High Bloods

by John Farris

  “How are the headaches these days, R?”

  “How are your hemorrhoids?” I said.

  His smile concluded with a sibilant tsk.

  “I know you’ve never been convinced that I had nothing to do with—outing you.”

  “No, I still like you for it,” I said.

  “I’m sorry. There’s nothing more I can say, is there?”

  “No problem, Cale. Ortega’s going to tell me all about it one of these days. Then I’ll be back to see you. Speaking of headaches.”

  DeMarco sighed a little and spread his hands farther apart on the desktop. He looked down as if admiring the quality of his manicure.

  “That attitude of yours is why you were always dangerous to work with,” he said. “And one reason why you’re about to be replaced at ILC SoCal.”

  I felt a pulse jump in my throat and my head was starting to throb under the tight do-rag. I don’t think much of anything showed in my face. But whatever he saw there caused him to sit back warily in his ergonomic chair.

  “Oh well,” I said. “Down and out in Beverly Hills again. What do you have on me that you think will stick, or do I only get the particulars at Kangaroo Court?”

  “I don’t mind telling you.” He had recovered his cool and gazed at me with a certain forbearance, as if he were counseling a backsliding drunk. His lips twitched a little and he made that sucking sound again. “Your clumsy, clownish actions at Angeltowne Livery tonight may have negated months of work on a vital investigation we’ve been conducting. I stress vital.”

  “An investigation that involves Raoul J. Ortega? If it’s blood you’re after, there are six big refrigerators of it in an upstairs storeroom. Assuming Ortega is connected to the limo place in some documented way, then you should have enough to put him in Rocky Peak for a few years.”

  “We’re not interested in Ortega’s bloodlegging activities. It isn’t illegal for any citizen to stockpile blood.”

  “If he’s selling it and the blood is tainted—”

  “Try proving he knows it’s tainted. We don’t have any plans to put Ortega away. Let it go at that.”

  I stared at him. A few seconds’ worth of astonishment and disbelief, then naked hate that choked me like something malignant growing in the throat.

  “What about Mal Scarlett? And maybe a dozen other Lycan celebrities he’s arranged to do their hairing-up at mal de lune shoots in the past?”

  DeMarco raised a hand from the desk just enough to brush the suggestion of Mal away with two fingers, as if a fly had annoyed him.

  “I don’t know anything about that.”

  “The fuck. You know everything that’s been going on at Angeltowne for weeks! You know Sunny Chagrin dropped by looking for Elena Grace, and now Sunny is dead. Mal Scarlett was a prisoner upstairs, probably not the first they’ve held there, until only a few hours ago. Where did they take her, DeMarco?”

  “Wayward Lycans are your responsibility. Were your responsibility. I personally don’t give a damn how many werewolves are slaughtered to raise the testosterone levels of Privilege bigshots with exaggerated notions of their prowess as hunters.”

  He pushed his chair back because he knew I was coming for him, right across the desk. I was out of my chair and he had his automatic half pulled from the shoulder rig he wore, looking at me expectantly, with the arrogant satisfaction his kind feel knowing they own somebody, dead or alive. He would have had a half second’s advantage, and that half second might have been enough.

  I exhaled, the blood in my head half blinding me. The door opened and the Greek kid named Paulo looked in and said casually, “Hey, easy, fellas. What’s the ruckus about?”

  We both glanced at him. He was smiling, but with a hard light in his eyes that emphasized the winner of our kill-or-be-killed session wasn’t going to have a chance to celebrate.

  I wondered just who the hell he was, and who he worked for. It sure wasn’t Cale DeMarco.

