~6.8~

The next morning Ed started making the rounds of the streets.

When he’d told the woman he was now calling Liv that he “knew a guy who knew a guy”, he had been oversimplifying. He knew lots of people, and everybody… at least everybody in Ed’s immediate circle… knew about Ivan. Many had seen the big man who handled tribe’s security concerns in the eastern half of Jericho. A few of them had met him, talked to him… or been talked to by him.

Finding someone who knew where he was and how to get a hold of him was a little more difficult. Getting Ivan’s attention wasn’t really all that hard. Most people who did it, after all, weren’t even trying. In fact, according to the stories on the street, it was the people trying hardest to avoid his notice that most often received it.

How to get his attention on purpose was the problem. Few people could conceive of wanting it. His own people probably knew how to get in touch with him, but there was no way of knowing who they were, exactly. Oh, tribe’s security forces weren’t that hard to spot. But while Ivan directed them in his half of the city, they weren’t his people. They were tribe’s.

And approaching them could be as fraught with danger as anything else that might get Ivan’s attention.

It was frustrating, because for the first time in his life Ed had stumbled onto something wonderful, something magical, something miraculous… the kind of thing it seemed like folks in Jericho stumbled over all the time. He didn’t have the first clue what to do with it… but Ivan would.

In the end, he decided he would lead with the only thing he knew for sure, and hope that would be enough to bring the big man to him.

“So,” he said to a guy he sort of casually knew, from around tribe’s safehouses and shelters. “I think I might know something useful.”