Not tonight, lady, Anna thought. Not unless you want me to Hulk the fuck out. “Bobby, we gotta talk.”
He opened his hands. “Talk.”
“Not here. I’m going hoarse screaming at you. This shit is important.”
Bobby rolled his eyes and let out a dramatic sigh, but he got up. “Okay.”
Anna made herself look away from the woman next to him so she wouldn’t see anything that might set her off.
She followed Bobby to the back. To the left of the toxic cesspools that passed as bathrooms was another door, this one locked. Bobby let them in and closed the door after. The room was narrow and crowded with shelves on which every kind of alcohol known to man had been stored according to an organizational system Anna couldn’t fathom. It was dusty and poorly lit, but it was a few decibels quieter, and that was all that mattered.
“You punch anybody out tonight?” Bobby asked.
“No. Why?”
“You look like you kinda want to. I was hoping maybe you’d already got some it out of your system, so it wouldn’t be me.”
“I ain’t gonna punch you, Bobby. Not tonight.”
His phone, a device that was for all practical purposes grafted to his right hand, buzzed. He tapped something out while Anna waited, then returned his attention to her.
“Okay, I might be tempted now,” she said.
He flashed a smile at her, probably assuming she was kidding. “What can I do for you?”
“I need news, and, unfortunately, there ain’t anywhere better to get it.”
“This isn’t how you suck up to somebody.”
She ignored him. “News. Anything weird, particularly occult stuff.”
He laughed. “What occult stuff isn’t weird? Look, everything is a mess. The feds are looking for Enoch Sobell, the great-granddaddy of bad occult shit in L.A. All his guys have either clammed up or split, or in a few cases are popping their heads up to see if now would be a good time to start a turf war and claim some territory. Add that to the insanity with the locusts, and there are end-times preachers on every street corner. The occult underworld has gone crazy.” Another laugh, the strained kind that acknowledged basic powerlessness in the face of events. “Sorry, babe, but you’re gonna have to narrow it down for me.”
She thought back to Karyn’s prophecy and to Rissa’s story. “Relics. Anything show up, anybody looking?” She tried to remember what Rissa had said. “St. Christopher’s walking shoes. St. Peter’s knucklebones, that kind of thing.”
“Huh.”
“What?”
“Just a sec.” He leaned against a shelf and typed some more on his phone.
“You ain’t gonna be able to text so much after I shove that thing up your ass,” Anna said.
“Jesus. You on the—” He pulled his gaze from his phone and got a good look at Anna, and the words died. “Um. Sorry.”
“You were saying?”
“Look, this is weird, and I think it’s probably bullshit, but what the hell? Either I tell you or you pull out my kidneys, right?”
“Not funny.”
His phone buzzed. He glanced sidelong at it and put it in his pocket. “Okay, it’s not saints or relics, exactly, but a couple of guys I know were telling me about this haunted church. Don’t laugh. Or, hey, what do I care? Laugh if you want. I did. Anyway, there’s lights on at odd hours, and a strange figure walking around, and weird sounds. The bangers down there believe it’s an angel of God, come to protect them from the other neighborhood gangs, if you can believe that shit.” He gave her a “come on, it’s funny” sort of grin. She didn’t smile back.
“Where’s the church?”
“You serious?”
The anger was ebbing, leaving a crushing weariness behind, as well as guilt. Bobby had always done right by her—he didn’t deserve threats and insults. She scratched the back of her head and tried not to look at him. “Look, Bobby, I’m sorry. I’m in a bad spot. A real bad spot. I gotta get some answers, or in a few weeks or months, you’re gonna have to find somebody else to come around and complain about the music. If you know where the church is, or even just the name, it would be a big deal to me.”
“Don’t know where, but . . . Hold on,” he said. “I know this. It’s . . . Nuestra Señora de las Misericordias.”
“Fuck, was that supposed to be Spanish?” Anna asked.
“You really suck at apologies.”
