Chapter 7. Investigation and insinuation.

When he arrived, Pete saw that the front window of Snooky’s Tavern was gone, and smoke from a just-extinguished fire hovered heavily across the corridor. With some relief, he saw Snooky standing over the smoldering ruins, holding a fire extinguisher and putting down little flares as they reappeared in the rubble.

“Snook!” he called, and her eyes lit up when they met his.

“Oh, Pete!” Snooky may have been the toughest woman on PC-3, but that didn’t stop her from throwing her arms around her friend, melting in his arms and planting a distinctly more-than-friends kiss on his perfectly willing lips. “I’m so glad you’re all right,” she said, settling into his chest when they came up for air.

“What happened? You were tied up the last time I saw you,” Pete said.

“They slapped me around and cut me free just before all hell broke loose,” Snooky said. “I didn’t know where they were taking you, but they didn’t make it sound good.”

“I’m all right,” he replied. “Hey! Where the heck are Bob and Baxter? They were supposed to meet me here.”

“Yeah, well, we were a little delayed,” came Bob Whelan’s voice from behind him. “Today’s Thursday, isn’t it?”

“Yeah, why?”

“Long story. I’ll tell you later. What the hell did you do to Snooky’s place?”

“It was the jerk who beat me up the other day,” Snooky said. “Guess he couldn’t get enough of me.”

“Guess he must’ve decided on the bazooka,” said Baxter Hetznecker. “I’m sorry we weren’t here to stop him.”

“Stop who?” Pete said.

“Jeff Hamilton,” Baxter said. “No doubt about it now. This is his style — he managed to mess up the front of Snooky’s bar without blowing the outer wall or hurting anyone.”

“— without hurting anyone much,” Snooky corrected, displaying the rope burns on her wrists. “I guess Baxter’s right, though, they could’ve easily blown me away with the storefront if they wanted ta. Hey, where’d they take you, anyway, Pete?”

“They wanted to pull a little divide and conquer routine, I think,” Pete said, and he explained about the imaginary lover and the imaginary sales lady in the ImagRoom. “The best place to start is to head back there and see what we can turn up.”

“No, the best place to start is to tell the police what the hell is going on around here.” As she took her first look at the crime scene, Detective Sgt. Eddie Bohannon did not appear to be at all pleased about the damage to the PC-3 encampment.

“Maybe you can tell us why Hamilton’s still running around shooting at people,” Whelan said.

“Because he hasn’t been home.”

“You know where he’s hiding out?” Baxter asked.

The detective looked at him as if she were hoping he’d say that. “Yeah, we used state-of-the-art police techniques to find him,” she said broadly. “He’s in the phone book. Bet you didn’t think of that one, big boy.”

Baxter Hetznecker looked like he’d been hit in the side of the head with a 2-by-4. Sometimes that flexible face was very easy to read. As if the figurative plank of wood wasn’t enough, he smacked the base of his palm into his forehead. “The phone book!” he wailed. “This is embarrassing.”

“Don’t worry, man of steel,” Eddie Bohannon said out of the side of her mouth as she fumbled with her pipe, “it’s not really the first place most people look for terrorists. In fact, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a hit man in the phone book. They’re not in the yellow pages most of the time. Makes you think maybe Hamilton’s not a hit man, don’t it?”

“Well, sure,” Baxter said, and you could almost see the light bulb burning over his head. “He’s gonna wanna look like an upstanding-type citizen. I did that a couple times when I was undercover, too — used my real name so I don’t get anybody suspicious.”

“Buddy, your real name is suspicious,” the detective said as smoke from settling debris mingled with the tobacco aroma. “Now, you were talking about leaving to go — where, exactly?”

“None of your damn business,” Bob Whelan interjected. “You haven’t been taking us seriously or you would’ve tracked down this Hamilton creep by now. So we’ll just handle this on our own. You just go put your feet back up and chew on your frickin’ pipe.”

Now, Pete, Baxter and Snooky had already decided that Detective-Sgt. Eddie Don’t-Call-Me-Edith Bohannon was no one to mess with, but Bob Whelan, captain of the good ship Betsy Ross, was not always one to pick up on such subtleties. Therefore only Bob seemed surprised when Bohannon drew herself up to her full height, which was just about eye-to-eye with the freighter captain, and leaned menacingly toward him, the waft of aromatic smoke gagging him just enough to make him uncomfortable.

“I read about you in the papers, little man,” she said roughly. “You were hijacked by the people who stole the imaginary bomb program, you told Special Forces they went one way, and then took off after them in the other direction. It’s probably your damn fault the moon got blown away. The only reason you’re not in the slammer for obstructing an officer of Special Forces is because you turned around and cooperated later on. Well, look, cute stuff, if you don’t want to end up in my slammer, you’re gonna tell me everything you know about why the front end of this bar’s been blown away, and you’re gonna tell me all of it before you take one more step or breathe one more breath!”

“You little ditz, I ain’t telling you nothing,” Whelan shouted, waving the pipe smoke out of his face. “You haven’t done a damn thing to help so far, and we don’t need your help anyway.” He probably had some other unpleasant things to tell her, but just then Eddie Bohannon nodded at two burly officers standing nearby, and they grappled Bob Whelan off to a nearby squad vehicle. They tossed him in the back seat, slammed the door, and stood next to the vehicle as Eddie Bohannon turned to the remaining threesome.

“I’m thinking Captain Whelan needs a night in the hoosegow to collect his thoughts,” she said coolly. “Would the rest of you care to cooperate with our investigation?”

“We’re on the same side, lady,” Snooky said, and somewhat indignantly, as if “lady” wasn’t the first word she thought of using. “You didn’t have to pull that stunt.”

“As a matter of fact, I did,” the detective replied. “It’s my job to keep this encampment in one piece; last I looked, it’s your job to keep the citizens lubricated, not do my job. I need your help, and I don’t need you gallivanting off on a vigilante mission. That idiot,” she said, thumbing a thumb toward the squad, “is just itching to get in my way. Now, Mr. Wong, I think I heard you telling your friends something about an Imaginary machine.”

“What’s going to happen to Bob?” Pete asked first.

Detective-Sgt., Eddie Bohannon laughed and pushed back her fedora. (Well, I didn’t mention the hat before because you should have known she was the type of detective who wears a fedora. I can’t do all the work for you, can I? Anyway, she laughed and pushed back her fedora.) “Nothing’s gonna happen to him,” she smiled — and somewhat fetchingly, I might add. “He just ticked me off and I needed to put him in his place, is all. If you want, I’ll let him out and he can come with us to see this machine. You remember where it was?”

Pete relaxed at that. “Sure, I can lead you right to it,” he said, and he went into the story of the imaginary lover and the imaginary saleslady and how he was allowed to leave and that was that. Eddie agreed that heading over there was the place to start, while the crime lab folks picked through the debris at Snooky’s. First they’d spring Bob Whelan from the back of the car.

As the detective walked over to relieve the burly officers, Baxter pulled Pete aside. “I think she likes him,” the big man grinned slyly, “and I think he likes her.”

“What in the bejeebers are you talking about, Baxter?”

“Bob and Eddie,” Hetznecker said impatiently. “They wouldn’t get so riled at each other if there wasn’t, you know, a spark there or somethin’.”

Pete Wong regarded his huge friend incredulously. “Bax, you’ve got one hell of an imagination.”

“Oh, I don’t know,” Baxter replied with a knowing grin. “You heard her. She called him 'cute stuff,’ didn’t she?”

Pete had no answer for that except a shake of the head and a silly grin, which was just as well because they’d caught up with the others.

Next: Chapter 8. Things get serious.