Made for Sin (15 page)

Laz's eyes narrowed. Speare tensed but refused to look away. Ardeth had dealt with enough that morning. She didn't need attitude from Laz, too, and if Laz said one more word about her, Speare was going to grab her and go. And fuck Laz and his investigation—like Speare didn't have anything else on his plate at that moment. The fact that Laz had been almost like a father to him—maybe
was
his father—didn't seem to matter so much at that moment.

Luckily, it did matter to Laz, or he just realized he was being very unlike his usual self. He turned to Ardeth, his face arranging itself into calmer lines. “I'm sorry. I'm very upset. This—Paulie Abramo is missing. This is his leg. I'm sure of it.”

“Paulie?” Fuck. He knew Paulie. Paulie was a big guy, too, taller even than Speare—the only person he knew who was—and wider. A tank of a man. Starting to run to fat as he neared his midforties, but a hell of a tough guy. The killers had gotten to him, too? Who were they, that they could get the drop on Theodore and Paulie?

Laz nodded. His eyes, always tinged with a sort of droopy sadness even when he was celebrating, turned full basset hound. “He's been with me twenty years. Almost since the beginning. A great man, a loyal man.”

“May his soul rise in the Realm of Silver,” Speare said. An automatic response, but no less heartfelt for that. Damn it.

“And may his killers' souls rise in the realm of the twisted,” Laz added with an audible snarl. “I'm sick of this, Lazaro. I want these bastards caught. I want them—” His gaze cast sideways, toward Ardeth. “Would you excuse us, please?”

Ardeth looked at Speare, who nodded. “Sure,” she said. “I'll, I'll go check the view from the other side, I guess.”

Laz nodded. “Thank you.”

She gave Speare one last glance, and left.

The second she reached the opposite wall—quite far, really, quite a long time for Speare to watch her walk away—Laz spun around. “What are you doing with her?”

This again? “Didn't Majowski tell you? It's a demon-sword killing these guys. I needed to know who might have one, and Felix—you know Felix—set me up with her, because she was asked to procure one for somebody.” Funny, how he slipped into the language of her profession so quickly; well, he'd heard her use the term so often over the past sixteen hours or so, why wouldn't he?

“So why is she still here? Why didn't she just tell you who she got it for and leave?”

“Because she didn't get one for anybody.” Damn, his glass was almost empty, and wooziness was clouding his vision again. “But listen, there's more going on here. Last night some men were at my house—not men. I don't know what they were. They were after me, and they're not human.”

“What does that have to do with her?”

Speare set down the now-empty glass, hard. “What the fuck is your problem with her? You asked me to do something for you, and I'm doing it. Who I bring in to help me is my decision.”

Laz didn't appear to agree, at least not entirely, but he didn't argue. “What has she told you?”

“I'm getting to that,” Speare said. “The men, the creatures, who were at my house last night. I think they're after a demon-made item, too, one that might—might be connected to this whole thing.” Shit, he'd almost said “one that might help me get rid of my demon.” He really was fucking exhausted and out of it, to come so close to letting that slip.

Or maybe his subconscious just wouldn't stop rolling that idea around, obsessing over it, no matter how much he tried to pretend it wasn't. “It's a mirror. They—”

“Goddamn it.” Laz looked almost angrier than Speare had ever seen him. “I want to know who's killing my men, and you're supposed to be finding out for me. Instead you're dicking around with some woman, telling her my—”

That was it. He felt like utter shit, he couldn't go home, his secret had been revealed in the most humiliating way possible, and he was getting yelled at by some Bizarro Laz who seemed like a stranger. Worst of all, that yelling was waking up the beast. “Hey, Laz? Whatever your problem is right now, I think you need to take it somewhere else.”

“Guys,” Majowski said. Shit, he'd forgotten Majowski was still there, and apparently Laz had, too, if the way he jumped was any indication. “Can we not do this? I need to call in the department soon, and this isn't getting anyone anywhere. Laz, for what it's worth, Ardeth seems perfectly trustworthy to me. I think she's been helpful.”

