I smiled.
I didn’t turn as George walked up behind me to join us. I didn’t need to see what I knew would be a cocky grin that put Bradley’s to shame – even though I was very, very curious to know what he had to smile about, and what was making the rustling sound that became obvious as he got closer.
I didn’t turn around because even though Bradley was, clearly, a smug putz and I am, equally clearly, a pretty huge witch-with-a-capital-B, this dispute wasn’t actually about our clashing personalities. What this was, was one small skirmish in an ongoing inter-service rivalry that makes the Army-Navy conflict look like the freaking Care Bears.
What I’m getting at is that George knew how to act, and so did I. I was going to display confidence, total confidence, even in the face of having no idea if my partner was about to place an ace or a deuce.
“That was one hell of a smoke break,” I said, my smile never wavering, “What, you had to harvest the tobacco leaves yourself?”
“Funny you should mention leaves,” he said, and stepped forward a little more, standing beside me. He was holding a bag full of autumn leaves, and my smiled became a little less forced. I’d guessed right, and pitched him a decent straight line to play off.
“I had a hunch,” he said, “That the leaves Jenny Kim got from Glenn Jackson might do with being examined a little more closely.”
My eyes met Bradley’s and I didn’t stop smiling, “And let me guess, George. You found something?”
“Yes. Yes, indeed.”
#
I’ve probably given the impression by this point that my primary concerns in this whole sorry story were a) the minutiae of the Iron Badge jurisdictional dispute with the self-proclaimed “real cops” and b) scoring points off Bradley, with c) getting an innocent young woman out of trouble and catching the real perp coming a distant third.
But really, and I know that I’m going to have to ask for your indulgence on the point given my behaviour so far, that’s not the case. I was very concerned about Jenny Kim, and I had high hopes for tracking down the spurk who was behind the whole mess.
But the fact was, like it or not, I had to deal with a) and b) before I could have a hope of moving on to c) at all. We needed to make it utterly, totally, unequivocally clear that this case was Borderland Guard business, and we had to cut off Bradley’s power-tripping on the subject off at the knees, to get Jenny released, and get ourselves out of there to go do our actual job.
