High Bloods (19 page)

The room, or cell, was tonelessly dull visually, but clean. Not a hair to be found in the sink or a ring in the toilet. I kneeled and sniffed the mattress. She had spent a lot of time lying on the bed, asleep or drugged, and her odor was as definite as if she’d been there only moments ago.

I inhaled again, then stood and backed away to the center of
the room, hoping that the guard on night security wouldn’t wake himself with the velocity of his snoring, or his feet wouldn’t fall off the desk. If I was going to raise her I needed another two or three minutes, and there was nothing I could do about the wide-angle security camera mounted in a corner of the room below the high ceiling.

I had been taught, in the long nights of the forest and the dark of the shaman’s lodge where only a dim red glow from the ever-present fire provided necessary light for orientation purposes, what might have been called miraculous by the uninitiated, or black arts by the fearful. But there was nothing otherworldly or profane about it. With training almost anyone could do what I was about to do.

With a firm olfactory impression of her, what I needed now was to telepathically “see” as much of her as possible from the energy field she’d left behind.

I didn’t look directly at the mattress, but at a place on the blank wall a few feet above the bed. Putting my mind at rest. She was there; I had only to let the energy field provide me with a glimpse of her spirit body.

“
There have been rumors
,” Booth Havergal had said to me. “
Little wisps of speculation floating around the Privilege. A shoot is being set up. Very large money involved, perhaps even a loving cup. If one is going to chance hunting werewolves, even under controlled conditions, it’s so much more prestigious as well as rewarding if the hunter bags a trophy werewolf: a celebrity.
”

Mal Scarlett was an insolent little scatterbrain, but nobody deserved such a fate.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart,” I said softly as her image faded from my mind’s eye. “Uncle R is coming to get you.”

I had notice of an upcoming
mal de lune
shoot with Mal as the designated trophy, but I needed a line on where and when. To get that
information I also needed to make good use of ten minutes, alone, with Raoul J. Ortega. President of the SoCal Diamondbackers, a criminal organization. Angeltowne Livery, judging by what I had already seen, was a favorite hangout of Diamondbackers. The refrigerators across the hall attested to the fact that they were still in the bloodlegging business. I didn’t think I would have much difficulty finding out that Ortega was a silent partner in Angeltowne. Or a shell company called Luxor Films. And one of Ortega’s least attractive ventures appeared to be setting up
mal de lunes
to amuse wealthy and morally deficient High Bloods.

I’d been hanging around Angeltowne a little too long. Bea would be safely back in the Rover and T. Hollingsworth Sibley might be wondering about me.

So I retraced my steps, not pausing to find out if the security guard was still asleep in front of his monitors, and went down the steps to the first floor. There didn’t seem to be a reason for caution at this point, so I just barged out into the hallway where the bathrooms were.

And almost ran into El Gordo, smelling of beer and pomade and just maybe underarm flop-sweat from a bad couple of hours at the poker table.

I don’t know how drunk he was. He sidestepped me, blinking, glanced off the opposite wall, mumbled something in Spanish, and went into the men’s room, unzipping and hauling out his cock as the door closed behind him.

I took a couple of seconds to start breathing again, looking toward the showroom. I didn’t see Sibley. The Hispanic women were running floor polishers.

My heart was pounding from rage, and there was nothing in my brain but an intense burning light.

I went into the men’s room with no concern about stealth and went up behind El Gordo where he was blissfully relieving himself at a urinal and crooning a Mexican song under his breath. I drew my Glock and put a hand on his shoulder and when he turned his
head to give me a blearily surprised look I lashed him backhanded across his fat face with the gun, opening a cheek to the bone. He staggered away from the urinal, pissing in spurts on the floor, and I hit him again with everything I had, coming across the other side of his face and smashing his nose.

He fell back into a stall and sprawled there, an arm across the toilet, his other hand going to his bleeding face. He stared up at me.

I pulled off my shades and leaned over him.

“It’s Rawson,
cabrón.
”

I pushed the muzzle of the .45 against his forehead and thought about Sunny in her cocoon of razor wire and thought about justifiable homicide. Drunk and hurt as he was, he saw it coming in my eyes and spasmed, swallowing blood.

But I didn’t do it. I needed him alive, at least for another sixty seconds. I had two questions for El Gordo. And there was no alternative to pleasing me with his answers.

T. Hollingsworth Sibley looked up from the infomercial he was watching on the TV behind his desk when I approached him on my way out.

“You’ll need a bucket and a mop in the men’s room,” I said.

Outside I walked back to the Rover, which was parked a block up the street. I didn’t feel as good about my encounter with El Gordo as I wanted to feel. Because dead was dead and I wasn’t going to get Sunny back no matter what I did now. As for Mal Scarlett—a sense of urgency was beginning to tick out of control next to my heart when I reached the Rover.

I opened the door. The light came on and it was obvious right away that Beatrice wasn’t inside.

I turned around to call her name and someone who was both quick and confident put the muzzle of his gun into the notch of my throat.

“Rawson, you asshole,” he said.

he tall man with the gun prodding my tonsils was
strung together like a big wading bird, with an overhang of head and almost no shoulders. That made him a bad fit in off-the-rack suits. Instead of demonstrating the ease with which I could disarm anyone so clueless as to crowd me like that, I smiled forgivingly. And I let him take my piece from the shoulder rig.

“Well, well. It’s Stork McClusky, right? Long time no see.”

“You’re going to be sorry you saw me tonight,” he growled.

