Midnight Taxi Tango

by Daniel José Older

  “Sasha,” I say. She looks at me, face stricken. I half stand, realize I’m rock-hard—the remnants of a dream—sit back down. “What’s wrong?”

  She shakes her head. Tires screech outside, and then the door flies open and Reza steps in, gun leveled at Sasha.

  “The fuck is going on, Reza?” I’m up, erection obliterated, confused as fuck.

  “You tell me,” she says to Sasha.

  Sasha shakes her head. “I have no idea.”

  “She didn’t try to kill you?” Reza says, catching me in the corner of her eye.

  “What are you talking about? Sasha?”

  “Carlos, I . . .” Her voice trails off.

  “Alright,” Reza says. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but the Survivors just made a move on Kia and Gio.”

  “What?” Sasha and I yell at the same time.

  “And they had roach guys with ’em.” Reza stares at Sasha.

  “They what?” Sasha gasps. “I don’t understand . . .” Her eyes narrow. “Gregorio. He . . . he . . .”

  Reza eyes her for another half second, the Glock steady. Then, ever so slightly, her jaw unclenches; her brow lightens. Whatever silent signal Sasha’s giving up that she has no idea what’s happening, it’s been received on Reza’s end.

  “We have to go, now.” Reza takes a step outside, holding the door open. “I’m sure they . . .”

  “My God,” Sasha says. “The twins!” She runs out.

  “Where are they?” I start after her.

  Ginny pokes her head through the curtain. “Carlos.”

  “I can’t now, Ginny. I . . . I’ll be back.”

  Out on the street, a family strolls past: a mama with a baby carriage, three giggling little ones and a teenager fully immersed in her phone. The bodegas are beginning to close down for the evening. “I left them with Marie,” Sasha says. “But if Gregorio allied the Survivors with the Blattodeons, it means he went against Marie, which means . . .”

  She’s cut off by the teenage girl’s scream. We whirl around, hands reaching for weapons. A man comes barreling past the family; one of the kids is sitting on his ass, looking stunned. Sasha moves first, stepping directly into his path and swinging up with a short sword I hadn’t even seen her unsheathe. Her slice nearly rips the man in half—now the whole family is screaming and collecting each other as they hurry down the block. The man stumbles once, then drops to his knees. He flails forward, dark ichor seeping from Sasha’s slash, and then buckles. Those pale nightmares stream off him in a sudden, relentless throng, and in seconds, Sasha is covered.

  “No,” I gasp as Reza and I launch toward her.

  My jacket is off, swatting the monsters from Sasha’s arms and chest as Reza wipes them off her face. A few land on me, and I swat them away, ignoring the tiny pinprick of their pincers.

  Two more roach guys round the corner as we’re finishing up. “Let’s move,” Reza says. She jumps in her Crown Vic and revs the engine.

  “I’m okay,” Sasha whispers, seeing the fear in my eyes. “Come on.”

  We both jump in the backseat and slam the door just as the first guy smashes up against it. Pale roaches splatter across the window, and then Reza peels off into oncoming traffic and a cacophony of horn blasts and tire screeches.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Reza

  Assaulting a house isn’t like delivering a pizza. You can’t just double-park out front, roll up in there, pop, pop, and zip off. Not unless you have a fully locked and loaded team and body armor. And even then . . . Nah. I pull up on the corner of the quiet residential block in Kensington that Sasha directed me to. Oak trees swoosh in the chill, early spring breeze over parked hoop-dees and SUVs.

  I almost have to physically restrain Sasha from jumping out of the car the second we stop. “Wait,” I say. “We can do this the right way or the wrong way, but if you fuck it up and go in hot, there’s a lot less chance of your babies making it out alive.”

  She freezes, already halfway out the door. Nods. Carlos, who had been about to open the other door, stops too.

  “Someone needs to stay with the car.”

  They look at each other, both restraining the urge to tell the other to stay.

  I nod at Carlos. “You stay.”

  “I don’t know how to drive.”

  “I’m not worried about a goddamn parking ticket, C,” I say, getting out. “I need to be sure no one runs off with it while we’re inside. Can you do that?”

