Free Psyc 03_The Call of the Mild by William Rabkin Page B

worse than anything I did while I lived with you.”
    “I knew that,” Henry said. “But you were an adult. It wasn’t my job to worry like that anymore, so I stopped. It’s the same with your detective work. As long as I don’t know about it until you’ve finished a case, it’s none of my concern. But if I have to watch you putting yourself in danger, it will be just like you’re twelve years old again. And I don’t think anyone wants that.”
    “Not if you’re going to make me go to bed at eight thirty,” Shawn said. “I’m still trying to see the second half of the A-Team episode where they went to Africa. They were caught by cannibals and put in a cauldron over a fire, but before I could find out what happened to them, you unplugged the TV and turned off the lights. For all I know they were eaten decades ago.”
    “It turned out the cannibals weren’t really cannibals,” Gus said. “It was all a plot by—”
    “Don’t tell me!” Shawn said.
    “The episode’s been on DVD for five years,” Gus said. “If you cared that much, you could have seen it a hundred times by now.”
    “It’s not the same,” Shawn said. “If there isn’t at least one commercial with Jacko urging me to knock a battery off his shoulder, I can’t watch it.”
    “And I can’t watch you putting yourself in danger,” Henry said.
    “It’s as simple as that.”
    Shawn shot Gus a pleading look over Henry’s shoulder. Gus shrugged helplessly. Shawn turned back to Henry. “I’ve got to do this,” he said. “Please.”
    “It’s a hard lesson to learn and a hard way to learn it, but you don’t owe this woman anything, son,” Henry said. “She asked you to find her necklace. You did. What happens in the rest of her life—even her death—is simply none of your business.”
    “She was our client,” Shawn said. “When a man’s client is killed, he’s supposed to do something about it. It doesn’t make any difference what you thought of her. She was your client and you’re supposed to do something about it. ‘And it happens we’re in the detective business. When one of your organization gets killed, it’s bad business to let the killer get away with it, bad all around, bad for every detective everywhere.’ ”
    For a moment Henry seemed impressed by Shawn’s passion for the profession. But something about the words nagged at him.
    “ ‘Partner,’ ” Henry said as the memory fell into place.
    “Yes!” Shawn said. “We’ll be partners.”
    “No,” Henry said. “It’s ‘when a man’s partner is killed he’s supposed to do something about it.’ ”
    “Is that what’s bothering you?” Shawn said. “Because I promise if Gus is killed I’ll stick with that case, too.”
    “Thanks,” Gus said. “Really means a lot.”
    “It’s from The Maltese Falcon, ” Henry said. “You want me to let you stay on this case because of some speech by a fictional detective.”
    “I can’t think of a better reason, can you?”
    “No, and that’s the point,” Henry said. “Now, if you’re not going to step off this case, there’s a dentist, a lawyer, and a real estate developer who can’t finish their song until I play my drum solo.”
    Henry took the two steps back to the cabin door.
    “You win,” Shawn said. “We’re off this case.”
    “Not good enough,” Henry said, slipping out into the dimming Ojai sunlight. “Too much wiggle room.”
    “I promise that as long as you are working with Lassiter on this case that neither Gus nor I will do anything to investigate, explore, probe, scrutinize, deconstruct, interrogate, or in any other way examine the circumstances surrounding the violent slaying of our former client, the late Ellen Svaco,” Shawn said.
    For a moment Henry looked convinced. Gus was almost convinced himself. There were only two ways he could see for Shawn to weasel out of the promise, which was at least three fewer than Shawn usually built into such a sentence.
    “I