Night and Day (Book 3): Bandit's Moon (24 page)

A small thing, a detail that would
probably pass unnoticed. But it was going to be hard enough getting through
this alive, and it’s the small things that bite you on the ass.

“Sure,” Angelo said. “Go find him
something, Marco.”

“You got it, Angelo,” he said. He
pushed himself away from the wall and disappeared through the
door.

“You think it’s smart going into
the Floresta heavy?”

“I don’t think it will hurt, and it
might even help sell my story,” I said. “Lot of people in eastside carry
for personal protection. License or not. They’ll probably confiscate it
when I go in, but that’s why I’m not carrying my own piece.” And my Glock
was a little upscale for the guy I was pretending to be, the guy I was
hoping would be prime recruit material.

Marco came back a minute later with
a small .38 revolver inside a clip-on holster. A Chief’s Special or
something like it, with a short barrel. He held it up. “This
work?”

“Perfect,” I said. He handed it to
me. I lifted the sweater and clipped the holster to my belt, right over the
scuffed part.

You got five in the wheel,” Marco
said. “I loaded hollow-points to give you a little more bang for your buck
if you get in trouble.”

If I had to use it, my trouble
would just be starting.

Schleu’s guys were out on bar duty
again, working the Arthur Avenue area. Angelo had guys staked out on the
blocks surrounding the Floresta, and they picked up on two of Schleu’s
recruiters from the moment they sauntered out of the building around
nine.

I left my Jeep at Werkle’s, just in
case somebody recognized it from my surveillance Friday night. Angelo had
Marco bring a car around. It was a pale green Chevy sedan that had seen
better days. Just like the east side. Me and the car would fit right
in.

Angelo slid behind the wheel and I
got in next to him. “What’s that smell?” I asked.

“Yeah, sorry about that,” he said
as he started the engine. “We used this car to toss that
porco cane
and his buddy out at the Floresta last night. Wrapped the cooked one in a
plastic tarp, but he still reeked.”

“How did it go?”

“Good,” he said. “Werkle has a
torch he uses to get rid of unneeded properties. This guy knows what he’s
doing when it comes to fire. To tell you the truth, I think he likes it a
little too much. Bed wetter.” He paused. “Still, he did a nice job. Burned
the body real good, left the face clean, like you said. We went over there
around two o’clock this morning and kicked both of them out of the car
right in front of the Floresta. Never stopped. We were around the corner
and gone before the guards knew what was happening.”

“You think it’s a good idea to use
this car?” I asked. The burned meat smell was pretty strong, and I rolled
down the window. Better to be cold than smell it.

“Don’t worry about it,” he said.
“I’m taking you the back way. I’ll drop you a block from the bar, nobody
sees you in the car.”

“What’s the setup?”

“It’s a block of Arthur Avenue
between 72
^nd
and 73
^rd
. Three bars. One just around
the corner on 72
^nd
. That’s where they went first. Spent about an
hour inside. Then they came around to the first one on Arthur Avenue. Went
in about twenty minutes ago. You wait in the last one at the corner of
Arthur and 73
^rd
.”

“That still Luigi’s Lounge?” I’d
never been inside it, but I passed it every day on my way to the
83
^rd
Street station before the war.

“Nah, Luigi didn’t come back from
the camp. Now it’s Artie’s. Artie’s on Arthur. Still a dump.”

“So how’s Eddie feel about you
staying with Werkle for now?”

“He likes it,” Angelo said. “Just
adds to Don Alfredo’s debt. Like money in the bank.” He paused. “It’s only
for a few days. While you’re doing your thing inside, I’ll be getting
Werkle’s guys together, in case we have to go to war.”

“Just hold off till Christmas Day,”
I said. “By then I should be done and out. Or dead.”

Angelo was silent for a moment,
then asked “This case worth dying for, Mr. Welles?”

“I can’t answer that right now.” I
paused. “I wish I could.”

Angelo turned the corner on
74
^th
and eased to the curb just shy of the intersection at
Arthur Avenue. “Okay, here you go. One block over to Artie’s.” He glanced
at his watch. “If they stay in that other joint for an hour, you have about
twenty minutes before they show up.”

“Plenty of time to get situated and
start working on my act,” I said with a smile.

“Don’t overplay it,” he said.
“These
strunzos
may be hillbillies, but they’re not
stupid.”

And they were probably anxious to
avoid mistakes, considering what had happened to Jimmy Joe and his partner
when they brought back the wrong person. “Yeah, I’ll be smart about it.
Give ‘em just enough to lure them in my direction.”

“Okay,” he said. “You better get
going. I’ll see you when you’re done.”

“Yeah.”

I climbed out of the car and
slammed the door. As cold as it was, it was an improvement over the stench
in the car. Angelo pulled away from the curb and hung a left on Arthur,
away from Artie’s. I walked to the corner and turned right.

Having Joshua Thomas as a partner
for two and a half years had given me a different perspective on vampires.
Not just knowing him, working with him, but sometimes running into the Vee
clients he handled.

The war happened fast and was over
in weeks. The Vee guards in the internment camp were harsh, brutal,
predatory. Maybe deliberately chosen because that’s who they
were.

But all Vees had once been human.
And though their dining habits and perspective on their once-fellow man had
changed, there was still a lot of the humans they’d been inside
them.

Alfredo Werkle. How different was
he, really, from the gangster he’d been before the war?

So I couldn’t hate them as a whole,
the way some people did, the way the Resistance did. Some, sure, I hated
with a passion. Like the ones who’d been behind Joshua’s murder a year
earlier. Most I took as they were. Good and bad.

Getting the attention of Schleu’s
recruiters wasn’t going to be easy. I would be playing a part, a part I had
little experience with. It made me hesitate, just a second, before opening
the door to Artie’s on Arthur.