  “My ba—”

  “I know.” My voice leaves no room for argument. “And I will get them back. I promise.”

  He slumps into the seat, and Sasha and I brisk-walk down the block past plain two-story houses and plain front lawns. “There a back entrance?”

  She nods, every part of her tensed with the effort of not bursting forward in a fury of mama-love and destroying the whole world.

  “You can handle the locks?”

  She smiles dimly. “I still have a key.”

  “Good. I’ll take the front; you take the back. I don’t need to tell you not to take any prisoners.”

  She shakes her head one time and then slips into the shadows of the front yard and disappears behind the house. I see how this woman could own Carlos’s heart. She moves with effortless grace, even this rattled. Also: she’s a killer. It’s all over her. There’s no hesitation in her lethal flow, and I’m positive it’s not just because of what’s going on.

  I soft-walk up the porch stairs and then my Glock is out, lowered casually by my hip and concealed from any chance passersby. I’m about to take the lock when I realize the door’s slightly open.

  Which is probably a bad thing.

  Yes, a very bad thing indeed: the first splatter of blood I see is a handprint on the foyer wall. Beyond that, the living room is in shambles: overturned chairs, shattered glass. And bodies: three in this room. One’s the older woman from the park, Marie. There are no bullet holes, I notice. Everyone involved wanted to stay discreet, and a single shot in this neighborhood would’ve brought a hundred cops. As it is, it’s incredible the place isn’t a crime scene, considering the battle that must’ve happened here. Sasha stands perfectly still in the middle of all the carnage. Our eyes meet, and for a terrible second, we just stare at each other.

  Then she brushes past me and up the stairs, but I already know, can feel it in the awful stillness of this house: the twins are gone.

  • • •

  In this dark inlet somewhere deep in Prospect Park, the Partymobile idles next to my Crown Vic. Carlos storms back and forth in the glare of their headlights, muttering to himself: “Something . . . We’re missing . . . something . . . Fuck!”

  Bri, Memo, and Rohan are spread out along the perimeter of the little clearing in the woods. Since everyone else is too busy freaking out, trying to make sense of shit, it’s on me to make sure we’re all safe in the meantime.

  Kia sits in the Partymobile with Rigo. The door’s open, and they both peer out as Sasha, Gio, and I huddle in the darkness, cobbling together a plan.

  Or trying to.

  “So what happened at the Survivors’ safe house?” Gio asks.

  “Marie was dead,” Sasha says. She looks like she’s barely holding it together. Every couple seconds she gulps in a mouthful of air and wraps her arms tighter around herself. “One of our leaders. You saw her in the woods.”

  Gio nods. “I remember.”

  “Also six other Survivors.” She exhales, looks away. “And the twins were gone. My children.”

  “I’m so sorry,” Gio says.

  “Fuck!” Carlos yells. “Something . . .”

  “And no roaches?” Rigo asks.

  I shake my head. “But they came at us in Flatbush just now. And you by the river. If I hadn’t put Rohan and Memo on Kia-detail, this would be an even grimm
er situation. Sasha, how many Survivors are there total?”

  “We were eighteen,” Sasha says. “Now eleven.”

  Gio shakes his head. “Ten. Blaine got got.”

  “Always hated that prick,” Sasha mutters.

  “And the remaining ten are probably gonna be siding with Gregorio?” I ask.

  Sasha scowls. “I’m not so sure. The lines haven’t been clear for a while, just a lotta infighting and politicking and bullshit, to be honest. And only about seven of those ten are really much use in a fight. A few don’t even really come around much, so I doubt he’d bother tracking them down for his coup. Especially if it was off-the-cuff like this. I don’t think he’s been planning this long—probably the Blatts reached out to him sometime after the meeting this morning. Most likely he grabbed up Blaine and one or two others and ran.”

  Best to prepare for the worst. “We’ll put them at seven, then. The question is where.”

  “Listen though,” Gio says. “Carlos is right. They’re acting different. It’s part of why we came back . . .” His voice trails off, and he casts a pained glanced at Kia. She looks away. “Finally. We got word from a contact here that there was a lot of Blattodeon activity—more than their usual now-and-then kidnapping. Something’s different.”

