![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
However, here's another chunk of Invulnerable
Fifteen minutes later Amanda was on-line in a cafe down the street. She’d worried briefly about how to ask Roadie for the use of the F5 civic database without explaining why, until she’d smacked her forehead in the realization that at least for the moment, most of what she needed was public knowledge.
Now, with a large coffee beside her, she was looking over maps and satellite photos of the neighbourhood, trying to guess what Victor might have been after. The Twelve Dancing Princesses seemed like the obvious answer, and for that reason she was wary of it. She’d just come from the gallery, after all, and the golden artwork was uppermost in her mind. Sam had told Amanda, shortly after she became the Caryatid, that the most important thing she’d ever learn was how to trust her instincts but not make assumptions, and that after ten years as Roadie he was still trying to figure it out. She was therefore looking over the neighbourhood to see if there were any other potential targets for supervillainy than the Wet Sheepdog Gallery.
The yellow pages website showed a jeweler’s around the corner. A look at their website, however, revealed it to be an art-jewelry studio whose owner worked mainly in copper and semi-precious stones – she doubted anything there was expensive enough to be worth the trouble of stealing, but made a note to check the place out in case any of the gems came from meteorites or were radioactive. There were a couple of fashionable restaurants on the block – she liked to think she knew Victor well enough to be certain armed robbery wasn’t his style – on the other hand, if one of them turned out to be the regular haunt of somebody worth kidnapping – she suspected he’d see a certain glamour in that. Everett Emin Books, next-door to the gallery, had a most uninformative webpage, consisting of a photo of the storefront and a scan of the owner’s business card, stating that he dealt in Antiquarian & First Editions, and that the shop was open By Appointment Only. Amanda decided to make an appointment for her afternoon off, and continued round the block. Hm. There was a police station on the other side from the gallery. She wondered if there might be something in that – evidence that would need to be tampered with, or a lock-up that Victor wanted to bust someone out of.
****
After giving up on Everett Emin Books’ webpage, Amanda had begun a search on Everett Emin, which turned up exactly two mentions of him: as the seller of a book called White Lead Nights, and in a report on a book dealers convention in which he was quoted about the poor behaviour of the convention hotel’s security. She looked up White Lead Nights, which proved to be a book published in 1938 about “sin and scandal...and DEATH!” among the eighteenth century’s fashionable set. There were no excerpts available, but she very much suspected the book fell into the category of Bodice-ripper, with perhaps a side-order of True Crime. Armed with the title in case Emin asked what she was looking for, Amanda had called the bookshop’s number and after a short game of phone tag, and a shouted conversation (Emin was somewhat deaf) had made the appointment to drop by.
The bookshop was better-lit than Amanda had anticipated, but crowded with crowded shelves. She glanced at some of the spines as she walked to the back; all of them seemed to be long to pulp mysteries of some fifty or seventy years before:
Murder in the Death-House; The Aluminum Killer; The Creeper Stalks Chinatown; The Burning Fog; The Doom Note.
Through a half-opened door at the back of the shop’s main room loomed a grizzled head belonging, she supposed, to Everett Emin. His eyes widened at the sight of her, but he quickly recovered himself. The book dealer was not quite so old as she had pictured him, with a certain wiry strength, but he was indeed hard of hearing; or perhaps just liked forcing his customers to shout the titles of old pulp mysteries.
“I know the business card says antiquary,” he began, grumpily, “but most of my stock is mid-century pulp paperbacks. You know what I mean by that?”
"Yes," said Amanda. This was the exact conversation they’d had earlier over the phone.
“I’m not an antique dealer, no pretty fussy gilded leather here.” he bellowed. “And I don’t sell books by the foot to decorate your library either.” Amanda hadn’t even realized that such a practice existed, but she held her tongue. Clearly Everett Emin wished to avoid selling any of his books, but since she wasn’t there to buy them anyway she thought there might be a chance of slipping a few queries past his defenses if she was patient enough to wait until they weakened.
"I'm shopping for a birthday present," she lied. "My boyfriend is wild about old paperback mysteries." It occurred to her Victor truly would enjoy these yellowed tales of adventure and crime, but she couldn't see him stealing the paperbacks. No, she thought, he'd steal something easier to liquidate, and then pay for the books. Emin interrupted her thoughts:
"Any particular Author?" Uh-oh. The Author of White Lead Nights - what had the name been?
"Hiram Vaughn Rochester?"
"You mean Hiram Von Rorschach?" The bookseller raised a suspicious eyebrow: "Your boyfriend has...interesting... tastes." The emphasis was unmistakable. Great. Now he thought she was the girlfriend of a pervert. She'd been trying without success to think of a neutral way to ask if he'd noticed anything suspicious around his shop - now she saw her last chance at subtlety sinking with a pathetic glance heavenward, not waving but drowning. Happily she was, for the moment, saved from having to reply by the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the basement stairs and the appearance of a middle-aged man in a city-works uniform. He had a pockmarked face with drooping eyelids, and he was carrying a large toolbox.
"Well," said Emin, "are the pipes up to code now?"
"Sorry, man, " mumbled the city worker, "Those pipes are way messed up. My boys and me are going to need a day just to clean off the rust before we can even start in on the repairs." The bookstore owner muttered something to himself about depraved clientele and now lazy incompetent plumbers; the rest being mercifully unintelligible.
