ARC: Peacemaker (9 page)

“Didn’t pick you for having OCD,” I said.

“No offence, darling, but you’re in law enforcement. I don’t leave my fingerprints on anything official.”

I snorted. “Thought only the police could get hold of dissolvable gloves?”

“That’s where you’ve got it arse-about, Virgin. The police can’t afford
anything
after the last round of cutbacks. Hell, they don’t even have a
policy
for managing Mystere anymore. They’ve
always
had that.”

“You got sources inside, eh?”

“Of course,” she nodded. With her protected hand she took my phone and studied it.

I waited, giving her time to study it, watching her face for reactions.

“Strange. Which is rather delectable,” she said.

I didn’t comment.

It doesn’t look strictly African vodun,” she went on. “See the carvings on the knuckle ends… they’re native Australian, and the beads where the bone and feather joins, I’d guess they’re Native American. And then there’s this… the stone with the hole through it at the bottom of the beads...”

“What about it?”

“I’m not sure.”

“And the feather?”

She shook her head. “I know someone who could identify it.”

“OK,” I said slowly. “So… no clue what it means.”

“No. But how intriguing,” she replied. “Where did you find it?”

“Around.”

She sighed. “You really are infuriating, Virgin. Coming here, demanding my opinion then you’re not even prepared to share.”

“I don’t know anything, Corah. This here…” I pointed to where we stood “…is me starting from scratch.”

“So the guy that got wasted in your apartment has nothing to do with it?”

Now she had my attention. “How do you know about that?”

Her smile spread into heavy-duty smug. “I see things.”

“Yeah. Right. You paying someone to watch me?”

She lifted her hand to my forehead and gently pushed my hair back out of my eyes. “Such paranoia is not healthy, my dear and oldest friend.”

Her fingers were cool and dry against my skin. She used to do that at school, to annoy me. Feign tenderness and lace it with a large whack of patronizing.

That was my read on it anyway.

“Who can tell me about the feather?”

“Still wanting something for nothing?”

“What’s your price then?”

“I hear that Chef Dabrowski is having an opening night for his new menu. I wish to go.”

“What?
Why?”
I stared suspiciously at her. Corah and I knew Chef both independently and together. For a while there, we worked the counter –a job-share arrangement – at his first burger bar. Chef sacked her for selling miscellaneous illegal substances from the kitchen door. To my knowledge, they hadn’t seen each other since.

“Let’s just say that there’ll be some interesting people there.”

I vacillated for a moment. Chef wouldn’t like it – he’d warned me off Corah many times when we were younger, but on the face of it, the request seemed harmless enough. It made me curious though. Who could she possibly want to meet Uptown? “Fine. I’ll message you the details but make sure you come to it clean.”

Corah walked over to the side table where her incense holder rested. Fishing in her pockets she retrieved the brass pipe from her pocket and lit it from a smoking incense stick. The sweet hashish stench smoked through the room in a couple of puffs.

“Of course. Like a virgin.”

I gave her a withering look. “Who can help me with the feather?”

“Papa Brise runs Mystere these days, and a spiritualist called Kadee Matari has control of the rest of Divine over Moonee side. All the gangs answer to them, commercially and for permissions.”

I raised an eyebrow. “Permissions?”

“Just like it sounds… who can go where in safety, what they can deal, what they have to pay for immunity. Brise or Matari will know who’s importing the feathers, if you can get past their gatekeepers.”

“I could just ask around the stall holders.”

“Asking questions in Mystere is more dangerous than drinking the water.”

She was right. “So how do I get to them?”

“Do I have your word on the invitation?”

“Sure.”

She turned and went over to a sideboard that rested under a 3D image of the rising sun. Taking a ring from her index finger she keyed open a drawer and retrieved a flat box.

Then she came back to me. “Roll up your sleeve.”

“What’s in the box?”

“You want to talk to Papa Brise or not?”

“Yes.”

“Then give me your forearm.”

Warily, I did what she asked.

She removed the lid of the box, took out a small black square and placed it on the sensitive flesh inside of my wrist, just above my pulse.

The instant it touched my skin it began to burn, in the way boiling water would.

I wrenched my arm away from her. “What the–”

“DON’T TOUCH IT!” she barked. “Pain won’t last.”

I bit my lips and glared at her through tear-blurred eyes.

Then as quickly as the scalding sensation started, it went.

My muscles relaxed and I glanced down expecting to see burn marks. Instead a tattoo undulated on my skin.

