Black Dove Read Online Free

know farms, ranches, trails, cattle towns, and such better than anybody. But could you find that needle
here
—in a city? Hell, could you find the damn needle factory if someone gave you the address and pointed you in the right direction? I ain’t so sure. It’s somethin’ to think about, you really wanna detect professional-like.”
    “I
been
thinkin’ about it,” Gustav grumbled.
    “And?”
    “And . . . .” My brother looked away and sighed. “You might just have you a point.”
    “Well, thank you for concedin’ that it’s possible, at least.”
    Old Red plowed on as if I hadn’t spoken.
    “True, I don’t know squat about city things. But I do know The Man’s method. And I been wonderin’ if that’s enough.”
    Now, I reckon you’ve read far enough to know who “The Man” was without me telling you. You could put a lot of fancy names to his “method”—and I reckon he and Dr. Watson did just that. But it really boils down to plain old looking and thinking, both of which Gustav can do with the best of them.
    Where the best of them would best
him
, though, would be in the
knowing
.
    “Detectin’ don’t mean nothin’ if you got no idea what you’re even lookin’ at,” I said. “You can read a footprint, a snapped twig, or a pile of horseshit like a book, but would you know a pawn ticket if you saw one? Or an e-lectric generator? Or a . . . I don’t know. Any of a thousand things. A million.”
    I nodded toward Fourth Street and the telephone wires, streetlamps, awnings, and office buildings that lined it. The sidewalks were aswirl with humanity in all its diversity, with high-born and low-brow, native son and fresh-off-the-boat walking side by side—and all of them moving so fast as to make Old Red and myself seem to be standing still.
    “Just look around. This here’s a big town. We may’ve bounced around a bit, you and me, but our world . . . it’s always stayed so
small
. You gotta broaden it up some. You gotta learn.”
    Old Red squinted at me skeptically. “I gotta ‘practice.’ ”
    “Exactly.”
    The squint turned into an eye-roll.
    “Look,” I said, “you don’t wanna listen to me, fine. Put it to the test, then.”
    “How do you mean?”
    “I mean let’s set you to deducifyin’. Pick out a stranger, say, and see what you can Holmes out of him on sight. Then we talk to the feller andfind out how close you got. You peg him dead-on, fine. The Man’s method’s all you need. You booger it up, though, you gotta set yourself to learnin’ city-style detectin’.”
    “By trackin’ down Diana Corvus, I suppose.”
    “Why, what a capital notion!” I exclaimed. “That’d be just the thing.”
    “So, it’s a wager you’re after.”
    “No. I’m suggestin’ a
test
.”
    “No. You’re
anglin
’ for a
bet
. Except you ain’t even puttin’ anything up on your end.”
    I shrugged. “What do you want from me?”
    “How ’bout a promise to shut up about Diana Corvus once and for all?”
    I stopped walking and held out my hand. “Done.”
    Old Red stopped, too—stopped
still
, making no move to take my hand. We stood there a moment eyeing each other as irritated passersby pushed by us on both sides like crick water flowing around a rock.
    “Who picks the feller?” Gustav finally asked.
    “Tell you what, Brother—I’ll give you the advantage. I pick the street, then you get to pick your man. Anyone who passes by in the span of . . . oh, let’s say a minute, is fair game. You tell me what he does for a livin’, maybe three or four other things that strike you, and if you’re right on all counts, you win.”
    Old Red gave me the kind of look you’d give a man offering to shake your hand after stepping from a particularly odiferous outhouse—but he didn’t say no.
    I’d recently tried to buck my brother up a bit with a gift: a beat-up copy of
The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes
I’d spotted in a book peddler’s stall. We were already halfway into