A long moment passed, during which Laz seemed to be warring with himself over something. Then he relaxed. “Yeah. Okay. I'm sorry, Lazaro. This unhappy business…I'm too old for this, you know. It's too stressful. You're a good boy. You always have been.”

As apologies went—at least, as apologies from Laz went—it was pretty good. One of the best Speare had ever heard, in fact. But something in him wasn't satisfied. Stress didn't explain why Laz had such a problem with Ardeth—such a personal problem, apparently, since his issue didn't seem to be so much that she was there or that she wasn't a man but that she was Mickey Coyle's daughter. Stress didn't explain why he didn't want to hear about the mirror, or the men who'd been at Speare's place.

And Speare didn't want to ask. Something told him he ought to keep those observations to himself, and that something wasn't fear. Instinct, maybe.

Or just the fact that he wanted the conversation to end as soon as possible. His head was screaming at him. The beast was wiggling around, still sleepy, but the anger in the air was waking it up more every second. And Ardeth was standing by herself several hundred feet away. “Sure. No problem. But listen. Ardeth set me up with the guy who asked her to procure a sword. He told me the client called himself Mr. Dunhill.”

As he'd expected, the name made Laz's eyes go cold with anger. “Mr. Dunhill? He told you that?”

“Yeah.”

“Good.” Laz nodded. “Good, we can follow up on that. How do you know this person—who was it?—told you the truth? Thieves don't give out that information.”

“I was persuasive.”

Laz's thin smile cleared the air a little. “I imagine you were. That's my boy.”

Speare ignored that. Cleared air was all well and good, but he wasn't a child, ready to forgive because of a couple of compliments. “Nielsen's his name. Nielsen—”

“Pollard,” Laz said. Did he look paler again, or was that the sun dipping behind one of the few small clouds in the sky? “Nielsen Pollard. Of course. One of Coyle's buddies. She's got you meeting up with all of them, has she? Letting them all get a look at you?”

So much for the air quality. “One more word,” Speare said, and was almost but not quite surprised to discover how serious he was, “and I'm fucking out of here, and you can get your own men to help you with this.”

“Damn it.” The basset hound was back. “Okay. Okay, listen. Let me tell you something. I knew Mickey Coyle. I knew his friends. You understand, there's some bad blood there.”

“Why is that?” The question was more idle curiosity than anything else, but as soon as it was out of his mouth he realized it might actually be important. He'd assumed Ardeth's low opinion of Laz came from a general dislike of his business, but maybe it was more than that. Maybe Nielsen had some kind of grudge—maybe there was a reason Fallerstein's man Dunhill had called Nielsen instead of some other dealer when he started looking to target Laz and his men.

And maybe the mirror had more to do with the demon-sword than he'd originally guessed.

“Doesn't matter,” Laz said, derailing Speare's train of thought. Damn it, he didn't have the energy to focus on more than one thing, not then. Later. Later he'd think about that, too. “Personality issues, let's say. But you're right. The girl isn't her father. It's this Paulie business. I just can't believe it.”

That much was clear. He'd never seen Laz like this. Ping-Pong balls in play had better stability. “You think they got him here? Maybe something on the security camera?”

“I'll have a look,” Laz said. “But I don't know. I doubt it. Did Pollard give you a description? So we can be sure.”

“He didn't have one.” Then, as Laz's mouth started to open, “Voice on the phone was all he had.”

For the first time Laz reacted the way he normally would, nodding with a what-can-you-do sort of expression. “Well, you look into it. Find out if he's truly involved. Then you call me, you come over, and we'll discuss it. Make a plan. Tonight.”

It was obviously not a request. Speare nodded, despite his inner groan. Track Dunhill down, find out what he and Fallerstein were up to, and do it all when he was so exhausted and dragged-out that he could barely stand.

“Don't bring the girl,” Laz said.

Like he would. He didn't bother replying to that one; he just gave Laz a flat stare.

Laz nodded. “You look out for her, though. Her father was a liar and a cheat and you know what they say about apples and trees. You stay away from her. She'll lie to you and cheat you, too.”

Yeah, Speare knew. He also knew—would have known even without the beast's pleasure—that Laz wasn't telling him everything. Lies of omission were still lies.

