Harmony Black (7 page)

TEN

W
e hit the Motor City right around noon, sitting in a snarl of traffic under a hazy autumn sun. Like Douglas said, Emmanuel Hirsch wasn’t hard to find. He ran his own practice, a swank boutique clinic in the Bricktown Historic District.

“People love this guy,” Jessie said, thumbing over reviews on her phone. “Tummy tucks, face-lifts, implants, he does it all.”

“And that’s just the legal stuff. So what’s our approach?”

She set the phone in her lap. “Hmm. Well, we could masquerade as prospective patients in need of emergency surgery, but unless you literally want to take a bullet for the team . . . ”

“Yeah,” I said, “that one’s out. Besides, a guy like this is going to be careful. He’ll want referrals, a voucher from an existing client, something like that.”

“We could go in after hours, search his clinic.”

“You think we can get a warrant?” I asked. “All we’ve got is Douglas Bredford’s say-so, and that’s not a lot.”

Jessie tilted her head and squinted at me.

“Warrant? Why the hell would we need that?”

“Because,” I said slowly, “it’s . . . the law?”

“When we run these cambion punks down, they’re getting offshored. They don’t
have
legal rights.”

I merged from a slow lane of traffic to a slower one, edging toward the off-ramp.

“I don’t like that,” I said, “and you shouldn’t like it, either, considering it’d be just as easy for
us
to disappear that way. Demon blood or not, they’re still American citizens.”

“You think I like it? It sucks, but what’s the alternative? Tell the whole world that magic is real, and there really
are
things that go bump in the night?”

I shrugged. “Maybe we should. Maybe it’s time.”

“Wow,” Jessie said. “Wow. No. Wrong. So very wrong. Case in point: not just anybody can learn to do magic, right? But it’s safe to say, there’s a lot of
potential
magicians out in the world who just never figure out that they’ve got the spark. Like, on an order of magnitude.”

“Sure,” I said, “that’s reasonable.”

“Okay. Now, how many of the sorcerers you’ve met are dangerous, deviant, murderous
assholes
? Most of them, right? So picture every Tom, Dick, and Harry Potter studying hard, trying to become a real live wizard. If just one-tenth of them succeed, and one-tenth of
them
let the power go to their heads—and it’ll be a lot more than one-tenth, you
know
this—we’ll be mopping up corpses around the clock.”

“That . . . is a frightening mental image,” I said.

“Then there’s the simple fact that the law can’t
handle
this stuff. How do you prove that someone cast a death curse on their boss? What happens when someone says, ‘Oh, I didn’t stab my neighbor to death, I was possessed by a demon’? How do you prove they
weren’t
?”

“
We
do that. Figuring that stuff out is part of our job.”

“Sure,” she said, “on a small scale. Again, orders of magnitude. And even for us, there’s a lot of judgment calls and leeway. Stuff that doesn’t fly in a courtroom. Oh, and another good reason not to expose the truth? You just met him, back in that bar. Imagine a nation of Douglas Bredfords. Some people can handle the truth, some people can’t. And the ones that can’t, well, they don’t end up too good.”

She had a point. I wanted to argue, but I couldn’t come up with anything. It felt like I was digging my heels in for the sake of digging them in, so I just lightly drummed the steering wheel and focused on the traffic.

“The system sucks,” Jessie said, her voice softer, “but it’s the best one we have. The way I see it, it’s not
about
the monsters; we’re here to protect the innocent. The only way to stop these freaks from hurting people is to remove them from the equation entirely. So no, I’m not all broken up about the Gresham brothers’ constitutional rights. In a perfect world, yeah, they’d get their day in court like everybody else. This isn’t a perfect world.”

“I can see it your way,” I told her, “but there’s one thing you’re missing.”

“Yeah? What’s that?”

“Emmanuel Hirsch. As far as we know, he’s just a regular garden-variety crook. Guy might be mobbed up, but he’s got no occult connections.”

“Yeah? And?” Jessie blinked at me.

We turned down the off-ramp. I braked at a red stoplight and looked over at her.