  “It’s true.” Rigo climbs out of the Partymobile and stands next to Gio. “And this thing where they throw their whole roach hive off their skin? They almost never do that. The Blattodeons are not very skilled fighters. They rely on luring enemies down to where they can gang up in great numbers to destroy them, yes?”

  “Right!” Gio’s getting excited now. “They’ve almost never attacked in public the whole time we’ve been after them. They’ll show up now and then, always cleaning up their dead quickly when it’s a public melee, but they never launched a full-scale lash out like the one by the river today.”

  “I mean,” I say, “we did take out Mom and Pop Fern. That’s gotta . . .”

  “That’s the thing,” Gio says. “That’s not how they function. Jeremy doesn’t come first; the hive comes first. Always. His needs don’t dictate their movements; theirs do his. Look, we captured one once, Rigo and this guy Ishmael we were working with. We did everything we could to get that corpselike motherfucker to talk.”

  “And?” I say.

  Rigo shakes his head. “The Blattodeon Trinity. That’s all we got out of him. The Blattodeon Trinity, the Master Hive. He croaked and whistled and hummed for hours, but the only actual words he said were those.”

  “It’s like they’re hardwired to protect it,” Gio says. “But that’s all we got. The Blattodeon Trinity, the Master Hive. Everything for them revolves around that. So if they’re breaching their normal protocol now, it’s for that. That’s been put into play somehow. And they’re protecting it is my guess.”

  I growl. The weight of incomplete information hangs over all of us.

  “But it’s still not adding up,” Gio says. “Why would they grab up the kids? What do they have to offer Gregorio that would get him to take out four Survivors?”

  Kia hops out of the Partymobile and walks around to where Carlos paces.

  “Not this second, Kia. I gotta . . .” He doesn’t even look at her. “There’s something missing . . .”

  “Carlos, man, stop for a sec. We all tryna figure this out together; you over here wildin’.”

  He stops. Closes his eyes and then opens them again. “You,” he says.

  “Huh?”

  “After I left the library, you stayed and talked to Dr. Tennessee more, right?”

  “Yeah. We got high. She’s the shit. Why?”

  “You kept looking up info on the architect though, right?”

  “Of course. You asked me to, didn’t you?”

  “And?”

  “He worked on the Ferns’ house, the one in Bushwick that you found him at and another behind it, a few others around Queens and one way out in Long Island.”

  “Tunnels?”

  “The houses in Bushwick and Queens had tunnels linking up with the sewer systems. That’s how they move back and forth between ’em, I guess. The Long Island one’s a tower or something. Got a network of tunnels underneath, but it’s like way out there. They don’t connect to anything that I could tell.”

  “That’s where they are. That’s it.” He starts pacing again.

  “Carlos?”

  “There’s something else. We’re missing something.”

  Sasha’s by his side in seconds. “Carlos, why do you think they’re out there?”

  “I—I’m sorry,” Carlos says. “I know I’m being weird. I’m . . . thinking . . .”

  “We don’t have time,” Sasha says quietly.

  “Time!” Carlos yells. “What time is it?”

  “Ten twenty,” I say, walking up next to Sasha. “Why?”

  Carlos stops pacing again. The headlights throw a tall Carlos shadow back toward the woods. “I forgot to tell you about Caitlin.”

  I scowl. “Caitlin Fern?”

  “The Council asked me to protect her. That’s what they were calling me in for this morning. Apparently she’s done work for them.”

  “Figures,” Sasha scoffs. If the Council dis reaches Carlos, he doesn’t react.

  “And she asked me to help her take out her brother.”

  Gio comes around to where we’re standing. “That makes no sense.”

  “Said Jeremy always blamed their parents for not giving enough to support him, and he’d threatened to kill them before, so she figured he’d finally done it when the house burned down and there were no bodies.”

  Carlos and I trade the slightest of glances.

  “Anyway, I’m supposed to meet her at eleven in Bushwick. And I presume we’ll go handle Jeremy.”

