Highfire
Page 20
Ivory found himself strangely flattered by the constable’s comments, but also intrigued. “Thanks a fucking bunch, Hooke. I don’t need any cop to tell me I got ambition. A fucking constable? You ain’t even a sheriff.”
Go on, thought Hooke. Ask me.
Ivory fought the urge, but he had to know. “So, go on, motherfucker. Why ain’t I got time?”
I should make this melodramatic, thought Hooke. These boss types love them a slice of melodrama. Or even better, something from the Bible. And just like that, the appropriate reference leaped out at him.
“You don’t have time, Ivory,” said Hooke, “because like Jesus in the desert, you are about to be sorely tested.”
“Tested?” said Ivory, and then, for appearance’s sake, “Who’s gonna test me? I own the police, I’m tight with the cartel, and this building is a fortress. I got a dozen men on every floor and enough firepower in this room alone to win a medium-sized war.”
Hooke pretended to be impressed by all this exposition. “You know, I do believe I brought this situation to the right place.”
“What situation might that be, Constable?”
Hooke fidgeted with his cigar. It wasn’t a simple thing, to present this case. Blurting out the facts would get him laughed out of the building or, more likely, carried out.
“Okay, son. Here’s the deal. There are a couple of strands, so pay attention.”
Ivory pawed his face like he would pull it off. “Constable, you’re the one testing me. The chances of you surviving this encounter are slim to none unless I like what you say next.”
The twin, knowing a setup when he heard one, drew a 9mm and stashed it behind his back.
“Okay, G-Hop, settle down,” said Hooke. “What we have here is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. The brass ring. A chance for us all to elevate our positions.”
“This I gotta hear,” said Rossano Roque.
“Well then, maybe you might consider shutting the hell up, son.” He ground the cigar under his boot heel. “So, the first strand. I got the boy who witnessed that little job on Honey Island tucked away in your freezer. No longer a threat.”
Ivory was surprised. “I hope the second strand is better than the first because I sure as shit never told you to bring a witness here. You sure you’re an officer of the law, Constable? Because you don’t appear to know a whole lot about it.”
“Relax, Ivory,” said Hooke. “You own the law around here, myself included. And the Feds ain’t sniffing around you yet. All’s you got is a hotel and a half a dozen corners. That there’s penny-ante shit to the Feebs.”
“Fucking Hooke,” said Ivory, and Hooke could see those words made his so-called boss feel better, so much better that he repeated them. “Fucking Hooke,” and added, “I rue the day. I surely do.”
Hooke grinned. “Well, that’s all about to change, son, because strand two, this kid, he’s got himself an employer. More of a friend, really.”
“A friend?” said Ivory. “I hate friends. Friends do illogical things for friends.”
“Ah, but this friend is special,” said Hooke. “You need to open your ears now because this is important. This friend could move the earth for us. I don’t wanna say too much about him, but you’ve seen Game of Thrones, right?”
“I’ve seen a few episodes,” said Ivory.
“Game of Thrones is genius, man,” said Roque. “The amount of ass on that show is insane.”
Hooke dropped Ivory a wink, like they both knew his soldier was an idiot.
“The point is,” he continued, “the little blonde lady, she’s nothing without her friends, right? What if we had a friend like that?”
Ivory’s eyebrows shot so high it looked like they might take off and fly away. “Like a dragon? Is that what you’re saying, Constable? What if we had a dragon on the payroll?”
Hooke grinned. “A dragon? Come on, Ivory, I ain’t no crazy guy coming in here with dragon stories. But this friend, he’s something to see. So I think that’s the best way for this to play out: just let you eyeball him. And I reckon he’ll be here any damn second, busting down your door.”
“He’s gonna come in here looking for beef?” said Ivory. “Who is he, your fucking brother?”
Hooke laughed. “Good one, boss. You zinged me there. He’s a character, ain’t he, Rossano? But no, this guy ain’t my brother. You’ve never seen nothing like this guy. And if we can capture him and get him hooked on product, go a little French Connection, get him on our leash, then we can bust this city open like a clam.”
This was Hooke’s fallback, if Ivory’s men actually managed to subdue Vern.
“He’s that good?”
Hooke considered his answer. “There’s a term—kids use it all the time. ‘Awesome.’ That’s what this guy is, in the true sense of the word. This guy is awesome. He’s Godzilla and Thor and goddamn Batman all rolled into one, and he’s gonna pop in here any second and wipe out half your men without breaking a sweat. You gotta sound red alert and get loaded with armor-piercing rounds—gas, if you have it; whatever the fuck is in your box of tricks. Because Vern don’t play around.”
Ivory snorted. “Vern? Some guy called Vern is gonna off half my people?”
“At least half. More if he sticks around.”
“A guy this powerful, why would I want to kill him?”
Hooke guffawed. “You ain’t killing him. All that shit might just slow him down long enough to get a spike of crank into him.”
Rossano laughed. “Crank? Fucking old-ass bitch be talking about dog food and dragons.”