“Sorry, man. But thanks. I know where Nuestra Señora is,” Anna said. It made sense now, or it was starting to. Too many signs pointing to the same place, and Karyn’s prophecy on top of it. Rissa’s lost gangbanger, the church, and even the number seven—it pointed to an area Anna had known very well a long time ago, a few blocks in East L.A. where she’d lived until she was eight or so. And Karyn’s prophecy . . . valley of the garden. Nail had guessed that might be some kind of biblical thing, but no—it was a neighborhood.
Doyle Gardens. That’s it right there. Anna didn’t know what they’d find there, had no idea even what exactly they were looking for, but she’d bet a thousand dollars that the place it was hiding had just been narrowed to about eight square blocks.
“If I live through this, you’re a lifesaver,” she said to Bobby, and she left him there dicking around with his phone.
Chapter 4
“Come on back,” Clarence said. He started through the gray-walled hall toward the back of the building without waiting to see if Nail would follow.
Nail stared after him, taking a moment to make sure he had control of himself. Clarence was a tall, skinny guy in his fifties or maybe older, and every time Nail looked into his craggy face with its permanent deadpan expression, he had to fight the urge to snap the man in half over his knee. Clarence had had Nail’s older brother DeWayne’s balls in his pocket for nearly a decade, and every so often he’d give them a little squeeze and Nail would have to come running with a pile of cash to bail DeWayne out of some new stupid situation. That had gone almost like clockwork until recently, when Nail had finally come into enough cash to settle all his brother’s debts. He hadn’t heard from DeWayne since the mess at the prison, so he was hoping his brother had finally had the sense to skip town. Though if Clarence hadn’t called him over here to talk about DeWayne, Nail didn’t know what else it could be.
Having taken a few deep breaths, Nail walked quickly to catch up. This was the usual routine, Nail thought, with one important change. One of Clarence’s heavies fell in at the rear. The guy was big and probably armed, but Nail figured he could take him if it came to that. That wasn’t the point, though. Used to be just him and Clarence for these little chats. Maybe Clarence was taking a bodyguard everywhere now, or maybe Nail had become a special case.
Clarence opened the back door out to the loading dock. Nail squinted against the glare of the sun. He paused in the doorway. There was a car parked back here, a blue SUV with tinted windows. It was running.
Clarence lifted an empty plastic Pepsi bottle to his mouth and spat a stream of saliva and tobacco juice into it. “Get in.”
“This end up with me in a hole?” Nail asked. The words came out steady enough, but he was already checking exits, running options. It was a toss-up between using Clarence as a hostage and grabbing the big guy, using him as a human shield, and running back through the building. Neither option looked great.
“Don’t know. You done anything that would make me wanna put you in a hole?”
“You know it don’t always work that way. Might be lotsa reasons for putting me in a hole that got nothing to do with anything I did.”
“We’re cool for now, unless you wanna keep arguing. Now get in the car.”
Something about Clarence’s face gave Nail pause. Nail had expected the guy to have all the expression of one of those Easter Island statues. If Clarence wanted him dead, it wouldn’t be an emotional thing. Just a
business decision. If he wanted Nail alive, that wouldn’t be an emotional thing, either. But that wasn’t what Nail saw on the man’s face. Instead, there was something—a slight drawing in of the eyebrows, maybe a tremor at the corner of his mouth, something small that Nail couldn’t exactly put his finger on, but it gave the game away.
Clarence was anxious. He wouldn’t be anxious about capping Nail. That kind of thing was old, old news for him, and probably wouldn’t even get him to look up from his desk as he dispatched somebody to take care of it. It was something else. Might be he had bigger problems. Might be he needed some help.
Nail jumped down off the loading dock platform and got in the backseat of the car. The driver, a big dude wearing a stocking cap, nodded at him.
Clarence came down the stairs, around the other side, and got in back as well. His bodyguard got in the front. A good sign, Nail figured.
The driver took the car around the building and headed toward the street.
