Read Online So Yesterday by Scott Westerfeld - Free Book Online Page A

them—plus they were giving
away our position.
    "Yeah, it's about two blocks east"—hooking
my thumb over my shoulder—"and about a hundred and ten blocks north."
    "A hundred and ten blocks? That's far,
right?"
    I told them where to catch the 1 train.
    "Your public-spiritedness is appreciated, I
assure you," Jen drawled after the two had left, uncertainly repeating my
directions to each other as they passed out of earshot.
    "After when are you not supposed to wear white
pants?" I asked.
    "Roughly 1979."
    I pointed. "They're leaving."
    The truck was loaded, the bald guy scraping shut the
building's doors. The shoes were going away. I thought of rising and dashing
after the truck, jumping on just as it exceeded running speed, concealing
myself behind boxes until I reached their evil lair, sneaking out and stealing
a henchman's uniform, and, after a few captures and escapes, pulling the levers
that made the whole place explode. And I realized why no crimes were ever
solved by amateurs.
    "There's nothing we can do, right?"
    "Nope," said Jen as the truck pulled away.
    ************************************
    The ground floor was empty.
    "This sucks," I
said.
    We’d squeezed our way in through the wooden
doors, which the bald guy hadn't bothered to chain
together very tightly. There was no point. Eve ry la st box was gone.
    I checked Mandy's phone for the time. It was coming up
on two o'clock, only two and a half hours since we'd been here.
    Jen surveyed the empty cavern of the building, her
eyes scanning the floor inch by inch, finding nothing but spotless concrete.
    "We should have come back earlier," Jen said
quietly. "The shoes were right here."
    "Did you forget the running-for-our-lives
thing?"
    "Overrated." Jen sighed. "There must be
something we missed before."
    She wandered off again, leaving me in the shaft of
light by the doors, where I silently listed the reasons amateurs didn't solve
crimes in the real world. Professional detectives would have sealed off the
building with yellow tape from the start, dusting for fingerprints, searching
for records of ownership and work permits. Actual police would have arrested
the big guy in black and intimidated him into talking. Real cops wouldn't have
run to the nearest coffee shop and then their friend's house to make expert use
of wax paper. (Okay, maybe a coffee shop would have come into play, but they
would have sent the rookie for doughnuts, leaving plenty of manpower for
stretching out the yellow tape.) Non-amateurs might have the first clue how to
take the license number of a rental truck and turn it into an address. I sure
didn't.
    And most importantly, a genuine crime solver wouldn't
be terrified by the idea that the bad guys had his cell phone and were trying
to find him.   Real police were machines
for turning coffee into solved crimes. I was a machine for turning coffee into
jangled nerves.
    "Hunter?" Jen's voice came out of the gloom,
jangling my nerves.
    "What?"
    "Looks like someone left you a message."
    She emerged, squinting and holding an envelope. A gray
square of duct tape curled from it, the envelope glowing white in the gloom,
carrying the letters H-U-N-T-E-R in red marker.
    Her green eyes were wide, pupils huge in the dim
light. "This was taped to the wall back there. Right where the shoes
were."
    I swallowed, holding out my hand. I'd seen Mandy
scrawling notes during focus groups, her handwriting slanted, impatient, and
unreadable. But my name stretched across the envelope in controlled and
implacable letters.
    "Aren't you going to open it?"
    I took a slow breath and tore gingerly at the paper,
not sure what I was nervous about. A letter bomb? Contact poison? The ace of
spades?
    It was two tickets.
    I stared at them dumbly until Jen pulled one from my
hand and read aloud.
    '"You are invited to the
launch party of Hoi Aristoi, the magazine for those with
discriminating incomes.' Huh. It's tonight."
    I cleared my throat.
"That isn't Mandy's