A door to the right of the table opened into an office. There was one desk when I walked in and two more along the far wall. A pair of young women sat at these desks, their backs to me as they chatted on phones and tapped on keyboards.
A woman stood by the first desk, a battered piece of furniture that looked donated from a thrift store. A paper taped to the desk had the words OPERATIONAL MANAGER marked through and replaced with, La Rena de Todo. The Queen of Everything.
Her head was tipped to one side, and she raked a brush through her wavy brown locks. The air around her smelled of apricot shampoo.
"I'm looking for Veronica Torres," I said.
The woman waved the brush. "That's me."
I introduced myself. Veronica was taller than I expected. We were almost eye to eye. I glanced to see if she wore heels. Nope. Sandals.
She looked to be in her midthirties. A very well preserved midthirties. A trim form in blue capris and a matching sleeveless blouse. High cheekbones and smooth skin a nice mestiza hue of cafe con leche. Her alert mahogany brown eyes complemented the inviting curve of her smile with its glamour magazine gloss. And she had a taut, succulent neck. The gums around my incisors began to itch.
She asked if I had problems finding the center. Considering that I was here to discuss the murder of her friend, Veronica's tone seemed unusually casual and loose.
Boxes filled with papers lay about haphazardly, making the place look like a recycling bin instead of an office.
Veronica pointed her brush to a chair beside the desk. I removed a carton of markers from the chair and sat.
She resumed brushing her hair and looked at me through the corner of one eye, a reaction that made me suspect a patch of pale skin was showing through my makeup.
I touched my cheek. "It's a skin condition. My souvenir from the Iraq war. Nothing to worry about."
Veronica nodded. She dropped the brush into an open gym bag between her desk and a swivel chair.
I heard the quick steps of a child approach. A toddler rushed into the office. A plump woman in a Guatemalan peasant dress hustled in, apologizing, and took the little rug rat with her.
Veronica waved good-bye and settled into the swivel chair. The open laptop on her desk said she had fifty-six new emails.
"When we talked earlier, you said you were an investigator. But you didn't say what kind." She closed the laptop. "You don't seem like a cop."
"I'm a private investigator. Katz Meow hired me." I waited for Veronica to respond to the name.
She turned her head and broke eye contact. Her jaw hardened and her breathing slowed. At times like this I wished my contacts were out so I could read auras and determine how genuine these reactions were. But I couldn't risk revealing myself, not here with these ankle biters running loose and getting in the way.
After a moment she brought those big brown eyes back to me. "Felix, whoever murdered Roxy needs to be punished."
"I'm here to make that happen. First, any idea where I could find Katz?"
"No." Veronica shook her head. "We weren't friends. I only met her once."
The phone rang. A young woman at the opposite side of the office answered and called out, "Veronica, line one."
"Take a message," Veronica replied in Spanish. "Tell them I'm busy with an appointment." She spoke with a rapid-fire Central America staccato that made her English seem like a drawl.
"Where are you from?" I asked.
"Panama," she replied.
"That's a long way from L.A. What drew you here?"
"Chicanismo is a state of mind. The barrio called and I answered."
The diploma on the wall was her master's in nonprofit management from George Mason University. I could imagine Veronica at any major foundation as the resident Latina hotshot. Instead of a nice salary with fat perks, Veronica slogged through the trenches on behalf of this community for what she could make managing a Burger King.
Veronica didn't see Pacoima the same way I did. For me, it was a dump to escape as soon as I could. For her, this was a place where she could fight injustice and bring hope.
I gestured toward the art exhibit in the hall. "Roxy must have made quite an impression on the people here."
"She was one of the most charismatic women I've ever met." Sadness tarnished Veronica's features. I preferred to see her smile.
"You're a community activist. Roxy was a porn star. What brought you together?"
"One day, she walked in to offer both her time and money to help stop Project Eleven."
"And that meant what to you?"
"Are you kidding?" Veronica replied. "This is not some black-tie nonprofit like save the sea otters or whatever. We're always short of volunteers and funds. Project Eleven was going to stomp through Pacoima like Godzilla. Roxy was our patron saint."