  Gio crosses his arms. “And you don’t think it’s a trap?”

  “I do think it’s a trap,” Carlos says. “I mean, I think it might be. But I don’t know how yet. And the twins might be down there with Jeremy, if the Blattodeons are leagued up with Gregorio.”

  “I’m guessing they’re at the Long Island safe house,” I say. “Or headed there. But we don’t know the address.”

  “We can call Dr. Tennessee,” Carlos says. “See if she’ll rustle up the maps for us.”

  Sasha steps forward, puts a hand on Carlos’s shoulder. She looks like she’s pulled herself together in the past few minutes. Her eyes have narrowed from terrified to determined. She’s ready to make moves. “Carlos. You might be walking right into an ambush. You don’t know a damn thing about these roach men.”

  “Hell, I barely know a damn thing about them,” Gio says. “And I been trailing them for years.”

  “I know,” Carlos says. He looks Sasha right in the eyes, and for a second I see it all: everything between them, how gigantic it’s become and how little time they’ve even gotten to spend together. They look like they’re alone in a whirlpool, like the rest of us are just spinning smudges. “I don’t like it either, but . . . the Blattodeon Trinity, Gio said . . . Maybe . . .” He snaps his head at Kia. “Mama Esther . . . She’ll know . . . maybe.”

  I roll my eyes. “We need full sentences, man.”

  Carlos squints a half smile. “I have a plan.”

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Kia

  Alright, listen,” Carlos says, twisting his body so he can see us from the passenger seat of the Partymobile. “Kia, whatever Mama Esther’s got, you get it. There’s something, something, and if anyone knows it, she will. Reza’s dropping me off a few blocks from my meet-up point with Caitlin. When you get what you need, you tell Gio, and they’ll put him at the entrance to the tunnels. Riley and Squad 9’ll be there and they’ll go in after me with Gio and Rigo and one of Reza’s guys. Got it?”

  “Who is this Esquad 9?” Rigo asks.

 
“They can’t see ghosts, C.” I try not to roll my eyes—Carlos is going through a hard time. “I gotta go wi—”

  “No,” Carlos almost shouts. He breathes deep, tries again. “No. You can’t put yourself in any more danger. Tell Gio and get somewhere safe. Understand?”

  I nod my head yes, but there is absolutely no way in hell that’s how it’s gonna go down. But okay, Carlos. Whatever makes you happy.

  “Reza and Sasha, y’all gonna head to the Long Island safe house after you drop me off. Dr. Tennessee is opening up the research library right now. She’s gonna call Reza’s phone once she has the location sorted out.”

  “And then?” I ask.

  “And then we . . . take it from there.”

  I hate this shit, but there really isn’t much else we can do. I know one thing: Gio’s not going into those tunnels without me. It’s not happening. Roaches and baby assassin ghosts be damned. I’m not losing him again. I put a hand on Carlos’s shoulder that I hope is reassuring, nod at Reza and Sasha, and then hop out the Partymobile. Gio and Rigo follow. Another Crown Vic pulls up behind us. The hazard lights blink on, and three of Reza’s people get out—Memo, the insanely tall and muscled bald dude; the sly-looking woman they called Bri; and Rohan, who I may have fallen in love with. But maybe that’s just cuz he saved all our lives. That and those thick-ass arms, Jesus. Bri and Memo glance up and down Franklin Avenue, looking like those security guards that stand there mean-mugging when an armored truck rolls up for a delivery. They exchange looks with Rohan and then climb into the Partymobile. Reza peels off doing about Mach ten as soon as the doors slam.

  Rohan looks at us, and my heart somersaults one time. “Ready to do some research, kids?”

  • • •

  Rohan, Gio, and Rigo stay downstairs. They say it’s to guard the front door in case the roach men or Survivors show up, but I think they’re just uncomfortable with all this spooky ghost shit. I don’t blame ’em. I’m not that happy about it either, to be honest. But Mama Esther is the coolest ghost I’ve met in the short time I’ve been able to see them, and if she has whatever key Carlos thinks she does to helping destroy the roach men, I’ll fuck with her.