Eye and Talon by K. W. Jeter Page B

shoulders and back of his unbelted duster were soaked wet.
    'What do you know?' His smile widened.
    'Not your name, for one.' Iris didn't return his smile. 'I like to know to whom I'm talking.'
    'Must be a cop thing,' said the tall figure. He extended a long-fingered, large-knuckled hand. 'Vogel. And you're Iris Knaught. Just in case you've forgotten.'
    The rain, which had diminished to a sulky drizzle when Iris had first arrived at the souk , squalled harder now. Through the monsoon downpour, she could see a pair of jumpsuited simul-wranglers using sharp hooksticks to prod a half-completed baby elephant, a flop-eared head and snaking gray trunk fastened to an articulated steel skeleton, safely under cover before the pistons and servos of the exposed machinery got damaged. Iris locked her grip on this Vogel character's forearm and pulled him against the window of the Arab snake dealer's shop, under the minimal protection of its retractable overhead awning. She could already feel a couple of damp rain tendrils trickling under the collar of her leatherite jacket and down her back.
    She let go of his arm, like dropping a rat, either real or artificial. 'I don't like,' said Iris flatly, 'people who know more about me than I do about them. Makes me nervous. Like I'm being watched.'
    'I imagine so.' Leaning against the security-tempered window glass, Vogel watched his own hands busily and efficiently rolling a cigarette. 'And it just wouldn't do to have someone like you get fidgety.' He extended the papers and bindle of artificial tobacco toward Iris, then shrugged and put them away inside his duster when she shook her head. 'Especially with the caliber of that piece you carry around with you. The way you blade runners are so given to firing your arsenal off in public, it's amazing that LA has any population crunch at all.'
    'Hilarious.' The artificial tobacco smelled as though one of the more realistic props in the souk 's gutters had been scraped up, dried and set on fire. Tut we only do it for a reason.'
    'Sure you do.' Vogel flicked a scrap of ash toward the glistening street. 'People — and replicants — can be so uncooperative. Especially when you're trying to, urn, "retire" them.'
    'But not you,' said Iris. Her gaze narrowed as she studied the figure standing beside her. 'Something tells me that you're motivated by some burning desire to be of help to me.'
    'You got that right, cupcake.' One side of the man's face was lit in detail by the light spilling from inside the Arab snake dealer's shop; the other side was blue-shadowed by the flickering neon threaded above the souk 's stalls. 'I'm the answer to all your prayers.'
    'I've heard that from guys before.'
    'Really?' Vogel leaned his head back and exhaled more gray smoke. 'Did it work?'
    'Not yet.'
    'This time, I promise you, it'll be different.' There was no remnant of his smile left as he leaned close to her. 'You really think you can find what you're looking for by just coming around a place like this and asking for it?'
    'Depends.' Iris met Vogel's hard gaze with her own. 'But then . . . I know what it is I'm looking for. Do you?'
    'Let's not screw around.' His knuckles were lit fiery orange by the cigarette's burn. 'You're looking for an owl.' He raised his eyebrows. 'You know? Big kind of a bird. Flies around and pounces on little mice.' He made a grabbing motion with one hand. 'Too bad if that's what you are.'
    A chill, colder than the rain, crawled the wrong way up Iris's back. If he knows what I'm here for , she thought, then what else does he know?
    'Yeah, too bad.' Iris nodded slowly. 'Lot of people come around here, looking for owls?'
    'You're the only one.' One corner of Vogel's smile returned. 'Everybody else knows better.'
    Two possibilities formed themselves in Iris's mind, like the thin rain puddles gathering at her bootsoles. Either this person, whoever he was, had spotted her when she'd first arrived at the souk, and had been following her around, asking