  The gloves-wearing woman walked into the room behind him. Paulo fetched the other chair for her and she sat erect with her back to the wall, looking us over, her hidden hands lying twisted on one thigh. The ash of her cigarette was about an inch long. Paulo gently removed the half-smoked cigarette from her lips. She didn’t look at him. Her eyes were on me. Paulo squashed the gasper on the wood floor and scuffed out the sparks remaining with the sole of a boot. Then he leaned against the wall a couple of feet from her with his arms folded. I was getting a crick in my neck looking around at them. I wondered if her hands were so useless she needed help getting dressed. Or undressed. And did Paulo in addition to bringing her a chair and fussing with her smokes do those chores as well? A very curious couple. I had the impression she found me interesting. But we all like to think we’re interesting. They had DeMarco behaving like a kid suddenly called to the principal’s office.

  But he stopped fidgeting, joined his hands on the desktop, and took a firm tone with me.

  “I want to know what you were doing at Angeltowne tonight. Why did you suddenly assault that Mexican in the men’s room?”

  “Let’s get this straight,” I said. “I don’t have to answer questions about an ongoing murder investigation.”

  “Ah,” he said, flicking his gaze at the impassive pair aligned along the bedroom wall. “So tonight was all about Sunny Chagrin?”

  “The greaser in question,” I said, “kindly phoned me up when I visited Valdemar a couple of nights ago and told me where I could find the package they’d dropped off for me. ‘Dropped off’ doesn’t quite describe how Sunny came to be there on the terrace of the house. According to the forensic guys, she was dragged across a cobblestone-paved auto court and down a couple of flights of stone steps wearing nothing but razor wire. The greaser in question Tasered me a few hours ago, then attempted to dump me under the back wheels of a tractor-trailer rig. Elena Grace bailed me out of that one. You’ll be happy to know she managed to do it without blowing her cover.”

  I waited for his reaction. He sucked at a tooth that might suddenly have pained him and said slowly, “Elena… Grace?”

  “You have her working undercover,” I said impatiently. Headache was causing my vision to blur. “Cozied up to Raoul Ortega for God knows what purpose.”

  DeMarco looked again at the Greeks auditing us like a couple of Furies from an obscure tragedy that had no name.

  I said, “And with every breath she takes she’s in danger of being killed herself.”

  DeMarco paid me full attention again, and shook his head.

  “Elena Grace? What would she be doing with—”

  “An evil murdering son of a bitch like Ortega? Good point. He knows exactly who she is, who she used to be, what we meant to each other, and what she became after she was raped. I can understand how it might all work for Ortega—a demented exercise in power, an ego thing—keeping his former victim and now a rogue werewolf dangerously close to him. A game he enjoys playing. For now. What I don’t get is the leverage you must have used to persuade Elena to cooperate in your game. Because if there’s hate in her bones, it’s hatred of Ortega.”

  I was breathing too fast. It was injury on top of permanent pain to think of Elena with the man who had ordered me killed, who was laughing at me from behind the wall of immunity he enjoyed, a wall provided by Cale DeMarco.

  “Leverage… ?” DeMarco said. He looked exasperated. “Elena Grace has nothing to do with us, Rawson. Jesus. I haven’t spoken to her in years.”

  I heard the click of a cigarette lighter and turned for another look at the Greeks on my periphery. This time I thought there might be a family resemblance. The gloves-wearing woman puffed on the unfiltered cigarette that Paulo held for her. I made a grab from memory, retrieved and placed her. Yes. There she was, looking at me the length of a wide echoing hallway that was all marble, old gold, frescoes, thirty-foot ceilings hung with chandeliers. A former palace, now a palatial public building. Late sixteenth century, maybe. I had been there on business. ILC business.
She was the only woman in a group of men, ministry level from the looks of them. She’d been smoking there too. I was crossing that hall with all the Renaissance statuary to a curved flight of stairs when our eyes met. We may have looked at each other for about three seconds while I hesitated a step. I hadn’t learned then, or been curious enough to ask, who she was.

  “You have a name?” I said rudely to her. I was fed up with the whole performance, for which she and the young Greek god-type seemed to have recruited me as an audience of one.

  She stared at me unblinkingly through a blue cloud of expelled smoke. Paulo leaned on the wall again, agreeably holding her cigarette for her.

  One of the sly phones on DeMarco’s desk played part of the Godfather theme.