A porn star saint? "In what way?"
"In a huge way. Her money paid for advertising. Mailers. Legal help. Pro bono only goes so far. Plus we could bus residents to council meetings. Stopping Project Eleven was a drain on our time. Roxy's generous support let us hire extra staff."
"But at first," I asked, "a wealthy porn star arrives here, checkbook in hand, didn't that seem suspicious?"
"Hell yeah, it was suspicious. This is Pacoima. Shit like that never happens. Our fight against Project Eleven was going to be a public relations battle. This smelled like a setup. I get help from a porn star and I'd be handing our enemies ammunition."
"What did you tell Roxy?" I asked.
Veronica folded her hands on the desk. Her fingernails were short and painted bright red, just like her toenails. She had silver rings on her index fingers and a matching band on her left thumb.
"I told Roxy it wasn't my place to judge. She was upfront about how she made her money. I'm no prude, but I didn't like it. That business is all about the exploitation of women. Roxy's success was the exception."
"What changed your mind?"
"I never changed my mind about pornography. But I came to respect and admire Roxy."
"Seems she would've been the worst kind of magnet for slander and a big distraction from the campaign."
"She was. Those Project Eleven bastards were ruthless vampires."
The word shocked me. "Vampires?"
Veronica snapped her teeth in a playful gesture. "Absolutely. They were a gang of bloodsuckers. We tried our best to drive a stake through their evil hearts."
"You're joking."
She settled against the back of her chair. "You're taking me literally, aren't you?"
I forced a sheepish smile. "Of course not. It was just an unusual choice of words."
Veronica reached across the desk and grasped my wrist. The touch of her silver rings burned my skin but I didn't flinch. The pain curled my toes. I clenched my other hand to endure the agony.
"You should've seen your face," she said. "It was like you really believed in vampires."
I wanted to yelp in distress and could barely hold my smile. "Silly me."
Veronica pulled her hand back. The relief was exhilarating. I dropped my wrist from her view to hide the scorch marks.
Veronica wrinkled her nose. With a puzzled expression, she looked around the office. "Do you smell that?"
"Smell what?" My seared flesh, what else?
"Chicharones."
Great, I've always wanted to remind a woman of pork rinds.
Veronica showed me a photo of Roxy and her standing together, smiling like sisters.
"They attacked Roxy again and again but it always backfired. Like when Councilman Krutz, the pious windbag cabron, thumped the Bible about protecting his community's values. According to him, taking money from that puta was a bribe from the devil."
Veronica's cheeks dimpled and a smile warmed her words. "Roxy worked her connections in the adult trade, then brought a cute young male escort to a Project Eleven meeting. The kid winked at Krutz, who toppled over with a heart attack and was wheeled out on a gurney. You didn't need a script to know what that was a
ll about."
"With you and Roxy spending so much time together," I said, "that must have created rumors of you two being… lesbians."
Veronica crossed her legs. "For the record, Felix, I've never munched a rug in my life."
So what if she had? Veronica could nosh on me while I munched her rug. In the time I'd been here, it was a heroic effort on my part not to stare and drool at the choicest parts of her body.
But I hadn't come here to make Veronica or sink my fangs into her tempting neck. As noble as Veronica appeared to be, the chance to score a half-million dollars could twist anyone's principles. Maybe the idea of killing Roxy for insurance money wasn't so far-fetched.
"Barrios Unidos was a beneficiary of Roxy's life insurance. Five hundred thousand dollars." I studied Veronica's expression. "What happened to the money?"
"The money was nothing compared to losing Roxy." Veronica paused and bit her lower lip. She closed her eyes, opened them, and said, "It's in the center's trust account."
"Meaning you haven't spent it?"
"We draw from the interest. To pay operating expenses. Get new projects started." She motioned to the clutter around us. "It's obvious that fixing up this place hasn't been a priority."
