Dead Man's Hand (2 page)

The night was still warm even though it was
closing in on eleven. “Where to?” I asked as we threaded our way
through the little crowd outside the Mirage.

Pixel looked around for a moment, her
expression making me wonder if she wasn’t tasting the air to see
which way the wind blew. “My place?” she asked. I shrugged my
agreement, wondering if the night had just gone from bad to worse
to suddenly better.

Two

I’d known Pixel Patterson for a couple of
years, had seen her around for some time before that. As far as I
knew, she was the only hacker in the city for whom arrogance wasn’t
a defining trait. In my line of work, there were times when you
needed information that wasn’t exactly legally obtainable—strictly
to get a leg up on the opposition—and that’s where someone like
Pixel came in. She charged a fair price, always delivered, and
never made you feel like a complete idiot for not being able to get
the information yourself. I hadn’t needed to hire her for a few
months now, but we were still on friendly terms.

“
So was that a case that
went bad, or what?” she asked as we headed toward her car. The
Gaudy Mirage was two blocks from my office, so I’d walked here
earlier and probably wasn’t in any legal shape to drive.

I shook my head. “Just a drunk looking for a
fight,” I said.

“
Wrong place at the wrong
time?”

“
Looks that
way.”

“
Had he Changed before he
came at you?”

“
No,” I said. “He must be
pretty new.”

For a werewolf with a few years of
Lycanthropy under his belt, the full moon doesn’t have to mean
turning into a beast, killing your loved ones, leaving slaughtered
sheep on a hillside somewhere, or anything equally dramatic. They
can control it, use it when they need or want it. That this guy had
made it till almost eleven on a night with a full moon told me he’d
had the bug for a while but not so long that the adrenaline of a
bar fight hadn’t made him lose control. Maybe all the tension in
the Gaudy Mirage had set him up for it first.

Along with the crucifix, Pixel had a black
thong slung around her wrist; a little velvet bag hung from it, and
out of this she now pulled a remote. From a few cars away came a
beep and a click as her car’s taillights flashed a greeting. “I’m
glad I ran into you,” she said as we walked. “There’s something you
might be able to help me with.”

“
Fair enough,” I said. “You
more than helped me just now. Probably would have been better if
you’d just looked me up the conventional way, though.”

She laughed, her teeth catching the
moonlight when she opened her mouth. Deftly slipping her silver
chain over her head, she tucked the crucifix inside her blouse,
catching my eye a bit provocatively as she did so. We had reached
her car, a tired little thing, and she stepped off the curb to go
around to the driver’s side. I waited at the passenger door for a
moment before clicking it open and sliding in beside her onto the
cracked upholstery.

Pixel and I had always kept it straight,
professional. But that didn’t mean I hadn’t thought about her
differently, and every time I ever had, I’d always ended on the
idea that things were best left as they’d been. There was something
about her, some indefinable thing that made me think she was best
not messed with. Pixel was small but not petite, round in all the
right places. And for all her allure, the fullness of her lips, the
wideness of her eyes, the tilt of her nose, there was also
something more. Maybe it was in the pointy little teeth that showed
when she laughed, or the perfectly done nails that looked like they
might just be razor sharp. Or maybe it was the way the tips of her
black hair came around on both sides of her face to frame her jaw,
ending in fine points that made her look almost like she had horns
curling down and around her ears.

And even then, it was likely just a feeling,
one I still had and told myself to ignore as she switched on the
car and popped it into gear. I’d never heard word one about Pixel
being anything other than she appeared, and there’d been no
shortage of men she’d been linked to. None of them seemed the worse
for wear. If there was anything worth worrying about, I’d never had
a better chance to find out than I did now as we sped away from the
curb, leaving the lights of the Gaudy Mirage to fade into the night
behind us.

“
Do you know my dad?” she
asked almost right away.

It seemed an odd place to start, but I went
with it. Pretty much everybody on this side of the city knew Max
Patterson and his loud, wild ways. “By reputation,” I said.

“
Which is pretty
bad.”

I shrugged. She seemed to catch the gesture
even though she watched the road, taking a left at 3rd and pushing
the accelerator to be able to make the next light a short block
away.

“
He wasn’t always trouble,”
she said. “It’s just been the last few years the gambling’s got the
best of him. He hits it big and then drops down to nothing. Deep in
debt and then king of the hill.”

“
And right now?”

“
Right now…” She hesitated.
“Deep in debt. Way deep.”

I was trying to guess where this was going,
what she could possibly think a lawyer with friends among the
city’s paranormals could do for her or her old man. I was coming up
zero and figured I’d keep letting this play out before I slammed
the door on whatever Pixel had in mind.

“
To?” I asked.

She waited a beat and then said, “Clancy
Grommet.”

I raised my eyebrows as she slowed for a
stoplight. The way she gripped the wheel, I could tell she really
wanted to run it, probably would have if she’d been in the car
alone.

And I couldn’t blame her, the thought of
Clancy Grommet making me feel jumpy even though it wasn’t my old
man who owed him.

Clancy Grommet was not a good man to owe.
The same was true of his twin brother Yancy. Together, the Grommets
ran vice in the city—drugs, prostitution, gambling, smuggling,
extortion. It didn’t matter to them if their clients or victims
were normals like me and Pixel or children of the night like the
werewolf who’d almost done me in twenty minutes before. The thing
about the Grommets, though, was that they hated each other. Each
employed bodyguards to keep his brother from unpleasant behavior.
And their mutual hatred was compounded by the fact that they were
conjoined twins, connected at their skulls. They faced opposite
directions, the left side of one’s bulbous, bald head fused with
the right side of the other’s, and they stood with their left and
right shoulders touching. For all anyone knew, their brains were
fused as well, but nobody asked. Nobody dared.

