Montezuma Strip Read Online Free PDF

eyebrows rose. “I didn’t hear you say anything about scraps. Thanks.”
    Her eyes dropped. Beneath her forearms the thermosensitive Lexan tabletop changed color as the plastic responded to the subtle
     shifts in her body temperature.
    “I like Charliebo. I’ve always preferred animals to people. Maybe because I haven’t had much luck in my relationships with
     people.” She looked back up at him. “Aren’t you going to ask me about my wonderful marriages?”
    “Hadn’t planned on it.”
    “For a man you’re pretty understanding. Maybe I should’ve kept away from the pretty boys. The first one was a Designer. Good,
     though not as good as me, not anywhere near Crescent’s class. But he was slick. Did furniture. Did me, too. Designed me right
     out of his life. The second one lasted four years. I guess I went to the other extreme. Max had a body like a truck and a
     brain to match. After a while that got old. It wasmy turn to move on.” She palmed a handful of shrimp crackers from a bowl. “That was ten years ago.”
    “Maybe you should have stuck with it awhile longer.”
    “You’re one to talk.” She looked around wildly. “God, I wish I had a cigarette.”
    “I saw a den up the block as we were coming down here.” He did not offer the expected criticism.
    “Can’t anyway. Company doctors tell me I’ve got ‘thin lungs’, whatever the hell those are.”
    “Sorry. You get anything from what we saw and heard today?”
    She shook her head sadly. “Typical cop. Can’t you leave your business outside for a while?”
    “I’ve done pretty good so far.”
    “I didn’t sponge a thing. Nothing in Mermaid lively enough to prick a neuron. Oh, lots of fascinating design work, enough
     to awe just about anybody except Wally himself, but nothing worth killing for.”
    He found himself nodding agreement. “That’s what I thought. I spent most of my time looking for what wasn’t there. Blocks,
     wells, verbal codes, Janus gates. Didn’t find any, though.”
    “I warned you. How can you sponge a code? Don’t they sound the same as everything else?”
    “To most people.”
    “What do you mean, ‘to most people’?”
    He met her eyes once more. “Hypatia, why do you think they put me on this case? Why do you think Agua Prieta had to bring
     somebody all the way over from Nogales?”
    “Because you’re good?”
    “I’m more than that. Hypatia, I’m an Intuit.”
    “Oh. Well.”
    Her expression stayed carefully neutral. She didn’t look at him like he was some kind of freak. Which of course he wasn’t.
     He was just infinitely more sensitive to sounds and verbal programming than practically everyone else. But the sensationalist
     media delighted in putting their spotlights onanything that hinted of the abnormal. Intuits were a favorite subject.
    Cardenas could hear things in speech nobody except another Intuit would notice. Previously that was something useful only
     to actors, lawyers, and judges. With the advent of verbal programming it was recognized as more than a talent. It became a
     science.
    In the late twentieth-century primitive machines had been devised that were crude mimics of natural Intuits. When the majority
     of information programming and storage switched from physical to verbal input, the special abilities of those people identified
     as Intuits were suddenly much in demand. Because people could hide information with delicate phraseology and enunciation.
     They could also steal. The impetus came from the Japanese who after decades of trying to solve the difficulty of how to program
     in characters leapfrogged the entire problem by helping to develop verbal programming.
    Not all Intuits went into police work. Cardenas knew of one who did nothing but interview for major corporations, checking
     on potential employees. As living lie detectors their findings were not admissible in court, but that didn’t prevent others
     from making use of their abilities.
    Six years of