Dead Man's Hand Read Online Free

with her father or me or how I
could do anything to help him out of his bind. So I kept the
interview going. “And then?” I asked.
    “ And then Pete hustled me
into his car, just about threw me inside and took off before the
satyrs could regroup. Not that they would, but Pete said there was
a chance. He drove me a few blocks away and then just circled
around a bit before he took me back to my car, just to give the
satyrs time to move on so they wouldn’t see me driving away and be
tempted to come after me somehow.”
    She stopped talking again, and I had to
remind myself that she’d been the one who’d wanted to talk, that
she’d brought me here to get help of one kind or another. It wasn’t
entirely odd that she needed to have the questions dragged out of
her. Given the trauma she was talking about, I could see she was
still on shaky ground.
    “ So where do I come in?” I
asked after giving her a few seconds to start on her
own.
    She crossed her legs, a deft little move
that drew my eye to her calves and those spiked heels for just a
moment. When I met her eyes again, they gave no indication that
she’d caught me looking. She just started talking again.
    “ Pete drives one of those
little red Getabouts. You know where they’re so small you’re
practically driving from the back seat? So before we headed back to
my car, I noticed he had an ice chest on the seat behind us. And I
asked him if he was just coming from a picnic. Trying to joke, you
know? And he gets real nervous. Which gets me curious, of course.
So I let it drop for a minute and then I say, ‘So really, Pete,
what’s in the chest?’ And he looks at me for a second and says, ‘A
hand.’”
    Pixel looked at me a bit challengingly when
she said it, as though she expected me not to believe it. “A hand,”
I said, obligingly.
    She nodded. “A dead man’s hand.”
    I raised an eyebrow, inviting her to
continue.
    “ Like I said, he sounded
nervous as hell, but after a few seconds, he started
talking.”
    That sounded like Neat Pete. Get a beautiful
woman in front of him and he’d start doing exactly what he wasn’t
supposed to if it meant there was a chance it would make an
impression on her, even the wrong kind. Anything to make her think
of him as different from all the other apes who thought she was
gorgeous.
    “ You know who Lester Rincon
is?”
    “ No,” I said.
    “ Big time hacker on the
south side. Yancy Grommet’s number one. Pete said Clancy’d been out
to find Rincon for a while just to mess with his brother’s
operation. But Rincon knew it, laid low, had walls within walls of
security. Real and virtual. So Clancy couldn’t get at
him.”
    “ But he screwed
up.”
    Pixel nodded, a little smile on her lips
that told me she thought Lester Rincon had gotten what he deserved
for getting into bed with one or the other of the Grommets. “He
screwed up,” she echoed.
    “ And now?”
    “ And now,” she said,
sounding a little mischievous. She got up and went to the kitchen,
opening her refrigerator. I knew what she’d have before she came
back.
    She carried a clear plastic bag, the kind
that zips shut. In it was the dead man’s hand, cleanly severed. I
had no doubt that this was Neat Pete’s work.
    “ Pete brought it to me
after he satisfied Clancy that the job was done. He’s funny, Pete.
So eager to please.”
    I could easily imagine Pete’s nervous
excitement at finding that he’d not only been Pixel’s knight in
shining armor but that he could also give her something she wanted,
something only he could supply.
    She set the bag down on the plain pine table
before me, her own hand lingering above it for a second before she
reached down to poke at the pinky finger; it let her push it down,
still quite pliable. It looked well preserved.
    The thing was repulsive, but I’d seen worse.
Looking at it, though, I was glad Pixel hadn’t offered me a snack
from her fridge when we’d first come in.
    “ I don’t suppose you