The Human Blend - Alan Dean Foster [51]
“I’m not interested in your name or anything else about you.” Molé’s response was as indifferent as it was calm. “What I’m interested in right now, the only thing I am interested in right now, is the location of a man named Archibald Kowalski, also known as Whispr, who is the tenant of record for this apartment.”
“I shouldn’t tell you that,” al-Thuum mumbled as he looked down at himself.
“Of course you should.” Molé shook his head slowly. Sometimes he could never decide if people were stubborn or just stupid. “Otherwise you will die a slow and painful death. I’ll find him eventually anyway. You know that I will. Listen to my voice and you will know it. Look into my eyes and you will find this confirmed. To me your demise will be only an inconvenience. Your inconvenience will be far greater, and permanent.”
“I don’t know where he is.”
The elderly grim-faced captor edged the neuralizer toward al-Thuum’s face and the younger man flinched. “Honestly, honestly! I do not. He sublet these rooms to me only yesterday.” Bound hands flailed sideways as they struggled for purchase on the mattress. “See? There are two beds. His only condition of the subletting was that he be allowed to sleep here from time to time.”
A number of the remarkably tiny, astonishingly sensitive, and profoundly expensive sensors that comprised Molé’s left eye played over the man on the bed. At the same time Molé inhaled deliberately of the bound young man’s body odor in hopes of isolating and identifying certain potentially revealing pheromones. Insofar as this exceedingly sophisticated combination of sight and sound was able to ascertain, al-Thuum was telling the truth. There was also no indication that he might be involved in a physical relationship with Molé’s target.
It meant another delay. Another inconvenience. But then, the truth was often inconvenient.
“When might he be back?”
The man on the bed shook his head. “I don’t know that, either. I don’t know anything about him, really, except that he needed money. That’s why he moved into this place and almost immediately agreed to sublet it to me. At least, that’s what he said.”
For someone on the run it made perfect sense, Molé knew. Rent living quarters so you would have an address and a place to eat, sleep, and clean yourself, but utilize it only when there was no alternative. Meanwhile sublet to keep it occupied and have the look of being lived-in, but not by you. What information he had been able to glean on this Whispr person suggested he was not particularly bright. In the light of present circumstances that assessment might have to be revised. Even in Molé’s chosen profession general intelligence evaluations had a difficult time gauging street smarts.
A pity this wretched émigré was not fat, or female, or otherwise melded. Any of those characteristics would have been sufficient to physically distinguish him from the loose description Molé had obtained of his quarry and the whole awkward confrontation could have been avoided.
“I can wait,” he declared softly.
“You might have a long wait.” Al-Thuum coughed again. His expression wrinkling slightly in disgust, Molé decided he would not want this gentleman cooking his food. “The last time I saw him he said he might be away for a while, and just to keep his bed clean and made up in case he should return unexpectedly.”
The hunter nodded. “Yes, you’re right. I could linger here for days, or weeks even, wasting time while he and the important article he carries with him journey ever farther from Savannah. Now that you mention it, renting this residence and then subletting it to another might be nothing more than an astute ploy to induce someone like myself to squat here and wait for him to fall into my lap.” He straightened. “I