Fifteen minutes later Amanda was on-line in a cafe down the street. She’d worried briefly about how to ask Roadie for the use of the F5 civic database without explaining why, until she’d smacked her forehead in the realization that at least for the moment, most of what she needed was public knowledge.
Now, with a large coffee beside her, she was looking over maps and satellite photos of the neighbourhood, trying to guess what Victor might have been after. The Twelve Dancing Princesses seemed like the obvious answer, and for that reason she was wary of it. She’d just come from the gallery, after all, and the golden artwork was uppermost in her mind. Sam had told Amanda, shortly after she became the Caryatid, that the most important thing she’d ever learn was how to trust her instincts but not make assumptions, and that after ten years as Roadie he was still trying to figure it out. She was therefore looking over the neighbourhood to see if there were any other potential targets for supervillainy than the Wet Sheepdog Gallery.
The yellow pages website showed a jeweler’s around the corner. A look at their website, however, revealed it to be an art-jewelry studio whose owner worked mainly in copper and semi-precious stones – she doubted anything there was expensive enough to be worth the trouble of stealing, but made a note to check the place out in case any of the gems came from meteorites or were radioactive. There were a couple of fashionable restaurants on the block – she liked to think she knew Victor well enough to be certain armed robbery wasn’t his style – on the other hand, if one of them turned out to be the regular haunt of somebody worth kidnapping – she suspected he’d see a certain glamour in that. Everett Emin Books, next-door to the gallery, had a most uninformative webpage, consisting of a photo of the storefront and a scan of the owner’s business card, stating that he dealt in Antiquarian & First Editions, and that the shop was open By Appointment Only. Amanda decided to make an appointment for her afternoon off, and continued round the block. Hm. There was a police station on the other side from the gallery. She wondered if there might be something in that – evidence that would need to be tampered with, or a lock-up that Victor wanted to bust someone out of.
****
After giving up on Everett Emin Books’ webpage, Amanda had begun a search on Everett Emin, which turned up exactly two mentions of him: as the seller of a book called White Lead Nights, and in a report on a book dealers convention in which he was quoted about the poor behaviour of the convention hotel’s security. She looked up White Lead Nights, which proved to be a book published in 1938 about “sin and scandal...and DEATH!” among the eighteenth century’s fashionable set. There were no excerpts available, but she very much suspected the book fell into the category of Bodice-ripper, with perhaps a side-order of True Crime. Armed with the title in case Emin asked what she was looking for, Amanda had called the bookshop’s number and after a short game of phone tag, and a shouted conversation (Emin was somewhat deaf) had made the appointment to drop by.
The bookshop was better-lit than Amanda had anticipated, but crowded with crowded shelves. She glanced at some of the spines as she walked to the back; all of them seemed to be long to pulp mysteries of some fifty or seventy years before:
Murder in the Death-House; The Aluminum Killer; The Creeper Stalks Chinatown; The Burning Fog; The Doom Note.
Through a half-opened door at the back of the shop’s main room loomed a grizzled head belonging, she supposed, to Everett Emin. His eyes widened at the sight of her, but he quickly recovered himself. The book dealer was not quite so old as she had pictured him, with a certain wiry strength, but he was indeed hard of hearing; or perhaps just liked forcing his customers to shout the titles of old pulp mysteries.
“I know the business card says antiquary,” he began, grumpily, “but most of my stock is mid-century pulp paperbacks. You know what I mean by that?”
"Yes," said Amanda. This was the exact conversation they’d had earlier over the phone.
“I’m not an antique dealer, no pretty fussy gilded leather here.” he bellowed. “And I don’t sell books by the foot to decorate your library either.” Amanda hadn’t even realized that such a practice existed, but she held her tongue. Clearly Everett Emin wished to avoid selling any of his books, but since she wasn’t there to buy them anyway she thought there might be a chance of slipping a few queries past his defenses if she was patient enough to wait until they weakened.
"I'm shopping for a birthday present," she lied. "My boyfriend is wild about old paperback mysteries." It occurred to her Victor truly would enjoy these yellowed tales of adventure and crime, but she couldn't see him stealing the paperbacks. No, she thought, he'd steal something easier to liquidate, and then pay for the books. Emin interrupted her thoughts:
"Any particular Author?" Uh-oh. The Author of White Lead Nights - what had the name been?
"Hiram Vaughn Rochester?"
"You mean Hiram Von Rorschach?" The bookseller raised a suspicious eyebrow: "Your boyfriend has...interesting... tastes." The emphasis was unmistakable. Great. Now he thought she was the girlfriend of a pervert. She'd been trying without success to think of a neutral way to ask if he'd noticed anything suspicious around his shop - now she saw her last chance at subtlety sinking with a pathetic glance heavenward, not waving but drowning. Happily she was, for the moment, saved from having to reply by the sound of heavy footsteps coming up the basement stairs and the appearance of a middle-aged man in a city-works uniform. He had a pockmarked face with drooping eyelids, and he was carrying a large toolbox.
"Well," said Emin, "are the pipes up to code now?"
"Sorry, man, " mumbled the city worker, "Those pipes are way messed up. My boys and me are going to need a day just to clean off the rust before we can even start in on the repairs." The bookstore owner muttered something to himself about depraved clientele and now lazy incompetent plumbers; the rest being mercifully unintelligible.
