“He said,” (and I knew exactly what he’d said, even after all those years, but I preferred to paraphrase it), “that he’d had his chromosomes checked, and they were normal, so it had to be her fault, genetically, that their only child was a mutant weirdo, and he was going to find a normal woman and have children with her before he was too old to father a proper son.”

The Ticker thought about this. “I’m sorry to have to say it to your face, but I think your father was not the most well-spoken man I’ve ever heard tell of. What, then, did your mother do?”

“She’d been a nurse, before I was born. She got recertified, and got work in a hospital emergency room. Which, she found out, is a hell of a lot different from being some specialist’s office nurse, which was what she was used to. I gotta tell you, in the list of jobs you should not take home with you, night shift ER is right up there. And it made her kind of… unstable. She started saying things to me, out loud, that she’d probably thought before, but at least hadn’t felt the urge to share. So,” I shrugged again, “I have bad associations with hospitals.”

“Gracious,” Tick-Tick said mildly. “Most of us simply go straight to the source and have bad associations with our mothers.”

That made me sort of laugh, which was a better way to end the meal. Tick-Tick stood up from the table and said she was going home.

“Should I come along?” I asked.

“Whatever would I do with you underfoot? No, I believe you have an errand to run.”

“I do?”

“I distinctly remember hearing you say that Rico needed to know about yesterday’s events.”

“Yeah. But…”

“But what?”

“I mean… will you be all right?”

“Good grief,” she said, a little explosion in words. “I only have a cold.”

“Okay, okay. Make some chicken soup or something.”

“Yes, my keeper. Now do make yourself scarce.”

We parted on the sidewalk. I heard, behind me, the sound of her cough.

There weren’t a lot of people at the Chrystoble Street copshop. Shift change had been hours ago, and in Bordertown, as in most places, first shift is a relatively quiet time for the cops. The one with desk duty was the green-haired halfie woman with the dragon tattoo I’d seen the last time I’d been in the station, the ill-fated morning that Walt Felkin blew up. There was another guy I didn’t recognize, who seemed to be filling out a claim for somebody, at one of the long tables; and there was Captain Hawthorn, who walked through the door that led to the back rooms just as I came in.