Angelo was right. It was a dump. A
rectangular room, with a bar immediately in front of the door, and an area
to the left with a few tables. It was dark and stuffy.

I glanced to the left. One of the
tables was occupied by a middle-aged couple, huddled together in close
conversation. Back to the bar. Two guys at the end, one black, one white,
sipping beers and staring at the wall. A stocky bartender with five o’clock
shadow wearing a soiled white apron, hands on hips, silently studying
me.

Time to go to work.

I walked to the bar and sat down,
halfway between the two guys and the other end. The bartender came over.
“Help you?”

“Lemme have a draft,” I said.
“Whatever’s cheap.”

He nodded and turned, grabbing a
glass from a shelf behind him. He stuck it under a tap and filled it, About
half of it was beer, the other half head. Which was fine. I’m not much of a
drinker anymore.

He put it on the bar in front of
me. No coaster. “A buck,” he said.

“Run a tab?”

He just stared at me.

“Right,” I said. I pulled out my
wallet, removed a dollar bill, and put it on the bar. He picked it up and
walked down to the cash register.

It was time to start working my
cover, so I’d be warmed up by the time Schleu’s guys got there.

“So last night on my way home, I
get stopped in midtown by a couple of cops for some bullshit reason,” I
said loudly, looking at the bartender’s back. “And I’m thinking they’re
both bloodsuckers, cause I gave my ID to one of them and he was cold as
death. Then the other one grabs my hand when he thinks I’m making a funny
move and he’s warm.”

The bartender closed the cash
register, grabbed a rag, and went to the bar. He began to wipe it down,
standing between me and the guys at the end. Not looking in my direction.
The two guys at the bar continued to stare at the wall and
drink.

“Can you believe that? What the
hell kind of shit is that?” I tried to work some outrage into my voice.
“Human cops working with bloodsuckers. It ain’t natural. Am I
right?”

The bartender continued to wipe the
bar. The two guys continued to watch the wall.

“Am I right?” I asked
again.

The black guy glanced over.
“Whatever,” he said. Then he returned his attention to the wall.

I was struggling. Most of the
people I know have about the same attitude about Vees as me, more or less.
They might complain about something specific, but it wasn’t just angry
rambling. But angry rambling was about all I could go with, unless somebody
struck up a conversation with me that I could guide to more focused anger.
And that didn’t seem likely with this crowd.

Behind me, I heard the door open
and the bartender looked up. If it was Schleu’s guys, I needed to get
something going and quick. Even if it was the crazy guy, sitting alone,
ranting at the Vees. Maybe they’d find that appealing.

“So then, I’m walking down Second,
heading home, and one of those tank things the fuckin’ Security Force nazis
use came around a corner and almost hit me. What’s the deal with that?.
This is America! We don’t have tanks in the streets here.”

Somebody slid onto the stool to my
right and the bartender headed in my direction.

“Good,” the guy to my right said.
“You barely got started.”

I turned to look. Johnny
Three-Legs.

I stared at him for a moment.
“Yeah,” I said, playing along with whatever the hell he was doing. “I
wasn’t gonna wait for you.”

He laughed. “Sorry,
man.”

The bartender reached us.
“Budweiser,” Johnny said. “In a bottle. With a glass.”

With a silent nod, the bartender
went back down the bar to the cooler. I waited until he was out of earshot,
then whispered, “What the hell are you doing here?”

“Eddie sent me,” he whispered back.
“Just be cool. We got a couple of minutes till those guys get
here.”

The bartender returned, holding an
open beer bottle. He put it on the bar in front of Johnny, then turned and
grabbed a glass from the shelf. “Two bucks,” he said, putting the glass
next to the bottle.

Johnny threw a couple of singles on
the bar. As the bartender took them down to the cash register, Johnny
whispered, “Eddie didn’t want you doing this alone. Said you needed
somebody to watch your back.”

“And he sent you?”

He grinned and poured some beer
into his glass. “So,” he said loudly. “You didn’t ask me why I was
late.”

Behind me, the door opened.
Footsteps. Two people. Moving off to my left, where the tables
were.

“Why were you late?” I
asked.

“I was late because that
bloodsucking boss of mine, Sumner, kept us in the office and told us that
we were gonna have to work an extra hour every night. For the same
pay.”

I didn’t have any choice but to go
along with Johnny. “Why?”

Johnny sneered. “Because he said we
were spending too much time getting ready for work and not enough time
working.” He paused and shook his head. “Clean every office in the
building, every night, Sunday through Thursday, always done by morning. I
think he’s just doing it because he can, because he thinks he owns
us.”

“Asshole,” I muttered. I would have
liked to have added more, but it was his play and I didn’t know where he
was headed with it.

“Yeah,” he said as he reached into
his pocket. His hand came out holding a pendant, dangling at the end of a
thin silver chain.

Pendants are oval discs, about the
size of a small egg. The faces of the pendants are different, depending on
the Vee who issued them. Swirls of colors, runes, pictures, logos. But
whatever they look like, they have the same meaning. Stay away. This human
works for me. This human is private property.

They’re usually worn close to the
hollow of the throat, though some hang a little lower. Right after
internment, when things were a little wilder and some Vees thought of the
people flooding back into the city as an all-you-can-eat buffet, pendants
became a popular accessory. Protection for the person wearing it, and it
kept valued employees from ending up as dinner.

They weren’t as important these
days, and some Vee employers had done away with them altogether. But most
still issued pendants, and expected their employees to wear
them.

Johnny let the pendant dangle in
the air between us. “I left work this morning and tore this fucking thing
right off my neck. I’m done with that bloodsucker.” He paused. “What I’d
like to do is shove it right up his cold dead ass.”