A Plain-Dealing Villain

The smiling man walked briskly along beds of golden dirt, past row after row of archaeologists working on hands and knees in the Bolivian heat. Twine roped off the dig site into a grid of dusty numbered squares where the researchers gently parted the earth with trowels, mesh screens, and camel-hair brushes. If anyone had glanced up as the man passed, they might have gotten a quick impression: white, early thirties, sandy hair, and stonewashed jeans.

Or, he knew, they might see a black man in his fifties, wearing faded overalls. Or an older Latina woman with her greying hair in braids. Either way, he’d just slide right off the skin of their minds. If anyone on the dig team was capable of looking at him—
really
looking at him—they’d think he was a cousin to the Cheshire Cat.

All they’d see was nothing but a smile and a shadow.

The Smile let himself into the dig foreman’s tent, ducking under a heavy canvas flap. The tent sweltered under the midday sun, trapping the brutal heat inside and turning the stagnant air into a gluey haze. He sat down at a folding table and powered up his laptop. It was a bulky Toughbook, a brick of rugged black plastic built for harsh environments, with a satellite modem. A sloppy pile of worn-out tarot cards sat off to one side.

The Smile held out his shadowy hand and the cards leaped through the air, riffling into his palm. He shuffled overhand, slow and lazy, while he waited for the computer to connect.

The screen flickered into focus, giving him a panoramic view of a brightly lit boardroom. Eight men and women sat along a table made of rock, one slab of obsidian with its surface polished to a mirror sheen.

“—given the Dakota oil boom,” a woman in a pinstripe suit was saying, “Operation Black Seed should move the entire region’s index into the desired range while yielding at least fifteen million—”

She saw the others’ heads turn and fell silent. Every face stared into the camera. A few looked guilty, like they’d gotten a bad report card and were just waiting for their parents to come home.

“Sir,” a man toward the front of the table said. He tugged at the knot in his tie, eyes downcast. “There’s been an incident. In Nevada.”

The Smile said nothing.

“One of the Keepers,” the woman said. “It’s dead.”

A man in the back of the room leaned forward. “We’re still piecing everything together from the chatter out of Washington. Vigilant Lock has an asset on the ground in Nevada, an FBI agent named Harmony Black, and we’re tapped into their communications. She’s been spearheading a disinformation campaign, covering up the shitstorm that went down at the Enclave Resort.”

“I heard about that on the radio,” the Smile said. “What do we know?”

The man up front tugged on his tie like it was a noose around his throat. “I’ve emailed you a full write-up, but to make a long story short, the Keepers latched onto the CEO of the Carmichael-Sterling Group. She discovered an Eden Tendril in Nepal, twenty years ago. Most recently she joined forces with a remnant of Ausar Biomedical to try to…attune herself to the tendril.”

“Perhaps I’m misremembering,” the Smile said. “Didn’t you assure me that Ausar Biomedical was, for all intents and purposes, obliterated? Did we not spend several million dollars currying government influence just to pull their teeth? Am I misremembering
any
of this, Mr. Brown?”

“That—that was a long time ago, sir. We can’t be held accountable for—”

“Choose your next words
very
carefully.”

Brown opted for silence instead. He sank down in his chair, still squeezing his tie knot.

“There’s a bright side,” the woman in the pinstripes said quickly. “These new developments uncovered a small treasure trove of data on Ausar’s last activities, before they went into receivership twenty years ago. Now we know exactly where the other two tendrils are: Mexico and the Swiss Alps. We have latitude/longitude and satellite surveillance photos.”

The Smile remained silent.

“The other Keeper is in Detroit,” the man in the back said, “with two of the original Ausar scientists. We’ve got a kill team on the ground, and they’re ready to move in as soon as you give the word—”

“No. Keep them under surveillance, but let it play out. Let’s see what happens.” The Smile slowly shuffled his tarot cards. “So. Someone did our work for us, taking down a Keeper. Excuse me—they did
your
work for
you
. Who and how?”