So far it seemed that Veronica's involvement with Roxy's murder was about as plausible as me getting a halo. Still, I needed to verify it through hypnosis. "What did Roxy do as a volunteer?"
"She was great at digging out facts about Project Eleven."
"Such as?"
"Conflicts of interest. 'Independent' consultants not disclosing that they worked for the developers. Contracts let out ahead of time. Silent partners who were not so silent. Off-the-record meetings between elected officials and lobbyists."
"Sounds like business as usual for a city project. What was so different about this?"
"The blatant audacity. It began when Lucky Rosario's people showed up and threatened my staff with trespass. This center was scheduled for demolition, even though Barrios Unidos owns the building. That's how I learned about Project Eleven."
"There was no public comment?" I asked.
"Only the pretense. The Project Eleven committee intended to sneak this three-hundred-million-dollar stinker past us." Veronica went to the window and raised the blinds. "See this neighborhood? It was to be bulldozed for a corporate office park and hotel. That library"-she pointed to a green building with a curved roof-"was only recently built. Still, the city was going to tear it down because it was in the way of progress."
"I was told Project Eleven would bring jobs."
"Oh yeah. Replace family-owned businesses with dead-end service work. Project Eleven was a scam, a huge bag of stinking pork. Know what made it worse? The project was to be paid for by a special tax levied against us, the community. In other words, we were to pay Project Eleven to screw us."
Veronica returned to her desk and rummaged through the gym bag. She brought out a pair of high-heel pumps. "But this Project Eleven Godzilla made one mistake."
"What was that?"
Veronica pointed the shoes' long, slender heels at me. "They never thought we'd come after them with stilettos. You know, woman-power. Roxy and me."
I reflected on the surroundings: the dilapidated furnishings, the cracked plaster, the mountains of boxes, and wondered about Roxy's true motives. Why had she come to Barrios Unidos to join their battle against Project Eleven?
"What was Roxy getting out of this?"
"l Quien sake?" Who knows? Veronica put the high heels back into her gym bag. She sat again, propped one elbow on the desk, and circled her fingers through her hair. "Roxy had her demons."
"What demons?"
"I don't know. For all the time we spent together, she kept a lot to herself. But Roxy had something to prove. To whom? No se." Veronica shrugged.
"There are two players I don't see involved in this," I said. "Cragnow Vissoom. Roxy's former boss at Gomorrah Video. If anyone had it in for her, it would've been him. What about Councilwoman Venin? She was the force behind Project Eleven. But I don't see a connection between Cragnow and Project Eleven." Or between Project Eleven and vampire-human collusion. "There are a lot of missing pieces to this puzzle."
"Maybe the next step," Veronica said, "will be to find out what demons brought Roxy Bronze to the barrio."
Chapter Thirteen
Veronica said, "We need privacy."
We certainly did.
She scooped her cell phone from atop her desk and slipped the phone into the small cargo pocket of her capris. "Let's go outside."
That wasn't the privacy I had in mind, to be honest. I was hoping for a room with a locked door. And a bed.
I followed her out to a side hall, through a cluttered but clean kitchen, and to a door between a refrigerator and the pantry. Veronica turned around and pushed against the latching bar of the door with her round and attractive rump.
We stepped onto a concrete slab surrounded by scruffy grass and picnic tables. Veronica led me to a concrete bench beneath a carob tree.
The hot California sun pressed through the thin spots in my makeup and sunscreen. The shade under the tree was a refreshing shelter.
With her attention away from me, I removed my contacts and put them in their plastic case. Veronica's red aura glowed like the filament of an electric bulb.
Veronica sat and dug a packet of Nicorette gum from her pocket. She popped a tablet into her mouth and turned to face me.
Our eyes locked. Her aura pulsed in surprise. Her eyebrows arced and her pupils opened like twin camera apertures. I caught her at midchew, and the ball of gum sat between the teeth in her open mouth. The look was unbecoming, so I flicked the wad away and closed her jaw.
