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We started over to the gate. Hallstock and Ravick were ahead of us. So was Sigurd Ngozori, the president of the Fidelity & Trust, carrying a heavy briefcase and accompanied by a character with a submachine gun, and Adolf Lautier and Professor Hartzenbosch. There were a couple of spaceport cops at the gate, in olive-green uniforms that looked as though they had been sprayed on, and steel helmets.
A sort of awe descended upon the half-dozen women marketing and upon the gray-haired ancient who in cap and apron was slicing chicken. Anthony pulled a batch of papers from his flapping briefcase and waved them cheerfully. "Buy a bon'," he suggested, "good as liberty bon'!" The phrase pleased him and he elaborated upon it. "Better'n liberty bon'. Every one these bon's worth two liberty bon's."
This was a test, no doubt about it, a dragon to slay. He had left his slayer channel-lock pliers in his truck, however, along with the rest of his tools. They now belonged to Maxie and were somewhere in New England. He walked to the shopping center and bought a toolkit cased in aluminum with foam cut out for each individual tool. It looked like a briefcase.
"You may go in now, sir." He disappeared around the door. Harold Bond stepped through the doorway, followed by two men. Morely looked at them closely. Engineers, he thought. "What have you got?" he demanded. One of the men opened a briefcase and removed a large, dully gleaming band. Apparently, it was made of plastic, or some light alloy, for he handled it as though it weighed very little.
Brannhard looked as startled as though his own briefcase had jumped at his throat and tried to bite him. He didn't look half as startled as Ham O'Brien did. "So you think," Pendarvis said, recovering his composure with visible effort, "that the logical custodian of prosecution evidence in a murder trial is the defendant? Mr. O'Brien, you simply enlarge my view of the possible!"
Needing or desperately thinking himself to need the continuum of former friends, he grabbed his cellular telephone from his briefcase and called one, only to find that the man was now a stranger who was distorted in age and mental outlook from that which he remembered.
This was repeated several times. In the meantime, Kellogg and Mallin seemed to be having some sort of exchange of recriminations in front. Ruth Ortheris came out, carrying a briefcase, and sat down on the edge of a table under the awning.
The others were no less enemies, perhaps more dangerous enemies, but they were only the tools of Stephen and Myra. For instance, T. Barnwell Powell, prim and self-satisfied, sitting on the edge of his chair and clutching the briefcase on his lap as though it were a restless pet which might attempt to escape. He was an honest man, as lawyers went; painfully ethical.
Then he looked at the briefcase the other man opened. It had sheets and sheets of paper in it hundreds, it seemed. They were filled with questions. He'd be called on to find answers for most of them, and to admit he didn't know the answers to the rest. When he was through with this questioning, every possible useful fact he knew would be on file for future use.
He gathered bathroom stuff together and remembered his briefcase and the file box where he kept his credit card information, the brokerage agreement, bank statements, and his passport. He put these in the front of the Jeep and took another look around the house. He added a flashlight and a picture of Emma to the pile in front. Woof and Verdi watched uneasily.
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