“So,” I said, “as long as we’re here, don’t you want to bust this guy? He
does
have legal rights, and if we break into his clinic without a warrant, we can kiss any evidence we find good-bye. Play this the right way and we can take him off the streets.”

“I might,” Jessie said after a moment’s deliberation, “have had a bit of tunnel vision. Okay, I’m down. Let’s bust the mob doc.”

“First thing we need to do is establish if the Gresham brothers are even here. Hmm. We can’t poke around Hirsch’s clinic without permission. So let’s
get
permission. From him.”

T
he Hirsch Clinic was a box of glass and steel, an elegant cube of new-wave architecture that stood out like a sore thumb on the historic district’s streets. We walked into a dazzlingly clean lobby, sunbeams streaming off a pink-granite floor, and up to a pale-gray desk whose surface curved like the scallops of an ocean wave.

Big, wall-mounted LCD screens played a looping, endless advertisement, showcasing everything the good doctor could offer.
Create a Brave New You
, the scrolling text trumpeted. Behind the desk, a young blonde nurse in a salmon-pink smock flashed a flawless smile.

“Welcome to the Hirsch Clinic,” she said, eyes bright. “How can we improve you today?”

We’d worked out our plan in the car. Jessie and I looked at each other, playing at being nervous and giggly.

“I’m, ah, thinking about having some work done?” Jessie said, pitching her voice low on the last two words.

I held up a fluttery hand. “I’m her moral support.”

“Is there someone I could talk to,” Jessie asked, “you know, about my options?”

“Oh, absolutely,” the nurse said, checking her computer screen. “Let’s see. Dr. Hirsch has appointments all morning, but it looks like his partner, Dr. Carnes, is just finishing up with a consultation. If you’d like to have a seat, she’ll be out shortly.”

The chairs in the lobby were as sleek as the building, gray canvas stretched across curving frames of beech wood. We took a seat by the wall of glass.

“Well,” Jessie murmured, “so much for getting a read on Hirsch.”

I glanced around the room. The door leading into the clinic proper had a heavy-duty lock, and the eye of a video camera kept a bird’s-eye watch over the lobby from one corner of the room.

“It’s okay,” I said. “Long as we can take a good look in back, we can still get something out of this.”

A tall, lean woman in a tailored suit, with sallow cheekbones and eyes as dark as her braided hair, strode out to greet us.

“I’m Dr. Victoria Carnes,” she said, eyeing us like she was trying to peek into our bank accounts. She shot a pointed glance at my shoes. “A pleasure. I understand you’re interested in our services?”

“That’s me,” Jessie said, raising a sheepish hand. “My friend Harmony is just here to keep me from going
too
crazy.”

Victoria gave a polite, humorless chuckle. “Well, if you’d both like to join me in our consultation room, I’d be happy to go over your options.”

The door leading to the back gave a slight click as we approached it.
Buzzer behind the reception desk,
I thought. They hadn’t spared any expense in back, either. The polished granite floor was clean enough to eat off, and doorways along the salmon-pink corridor looked in on plush offices and a cutting-edge surgical suite.

“Business must be good,” I said, trailing in the doctor’s footsteps.

“Our facility is state-of-the-art. Dr. Hirsch and I have worked very hard to provide our clients with a safe, discreet, and comfortable place to embrace their becoming.”

“Their . . . becoming?” Jessie said.

She nodded back at her, eyes widening. “Oh, yes. What we sell isn’t vanity or ego. It’s all about the ideal
you
. The
inside
you.”

As Victoria turned her back, Jessie rolled her eyes at me.

Victoria ushered us into a windowless office, the walls painted lavender and lined with glossy, blown-up photographs. Close-ups of eyes and hairlines, breasts and thighs, all shot in hazy soft focus. There was something creepy about the display, almost fetishistic, but I kept a smile on my face as the doctor motioned for us to sit. The room was appointed with a curving glass-topped desk and a thirty-inch screen hooked up to a computer and a webcam. As we took our seats, the screen displayed a menu of three-dimensionally rendered limbs and the wire-frame outline of a woman’s body.

The office smelled like faint vanilla spice. The air was warm, like bathwater or bedsheets fresh from the dryer. Victoria sat down on the other side of the desk.

