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Mike the Angel shook his head. "Not really. If their vibros started burning out every time they came near a cop, the JD's would just start using something else. You can't win in this game." Cowder nodded glumly. "It's a losing proposition any way you look at it.... Well, good night again." He stepped out, and Old Harry closed and locked the door behind him.
Harry's grin became grim. "Not unless I go with 'em. And not even then if I don't want 'em to." "It was kind of you to let us in," said the detective mildly. "A pleasure," said Harry. "But I wish I knew how that kid got in." "Well, he did somehow," Cowder said. "What happened after he came out of the closet?" "He made me let the girl in.
What caused those vibroblades to burn up that way?" "Must have been faulty," Mike the Angel said innocently. "Both of them?" Sergeant Cowder asked skeptically. "At the same time?" "Oh no. Thirty seconds apart, I'd guess." "Very interesting. Very." He started to say something else, but a uniformed officer stuck his head in through the doorway that led to the front of the shop.
Result: one dead kid, one getaway. One of the cops got a bad gash on his arm from a vibroblade, and one of the priests got it in the abdomen. He'll live, but he's in bad shape." Mike said something under his breath that might have been an oath, except that it avoided all mention of the Deity. Then he added that Name, in a different tone of voice. "I agree," said Cowder.
"Probably not," said Perkins, "but we'll see. Come on, boys." Mike the Angel tapped Cowder on the shoulder. "I'd like to talk to you for a minute." Cowder nodded, and Mike led the way back into his private office. He opened his desk drawer and took out the little pack that housed the workings of the vibroblade shield.
Harry glanced quickly at the receiving screen that was connected with the multitude of eyes that were hidden around the area of his shop. Then a smile came over his small brown face. "Cops," he said. "Time they got here." Sergeant Cowder looked the room over and took a drag from his cigarette. "Well, that's that. Now what happened?" He looked from Mike the Angel to Harry MacDougal and back again.
I'll get in touch with you later, if I need you." Harry and Mike the Angel followed him through the front of the shop to the front door. At the door, Cowder turned. "Well, good night. Thanks for your assistance, Mr. Gabriel. I wish some of our cops had had your luck." "How so?" asked Mike the Angel. "If more vibroblades would blow up at opportune moments, we'd have fewer butchered policemen."
"We combed the whole area, Sergeant. Not a soul around. But from the looks of the alley, there must have been a small truck parked in there not too long ago." Cowder nodded. "Makes sense. Those JD's wouldn't have tried this unless they intended to take everything they could put their hands on, and they certainly couldn't have put all this in their pockets."
And Harry knew the sergeant knew it. Sergeant Cowder sighed for a third time and looked at the Scot. "Okay. So what happened?" Harry's face became serious. "They came in about six-thirty. First I knew of it, one of the kids the boy stepped out of that closet over there and put a vibroblade at my back. I'd come back here to get a small resistor, and all of a sudden there he was."
Cowder cut off with a sharp click, and Mike the Angel looked quizzically at the dead screen. Was he imagining things, or was there a peculiar note in Cowder's voice? Two minutes later he got his answer. Mike the Angel was sitting behind his desk in his private office when the announcer chimed.
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