~~~~~~
Bottoms Up was, Casey supposed, a decent joint for a topless bar. The corner of Williams and Airline wasn't as bad as Leopard Street. SPID was, after all, only about a block north. A little crime so close to the upscale stores and restaurants was acceptable, but they weren’t going to let things get out of hand. There were still overgrown weeds and a kind of shoot-me-before-my-next-shift-and-get-me-out-of-this atmosphere, but there was also hope for upward mobility. Apartment buildings crowded around the small strip of stores. Dawn softened the hardened asphalt, chased the predatory shadows away, and illuminated the parking lot contents.
One cop car. One ambulance. A small splattering of blood on the five-dollar-lap-dance sign. A clot of policemen talking to a man in a white wife-beater t-shirt. One hysterical woman folded over next to the lap dance sign. Her skimpy blue dress had worked up to mid thigh, and she had miles of leg to show.
Marco walked up to the nearest police officer. "Hi. I'm Lyrene's brother. What's going on?" Casey looked on in admiration. He looked completely harmless. Marco didn't lie with his mouth. He lied with his whole body.
The cops sighed, but it was the man in the wife-beater who spoke. "Yeah. Marc, Hi. I know the guy, officers. Look, can he and I talk for a second?"
“Don’t go anywhere, Jeffson.” The cop said, and walked over to the ambulance.
Once they were in the clear, Mr. Jeffson shook his head. "Look...I don't question the girls about their love-lives. If they wind up shacked up with a customer, it's no skin off my nose. But Lyrene is involved in bad news, and it's in the way of her job."
“How so?”
"The guy she’s shacked up with might as well be pumping drain cleaner into his arms. I ban him from the property, she lets him back in. Plus this last month she’s been missing work, showing up late, she can’t hardly function when she’s here. Marissa is my backup. She figured the problem was Tony, so she and I were going to stage a kind of boyfriend intervention tonight.”
Casey looked at the bloody sign. “It didn’t go well.”
“It didn’t even start. Lyrene walked up to Mari and pow, clawed her face open. Mari’s gonna need stitches. She won’t press charges, but I’m gonna have to fire Ly. Damn shame. The little chicken shit she’s with ain’t worth it.”
“Loser?” Marco asked.
“Scrawny little gangster wannabe. Riskiest thing he ever done other than Ly, and maybe push a little weed, is get that fancy-ass tattoo on his back. How’s this for a gangster, kids? Two braided roses and a mermaid. Ain’t exactly a gang tatt, you know?”
Marco nodded sagely. Casey, however, felt cold. Roses, she thought, and a mermaid.
Where’d you get the ink?
What’s it to you, bitch?
She was wrong. Had to be. All this Faerie stuff was only hours old to her. Just because she had an instinct, didn’t mean the impulse was right. She asked, “I heard one of your regulars was a sniper victim. That true?” She tried to smile. It failed.
Jeffson grimaced. “Hell. All five of ‘em came in here at least a couple days before they died. Not you, Princess, but everybody else.”
“All of them?” Marco asked. “Nicole? Amaya?”
“They weren’t here for the dancing, but I seen ‘em. Amaya Hernandez wanted my girls to quit. She’d come, talk, leave her card. Come back a few days later and try again. She even tangled with Tony—That’s Lyrene’s boy, Antonio Benavidez—over a bruise on Ly’s shoulder.”
“How long after that was she killed?” Casey’s gut was plummeting.
“A week, I think.” Jeffson rubbed his chin. “Now, Nikki Hartman…she came in to interview Ly about something. Tony thought she was a new girl and started hitting on her. She pepper-sprayed him. She had to hit Lyrene with it too, because she came in on Tony’s side. That’s when I told him to get out and not come back.”
“What about the two men, and the woman last night?” Marco sounded sick. Good. Casey felt sick.
“Both guys were bothering Ly. Mostly to get to Tony, I think. Rival gangs. They laid off about a week before the first one died, but by then it was too late.
“And the girl tonight…” Jeffson stopped. He swallowed. “Lily is--” He stopped again. “Was. She was one of my girls. We all knew her. Goddamn it. I told her not to work the streets.” he met Casey’s eyes and shook his head. “I thought what you’re thinking now, Sunshine. It ain’t Tony and Ly doing it. They loved Lily. She was Lyrene’s best friend.” Jeffson rubbed the back of his neck. “Mari’s, too. She doesn’t know yet. I gotta tell her. How do you do something like this?” It must have been a rhetorical question, because he moved towards the ambulance without waiting for an answer.
Marco closed his eyes and sucked in oxygen. “Father God,” he whispered, staring at tiny, pitiful Lyrene curled on the sidewalk. He shook himself. “I have to find her boyfriend.”
