the alarm to wake me up a little before dawn. Lots to do, if I wanted to get the drop on Sheldon Kaufman today. I grabbed a breakfast burrito and a paper cup of black coffee from the gas station on the corner, then hit the thrift store as soon as it opened. Fortunately, they had exactly what I was looking for: a white polo shirt, pristine white slacks, and matching Nikes with a pale silver swish. I looked exactly like somebody who should be serving drinks and taking car keys at a fancy country club. Either that or selling you a vacuum cleaner.