The food was vegetable soup, and the cup was full of genuine coffee. Well, I suppose if anybody knows where to get it when the rest of the town is short, it’ll be the police.

I hope I didn’t salivate visibly. I slid an ashtray over from the end of the table and snuffed my cig. “You didn’t go out of your way for this, did you?”

“It was all we had left. We already ate the donuts. No, we keep a pot on pretty much all the time, for when we’re too busy for breaks.”

“Good grief. Thank you.”

“No prob. If we run out, next shift can make their own damn lunch.”

Hawthorn had watched the whole exchange closely, as if he were looking for tips on his intonation. “We can also manage some aspirin and a beer, I think. Can’t we, Saquash?”

“Yes, sir. Beer’s in the icebox, and aspirin’s in the first aid cabinet.”

Hawthorn pursed his lips faintly, eyeing Saquash. Saquash was rummaging industriously in the table’s long drawer for, it turned out, a spoon. Finally Hawthorn’s shoulders rose and fell a little, and he ambled off through the door at the back as if he’d always meant to do it, anyway.

Saquash gave a contained snort of laughter. “Old Prickly’s a swell guy, actually,” he said, and handed me the spoon. “But you have to make him run his own errands, sometimes.”

I dug into the soup. It probably wasn’t as good as it seemed at the time, but that still leaves some room at the upper end. “Hawthorn’s a Dragonstooth Hill guy?”

“Yep. But we let him hang around just to show how broad-minded we are. Actually, I think he’s interested in Rico’s illusionist, this guy you’re helping her chase down. Maybe they haven’t forgotten, up on the Hill, that Soho is full of their kids.”

“I hadn’t thought B-town cops had so many regulations.”

Saquash cocked his head. “Like what?”

“Hawthorn said he had to do something to clear working outside his jurisdiction.”

“Eh. That sounds like Old Prickly. It’s more a courtesy than a regulation. Nobody would give him shit for pitching in, but his conscience’d bother him for months.”

Then Hawthorn came back, and we had to stop talking about him. He had an unlabelled, sweaty beer bottle in one hand and the aspirin bottle in the other. From a pocket of his silver jacket he produced a ring of keys so big I wondered what he weighted the rest of the pockets with in order to get the jacket to hang so well. There was a bottle opener on the ring, with which he popped the beer. “No dark, I’m afraid,” he apologized.