Dead Harvest

  "Sam? Jesus, you scared the shit out of me! I could tell this body didn't belong to whoever was driving, but I had no idea it was you!"

  "I left the old one in the apartment," I said. "The place was his, anyway." I pocketed my cat-shard and dabbed at my neck with the palm of my hand. It came back streaked with blood.

  "Sorry about that," Anders said, his furtive gaze regretful. "I thought you were one of them. A dark-eyed one, tired of simply watching." The kid I'd been following had yet to relinquish his grip on the handrail – he was just staring at me and Anders with a mixture of bewilderment and fear. Anders shot him a reassuring smile; it looked out of place on his gaunt, worry-lined face. "It's all right, Pinch. This is Sam – he's one of the good guys."

  That characterization was a dubious one at best, but I wasn't in the mood to correct him. "Anders, what the hell is going on here? Is Kate all right? Who the hell is this?"

  "Kate's fine – I'll take you to her. We tried to wait for you at the park like you said, but things got dicey quick. A bunch of guys were going door to door flashing Kate's picture around, asking if anybody'd seen her. They wore the skin of cops, but I knew better – their eyes shone black as night. I grabbed Kate and we got the hell out of there. Pinch here offered to stay in case you showed, but when you didn't…" he swallowed hard. "We thought you might be dead."

  "Truth be told, you weren't too far off." I looked the new kid up and down, then, not bothering to hide my suspicion. Pinch let go of the ladder, and took a couple tentative steps toward me. "Pleased to meet ya," he said. He extended a hand. I ignored it. It hung there between us for a moment, and then he let it drop.

  "Anders, what the hell were you thinking bringing someone else into this? Does he know where you're keeping Kate?"

  "Relax, Sam. The kid's the best pickpocket in town – wasn't anybody gonna get the drop on him."

  I said, "I just did."

  "Yeah, only that almost didn't work out too well for you, did it?" Again Anders smiled. "Look, all I gave Pinch was the number to a payphone down the street. Told him if he saw anything, he should give me a call. A few minutes ago, he did. Seems he didn't like the look of your little setup, thought maybe he ought to bring along some backup."

  "Still, if anyone had gotten that number out of him, it would have only been a matter of time before they tracked you down."

  "I can hear you two, you know," said the kid.

  Anders replied, "The way I saw it, without you around, we were as good as dead already. The number was a risk I was willing to take."

  "I'm standing right here." Pinch spoke again, his voice tinged with impatience.

  "Why in the hell was he following me in the first place?" I said.

  "I told him if anybody else came looking for Kate, hang back and keep an eye on 'em. I hear you put on quite a show, questioning those homeless guys."

  "You coulda gotten him killed."

  The kid bristled. "I can take care of myself."

  I replied, "No offense, kid, but you have no idea what you're dealing with. You're in way over your head."

  Pinch just smiled and held a good-sized shard of ceramic up to the light and turned it over in his hand, inspecting it. My hand flew to my pocket. It was a whole lot emptier than I remembered. "Did you just almost attack me with a cat?" he asked.

  "Don't touch that," I said, snatching back the catshard. "It's dangerous."

  "Good thing you never tangled with my grandma, then – she had a couple dozen of these things. Coulda gotten messy."

  I said nothing, settling instead for seeing if maybe I'd spontaneously developed the ability to shoot death rays from my eyes. Anders took the hint, and pulled the kid aside. "Listen, Pinch, why don't you take off? I'll catch up with you later, OK?"

  "Whatever," the kid said. He trotted back toward the fire escape he'd come up on. Before Pinch disappeared from sight, Anders stopped him with a shout.

  "Hey, Pinch?"

  "Yeah?"

  "You did good today."

  The kid flashed him a smile, and disappeared behind the stairwell shed.

  "You know you never should have brought him in," I said. "The kid's a liability."

  "The kid's a friend, Sam."

  "Yeah," I said, "same thing."