“He’s at my place.” Casey said, softly. She rubbed her shoulders against the cold morning air. Sunlight shone around them, burning off the last traces of fog, but Casey couldn’t feel it. Nothing would be warm now, not ever again. “She picked the fight with Marissa so that she’d have to call you. If she’d waited a little longer, or if I hadn’t made you pull over, I’d be at home, you would have left me there to take care of your business, and Tony wouldn’t have had a problem killing me. He was in the store tonight. Don’t you remember? Arthur talking to Julio? The kid who was with him? Julio called him Tony, and he had that exact tattoo on his back. Roses and a mermaid.”
“You think you pissed him off asking for his ID?” Marco raised an eyebrow. “Enough to kill you?”
“No. He was hostile before that. I think he had to be tough to keep from realizing I was a human being.”
“But Lyrene loves your stories. She wouldn’t want you dead.”
Casey looked at the tiny woman on the sidewalk. “I had a cow when I was a kid. We babied it, and even cried a little when Daddy turned it into hamburger. It tasted real good with A1 sauce. How do the Faerie feel about humans?”
Marco didn’t answer the question. “I don’t want to believe anyone could be that cold blooded. Especially not someone I know.” Then he put a hand on her shoulder. “I’ll take you to my shop. Nobody goes through Ero, Tim’s not bad with a socket wrench. You’ll be safe.”
“Safe.” Casey liked that word a lot, these days. Life without pain and fighting, that’s what “safe” meant. She’d left her ex-husband and moved back to Corpus to be safe. She swallowed. “I don’t think so.” She jerked her chin at the sobbing woman on the sidewalk. “Introduce me.”
"Casey, if you honestly think she has anything to do with the sniper--"
"Can you go to the police and tell them what she’s doing? Can she be arrested?” She waited. Marco’s face turned to stone. “I didn’t think so.”
“It’s not your fight.” Marco whispered. “You’re hurt, you’re tired, you’re human, and you’ve got nothing on your side.”
“It’s my stories, Marco. And…the last thing I want to do is die on the floor of a convenience store. I almost did. That makes it my fight. And I want to know who would do that to me.” She looked into his eyes. “Introduce me.”
~~~~~~
Lyrene the Merrow wasn't pretty. She was intoxicating. Huge sea-green eyes, hair so red and deep it looked as if her scalp were bleeding. Lush lips, high cheekbones. Tears glittered like rhinestone stars. Her mascara hadn’t even run.
Then she saw Casey.
Those expressive eyes flashed through so many emotions it left Casey dizzy. Volcanic hostility. Anger. Hate. A strange kind of envy, and hunger deep as the raging sea. Then it crumpled into a little girl’s terror, and she threw herself into Marco’s arms. “Oh, I was so scared!”
Marco let her weep onto his shoulder. He murmured soothing words and stroked her tiny shoulders. But his eyes were cold. Lyrene might fool the men she danced for, but compared to Marco she was a terrible li
ar.
Perfectly manicured fingers dug into Marco’s lapel. “They attacked me, Marcaius. You have to believe me.” She looked up with pleading eyes. The Gestapo’s heart would have broken.
“I understand,” Marco said, and gestured at Casey. “Guess who I met tonight. Casey, this is Lyrene McHally. Lyrene, Casey Winter. Don’t worry. I’ve told her everything.”
Lyrene’s cheeks looked hectic, but her smile seemed genuine. If she hadn’t been crying hysterically two seconds ago Casey might even have bought it. “It’s not an assumed name, in case you were wondering. I grew up in Scotland. My family’s been there for six hundred years, and I just got sick of it. Shetland islands. Sheltand sheep going baa, baa, baa. Crumbly old ladies knitting lace. God. Gimme rock music and flashy lights any old day.” She shook her curls. “It’s only the great ones, like Razielara and Marciaus, who come from Ambercross.” She took one of Casey’s hands and squeezed it so hard the wrist bones ground together. “I am so glad to meet you.” Jewlery jingled as she pumped Casey’s arm up and down. “I’ve got so many questions.”
Marco lead them both to his massive truck, Lyrene talking a mile a minute the whole way. Trying to put them at ease, Casey supposed. If I didn’t know something was up, the penny would have dropped by now. She fastened her seatbelt. Nobody was that vapid by accident. Lyrene got into the back seat. Marco put the key in the ignition and raised an eyebrow at Casey.
Huh I guess I am kind of running the show. Well, this had better work. She hit her own forehead in theatrical frustration. “Oh, Damn. Marco, I forgot. There’s an errand I have to run today. Would you mind stopping at Academy?” She looked back at the Merrow girl.
“Not at all,” Lyrene said, and smiled.
Silver Bullet (Exiles of Ambercross 1 Page 5
