Mask Market A Burke Novel

I'm not the client," the ferret seated across from me said. He was as thin as a garrote, with a library-paste complexion, the facial skin surrounding his veined-quartz eyes as papery as dried flowers. He was always room temperature. "You know me, Burke. I only work the middle." "I don't know you," I lied. "You knewyou say you knewmy brother. But if you did" "Yeah, I know he's gone," the ferret said, meeting my eyes, the way you do when you've got nothing to hide. With him, it was an invitation to search an empty room. "But you've got the same name, right? He never had any first name that I knew; so what would I call you, I meet you for the first time?" It's impossible to actually look into my eyes, because you have to do it one at a time. One eye is a lot lighter than the other, and they don't track together anymore. A few years ago, I was tricked into an ambush. The crossfire cost me my looks, and my partner her life. I mourn her every daythe hollow blue heart tattooed between the last two knuckles of my right hand is Pansy's tombstonebut I don't miss my face. True, it was a lot more anonymous than the one I've got now. Back then, I was a walking John Doe: average height, average weight . . . generic lineup filler. But a lot of different people had seen that face in a lot of different places. And the State had a lot of photographs of it, toothey don't throw out old mug shots. I'd come into the ER without a trace of ID, dropped at the door by the Prof and Clarencethey knew I was way past risking the do-it-yourself kit we kept around for gunshot wounds. Since the government doesn't pay the freight for cosmetic surgery on derelicts, the hospital went into financial triage, no extras. So the neat, round keloid scar on my right cheek is still there, and the top of my left ear is still as flat as if it had been snipped off. And when the student surgeons repaired the cheekbone on the right side of my face, they pulled the skin so tight that it looked like one of the bullets I took had been loaded with Botox. My once-black hair is steel-gray nowit turned that shade while I was in a coma from the slugs, and never went back. The night man sitting across from me calls himself Charlie Jonesthe kind of motel-register name you hear a lot down where I live. A long time ago, I'd done a few jobs he'd brought to me. The way Charlie works it; he makes his living from finder's fees. Kind of a felonious matchmakeryou tell him the problem you need solved, he finds you a pro that specializes in it. Charlie pointedly looked down at my hands. I kept them flat on the chipped blue Formica tabletop, palms down. He placed his own hands in the same position, showing me his ID. The backs of his frail-looking hands were incongruously cabled with thick veins. The skin around his fingernails was beta-carotene orange. The tip of the little finger on his right hand was missing. I nodded my confirmation. Yeah, he was the man I remembered. Charlie looked at my own hands for a minute, then up at me. The Burke he knew never had a tattoo, but he nodded, just as I had. Charlie was a tightrope dancerperfect balance was his survival tool. His nod told me not to worry about whether he believed the story that I was Burke's brother. By him, it was true enough. Where we live, that's the same as good enough. "It's a nice story," I said, watching as he lit his third cigarette of the meet. Burke was a heavy smoker. Me, I don't smoke . . . except when IVachss, Andrew is the author of 'Mask Market A Burke Novel', published 2007 under ISBN 9780307278302 and ISBN 0307278301.