  “Rome,” I said to the gloves-wearing woman. “About four years ago, wasn’t it? But you were only wearing a glove on one hand then.”

  This time she blinked.

  Paulo smiled slightly and looked down at her and whispered something in Greek.

  “What?” DeMarco yelled, or almost yelled, to whoever had called. He was exasperated again. I looked at him. He listened for a few more seconds, then slammed the phone receiver down.

  “What the fuck did you do?” he demanded.

  “The decent, humane thing,” I said. “There was a badly injured man in the men’s room at Angeltowne. I think he may have fractured his skull when he slipped and hit his head on the toilet. He also happens to be either a murderer or a material witness in a murder case. Which is why I notified ILC Medevac to transport him by helicopter to the prison hospital at San Jack Town for treatment. He’ll be guarded twenty-four/seven in ICU where Ortega won’t be able to get to him. Once El Gordo is on the mend and coherent there’s a chance I’ll get a statement from him implicating Ortega in Sunny’s death. Sorry if that blows up some shit of yours, DeMarco.”

  “You have no damn idea of the trouble you’ve caused, how badly you’ve set us back! But that’s it. You’re gone, pal. You’re history where ILC is concerned. I’ll see to it personally.”

  “Mr. DeMarco?” Paulo said, before I could react. “I have a suggestion.”

  His words were polite, but his tone had an edge that denied politeness. It said, Time for you to shut up and listen.

  14

  aulo took his leave from the wall he’d been holding up and seated himself on a corner of the gray steel desk, one foot on the floor. He formed a triangle with DeMarco and myself. His gold medallion glinted in the leak light from the gooseneck desk lamp. His face, turned to me, was sculptured shadow. DeMarco ran a hand over the top of his head where his hair was thinnest and looked about to say something to reestablish himself as the honcho of our little group.

  The Greek gave an earlobe a tweak between thumb and forefinger and said, for DeMarco’s benefit but without a glance at him, “I think Mr. Rawson might agree that it makes sense at this point to release a report that his material witness in hospital lapsed into a deep coma and is surviving on life support. Thus giving Raoul Ortega temporary peace of mind.”

  I grinned at him. “Did you say ‘thus?’”

  “Cambridge,” he said. “I read medieval Middle European history.”

  “Run across any references to werewolves in the good old stuff?”

  “Some. But I guess my interest in the species is the same as yours: finding a way to survive them.”

  “Okay. My material witness or whatever he is lingers near death and there’s no hope for him. Sound about right to you, Cale?”

  “I—”

  “Good,” Paulo said. “Now, if you wouldn’t mind leaving us alone for a few minutes, Mr. DeMarco?”

  “What?”

  “We’ll get back to you shortly. By the way, you’ve been doing an outstanding job here in SoCal.”

  “But—”

  “Thank you, Mr. DeMarco.”

  Cale’s mouth was open. He breathed through it. Paulo didn’t go to the trouble to look around at him. Cale coughed a few times, possibly reacting to the bile that had risen in his throat. When he had that under control he scraped his chair back. He stood and squared his shoulders and walked to the door where, his hand on the knob, he appealed with a glance to the gloves-wearing woman. She declined to save his manhood.

  “I could use some coffee,” I said, as he was opening the door.

  He stiffened as if I’d touched a cattle prod to his tailbone.

  “And I,” Paulo said. “If you wouldn’t be going to any trouble.”

  “Two coffees?” Cale said in a strangled voice, not looking around to confirm.

  “Black,” I said.

  “Any old way,” Paulo said indifferently.

  The door closed. Paulo tweaked his earlobe thoughtfully, grinned to himself.

  The ash on the woman’s cigarette was growing too long again. Paulo got up and disposed of the ash and put the cigarette back between her lips. Probably from long practice he knew just where she liked it. He spoke to her again in Greek.

  They were an interesting team. Interesting in a purely clinical sense. I had the kid figured for a killer fruit. And speaking of medieval, if souls wore clothing, hers would’ve been chain mail.