“Our philosophy is simple: everyone knows, in their heart, how their body
should
look. Sadly, nature rarely meets those expectations. This leaves a person fragmented, incomplete. My job, as your surgical guide, is to help select the perfect procedures to bring your flesh into solidarity with your heart.”

“Wow,” Jessie said, nodding very slowly. “That’s . . . so true. That’s so real.”

Victoria smiled placidly. “You won’t regret choosing us. So. If I might ask, are you two . . . partners?”

Jessie reached over and rubbed my shoulder. “We are! Our first anniversary is next Sunday. Isn’t that right, sweetums?”

“That’s . . . right,” I said, forcing a smile. “It’s like every day is a honeymoon.”

Victoria clasped her hands together and looked my way. “Ah, I thought so. I only ask because we do offer a couple’s discount. For instance, if you wanted to do something about your nose, or perhaps a breast augmentation?”

Jessie nodded vigorously, eyeing my chest. “Oh, yeah. We need to pump those babies up. Double Ds, at least. Do they make quadruple Ds?”

“My . . . nose?” I asked.

“To unearth the beautiful woman,” Victoria said, “who lives inside your heart.”

“Let’s talk about
me
for a while,” Jessie said. “I’ve always been insecure about my thighs. They’re so . . . thigh-ish.”

I held up a finger. “Um, sorry, I need to freshen up. Is there a washroom I could use?”

Victoria pointed behind me. “Of course. Just go back out into the hall, turn left, and it’ll be on your right-hand side.”

“Great, thank you.” I stood up and patted Jessie’s shoulder. “I’ll be right back, sweetheart.”

I had no doubt Jessie could stall for as long as she needed to. What I needed, at the moment, was a better look at the clinic. First, though, I followed Victoria’s directions and ducked into the washroom.

“There is nothing,” I told my reflection in the mirror, “wrong with my nose.”

All the same, I tilted my head left and right, checking from different angles. No. My nose was fine.

I was pretty sure, anyway.

Back in the halls, I prowled past empty surgical suites and recovery rooms. Victoria wasn’t kidding about discretion: there wasn’t so much as a stray slip of paper to be found, every file stashed out of sight, and every drawer and cabinet firmly locked.

Would he take care of his off-books clients here?
I wondered, ducking into an examination room and tugging on cabinet handles.
Unless the whole clinic’s in on his scheme, it’d have to be after hours. But where would they recover, then? That cambion who Jessie mangled is going to need serious reconstructive surgery. That’s not an outpatient kind of deal.

There just wasn’t enough room here to hide a recovering fugitive, let alone three of them. I was thinking it over when I found a closed door with
Dr. Hirsch
etched on a brass nameplate.

My hand was on the handle, about to give it a try, when I heard an anxious voice on the other side.

ELEVEN

“
And I’m telling you,” a man said, “I have other buyers. Does the name Damien Ecko mean anything to you?”

I leaned close, putting my ear by the door. I could hear soft, rhythmic taps. He was pacing the office floor, and from the lack of any response I could hear, talking on the phone.

“No. It has to be
tonight
. Do you understand the kind of risk I’m taking here? This isn’t normal product. I have
three
of them. And two are still breathing.”

Three of them. I had a bad suspicion, and what came next only made it worse.

“No,” he said, “I’m keeping them sedated. You can do whatever you like with them.
Whatever
you like. But you have to take delivery tonight, and it has to be cash. Yes. Ten thousand each, twenty-five if you take all three.”

“Miss?”

I jumped. A nurse stood behind me, looking as startled as I felt.

“Can I help you, miss?”

“Oh,” I said, fluttering my hand. “I’m a little lost. Which way to the washroom?”

“Around the corner, there. On your right.”

I thanked her and took a walk. Back in Victoria’s office, the doctor was giving Jessie the hard sell, and the computer screen had sprouted an itemized list of services. I felt a lump in my throat when I saw the total price on the bottom line.

“I know it’s a lot,” Jessie said, all wide eyes and sincerity, “but it’s the only way to achieve my lifelong dream of looking just like a life-size black Barbie doll.”

