The motorcycle was now behind and to the left of me. Its nudge for my attention was beginning to feel less like a nudge than a scrape.

I was involved in some elaborate eye-and-bridge-of-nose massaging and missed his entrance; but when I opened my eyes, the tall, fatherly elf with the tightly braided hair, the one I’d seen here on my original visit with Rico, was sitting across the table. He wore a classic furrowed-brow Fred MacMurray nice-guy expression, and the immaculate silver jacket.

“Hawthorn,” I said. I was pleased with myself for remembering his name. Then I was a little alarmed, thinking that there had been a rank attached that I couldn’t remember. But Kathy Hong had said that they never really used them—no, she’d said they did, up on the Tooth, which was where Hawthorn hailed from… That took less time to think about than it looks, but not much.

Hawthorn, thank Mab or whomever, smiled. He had really good teeth, and cross my heart and hope to die, laugh wrinkles around his eyes. Had I ever seen an elf with laugh wrinkles? “Captain Hawthorn, actually.”

Well, there was my answer. “Captain. Sorry.”

“No offense taken. I saw you here with Detective Rico—night before last, wasn’t it? Did she introduce us?”

I certainly wasn’t going to tell him that I remembered his name because Rico and I had talked about him behind his back. “No. I’m Orient.” I stuck out my right hand, which is not something one usually does with elves, but I had the feeling it was appropriate with this one.

It was. He had a good firm handshake, which fit the role. Bingo—now he made sense. He might be older than most elves I knew, and have a more responsible job, but Hawthorn was as much a sucker for playacting as any of them. Darn good at staying in character, too. Wolfboy would have asked him if he’d seen Robert Preston in This Gun for Hire.

“I think I’ve heard of you,” he said. “You can find things for people, can’t you?”

I nodded. “That’s what I’ve been doing for Rico. I’ve got a fix on something right now that might be useful.”

“I see. Failing Detective Rico, will I do?”

“Nicely.” I explained to him about the dream, which took considerable backtracking; he was as surprised as Linn had been that I’d snagged a memory off a corpse, and wanted all the irrelevant details. Then I told him about the black-framed bike with the red teardrop tank. He stared over my shoulder, abstracted.

“Sound familiar?” I asked.

“Possibly. Possibly…”