“Corah!”

“Relax Virgin. It’s a temp. Be gone in a few hours. That’s how long you’ve got to find Papa Brise and talk to him.”

“You’ve given me a gang tattoo!”

“Technically incorrect on two counts. First, it will vanish like you never had it. Second, it is a parlay tattoo, not a gang marking. It means you’ve been screened to make contact.”

“Screened?”

“Divine has its systems of checks and balances, just like you got laws uptown.”

“You seem to know a lot.”

“That’s why you came to me, isn’t it?” she said.

I guess it should be no surprise to me that Corah had questionable affiliations.

“Now use the parlay mark to get to Brise. With Kadee Matari you’re on your own. I wouldn’t go near her if my life depended on it. But if you put word out that you’re looking for her, she may find you.”

“S
he
?”

She smiled. “Don’t mess with the Stoned Witch.”

Chapter Twelve

Outside, the streets were a fresh assault on my senses. The stall guy yammered on his microphone, noise projecting in short static bursts like a food blender.

I held onto the pole for a few seconds before letting the tide traffic sweep me up. The momentum took me down past Bambara’s Emporium, where I had to skirt the edge of the human whirlpool created by people entering and leaving the popular arcade.

On the other side of it, traffic lights halted forward movement and the crowd bulged onto the street, waiting for the sequence to change.

I was six deep back from the curb and could only see glimpses of what lay ahead. Word seeped through though, that something was happening.

“Shit is going down.”

“Jees, do you see that? Three against one.”

Arms began to rise above heads, hands holding camera phones, fingers tapping the
snap, reset, snap
,
reset
tattoo.

A surge of irritation made me consider trying to fight my way back against the flow. Then I heard the man in front of me say! “That guy in the hat has a gun.”

I grabbed him by the shoulder and squeezed. “What kind a hat?”

He shrugged me off but I wasn’t having it.

“Mate! What type of hat?”

“Who the–”

I flashed my badge at him before he let the profanity let fly –only giving him a brief look at it so he didn’t clock it as not being Aus-Pol.

The glimpse and my expression must have been enough because he lowered his phone so I could see the screen. The photo taken a few seconds before might have been blurred but there was no mistaking the scenario.

Or the man in the hat.

“Make room!” I roared pulling my gun from the holster hidden by my coat.

The press of flesh melted away once shouts of “gun” and “she’s packing heat” let loose around me. I suddenly had a free lane to the curb and I ran through it hard before it disappeared, plunging out onto the street. The traffic had stopped and left an oasis of space right in the middle of the intersection.

The reason for the gridlock was four men. Three of them stood still, their backs to the other curb. They were dressed in baggy overalls adorned with patches. I didn’t know all the gangs and mobs that ran in Mystere, but these guys clearly belonged to one of them.

My glance skittered along the upstairs windows and balconies with a vantage point. Someone had to be gunning for the fourth guy, who stood opposite the three statues, pointing two Peacemaker pistols. But the patchwork of window-shadows and neon made it impossible to see clearly.

With my own piece raised, I stepped slowly onto the street, towards Nate Sixkiller.

“Marshall?” I said as evenly as I could. “What’s going on?”

“Ranger,” he replied without so much as a glance. “You made it.”

I tried to swallow over the dry patch at the back of my throat but it remained rough. “You were expecting me?”

“Gambling on it.”

“You should get some help for that.”

He didn’t answer but I fancied a faint smile touched his lips, even though his back was to me.

I raised my voice even louder. “Hoping we can sort this out now, gentlemen. These people want to get about their business, as do I.”

“Then tell the fucking cowboy to holster his pieces,” said the middle statue of the three.

“Nate?” I asked.

“Is it custom for thugs to set upon a visitor to the country and try and rob him?” he said loudly in reply.

That got the crowd caterwauling.

Someone shouted, “Shoot ’em and get on with it.”

I drew alongside Sixkiller, knowing that his trigger fingers would be twitching, and noticed the blood trickling from his temple to his chin. Brown muck clung to the shoulder of his shirt as if he’d been rolling in something unsavoury.

“Sounds like you-all owe the Marshall an apology.”

The middle guy spat on the ground and dipped his bald head so I could see his ink.
MY3
. I guessed that meant the three streets that made up Mystere. It wasn’t smart to back bangers into a corner, but that’s just what I’d done.

