His chuckle was harsher this time, and had the ring of truth. "You'll find out. Oh, I don't mean she's got the morals of a cat or anything like that. So far as I know, she's still waiting for Mister Right to come along."
"Drugs?" I asked. "Liquor?"
"A few drinks now and then—nothing else," Brock said. "No, it's none of the usual things. It isn't what she does that counts; it's what she talks other people into doing. She's a convincer."
"That sounds impressive," I said. "What does it mean?"
His hard face looked wolfish, "I ought to let you find out for yourself. But, no; that wouldn't be professional courtesy, and it wouldn't be ethical."
"Brock," I said tiredly, "I have been given more runarounds in the past week than Mercury has had in the past millennium. I expect clients to be cagey, to hold back information, and to lie. But I didn't expect it of you. Give."
He nodded brusquely. "As I said, she's a convincer. A talker. She can talk people into doing almost anything she wants them to."
"For instance?"
"Like, for instance, getting all the patrons at the Bali to do a snake dance around the corridors in the altogether. The Ceres police broke it up, but she was nowhere to be found."
He said it so innocently that I knew he'd been the one to get her out of the mess.