Cookie Cutter Man Read Online Free PDF Page B

canned and tinny,
far away.
    “You tell me, man,” Daniel said.
    “We can’t be traced this way. Are you alone?”
    “This is Jared, right?” Daniel asked.
    “You’re quick, Dannyboy.”
    “Don’t call me that, Jerry-boy.”
    “Fair enough. Did you get the pills?”
    “Yeah. Now what’s this all about?”
    “Can you meet me to talk?” Jared asked.
    “I thought you said we could talk here.”
    “We can, but I prefer to do this sort a thing face to face,
no?”
    Daniel hesitated, but what choice did he have? “Where at?”
    “Good man! Remember where we bumped into each other?”
    “Yeah.”
    “Can you be there in 20 minutes?”
    “I’ll have to call a cab.” Echo had taken the Mustang, and
though his head was clear of narcotic cobwebs, it still ached like a bastard
and he was a little unsteady on his feet.
    “Don’t have it sent to your house,” Jared said. “Go up the
street and use a payphone. The one on Grant.”
    Before Daniel could ask anything else he heard a double
click. The dial tone stuttered and the line went dead, and he might as well
have imagined the whole thing.
    You did! Can’t you see that?
    Daniel ignored the stranger and got his jacket.
     
    Daniel handed the cab driver a medium-sized tip because
that’s what people always did in books when they didn’t want to be noticed. He
shut the yellow door behind him.
    The station wagon was parked across the street to the right;
Jared was leaning on it, wearing a black pea coat against a bitter October
wind, smoking a cigarette. He locked eyes with Daniel, and got in the car.
    The Country Squire pulled away from the curb, right blinker on;
Daniel cut across the paseo headed south. When he emerged from amidst the
tourist shops on the other side, the station wagon turned the corner and came
down the street toward him, pulled up to the curb and stopped.
    Daniel bent to look in the window, half expecting to be
shot, stabbed, or otherwise double-crossed. Jared was alone in the car, looking
straight ahead. Daniel drummed his fingers on the roof of the station wagon,
looking over his shoulder; traffic was about to start piling up behind them. Despite
his better judgment, Daniel got in the car, wishing he had thought to bring
along some means of defending himself. The babbled protests of the stranger in
his head rose until the slam of the closing car door cut them off.
    “Where we headed?” Daniel asked.
    “Nowhere yet. I need to talk to you first, and you need to
make a decision.” Jared pulled away from the curb and was sucked back into the
herd of plodding metal beasts. “We’ve been watching you for a while now,
Daniel. But it was Them that sparked our interest in you, because
they’ve been on you for even longer.”
    “ Who?”
    “Them. Big Brother. The Man. Pick a fuckin’ name bro, it’s
all the same set of eyes.”
    Daniel felt sick to his stomach. “But why me?”
    “Because they can’t catch you, or haven’t yet, anyway. They
have enough to put you away for a long time, but they have that shit on most
people. They just can’t use it in court.”
    “What do you mean?” Daniel asked.
    “Everything they have on you is stolen information. Illegal
phone taps, surveillance—”
    “My place really was bugged?”
    “We sent over a cleaner to sweep the place, so it’ll be
clear when you get home.”
    “You mean someone’s in my house right now?”
    Jared glanced at his watch. “Probably. But don’t worry.
Copper’s the best at this.”
    A cleaner named Copper is debugging my house, Daniel
thought, to see how it would make him feel. Numb. Was numb a mood? Had he swung
into it?
    Anger flashed in his guts. “Are you the ones that trashed my
place?”
    “We’ve never been inside your apartment before. Why? Was
anything missing?”
    “No, but someone tore it up pretty good.”
    Jared shrugged. “We can find out for you.”
    “How? We don’t have enough road to get up to 88, doc.”
    Jared grinned. “You’ll