You’d see the Grommets leaving their office
building downtown, first Clancy fighting to walk forwards and then
Yancy. Sometimes the power struggle ended up with them walking in
circles, cursing each other, and looking like something out of a
Bosch painting—if Bosch had painted people square dancing in hell.
If they’d gotten along, it would have been easy enough for each to
wrap an arm around his brother’s front and coordinate their
efforts. As it was, though, the position of their heads forced each
to angle himself just enough to give the other an opening, and
they’d poke and kick at each other until their bodyguards figured
it was enough and would step in to calm them down. Then they’d move
on until it started all over again.

It made for a rough administration of their
competing criminal enterprises. At some point in the past, they’d
agreed to split the city with Clancy taking the north and east,
Yancy taking the south and west. Rumor was that they couldn’t talk
to their operatives since each brother’s rival was always in the
room, so they let their will be known through texts or paper notes
that they shredded the second their minions knew what the Grommets
wanted of them.

“
Sorry to hear that,” I
said. “But I don’t see how I can…”

“
It’s not that,” she said.
The light turned, and she stepped on it. “My dad’s safe, gone into
hiding. I think I’ve figured out a way to get him clear with
Clancy, but there’s one little sticky part I was hoping you could
help me with.”

“
And that would
be?”

“
It’s better if I show
you.”

The thought made me nervous. The way things
were in this city at night, you didn’t want to know what people
were saving up to show you in the dark.

“
You sure your old man’s
safe?” I asked to change the subject.

“
Yes. He messages me
constantly. It’s like his tablet’s melded to his fingers or
something.”

“
Got to have access to
those bets.”

She nodded. “Anyway, I haven’t heard from
him since yesterday morning. And then he said he was getting
nervous about how hot things were getting for him. He said he was
going to lay low for a week or so and see what he could scratch
together to get himself into a better situation.”

I immediately thought there might be
something more sinister to Max’s sudden absence, but I thought it
best to keep that to myself and said, “Sounds to me like he was
going towards another source of money.”

“
Could be. Or he could
really just be hiding out. If he was off gambling somewhere else,
he’d be messaging me still. I haven’t heard a word.”

She slowed the car and swung the wheel,
taking us into an underground garage. It was well lit, and several
other cars filled most of the spaces. “But you’re worried about him
anyway,” I said as Pixel pulled her car expertly into a spot
between a wall and a green concrete pillar.

“
Well, concerned is maybe
the better word.” She killed the engine and unbuckled, getting out
of the car without looking to make sure I followed. I let her lead
the way to the garage’s elevator. I kind of liked being a bit
behind her.

“
You know Neat Pete, don’t
you?” she said, half turning to look at me as we walked.

“
Clancy’s muscle, right?”
It surprised me that she’d mention a guy like Pete. He seemed about
as far away from her hacker circle as one could get. A dapper SOB,
Neat Pete got his nickname not just from being fastidious, but also
from the sharpness of his blade and the speed with which he used
it. Word was that Pete could slice you so fast you’d be bleeding
out while thinking only that you’d felt a breeze blow past your
throat. Pete also had a weakness for the ladies; the rumor of late
was that his predilections had gotten him into some hot water with
Clancy Grommet. Pete hadn’t been able to resist a dancer who Clancy
had declared off limits, so now he was doing penance running one of
Clancy’s drug labs, work that was far from the cleanliness Pete
preferred.

“
He saved my life last
night,” she said, pressing the call button for the
elevator.

“
And tonight you saved
mine. I hope that doesn’t mean I have to save someone
tomorrow.”

She smiled. “You might. Maybe it’s an
exaggeration to say Pete saved my life. More figuratively, I
guess.”

“
What happened?” I asked as
the elevator doors slid open. There was no one else inside, which I
was glad for. I didn’t want Pixel to get shy all of a sudden around
her neighbors.

“
I went to check on my
dad,” she said. “He’s in an apartment house on Neville Place. I had
to park down the block and walk up. It’s not a great neighborhood,
you know?”

I did. I’d had several clients who lived in
the vicinity. “I’ve heard,” was all I said.

I waited for her to go on, but she’d grown
silent. Her eyes looked teary.

“
You were attacked?” I
asked quietly. Reading people’s silences is one of my necessary
talents. It helps with clients who don’t want you knowing certain
things—especially when you need to know anyway.

She nodded. “Satyrs,” she said quietly.
“Four of them.”

“
Ahh,” I said with a
nod.

The elevator doors opened, and we stepped
out onto the seventh floor corridor. I could see immediately that
the place wasn’t high rent—fading paint on the walls and the same
sort of fraying carpet that met me each morning outside my own
door.

“
Your crucifix wasn’t much
good then, I suppose.”

“
Maybe to take out one of
their eyes,” she said. With a nod to the left, she led the way
toward her door, keeping quiet now as we went. I supposed the walls
might be thin and she didn’t want her neighbors hearing the rest of
the story.

When we got to number twelve, she stopped,
took her keys out of the little wrist bag, and opened up. I let her
go in first and closed the door behind me. When she flipped on the
lights, my first thought was that Pixel’s line of work wasn’t any
more lucrative than mine. The carpeting and paint here, too, looked
like it hadn’t had a freshening up since several tenants ago. The
furniture fit the rest of the room—worn and mismatched, a saggy
looking sofa and two wooden chairs around a table made of milk
crates and unfinished pine boards. Across the room, two dirty
windows afforded Pixel an unbroken view of the building next
door.

The only thing high-end in this room was a
computer desk with an impressive array of drives and monitors on
it. This was Pixel’s bread and butter, and she clearly pumped as
much money as she could into her hardware. Like me, she had found a
way to make a living that kept her from being beholden to Clancy
Grommet and his ilk, which was luxury enough, making up for the
rest of the room’s sparse décor.