McClusky had backup, this one coming toward us from across the street, thumb of one hand hooked in his belt. The whites of his eyes gleamed in the available light. Him I didn’t know, but it had been a while since I had worked ILC Intel.

McClusky took a step back but with his automatic, a big H and K two-tone, still close to my face.

“Get in the backseat, Rawson,” he said. “I’ll drive.”

“Oh my,” I said. “Two Intel boyos coming on hard to me. Just give me a few seconds while I finish peeing down my leg.”

“I’m Maltese Greek,” the other one said quietly, with a shrug and a smile to strum the heartstrings of the lovelorn. He had thick dark curly hair and thick glossy eyelashes. He wore a summer-weight blue mock-turtleneck with his faded jeans, a
gold medallion on a chain centered on his breast, and a gold loop earring. Small loop. McClusky had a gun and a line of hard talk and he wasn’t somebody I’d turn my back on. The kid was half McClusky’s size, had a diffident way of speaking, a winsome smile, and a brand of deadliness he had no reason to advertise. It was just there, and anyone who’d had experience with his type would recognize it.

“Where’s Beatrice?” I said.

“She went on ahead,” McClusky said, giving me the bitch eye. “Now get in and be quick about it.”

“If you shoved your gat in my girl’s face,” I said to McClusky, “we’ll need to have a short discussion about your crummy manners before the night’s over.”

“She’s all right,” the Greek kid said reassuringly. “She handled herself fine.”

I looked at him.

“It’s just going to be conversation,” he said. “About teamwork, or so I understand. We can’t exactly chew you up and spit you out, now can we? My name’s Paulo. By the way, I like your outfit.”

“You seem to have a brain,” I said. “That should have disqualified you right away for Intel.”

He grinned, opened the door for me, and nodded politely. I climbed in without a fuss. McClusky put his gun away, put a finger on his earbud. He looked up and down the street, then said importantly to someone, “We got him. Leaving now. ETA about three minutes.”

“If you make the lights,” I said, and settled back to await developments.

McClusky drove us into North Hollywood, took some residential side streets in a cunningly evasive manner in case we were being followed, which we weren’t. We came to a bungalow in the
middle of a block of similar 1930s-sytle homes. There was a black wrought-iron gate across the drive and somone waiting near the gate in the dark front yard. He opened it when McClusky blinked the Rover’s lights. At the end of the drive there was a small garage with the doors chained shut. A couple of sedans were parked haphazardly beneath jacaranda trees in the small backyard, which was surrounded by a seven-foot wooden privacy fence with bougainvillea spilling over from the yard behind it.

“Not much to show for your budget,” I said idly. “And in this neighborhood all of you should be wearing T-shirts with
SEXUAL PREDATOR
logos.”

“We know what we’re doing,” McClusky said.

“There’s always a first time,” I allowed. “But this probably ain’t it.”

McClusky left the Rover at the end of the driveway beside a large yellow van with
JAKE’S JIFFY ELECTRIC
in red script on the side. This van or a similar one, I remembered, had been parked at the gas station across from the Angeltowne Livery.

I followed Paulo the Greek onto a small back porch. A dog barked close by. McClusky hung back, ready and able to mow me down if I made a sudden break. The glass in the kitchen door had a blackout shade covering it. Nifty. Inside a couple of techie types, red-eyed in the wee hours, were hanging out waiting for a fresh pot of coffee to brew. We continued along a short hall. Bathroom, two bedrooms. McClusky rapped on a bedroom door as he went by. It didn’t sound like a secret knock. But like I said I’d been away for a few years. Maybe they’d changed it.

There were two snug rooms at the front of the bungalow. A dining room with pocket doors half closed and a parlor. More blackout shades on windows that faced a roofed front porch and the street. The dining room contained utility shelves and a lot of audio and visual surveillance equipment. The latest and best available. Overhear a whispered conversation in a restaurant half a mile away. See through walls, clothing, locked safes. Peer into
the hearts of desperate men. Or maybe they hadn’t yet reached that level of snooper refinement.

In the dining room Paulo joined a tall, formidable-looking woman with his olive coloring. She wore all black: sweater, leather gloves, high-waisted slacks. She had been watching a TV monitor I couldn’t see, but when Paulo spoke to her she turned and gave me a flat incurious stare. She said something to Paulo. He opened a pewter cigarette box on a table and lighted one, then took the cigarette from his lips and placed it between hers. Something wrong with her concealed hands; rheumatoid arthritis? The fitted gloves could only have worsened her pain. But maybe her vanity required them.

The woman had a severe, beautifully boned face, heavy eyebrows, and countersunk lightless black eyes like dark wells in a soothsayer’s cave. I thought she might have passed through my life at some point like a messenger from the damned. But the hour was late, I was tired, and I couldn’t place her.

I sat next to Bea on the sofa. Her eyes opened. She looked happy to see me, then worried.

“Did I screw up?”

“No,” I said. “Did any of them lay a finger on you?”

“They’ve been nice enough. But they don’t say much. Who are they? What’s going on, R?”

“Remains to be seen.”

In response to a summons on his wristpac Stork McClusky beat it back down the hall and briefly visited the bedroom behind the closed door. I squeezed Bea’s hand.

“Whatever it is, we shouldn’t be long.”

“Good. Do you know any of them? Are they ILC?”

I nodded and looked at the Greek woman’s profile. Still familiar, but elusive, just a shadow among shadows in memory. I shook my head, which needed clearing. McClusky returned and gave me a smug, hostile look. So I was about to get my nuts busted. But not by the likes of McClusky.