The corner of Fig Street was banked up with piles of snow that looked like dirty fleece.
Lil and Nedly loitered a short distance away from the hot dog cart, pretending to browse the magazines at the newsstand on the other side of the road.
Minnie the hot dog seller was wearing two hats. Around her neck was a woollen snood, and beneath the brown apron that was tied round her waist she wore a padded jacket under a tatty sheepskin body warmer. Her snow boots were too big but three thick layers of socks made up the difference. Even so, her freckled cheeks were dull and chapped-looking and the tip of her nose was so red it was almost glowing.
‘She’s not going to talk to you without Abe.’
Lil gave Nedly a ye-of-little-faith type look. ‘Watch this.’
She slipped her way across the road but got held up climbing over the shovelled snow and by the time she had neared the cart a spry man in a black-leather bomber jacket and a Russian fur hat had beaten them to it.
Lil waited behind him, twiddling her pencil impatiently. Warm steam blew off Minnie’s cart carrying with it the sweet smell of frying onions on the hotplate. Nedly drew up alongside and the man, who was still deciding on what to order, started shifting and looking warily over his shoulder. By the time Nedly realised what he had done, the man had scarpered, slipping over in the ice in his hurry to get away.
Nedly was mortified. Lil gave him a sympathetic shrug that quickly morphed into to a look that meant, On the bright side, we are at the front of the queue now, and turned to the hot dog seller with what she hoped was a charming grin.
‘What’s up, Minnie?’ With a wink Lil flicked her pencil onto the hot plate. Minnie expertly retrieved it with her tongs and offered it back to her.
‘Sorry,’ said Lil, reclaiming the greasy pencil. ‘So –’ she thinned her lips out and murmured stiffly through the side of them – ‘What do you hear?’
Minnie narrowed her eyes at Lil. ‘Me? Nothing.’
‘It’s all right, Minnie.’ Lil dropped a second wink. ‘We met a few months ago – I’m an associate of Abe Mandrel. The name’s Potkin. Lil,’ she added.
Recognition dawned on Minnie’s face. ‘Potkin? Say, maybe you do look familiar. ‘So, what can I get you Potkin Lil?’
‘It’s the other way round,’ Lil said, her ear tips going red.
Minnie looked confused. ‘What can you get me?’
‘No, I meant –’
‘It’s all right, kid. I was just ribbing you. Sure, I remember. You’re Mandrel’s sidekick.’
‘Associate,’ Lil corrected her, ‘and what I’m looking for is information.’
Minnie shook her head. ‘Is that right? Well, this here is a hot dog stand so …’
Lil realised her mistake immediately. She had forgotten she needed to buy a hot dog for cover. ‘Oh, um, right. Sorry.’ Her ears burnt painfully in the cold. ‘I’ll take one with the works,’ she said loud enough for anyone who was listening to hear, winking again as she said the word ‘works’, and then, more quietly, ‘and hold everything but the onion and ketchup.’ She dug her hands into her pocket and pulled out a fistful of small change. There wasn’t much to it.
‘Actually, maybe I’ll just take a bun. How much would that be?’
‘Just one bun on its own is seventy.’
Nedly looked appraisingly at the hotplate. ‘Maybe get some onions?’
Lil counted up the money in her palm. ‘How much for the onions?’
Minnie sighed. ‘That would be ninety all together.’
Lil beamed. ‘Great – chuck a couple of those on too.’
‘You want a bun with some onions in it?’
‘Yeah, is that OK?’ Minnie shrugged. ‘And a thick slice of whatever else you’ve got.’ Lil raised her eyebrows meaningfully and spoke out of the corner of her mouth again. ‘By which I mean information.’
‘You’re a real piece of work, kid. All right – because you’re a friend of Abe’s I’ll play ball. What is it you want to know?’ She set to work on the bun – sawing it in half and flipping over some onions to get them good and brown, while Lil pretended to read the label of the bottle of mustard.
‘What do you know about the Needle?’
Minnie frowned at the hotplate. ‘The word on the street is that the former prison governor Minos was being blackmailed and on the night he was killed, he had arranged to meet a reporter from the Klaxon, over at the multi-storey. He was ready to sing, only someone got to him first, and silenced him for good.’