Clarence spat into the bottle again. Nail kinda wished he’d use a can or something. The brown juice sloshing around the bottom of the bottle was visible through the clear plastic, and it was goddamn disgusting. He forced his attention from it.
It was all Nail could do not to ask where they were going. It would be useless—he’d get no answer, or one he couldn’t trust—yet basic humanity made him feel that the question ought to be asked. Stupid.
“I got dead guys, Owens. I got guys in jail.” Clarence rolled the bottle between his hands. He wouldn’t look at Nail, just kept staring at the open mouth of the bottle.
“That’s rough,” Nail said, “but it ain’t got nothing to do with me or DeWayne.”
“Yeah, well, I don’t know about that.”
Nail waited, but Clarence didn’t add anything.
“You looking for him?” Nail asked.
“What do you think?”
“I think you got your money. You don’t need nothing else from him.” Clarence’s expression remained flat and skeptical, so Nail continued. “Look, he didn’t rat. The cops picked him up—”
“The feds picked him up.”
“Six of one, half a dozen of the other.”
“Not really.”
“And they gave him a hard time, and then let him go when they didn’t have shit.”
Clarence spat. “Yeah? How do I know that?”
“’Cuz I’m telling you.”
“Uh-huh. Dead guys, guys in jail.”
“You know my brother didn’t have nothing to do with that.”
“I got a guy says he saw him leaving. That’s all I need to hear, till I can talk to him.” He coughed. “Got a guy says he saw you leaving, too.”
“Yeah. Cuffed and dragged.”
“And here you are, while I got dead guys and guys still in the can.”
“Yeah, well, it turns out they can’t charge you just for being present at a massacre.”
“Hmm.”
Nail couldn’t tell where they were headed. This part of town, everything was seedy strip malls, all pawnshops and payday loans, sometimes with sorry-looking brown palm trees to try to dress them up. The car could be going in circles, for all he knew.
“Want to tell me what you were doing there?” Clarence asked. He’d stopped staring at the bottle, and he’d fixed his gaze on Nail’s face.
“Had a friend in trouble. Thought I’d get her out of that shit before she got hurt. That didn’t work out so good.”
“Uh-huh.”
The driver pulled into a cracked, rutted parking lot. There were maybe a dozen cars parked here, most of them at least ten years old and battered. Two of the suites in the strip mall were vacant, and one of those had had its main window smashed out in some long-forgotten act of vandalism. Next to it, a noodle joint, and next to that a weary-looking hardware store.
The driver brought the car around back to another loading dock. The one behind the hardware store, Nail was pretty sure. Lots of bad shit in a hardware store. The thought came unbidden, and with it the sickening tang of his own fear. You wanna fuck somebody up, here’s the tools.
“Get out,” Clarence said. “Something I want you to see.”
“At the hardware store. I dunno, man. I seen Casino.”
Clarence gave a short, dry laugh. “I wanted you dead, I’da had it done already, ’stead of wasting my time with this shit.” The humor fell away from his face. “Now get the fuck out the car.”
Nail got out. Clarence and the bodyguard did likewise.Once again, Nail found himself sandwiched between the two. He followed Clarence up the stairs and into the building.
The air-conditioning was a welcome change, immediately chilling the fingers of sweat that oozed down the sides of Nail’s head. The smell, though . . .
“Something burning?” he asked. Clarence and the bodyguard shared a glance, the meaning of which Nail couldn’t divine, and then Clarence walked down the hall a little farther. He stopped at a door. The glass window had been hung with a blind, so Nail couldn’t see in.
Clarence opened the door. The burning smell grew more intense. “Hey, Big John. How’s it hangin’?”
An indistinct murmur came from the room. Clarence beckoned Nail over.
Nail stepped forward and looked in the room. He let go a breath he hadn’t known he’d been holding. He’d worried that, despite Clarence’s assurances, maybe there’d be a guy with a gun ready to waste him, or a chair with some leads hooked to a car battery, or something equally terrible. Instead, there was a big guy—the name wasn’t ironic, apparently—sitting in a chair, hunched over a table. That was it.