A pudgy man with a comb-over and a nervous twitch in one eyebrow raised his hand. “I—I have that, sir. Um, street mage named Daniel Faust. Small time con artist and thief. He’s a nobody.”

The Smile idly tossed a trio of cards down on the table. The Fool. The Magician. The Tower. He scooped them up and shuffled them back into the deck.

“Las Vegas has a sizable occult footprint,” the man in the back said. “Insular community, mostly petty criminals. They’ve got a détente with the corporate powers that be: they don’t mess with the casinos, and in return, the casinos don’t red-book them.”

“Red book?” the woman in pinstripes asked.

“The black book is for cheats and hustlers. Means you don’t get to play in Vegas anymore. The red book’s the one the public doesn’t know about. That’s for cheats and hustlers who use magic. Penalty’s a little higher. I hear they’re fond of psychic lobotomies.”

“So,” the woman said, “minimal blowback if we have Faust eliminated. This entire situation is a deviation from the script. I think we should terminate everyone who was involved to tie up any loose ends.”

The Smile tossed down another three cards. The Fool. The Magician. The Tower. This time, the image on the third card didn’t depict a crumbling medieval spire; now it was a sleek monolith of black glass and chrome rising over a sea of neon lights.

“I have a better idea,” he told them. “We still have our eyes on the Knife?”

The man with the comb-over nodded quickly. “Y-yes, sir. It’s in Chicago. We can send a retrieval team—”

“Lure Faust to it,” the Smile said. “Let’s pull a few strings and push him into the path of the Year King. I think the two of them should meet. Worst-case scenario? Daniel Faust dies. Best-case scenario? He serves us, and then he dies. Either way…well, we’ll have a little fun, won’t we? Also, dispatch teams to permanently seal the Eden Tendrils in Nepal and the Swiss Alps.”

“And the one in Mexico?” the woman in pinstripes asked.

“I might want it later. Buy up the land it’s on and the twenty acres around it in every direction. Post a permanent guard.”

“Satellite scans show a small village within that radius.”

“Shame,” the Smile said. “The drug cartels are just getting bolder and bolder these days, aren’t they, Ms. Green? I hear they’ve been known to massacre entire villages as reprisal for some imagined slight.”

Green nodded sharply. “Understood, sir. We’ll deploy our usual fixers.”

“Very good. Dismissed. And someone please send me a complete dossier on this Daniel Faust person. I think we might be able to find him a part in our little drama.”

A pale yellow moon hung over East Las Vegas. I slouched in the passenger seat of a stolen bakery van. The light from a Chinese restaurant sign washed the empty street in yellow neon. We’d grabbed the van right out of the bakery lot, five blocks away. We’d have it back before morning, and the owners would never know it was gone.

That assumed, of course, that the job went according to plan. I’d had a bad feeling all night, closing on my shoulder like a bouncer’s hand telling me it was time to go home. The kid drumming his fingers on the steering wheel to the beat in his head wasn’t helping. He was nineteen going on twelve, too damn eager and too damn green.

“Hey,” he said, looking my way. “You got a piece, man?”

I arched an eyebrow at him.

“’Cause I don’t,” he said, “and one of us oughta be strapped. You know, in case of trouble.”

I leaned my head back against the cheap vinyl headrest and called out, “Coop?”

I heard rummaging sounds. From the back of the van, a willowy southerner with a bleach-blond goatee poked his head up.

“Yeah, Dan?”

“Tell your nephew why we don’t carry guns on a B&E.”

Coop sighed and dusted off his hands on his faded jeans. “Burglary gets you one to ten, and they go easy if it’s your first ride. If you’re carrying a piece? Then it’s two to fifteen years and no leniency. Don’t matter if you use it or not.”

Coop was going to owe me for this. I’d brought him in for a cut of the action because I needed a safe cracked, and he was the best boxman on the West Coast. He’d never met a slab of steel he couldn’t punch, burn, or melt his way through. Then he asked me to bring his dipshit nephew Augie along as a wheelman.