Part of him thought that wasn't really a big deal; so what if Laz wanted to lie to him? Since when did the old man always tell the truth?

But to lie about Ardeth, to be so angry when he saw her…something wasn't right there.

And something was definitely wrong on the face of Jimmy Chambers when the elevator delivered him to the roof. Jimmy was one of Laz's men, a new guy Speare didn't know very well, but he didn't need to know him well to be sure that his expression didn't say anything good and that Jimmy had been sick at least once.

“We found a head,” Jimmy said. His voice shook. “In the trash in Room 703. It's Paulie, Mr. Doretti. I'm sorry.”

Silence fell, while all four men absorbed the news. Confirmed, then. It was Paulie. Bad news.

Not as bad as what was apparently coming next. Jimmy lifted his right hand, from which hung a cloth laundry bag, in which something lumpy obviously resided. Oh, no. Oh, no…

“I brought it up,” Jimmy said.

“You what?” For the first time that afternoon, Majowski sounded pissed. “You moved it?”

Laz waved his hand. “We'll take care of it. We'll get it back down there. I want to see it first.”

Jimmy plunked the bag down on the ground, right next to Speare's empty glass. If only he had another of those. He really needed another of those. It seemed to him that if someone was going to go delivering decapitated heads to people, a bottle ought to come with it for free.

But there was no bottle. There was only the cloth bag and then the plastic bag inside it falling away from Paulie's head, his slack mouth, his unseeing eyes. There was only the beast's triumphant joy. It hadn't thought it would get a chance to play with something so twisted so soon.

And there was the scent of incense, a weak blast of it that hit him a second after the bag opened. The same incense. He glanced up at Majowski, ready to say something, but he didn't need to. That Majowski noticed it, too, was plain from the faint wrinkle in his nose, the knowledge in his eyes.

“Is the mark there?” Majowski asked. “Maybe you want to get a picture of it?”

No. He did not want to get a picture of it, or touch it. “Sure.”

This time the jolt was worse. This time the beast was awake, ready. Anticipating the dark magic that would invade Speare's body as soon as he touched the head, anticipating the power it could pull from such things that humans couldn't.

All the progress he'd managed to make in the previous twenty minutes or so disappeared. It wasn't as bad as it had been at Nielsen's place—the beast wasn't escaping—but it was bad in its own way. He was too tired for this. He couldn't do it, not then.

Especially because it was worse than it had been with the leg, and worse than it had been with Mercer's one-armed torso. Whatever the killers were doing with that demon-sword, it was working. It was absorbing the evil of their acts and the evil of their intent; they were strengthening it with every use, and all of that strength made the beast chuckle and wiggle.

“Who rented that room?” he heard Doretti ask. “What name was on it?”

“Ingram. Val Ingram.”

That name registered with him even over the horror he felt touching the head. Val Ingram was another of Fallerstein's higher-ups.

Before he had a chance to say anything, Doretti spoke again, his voice low with rage. “Why the fuck aren't those bastards banned from my places? How did he manage to get a room here? What the hell are they up to?”

The other men mumbled something Speare didn't bother to pay attention to, and he didn't want to stand there and listen to them squabble all day. He stood up.

“I think—” How to put this, so he didn't let on that some of his information came from a source inside his head? “Ardeth says last night's victim was a lockpick, and a lefty. They took his left arm. They took Theo's right. We were thinking they're taking the most talented parts of their victims. Maybe even building themselves some sort of monster.”

Majowski was the first to catch the implication of what they found. “And now they have a torso. They have two legs, two arms, and a torso.”

“Right.”

“So all they need is a head,” Jimmy said.

“Yeah.” Something even more unpleasant hit him. “But why would Ingram register here under his own name? Why not make one up—at least
try
to conceal his involvement? Why don't they care if we know what they're up to?”

None of the other men spoke. Even with the murderous glare on their faces, it was clear the thought bothered them as much as it did him. If Fallerstein and his men weren't bothering to hide their involvement, if they weren't afraid of being found out, then what they had planned must have been terrible indeed. And Speare knew—he just knew—he was going to be the one who dealt with it.