Chapter 7

Rudy had nothing to report – which of course is the best report you can have when you're on bodyguard duty. The ideal is that the body you're guarding winds up not needing the protection at all; it might be a waste of the guard's time, but it's also the safest for everyone. Next best is when the presence of the guard deters the person you're guarding against. That's why bodyguards tend to be large, intimidating characters. Either way, if nothing happens it's going well; no bodyguard wants to wind up having to actually defend the body he's guarding. The Secret Service, for instance, would far rather deal with boredom than with someone shooting at the president.

Rudy's been a cop long enough that though he hasn't lost his idealism, he has a large dose of get-home-in-one-piece in his attitude. He's never been a hot dog, not since I've known him anyway, and he's been in police work long enough that he never will be. He'll go into danger if he has to, but he prefers to avoid it. I say that makes him a smart man. Certainly it made him happy to be able to report that nothing had happened during his shift.

While we stood outside talking, Cinda came to the door and offered us something to snack on. It surprised me – generally when you guard a body, the body in question prefers to pretend the guard isn't there. It isn't, after all, comfortable to be in need of a bodyguard's services, and though bodyguards aren't butlers or upstairs maids, there is something of the master-servant relationship there. Frequently the body treats the guards like furniture – which is one reason I almost never get into bodyguarding. But Cinda's manners would have done Tony and Anna proud. They taught me good manners ... at times by applying the board of education to the seat of learning. I'm an inherently informal guy, but I say "please" and "thank you" and I hold the door for people – men as well as women – and when I know it's safe to do so I take my hat off when I go in the door. Cinda was displaying the same sort of courtesy and consideration that Tony and Anna had pounded into me.

The snack was just taquitos and Coke, but it was welcome. I'd eaten my fill back at the house, but I had a couple of taquitos, partly out of good manners and partly because I'm always ready to eat a little bit more. And I did appreciate the gesture.

After 20 minutes or so Rudy and I went back outside, so that I could do my job and Cinda could relax. I'd not inquired as to her schedule at home, and wouldn't – it wasn't relevant. For all I knew she was now going to hang upside down from the living room light fixture and chant something from Robert Silverberg's The Book of Skulls. I didn't much care, just so long as she didn't go running around town without I knew about it.

As Rudy got ready to get into his car, I asked, "You know anyone who might be interested in this gig?"

"¿Que pasa, Darvin – nadie quiere ayudarte?" It was good for me that Rudy kept the Spanish simple enough for me to understand that he was asking if no one wanted to help. I can only keep up so far, and then I get completely lost.

"Nope. I tried my whole list already – somehow they were all by the phone the first time around – and no one's loose."

"Bueno. I'll ask around – maybe there's a cop who'd like some extra cash."

"Coolness." I put my hand on his shoulder – we've been such good friends for so long we don't have to pretend not to care about each other, as our culture forces men sometimes to do. "Hey, tell Sara I said hello, okay?"

"Sure, Darvin. But you can tell her yourself."

"I know – and I will, sooner or later. But you tell her too. For one thing you may talk to her before I do. And for another thing—" here I grinned at him "—if I have anything to say about it y'all are gonna get married again someday."

He grinned back at me, got into his car, and drove off. I climbed into the Blazer, checked that my gun was handy under the seat – though I knew it was – and settled down to wait.

I'd bought the Blazer a couple of months before. I'd been driving an old, beat up, hardly-ever-washed Chevy pickup for years – I'd had it when I'd met Cecelia in 1994 – and it had finally become irrational to keep it any longer. It was getting too expensive to keep it in the sort of running order I demand of my vehicles. I could afford it, but there's no point in wasting money even when it's coming out your ears.

That pickup had made me a confirmed Chevy man, and so when I decided to buy a new vehicle I'd looked for a Chevy. I got the Blazer because it had passenger and cargo room, and four-wheel drive – which the pickup had lacked, sometimes causing stressful moments in the desert – and if the weather was bad we could sleep in the back. Sleeping in the bed of the pickup could get cold or wet sometimes, even in the desert.

So it was in the Blazer that I waited ... and waited ... and waited...

A great deal of detecting is tedious. Sometimes I spend hours going over records – phone bills, check books, deeds, boring stuff like that. Sometimes I follow someone all over town, watching whoever it is do things that interest him or her, but bore me to death. And sometimes it's sitting around doing nothing for hours on end. It's a good thing I grew up without TV and computers and video games and all that. If I'd had that kind of thing when I was a kid – not that anyone had a personal computer when I was growing up – I wouldn't now be able to sit in the parking lot looking at the darkening landscape without going nuts. You can listen to the radio or to CDs – and I did. I heard Ana Gabriel's Eternemente about three times through, altogether, though I had the CD player on shuffle, and I was wearing the numbers off the radio buttons. It never ceases to amaze me that every radio station in town that I like will run commercials at the same time, for 15 minutes at a stretch it seems like, or that every one of them will play stuff I don't like for 20 or 30 minutes straight. And when one of them does decide to put on a song I like, I come in near the end – either that, or they all put on good songs at the same time, and when one ends and I go hunting I find the others are just ending too.