“He’s looking to get into the game,” Coop had told me over a couple of Jack and Cokes. “His old man’s bunking up at the Ely State pen for the foreseeable future, so he’s no use, and the kid’s just gonna end up sharing a cell with him if he goes it alone. He needs to learn how to do things the right way.”

I didn’t like it. Then he told me the kid would only take a five percent cut of the score. Apprentice wages. I still didn’t like it, but I could only handle so much of Coop’s puppy-dog eyes. Besides, I owed a wad of cash to Winslow, a gunrunner friend of a friend who helped me out of a jam a little while back. It’s never good to owe money to a guy with a cellar full of military hardware. Especially not when he rides with an outlaw biker gang.

I took a deep breath and tried to sound more patient than I felt as I explained Crime 101 to the kid. “Guns escalate things. They’re only good for crowd control. We’re going in after closing hours, so we don’t
need
crowd control.”

“Yeah,” Augie said, “but what about security? What if they start bustin’ caps?”

Bustin’ caps
. I wondered how many hip-hop posters he had on his bedroom wall.

“Site’s handled by Gold Star Security Northwest,” I explained. “They don’t carry guns, just Tasers and pepper spray. They also make thirteen bucks an hour, and heroics are highly discouraged in their training manual. Their standing orders in case of a burglary are to retreat to safe ground and call the real cops. That gives us plenty of time to bug out if we get spotted and blow it.”

“Cool,” Augie said. Then he scrunched up his face like he was doing calculus in his head. “Wait. How do you know all that stuff?”

“It’s called research. What I’ve been doing every single night for the last week like it’s my full-time job. I know shift schedules, head counts, and guard timing. The manager, he works late two nights out of five, but there’s no way to predict which ones. What I do know is his home address, the names of his wife and their two little girls, and what their bedroom windows look like. If he’s there, he’ll cooperate, and we won’t need a gun to make him do it. Just words.”

“Cool,” Augie said, his head bobbing like a puppet. I stared out at the street. We had five minutes until the shift change opened our window of opportunity.

I was rusty. I didn’t like being rusty. I’d been a little busy these last couple of months, dealing with a mad sorceress and her scheme to take over the world.

I had a strange life.

Bottom line: Lauren Carmichael and all her followers were six feet underground, and that whole ugly mess was in the rearview mirror. The wounds still felt fresh, especially in the still hours of the night, but that just meant it was time to get my life back on track. Nothing in my wallet but a Canadian penny and a couple of moths. This job was supposed to turn things around for me.

Supposed to.

I dug into the pocket of my slacks and fished out my lockpicks, nestled in a forest green oilskin case.

“Here.” I handed the case to Augie. “Hold on to these for me.”

“What’s up?”

The empty street was trying to tell me something. I needed to listen.

“Just stay here,” I said. “I want to check something out. I’ll be right back.”

The target was one block over and one block up. The corrugated plastic sign for the Laramie Brothers Tool & Die Company hung on a wire fence that ringed a small parking lot. The building had seen better days; cracks ran through the frosted glass windows and chips marred the red brick façade, worn down by time and neglect.

I strolled down the sidewalk on the other side of the street, hands in my pockets, keeping it casual. That was what it looked like, anyway. I didn’t spend years working for Nicky Agnelli’s gang, earning my place at the right hand of Vegas’s biggest racket boss, just because I knew how to pick a lock.

I brought a little something extra to the table.

I took a deep breath and stretched out my senses, far beyond the confines of my flesh. Tendrils of psychic energy, luminous purple in my second sight, snaked out and licked the night air. I felt for dissonant rhythms, stray thoughts, dark intentions. I got nothing but empty cars and boarded-up buildings. A stray wind kicked a crumpled hamburger wrapper down the street.