I straightened my aim. This could go way south and I didn’t have a vest on. My stomach felt full of razor blades, and anger towards Sixkiller surged through me.

“Couldn’t you just let it go?” I whispered out of the side of my mouth. “It’s Mystere. Of course you’re gonna get rolled, coming here in a hat like that.”

He said nothing and I risked a quick sideways glance. His expression was hard enough to strike a match on.

“Shit,” I muttered. “You cover the one on our right, and the one in the centre. I got the guy on the left.”

A slight nod.

“But let me try something first,” I added.

He didn’t react.

Not sure if that was agreement or not, I stepped forward anyway, taking care to approach the three men from the side, so as not to get in Sixkiller’s direct line of sight. I didn’t know him well enough to judge whether he’d shoot me in an attempt to get at them.

The closer I got, the more little details stood out. The middle guy had a missing eye tooth and a thick silver
earing
earring
though one brow, the small guy on his right had circular sweat stains under his arms and rib cage, and the guy on his right’s fingers curled as if he was planning to grab something. I figured he had a concealed weapon of some kind, maybe a knife. The way his eyes darted to and fro suggested he might be estimating the accuracy of his aim over the distance.

All
of them had killing in their eyes. And embarrassment. The kind of combination to led to impulsive decisions.

I took my shot at defusing the situation. “Y’all picked the wrong target today. I’m on my way to see your boss.” I lifted my free hand so they could see my wrist plainly. “Hate to be telling him that you caused aggravation for a friend of mine. And a US Marshall at that. Could bring all kinds of heat.”

Their eyes flickered to and stayed on the parlay tattoo Corah had given me.

“You’d be all letting the Marshall see your apology now, I’m guessing.” I glanced back at Sixkiller whose expression hadn’t altered.

They glanced at each other and the guy with the twitchy fingers began to reach.

I lifted my pistol. Behind me, I knew the Marshall’s Peacemaker’s were a spit away from discharging.

The crowd had fallen silent, shuffling backwards, leaving space behind them; sensing the climax approaching. Further down Gilgul the rhythm faltered, the vendors momentarily mute while the momentum within the triangle listed like a damaged ship.

“Don’t waste your life over this,” I said to the MY3 guys quietly. “He will kill you. I‘ve seen how quick he is. His pedigree, you know. Comes from a line of true gunslingers.”

The bald, middle guy made a noise in the back of his throat, unintelligible to me but enough to communicate meaning to his compadres. Twitchy fingers relaxed and one by one they all nodded their apology to Sixkiller. When the last one had finished, the Marshall slowly holstered his pistols.

And then suddenly it was over.

The bubble of invisible restraint on the curb, burst, and people swarmed across. Like backed up water pressure in a pipe, they spilled past and I was once again caught in the swiftness of their flow. As I steered to the other side of the street, a hand seized my wrist.

I came around hard with my fist up and smacked it against a calloused, iron-hard palm, bruising my knuckles.

“Don’t ever grab me from behind,” I said with heat. Sweat trickled down between my buttocks. The stand-off had been intense.

He dropped his hand immediately. “I didn’t want to lose you in the crowd.”

I planted my feet to brace against the people brushing past us and looked at him. Not a trace of stress showed, only the underlying stern seriousness that was his default expression. He should have been handsome
–
the symmetry to his features and the compelling dark eyes
–
but Nate Sixkiller made me shiver. He’d killed the intruder in my apartment without a flicker. How much of a real human existed under his skin? There were plenty of psychopaths in law enforcement.

“You just can’t do that here,” I said. “Pulling your weapons when people do you wrong.”

“Seems to me like the perfect time to do it.” His deliberate contradiction made me want to smack him.

“How did you get that apology from them?” He recaptured my hand and held my fingers in front of my face. “What’s this marking mean?”

“Means I’m been working, getting some background that will help up with the Park murder while you’ve been
–
” I bit off the rest of my sentence imagining Bull Hunt firing me three ways to Sunday for what I was about to say.

“Let’s get something to eat and you can tell me about it,” said Sixkiller suddenly.

“It’s nearly midnight,” I said, not wanting to tell him a damn thing.

“And your point is…?”

I let out a frustrated breath. “OK. There’s a cantina just off Gilgul. Crowds aren’t so bad there.”

“Cantina? If that means beans and chili,” he lifted his Stetson and patted his hair flat against his scalp! “then lead the way, ma’am.”

I graced him with a withering look. “My
name
is Virgin.”