Read Online Lowball: A Wild Cards Novel by George R. R. Martin, Melinda M. Snodgrass - Free Book Online

than Eddie, and had a soft voice that Eddie recognized from the earlier phone call. “You can call me Franny. This is my partner, Detective Stevens.” Stevens was a tall, black nat in a dark suit. He was slim, with prominent ears …
    Jesus Christ. It was Mr. Trio.
    “Whoa,” Franny said, catching Eddie’s shoulder with one slim hand. “You okay?”
    “Yeah, I…” He swallowed hard. “I just had a tough time getting here this morning.” He wiped his face with his handkerchief. “I don’t deal well with crowds.”
    “Maybe you should sit down.”
    Franny helped Eddie to a seat, then fetched him a paper cup of water. He took it with shaking hands, trying not to look at Stevens. “I’ll be all right.”
    If the situation weren’t so terrifying it would almost be laughable. Called in to sketch his own creation! But there was nothing, absolutely nothing, to connect him to Gary Glitch. As long as he kept calm and did his job—maybe not too good of a job, but not so bad as to attract attention—he could just collect his paycheck and that would be the end of it. The hardest part would be pretending that he’d never seen Stevens before.
    No, the hardest part would be not drawing Gary Glitch as though he’d drawn the character ten thousand times before.
    “What’s the case?” Eddie asked, struggling to keep his voice level.
    Franny shrugged. “Missing persons. Sort of.”
    “I, uh—oh?” Eddie fumbled with his portfolio and cane to cover his confusion and relief. “What do you mean ‘sort of’?”
    “It’s not much of a case,” Franny admitted.
    “It’s the best you deserve,” Stevens muttered under his breath, so low that Franny couldn’t have heard it. Oh, really?
    “We aren’t even really sure anyone has actually gone missing,” Franny explained as he led Eddie through swinging doors and across the crowded, noisy wardroom, where too many desks were crammed together under harsh fluorescent lighting and a miasma of stale vending machine coffee. “Very few of the supposed missing persons are, you know, anyone that anyone would miss. But now we’ve got a witness—someone who claims he saw some of the missing jokers getting snatched off the street.” They paused outside an interrogation room and looked through the one-way glass. “For all the good he does us.”
    Slumped in a plastic folding chair on the other side of the glass was one of the most pathetic-looking jokers Eddie had ever seen. His head resembled a wolf’s—a mangy, flea-bitten, ragged-eared cur of a wolf. The fur was matted and patchy, with a lot of gray around the muzzle; the watery, red-rimmed eyes stared wearily at nothing; and the lolling tongue was coated with gray phlegm. The rest of him was essentially human, with a stained and tattered Knicks T-shirt stretched across a swollen beer gut. Dandruff and fallen gray hairs littered the shoulders of his filthy denim jacket.
    Stevens crossed his arms on his chest. “His name’s Lupo. Used to tend bar at some swank joint, he says, but that was a long time ago. Now he’s just another denizen of No Fixed Abode.”
    “He was passed out behind a Dumpster,” Franny continued, “and woke up just as the supposed kidnappers were leaving the scene. Didn’t get a very good look at the perps, but maybe enough for a sketch.”
    Eddie was dubious. “I’ll do what I can.”
    Franny sighed. “I sure hope so, or else this case is just going to fizzle out.”
    At the sound of the door, Lupo’s head jerked up like a spastic puppet’s, his eyes wide and feral. Eddie let the detective precede him into the room.
    “It’s just me, Lupo,” Franny said.
    Lupo’s muzzle corrugated as Eddie entered, his eyes narrowing and his ears going back. Though the wolf-headed joker was no rose himself—he stank of garbage, cheap wine, and wet dog—his beer-can-sized muzzle probably gave him a keen sense of smell. “What’s that ?”
    Love you too , Eddie thought.
    “This is Eddie Carmichael,