“I don’t get it,” Nail said.
Clarence gestured at the room with an open hand. Have a look around, he seemed to be saying.
Nail obliged. The burning smell, he noted, came from candles, arranged in a rough circle on the floor. Wide puddles of wax surrounded each, and Nail got the impression that several candles had burned to nothing in each spot, only to be subsequently replaced. The room’s walls were largely covered in Peg-Boards hung with tools. Tools and papers, Nail noted. Irregularly shaped papers torn carelessly from notebooks or invoice pads or, from the look of things, whatever was handy. Nail inspected the nearest, where a dozen or so business cards had been stuck together with masking tape to form a wider writing surface.
He didn’t recognize any of the specifics, but he knew that kind of writing. Tommy had done that shit. Genevieve did it by the bucket load—had once done the better part of the interior of a house in Magic Marker to keep the bad guys from finding them.
“What are you into, Clarence?” Nail asked.
“Why don’t you tell me?”
Nail glanced uneasily over at Big John, who, he saw, was now scribbling over the surface of his table. Quick, sure lines, accompanied by a low mutter Nail didn’t like at all.
“This is—” Nail cut himself off as the tenor of Big John’s muttering abruptly changed, growing louder and picking up speed. Nail turned, annoyed and concerned in equal measure, and Big John sat up straight in his chair, a beatific, awful smile spreading across his face. He spread his hands apart and said one final word.
In the space between Big John’s hands, a seething black cloud appeared.
“What—” the bodyguard began, and then something uncoiled from the cloud, abruptly dispersing it as it leaped out.
Nail didn’t even have time to think. The thing that had burst from the cloud— Snake! Nail thought, and it had that general shape, though he saw no details—flew through the air toward him. He batted it out of the air, felt a sting in his palm. The snake hit the floor and reared up immediately. Nail saw a serpentine body, maybe a meter long, thick as his wrist, lined with wicked spines. It hissed, spreading a spiked hood like some nightmare version of a cobra, and it struck.
Nail danced back. The snake hit the floor i
n front of him, missing by inches, and before he could think better of it or change his mind or even decide to run, he stomped on its head. The thing’s body slashed through the air, its spines shredding the leg of his pants, and he stomped again, then again, then another time for good measure, until it stopped moving.
He backed up, panting. He got a good look at the ruined creature as he stepped away. It was shaped like a snake, more or less, but covered in a shiny blue-black, its scales made out of something more like an insect carapace than whatever the hell normal scales were made out of. Jagged spines, reminiscent of those on cricket legs, ran down both its sides. An iridescent green eye stared up from the crushed ruin of its head. As Nail watched, it crumpled into the black smoke it had come from, and then it was gone.
Big John gave him an irritated look that seemed to say, What the hell, man? and then went back to mumbling.
Clarence was staring at the spot on the floor with wide eyes.
“Outside,” Nail said.
They stepped into the hall, and Clarence closed the door. Clarence and the bodyguard stood on either side of Nail, staring holes into his head. Nail thought he could still hear muttering through the door. “Outside, outside,” he said.
Back down the hall, and it seemed to Nail that Big John’s low, guttural muttering followed him the whole way, putting evil suggestions into his mind at a level just below that which his conscious mind could understand. The heat outside was welcome, not least because it put another door between him and Big Bad John.
Nail checked his hand. Slashed up a bit, ugly but not deep. He hoped that thing hadn’t been poisonous.
“So,” Clarence said. “Tell me what the fuck is going on.”
Nail gave him a wary look. “I don’t know nothing about any of this.”
“Bullshit. You think I deal with a man for as long as I’ve dealt with you without doing some checking? I know the circles you travel in. I’ve heard all the rumors. I hear what they say about Karyn Ames. So don’t bullshit me. You know enough about this shit to be useful. So, what’s going on with Big John?”
Nail sighed. He pointed toward the door with his thumb. “How long he been doin’ that?”
Sacrifices Page 5