Spend enough time living on the wrong side of the law, magic powers or not, you grow a sixth sense for when things are about to go sideways. Think of it as Darwinism for criminals. You learn when to walk away, you stay in the game for another night. You don’t, well…the prisons are filled with guys who didn’t spot a setup until they were being hauled off in handcuffs.

I couldn’t find anything wrong, but that didn’t mean nothing
was
wrong. I’d only ignored that bad feeling in the back of my brain a couple of times before, and I’d always paid a price for it. I walked across the street, toward the company parking lot.

The cars parked along the curb were as low-rent as the neighborhood. Used, rusted, dents patched with Bondo. The van at the end of the block almost fit in. Almost. Tires were brand new, high-end Pirellis with sturdy treads. Then there was the problem with the lights inside the building: I didn’t see any. I’d run surveillance for the last five nights, and I could always catch the swing of a watchman’s flashlight on the opposite side of the frosted glass, but not tonight.

I stood at the lip of the parking lot and glanced over my shoulder, just in time to see a curtain flutter behind a second-floor window in the apartment building across the street.

I pulled out my burner, a cheap Nokia flip phone with an hour of prepaid time. I’d only need five seconds. Coop picked up on the first ring.

“I’m calling it.” I strode away from the fence, heading back across the street. “Scrub everything and get out.”

Sometimes I hate being right. The sudden glare of high beams blinded me as a sedan screeched around the corner and slammed to a stop, pinning me in its headlights. Another car, a Metro cruiser with its light bar strobing, pincered in from the other side and painted me in blue and red.

“Leave the van. Get out.
Go
,” I hissed. I dropped the phone to the pavement and stomped on it as I raised my open hands and offered up a big, cheerful smile. Car doors swung open and suits jumped out, their guns hard shadows in the piercing light.

“Step back,” a woman’s familiar voice barked. “Step back and away from the phone. Hands where we can see them.”

Harmony Black. I should have known. She was a full-figured blonde, a little on the short side, wearing an eggplant-purple necktie, wire-rimmed glasses, and a silver bracelet that dripped with magical energy. A small retinue of feds followed her into the headlights, and she snapped her fingers at one of them, pointing to the pavement.

“Bag that. See if you can get anything off the SIM card.”

Good luck. We’d bought the burners just for this job and paid in cash. If my shoe hadn’t cracked the card, all they’d get from it were the numbers of two other anonymous phones. Phones that, right about now, would be wiped for prints and finding their new home at the bottom of a trash can. I didn’t break the phone to cover my tracks; I broke it to make it look like there were tracks to find.

“Well hello, Officer,” I said. “Lovely evening, isn’t it?”

“Special Agent,” she corrected me. Then she gestured to somebody standing at my shoulder. “Cuff him.”

Rough hands grabbed my arms and wrenched them behind my back. The steel bracelets clicked tight around my wrists, cool and hard. A cop from Metro patted me down. He gave Harmony a shrug when he came up empty.

“You know,” I said, “if you wanted to see me, you didn’t have to go to all this trouble. We could have a couple of drinks, get to know each other better…”

She got up close and personal. Her stare could have burned a hole right through me.

“Meadow Brand. Where is she?”

I blinked. “I thought she was with you. You mean she didn’t show up for her hearing? Wow, that’s really surprising. She seemed so trustworthy.”

“I have
had
it with you, Faust. You blew it tonight. And now you’re going down.”

“Sorry,” I said, “never on the first date, not unless you pay for dinner. And you have to take me someplace real nice.”

Harmony took a step back and looked at me like I was something she’d found stuck to the bottom of her shoe. She turned to the cop at my shoulder.

“Get him out of my sight. The rest of you, listen up! He wasn’t working alone. I want you to canvass three blocks in every direction. If someone looks the slightest bit wrong, run them in and—”

The cop shoved me into the back of his cruiser and slammed the door. I wasn’t worried about my partners. I knew Coop was busy teaching his nephew one of the most important survival skills in the book: how to make a clean getaway.

As for me, I’d have to find my own way home.