  When Paulo finished talking the gloves-wearing woman nodded, looking straight at me.

  I said to her, “How are we going to have a beautiful relationship if you won’t tell me your name? Or am I just not your type?”

  Lavishing the charm just as if I hadn’t been through a world of crap tonight, with bowling balls knocking around inside my head. I needed codeine like a baby needs its pacifier, or I was going to start vomiting.

  Charm got me nowhere either.

  Paulo also ignored my overture to the woman as he took a slightly larger than letter-sized envelope from an inside jacket pocket. The envelope contained a few small lumps of something and a color photo, which he placed on the desk in front of me. Then he adjusted the lamp so I could see more clearly.

  The photo was a head-and-shoulders portrait of a Middle Eastern or Indian-Asian male, late middle age as far as I could tell. You could see thousands just like him on streets from Damascus to Mumbai to Jakarta every day. A somewhat frowsy, dark mustache plastered to his upper lip, dull half-lidded eyes. Flat lighting. Maybe the fact that he’d been dead for hours or as much as a full day when the picture was taken in a morgue had everything to do with his lack of manly distinction.

  “I know it’s tough,” Paulo said. “But—”

  I shook my head. “Uh-uh. Any identifying scars I could look up? A unicorn-shaped birthmark on his tummy?”

  “No.”

  “Murdered?”

  “Yes. What is popularly known in SoCal as a spike job.”

  “Where?”

  “Rome. We think he came to see us.”

  “‘Us’ being the Home Office. Spook Central.”

  “Sure.”

  “Did the vic contact you?”

  “Presuming the corpse in the photo and the one who left his name and a message are the same man. Matter of great urgency, he said. Before we could establish direct contact, apparently some owlhoots on his trail caught up to him.”

  “Owlhoots?”

  “Bad guys. Dog heavies. I’m a Luke Bailiff junkie.” Paulo grinned and swished his feathery dark eyelashes at me.

  “Okay, so you don’t have a positive ID?”

  “They didn’t leave him with his fingers when they dumped him in the Tiber, only the ice pick in the back of his neck. But the name we have checks out. There is only one Barsi Chanthar Vajracharya, alive or dead. Known to colleagues as ‘Dr. Chant.’ A renowned nanobiotechnologist. Until about six months ago Dr. Chant was director of R and D for the Nanomimetics Corporation in San Jack Town.”

  I nodded. “Was he fired?”

  “As far as we’ve been able to learn, Dr. Chant took an abrupt and indefinite leave of absence and did his very best to disappear. Through airline sources we’ve placed him in recent weeks in five different cities around the world.”<
br />
  “Fiddle-footed,” I suggested. “Or not very good at disappearing.”

  “We’re just very good at tracking people who try. But so were the ones who wanted him dead. And they had a head start.”

  I looked again at the photo. “I have a bitch of a headache right now, but I hear a bell faintly ringing. What did the autopsy report have to say? High Blood? Lycan?”

  “The man from the river was an Off-Blood. NANOMIM HR records confirm that Dr. Chant was Off-Blood. Best we can do without fingerprint confirmation, but it’s a near-certainty they’re the same man.”

  “Off-Bloods are a select group,” I said. “Fewer than one thousand of them in SoCal. Most are men. It’s almost a fraternity. No secret handshake, but they try to help one another. It’s a difficult way to live. They share info on the availability of reliable blood cows. Off-Bloods like doing business with Off-Bloods. Nobody else seems to have much affection for them.”

  Cale DeMarco knocked, then backed into the room with two Styrofoam cups of black coffee. I felt in my pockets for my pill dispenser. A cody for my head, meth for stamina. I took both with the coffee, burning my tongue.

  DeMarco looked curiously at the photo of the murdered man. And at me.

  “Two murders that may tie in,” I said. “I’m pretty good with murders. Would you mind asking Beatrice to come in? We need her.”

  Paulo didn’t object. The gloves-wearing woman glanced at DeMarco when he was slow to react. He nodded tightly and left.