‘Anyone know who did it?’
‘No one who’s talking to me.’
‘How about the epidemic?’
Minnie handed Lil the hot dog bun. It was soft and warm. ‘The Secure Wing for the Criminally Insane is officially in lockdown. No one can get in; no one can get out. The epidemic was declared by the egghead in charge there, Dr Lankin. He used to work up at Rorschach.’ She piled onions inside the bun. ‘Not that anyone has reason to doubt him; by all accounts he’s a stand-up guy.’
Lil and Nedly exchanged glances.
Lil squirted a careful line of ketchup across the onion bun and said, ‘Rorschach burnt down years ago and Lankin only took up his post at the Needle after that other doctor, Carvel, got iced – I mean, burnt to death. So, anyone know where he was in between times?’ She took a big bite that threatened to pull all of the onions out of the bun with it.
Minnie took a gulp of tea out of an ‘I heart Peligan City’ mug that must have been older than Lil was, and took a guess. ‘Abroad?’
‘Murmph.’ Lil shrugged, chomping away, trying to disengage the onions.
Minnie looked thoughtful. ‘Do you think he brought something back with him? Some kind of exotic germ?’
Lil shook her head vigorously. ‘Mo,’ she said, gulping away the half-chewed onions. ‘I don’t think he left town. I think he was here the whole time.’ She levered up the Cryptic Eyebrow but Minnie didn’t catch it.
‘Whatever that epidemic is, it won’t stay in there for ever,’ Minnie murmured, drawing her body warmer closer, and looking uneasily in the direction of Nedly, who froze.
Very slowly he took a step to one side but the direction of Minnie’s gaze didn’t alter. She wasn’t looking at him; she was looking into the distance where the Needle pierced the sky, its tip vanishing into snow clouds.
‘I heard that quarantine has been breached,’ she told them. ‘Someone has another way in and they’re using it.’ Lil was poised to take another bite but decided against it, just in case. ‘And Minos, and Ping, and all those big shots aside, I’ve heard that plenty of ordinary people have gone missing lately too, and then wound up dead and no one knows what they died from.’
Lil hesitated. ‘You think it’s connected?’
Minnie shrugged. ‘Who knows?’
Lil wrapped a serviette round the remainder of her onion bun, stowing it away in her mac pocket for later. ‘Have you heard if anyone is investigating? Like the police?’
Minnie smirked. ‘Generally cops aren’t interested in cases they can’t solve, and no one cares about prisoners getting iced so long as whatever is in there doesn’t get out.’
Lil gave Nedly a cynical look.
Minnie continued, ‘But a couple of beat cops I know, Mucklehammer and Dingus, took an interest in following it up, trying to find out about some of the people round here who disappeared, but they were warned off by City Hall. They were told that there’s a crack team working on the crimes and everyone else is locked out.’
‘Is that true?’
‘I wish I knew! Gordian isn’t sloppy. She’s got herself walled up in the Mayor’s Office and no one between her and those shiny walls knows what’s going on.’
‘And the Klaxon?’
‘They’re on the case of the epidemic, so my guess is they have someone on the inside, just like they did with City Hall.’
‘Randall Collar,’ Lil breathed admiringly. ‘So, do you think there will be someone like him in the prison? An undercover reporter?’
Minnie took a sip of the now cold tea, winced and chucked it on the snow. ‘I’d bet on it.’
Lil chewed the end of the greasy pencil thoughtfully. ‘Do you think anyone knows who it is?’
Minnie looked at Lil for a moment, like she was about to say something and then changed her mind. ‘If they’re any good, no one will know who they are.’
Lil spat a few crumbs of chewed wood out and gave Minnie the Penetrating Squint. ‘Are you one of those people?’
Minnie turned back to her hotplate and rolled the dogs over with the tongs. Her fingers were red at the ends of her fingerless gloves and the nails were bitten close. ‘Me?’ She snorted a quick chuckle and flipped the onions a couple of times. ‘I just sell hot dogs.’