Hacklin grinned at me with no humor whatever. “That deal we made. I guess you won’t mind if we call that off now?”
Chapter fourteen:
High jinks in no. 2010
That was a bad spot.
I knew they had to take Auguste. They’d have been derelict if they didn’t. Presumably neither Hacklin nor Schneider knew about Auguste’s having quarreled with Roffis. Or his background of belligerency.
Still, the steak knife, the blood on his sleeve, that ridiculous numbers clipping, they were enough. Even without this compact. The compact wasn’t precisely the sort of trivia a guest hands out as cumshaw. More likely the kind of article included on some jewelry insurance inventory.
So Auguste was in for it. No matter what I did.
But a security man stands or falls, depending on whether he has his staff with him or agin him. We’re hired to keep order in a city, a vertical city to be sure, but one with more transients moving in and out every day than, say, a city like Northampton, Massachusetts. Yet we don’t really have any power or authority. No night sticks or hip holsters. It’s all done with mirrors. We have to depend on employees for information and backing. No protection man rates that sort of support unless the staff knows he’ll go to bat for an employee if and when necessary.
So I couldn’t just let them walk out with Auguste. In five minutes the bunch on the grapevine would have spread the word all over the house.
“Auguste,” I said, “when’d she give you this?”