“We can make this happen,” Victoria said, nodding solemnly.

“For as long as I’ve known you,” I told Jessie, “it’s been your guiding ambition in life. Still, that is a lot of money, and we
did
just spend several thousand dollars on those professional pole-dancing lessons for you. Let’s sleep on it?”

Victoria beamed at us and rose from her chair. “I’ll print off a copy of the quote, and you can take it home and talk it over. I think we can really make wonderful things happen for you.”

To her credit, Jessie kept a straight face until we left the building. The second we hit the sidewalk, she let out a sputtering gust of a laugh, like she’d been holding her breath the entire time. She crumpled the quote in her hand.

“Man, fuck their fascist beauty standards. Do you believe that shit?” She turned to me and arched an eyebrow. “And . . . pole-dancing lessons? I was wrong, you
can
serve it back.”

“I’m full of surprises.”

“Gonna surprise me with a fresh lead?”

We got into the car, but I left the engine cold.

“Unfortunately, yes. The Gresham brothers picked the wrong family doctor. I heard him talking on the phone: near as I can gather, one’s dead and he’s got the other two doped up. He’s going to
sell
them to somebody. Tonight.”

“What are we waiting for?” Jessie nodded toward the clinic. “Let’s go kick some doors in.”

“They’re not here. Can’t be. I saw almost every room in the place. It’s just not that big.”

Jessie slumped back in the car seat and squinted at the clinic doors.

“Fine,” she said. “We’ll stake it out, wait for the doc to poke his head out, then follow his ass.”

We sat in silence while I looked up and down the street, trying to guess which car was Dr. Hirsch’s. No luck.

“Hey, Jessie?” I said.

“Yeah?”

“Is there . . . anything wrong with my nose?”

She crossed her arms.

“Seriously?”

“I’m just asking,” I said.

“I hope she’s in on it, too,” Jessie grumbled. “Somebody needs a righteous ass-kicking.”

T
he average stakeout involves all the thrills and excitement of watching paint dry. Still, Jessie made it bearable. We moved the car a little farther down the block as soon as street parking opened up, giving us a better view. We had some time to kill, so I held my post while she ran over to a Subway at the end of the street, coming back with sandwiches and two small bottles of water. As a rookie, one of the first things I learned was to never drink soda on a stakeout: it’s a diuretic, and your options for a bathroom break may be severely limited.

Cars came, cars went, and the sun set over Detroit. We watched nurses leave the clinic, one locking up behind her, but no sign of the doctors. I hadn’t seen Hirsch in the flesh, but Jessie was confident she’d recognize him from the picture on his website.

“You’re sure they aren’t in there?” Jessie said, slouching against her armrest.

“Positive. Besides, if they are, the buyer has to show up here.”

“
Then
we can kick in doors.”

“Agreed,” I said.

She sat up straight, ears perked.

“Showtime,” she said.

Victoria Carnes strode out of the building alongside a man who must have been Emmanuel Hirsch. He was stringy and bony, with a snow-white comb-over and a mustache too big for his face. They jogged across the street together, talking animatedly, and their body language told me it wasn’t a pleasant conversation.

“Trouble in paradise,” Jessie murmured as the doctors got into a shiny black Lexus. I revved the engine, waiting patiently until they pulled out into traffic, then I mirrored their move.

This was the tricky part. To tail somebody properly you need at least two chase cars, preferably three or four, in constant radio contact. The idea is to periodically let one car fall back and another chase car take point: that way, your target won’t notice a familiar-looking vehicle hanging in their rearview for too long. Plus, if one car has to drop the pursuit—like if you do slip up and make them suspicious—the others can step in and pick up the slack.

We didn’t have any of that. The darkness was our one real advantage, shrouding our faces and turning the Crown Vic into an anonymous blur. Even so, I made sure to hang back, keeping one car between us at all times. They took a twisting, turning path through the city streets, and as the drive went on our odds got slimmer. We headed into no-man’s-land, a maze of broken streetlights and empty sidewalks, and with every passing minute it had to be more obvious we weren’t sharing the road by coincidence.

“Hang back,” Jessie said. “Give him a little more room.”

