Doctor Who_ Atom Bomb Blues - Andrew Cartmel [69]
drawled lazily ‘I’m afraid you’ll have to be somewhat more precise.’ He chuckled. ‘There’s plenty of them and they all seem to find some way to get into trouble at one time or another.’ He turned to the waiter. ‘And some bacon, please.’
Bacon? thought Ace, staring at the mound of food on the table.
‘This particular girl got into some very specific trouble.’
‘Really?’ said the Duke, his forehead wrinkling in a frown of sympathy as he poured a generous serving of warm maple syrup onto each of the tall piles of pancakes. He contentedly inspected the syrup dripping down the pancakes, like an artist pleased with an effect on a canvas. ‘The poor dear.’ He carefully speared one of the piles with a fork, holding it steady as he used the knife in his other hand, cutting like a surgeon. He removed a neat high wedge of pancake, layered like a prime archaeological site, compressed it carefully onto his fork, transferred it to his mouth, chewed and swallowed. He dabbed at his chin with a white napkin, removing a trace of syrup. ‘Not too serious I hope.’
‘Quite serious,’ said the Doctor. ‘Trouble with the government. About her sympathies. Or perhaps I should say her loyalties.’
‘Ah,’ said the Duke. ‘That’s the silken lady you’re alluding to.’ He shook his head and set to work carving out another wedge of pancakes. He cut, chewed, swallowed. ‘Such a shame, a pretty little thing like that with such a daydream of a voice.’ He addressed another wedge of pancakes. ‘Then she had to go and get involved in politics.’
‘I imagine she felt compelled to because of her background,’ said the Doctor.
‘Her Japanese blood.’
The Duke listened carefully as he continued eating. He had now finished his first plate of pancakes and pushed it aside, drawing the second one closer. ‘Yes, you might indeed be tempted to think that, but when she was singing with my band I got to know Lady Silk quite well, and I have to say she didn’t seem to have a political bone in her pretty little body. She just changed completely.
Something changed her completely. Now they say she’s making propaganda for the enemy And she’s a fugitive from justice.’ The Duke shook his head as he began to demolish the second stack of pancakes, pausing now and then to help himself to sausages. ‘It’s such a pity.’
‘I believe Lady Silk sang with your band before the war. When you were performing in Los Angeles,’ said the Doctor.
The Duke paused in his attack on the sausages. ‘Los Angeles, Boston, Chicago, New York, New Orleans, Winnipeg. Across the entire atlas. But mostly Los Angeles. That’s where Silk came from. Her home town.’
‘So I understood,’ said the Doctor. He was smiling and he had that look in his eyes that Ace knew well. The look of a hunter who has at last come in sight of his prey. ‘I was wondering if you might have any recollections of places she 121
was especially fond of frequenting. Her old haunts, so to speak.’
The Duke finished the last of the pancakes and impaled a lone surviving sausage on his fork. He chewed the sausage, regarding the Doctor shrewdly.
‘You wouldn’t happen to be some kind of Fed, would you, my friend? A G-man as well as an aficionado of hot music?’
The Doctor grinned as if he had been waiting for this moment and took out a small wallet containing an ID card and a very large, very official-looking badge. Duke Ellington inspected it as he patted his lips with his napkin. ‘Of course,’ said the Doctor, ‘I would entirely understand if you felt you were unable to help us out of a sense of loyalty to an erstwhile colleague of yours.’
Setting down his napkin, the Duke shook his head emphatically. ‘Silk was a