Fred was not the kind of man to hold a grudge...after yelling at
me for ten minutes, telling me how stupid I was, how unprincipled and that I
was in over my head; he finally let me talk.
We stayed up most of the night talking at Fred's place about what
we could do about Sykes and the Snake Devils. I was drinking whiskey and Fred
was drinking coffee. Needless to say I woke up with a hangover to discover Fred
had gone.
This wasn't unusual, neither was the fact that Fred had clearly
carried me to bed when I had fallen asleep in the living room and left me fully
clothed. He hadn't left any note though as to where he had gone. This was
problematic for several reasons.
1) If he had gone to work then I would have to wait for him to
come back before I could do anything about Sykes and his serpent friends. 2) If
he had gone after the Snake Devils, then he had gone alone and was probably
going to end up being shot and dumped in a ditch. 3) He had taken my guns from
me whilst I was asleep and I didn't know where they were. 4) I might have to
also ask Harry Lee for help.
Of all these problems, the discovery of where Fred had hidden my
weapons was the easiest to solve. Thinking of the last place that he would
think I would look for them is often the best place to start. After I had
checked the washing machine, the dishwasher, the oven and the cupboard where
the vacuum is stored, I found them in the top draw of the nightstand by the
bed.
I decided that phoning Harry wasn't the most horrible of ideas as
he would be able to find out if Fred was working and if he wasn't then I'd be
in the perfect position to get Harry to volunteer to help find him. It took
four phone calls to find Harry and a further six to actually speak to him.
That's the problem of calling a man who seems to spend all of his off duty time
in bed.
I swear the man has more girlfriends than brain cells.
He did however confirm that Fred was not working today and then
very hurriedly hung up. It was at this point that it occurred to me that going
to see Harry in person might just be the best way to get his co-operation.
He didn't live that far from me, so twenty minutes later I kicked
in his door and found him in the hot tub on his balcony in a very clichéd
situation with twins.
It's amazing how effective wits and bravado are in clearing a room
and even more astounding how much more effective twin revolvers can be. Harry
was a tiny bit mad about having a hole in the side of the hot tub, but he
seemed to calm down when I told him that the twins were related to the Mayor;
and had Mayor Major Tyler found out about them being in Harry's hot tub, well,
that life could have been more than a little unpleasant.
It was also this point that I chose to tell him about Fred going
off to take on Sykes on his own.