Beyond a maze of warehouses and shuttered plants, we crossed over into Delray. The neighborhood was a ghost town, nothing but broken asphalt, boarded-up houses, and dead traffic lights as far as I could see. About three hundred feet ahead, the Lexus signaled a left turn. I slowed down, giving them as much room as I possibly could without losing sight of the car, and waited for them to make their move.

Then I killed the headlights.

We weren’t driving entirely blind, but it was close enough. The gathering clouds and the distant downtown lights choked the stars from the sky, and no electric lamps burned on the streets of Delray. We rolled through a fog of shadows, tires bumping on torn-up pavement, keeping the Lexus’s distant taillights in view like some urban will-o’-the-wisp.

The Lexus turned in to a parking lot, and the taillights went dark. I stepped off the accelerator, slowing our ride to a crawl.

I couldn’t imagine the building up ahead—a tall slab of crumbling bricks and rusted steel—had ever been pretty, but the years hadn’t done it any kindness. A faded billboard propped up on warped crossbeams showed a smiling cartoon pig serving up a tray of steaming steaks. “Lombardi Meats,” it read. “Come Meet Our Meat!”

“Well, that’s not creepy or anything,” Jessie said.

I pulled the Crown Vic over to the side of the road, about a block from the shuttered meatpacking plant. A barbed-wire fence ringed the parking lot, the fencing torn and uprooted here and there, but the front gate hung wide open. We kept low as we jogged across a weed-infested empty lot, trying to get a closer look.

The Lexus sat parked and empty. A few spaces down, a pair of delivery trucks with the Lombardi Meats logo lined up near a loading-bay door.

I gestured for Jessie to hold up. We crouched low in the grass, watching. Up ahead, a single light shone behind a wire cage, set into the wall over a sheet-metal side door. A man in a leather jacket smoked a cigarette, occasionally pacing back and forth or nudging loose rocks with the toe of his shoe. As he turned, his jacket hung open, and I caught the glint of steel on his hip.

“How long you think this place has been closed?” Jessie whispered.

“Years, why?”

She pointed at the delivery trucks.

“Those trucks look new.”

The side door swung open. Another man, features too shadowed to make out, gave a wave. The thug at the door tossed his cigarette down, snuffed it under his heel, and walked inside.

“Two guys plus the doctors,” I whispered.

“At least, but I don’t imagine Miss-Find-the-Inside-You is gonna put up much of a fight. How do you want to play it?”

“Let’s go in quiet, until we know what we’re up against,” I said. “Given what I heard on the phone, we’ve got probable cause to believe that human trafficking is in progress.”

“You still think Hirsch is just an ordinary crook?”

I shrugged. “Depends on whether or not he knows exactly what the Gresham brothers are. Sounded like he did. Either way, he’s going down tonight.”

We drew our Glocks as we jogged across the parking lot, staying close and tight. Jessie covered me as I took hold of the door handle. They hadn’t locked up behind them. It opened onto a hallway lined with cinder blocks painted dirt brown, riddled with open doorways on both sides. Too many angles, too many places a bad guy could be lurking.

Jessie put her hand on my right shoulder. I nodded. Breach and clear.

We moved together, hustling silently down the hall, muzzles sweeping to cover every opening. At Quantico they taught us proper technique in “kill houses” with plywood walls and random floor plans. There, though, paintballs were the ammunition, and the only consequences of failure were bruised skin and a bruised ego. Tonight we played for keeps.

We ghosted through empty rooms stripped of anything but chunks of corroded steel or the remnants of old chain belts. Machines rusted in the gloom, forgotten and abandoned. Then, around one corner, we found the operating room.

Calling it that was a stretch. It was just another empty storage room, but circled with thick plastic sheeting that dangled from shower rings. At the heart of the room stood an operating table, beside a sturdy wooden tool bench.

I smelled the blood before I saw it. The odor clung to every surface, metallic and pungent, so strong it pushed fingers down my throat and challenged me not to choke. Dried blood splashed the plastic sheets like some mad impressionist’s painting, and coated the operating table like a sacrificial altar.

The operating table had restraining straps.