I sat beside her and grasped her hands to massage the webs of flesh between her thumbs and index fingers. I stared into the concentric brown and black circles of her irises and pupils. Now to get the obvious questions out of the way.
"Veronica, did you kill Roxy Bronze?"
She took one slow breath. Then another. "No."
That answer was comforting. I had plans for Veronica other than seeing her cuffed and taken to jail.
"Veronica, do you know who killed Roxy?"
Another breath and another comforting "No."
"What about vampires?"
Another no.
At least I knew enough to cross her off my list of suspects.
Veronica remained still, her mind pliant as clay. Her smooth and elegant neck beckoned. My fangs protruded.
The lot behind Barrios Unidos faced the back fences of neighborhood homes and their cluttered yards. Other than a few cars passing on the side streets, we were alone.
This was going to be easy. If I embraced her, we'd look like we were necking. Really necking.
I brushed the hair back from her collar to bare her neck. The top two buttons of her blouse were open, revealing a nice crease between her breasts. A lacy, powder blue brassiere cupped her full bosom. I fought the temptation to undo the rest of the buttons and slip a hand into her blouse.
Okay, so it was creepy of me to hypnotize a woman and think about copping a feel. But I'm a vampire, not a Boy Scout. I bite people on the neck and suck their blood. Occasionally I even kill them. Compared to that, putting my hand under Veronica's blouse would be like swiping a pen from work.
Besides, sex with a vampire was an extraordinary thrill. At least, that's what I told myself.
Desire pumped into my crotch. Feeding on her wouldn't be enough. But out here in the open? No, the rest would wait for later. I held Veronica by the shoulders and brought my fangs to her neck.
She was a fountain of appetizing aromas. The sweet shampoo, lilac soap, her morning coffee, peppermint from the gum, and an underlying scent of pheromones. The anticipation of tasting her skin and blood made my mouth water.
The sudden and loud caw of a crow grabbed me by the ears.
I pulled away from Veronica and wiped the drool from my lips. A crow stared from the rain g
utter along the eave of the Barrios Unidos roof. The bird cawed again, louder this time. I didn't know if it was the same crow that delivered my orders from the Araneum back in Denver. Even if it wasn't, I got the message.
We're watching you, Felix. Get your ass back to work.
My fangs retracted. The warm swelling in my crotch ebbed with frustration. I smoothed Veronica's hair over her collar.
The crow sidestepped along the rain gutter, its claws ticking against the metal. Its beady eyes gave me the harsh glare of a zealous chaperone.
I closed Veronica's eyes and massaged between her thumbs and fingers again. Her aura dimmed as she relaxed. I commanded her to awake.
In the moment that I waited for Veronica to come to, I put my contacts back in and thought about what clues I hoped to find here.
Veronica opened her eyes. "What was I saying?" She touched her forehead in an absentminded gesture. "I lost my train of thought."
"We were going to talk about Roxy Bronze and her demons."
Veronica nodded. Her face took on a dark hue. She reached for a pod of carob seeds on the ground and picked at it. As Veronica shared what she knew about Roxy, the crow lifted from the rain gutter and flew off, the feathered bastard.
Veronica repeated what I had already learned on my own. When she was done, Veronica kept quiet until the gloss from the tears in her eyes faded.
She dropped the carob pod. "Know what 'Freya' means?"
"It's the Norse goddess of love and beauty," I replied.
"An appropriate name." Veronica blotted her eyes and wiped her fingertips across one thigh.
I was a vampire, supposedly cold and hard like iron. But the sincerity of Veronica's affection for Roxy warmed me. I wanted to share that affection, and suddenly I felt myself wanting to know Veronica as man to woman, not vampire to prey.
She asked, "Do you know what happened to Dr. Freya Krieger?"
"Roxy… Freya was accused of negligence in the death of a patient and had her license suspended by the state medical board," I said.
"That was the official version. A guy I dated…"
Dated? Past tense I hoped.
"… a lawyer…"
Sleep with the dogs, why don't you?
X-Rated Bloodsuckers fg-2 Page 8