Hooke was not a man for swallowing insults unless there was an upside, and in this case, he couldn’t see one. In fact, Ivory could use a lesson right about now.
He moved fast, while seeming to move slow, which is about as difficult as it sounds and involves every muscle from the neck down. He had seen a French merc in Iraq operate in this underwater fashion: Old Serge could slice a fella’s neck like he was opening a greeting card, and people never saw him coming. Hooke had studied that technique and practiced it until he felt confident enough to go public with Serge himself, which he figured was the ultimate test.
Hooke passed; Serge passed on.
He leaned forward easily and grasped Rossano’s knee, which was at his eye level. “Sorry,” he said, making it look like an accidental graze; then he tightened his grip and pistoned his arm, pushing the knee in a direction knees don’t like to go.
“Oops, hey,” he said, still playing the bumbler, “watch out there, buddy.”
Roque went down, his face the color of swamp scum, and as he fell, Hooke drove an uppercut into the bodyguard’s jutting chin, which carried Hooke to his feet and almost took Rossano’s head clean off. It certainly drove the life from his body.
“One punch,” said Hooke. “I always wondered.”
To give Ivory his due, he didn’t quake or gibber but stood up tall for the fight to come. The boy had probably had to show some moxie along the road, dealing with all those senior-type mafiosi hooked up to breathing machines over in Saint Margaret’s.
“You wanna go for a gun?” Hooke asked him. “I know you got one in your fancy desk. Smart move, I’d say, because it would be real stupid going toe-to-toe with me.”
“I don’t need a gun,” said Ivory, balling his fists. “I ain’t scared of you.”
Hooke balled his own fists a touch mockingly. “It ain’t Marquess of Queensbury, boy. Getting to the top might be about brawling, but staying there sure ain’t. Rossano had to go because he was distracting you from the Fourth Horseman of the Apocalypse who’s about to drop in. We can finish this right now, or you can get on the intercom to your floors and get them set up for a breach and maybe make something of yourself. Get out from under the family’s shadow. Be the next big man.”
“I am the big man, Hooke. All I gotta do is holler and a roomful of hurt is gonna come running in here.”
“That’s your call,” said Hooke, though it wasn’t r
eally. “But I wouldn’t waste resources just now.” He gave Ivory a few seconds to think about it, then said, “Come on, son. Clock’s ticking.”
“Okay,” snapped Ivory, “we do it your way for now. But soon as this super-fucking-assassin is strapped to the table, me and you are going to have a long talk.”
“Of course, boss,” said Hooke.
Boss. Like Ivory was still in charge of anything.
Chapter 16
VERN DIDN’T GET THE PHOTOGRAPH ON HIS PHONE UNTIL HE CAME out of the water at sunset. At first the dragon didn’t know what he was looking at, figuring the boy was pranking him, which seemed to be a popular pastime on the Internet, but then he took a closer look and realized that someone had sliced Waxman up like so much gator bait and placed the pieces around a knocked-out Squib. Vern was no stranger to savagery. He’d seen enough of it in his life, mostly concentrated around the time of the purge, when humans had inflicted just about every atrocity on dragon-kind that they could come up with. Vern had seen the looks on the faces of those humans in the aftermath and figured that they had surprised even themselves with the innovative forms of murder they’d freestyled with maybe half a dozen swords, a couple of elephants, and a vat of oil.
Vern had seen it all and his heart had broken and his mind had snapped.
But hearts and minds can heal.
And now Vern was plunged into hell all over again. Waxman was dead. The human Hooke had done the deed and Vern felt the deep blues creeping over him like a storm cloud and his thoughts slowed and it felt like blinking and breathing was just too much trouble.
Then a text buzzed through. Squib had set the text alert to light saber.
The text read: Hey, dragon. Didn’t you get my picture? I got your little buddy here.
The text was signed with a hook emoji, which made it clear who was sending it.
Five seconds later the light saber buzzed again.
He don’t look so good. You better get down here.
This was followed by a Google map pin on the Marcello Hotel in New Orleans.
A third buzz.
Ivory Conti says kill him now, but I’m gonna give you an hour before he ends up like Waxman.
This one came with an attachment: another picture of Waxman. This time just the mogwai’s head sitting on a post.
Hooke made a mistake, thought Vern. He shoulda killed Squib, too. Now I got something to live for.
For sixty minutes.
TEN MINUTES LATER Vern was in the air and in a state of disbelief about current events in general.
For one: He was entering New Orleans airspace for the first time after all the shit with the janitor’s video a couple of years back.
For another: He was risking his scaly ass for some kid he’d known barely a wet week because—because what? Squib ferried vodka and dragon porn to the shack: hardly worth killing or dying for.
And for the third strike: He was allowing some asshole cop to get him so riled up that he was flying into a den of gangsters, in no small part to win a pissing contest.
Whatever happens on this night, Regence Hooke ain’t walking away from it, nor crawling neither.
“You have plumb lost your mind, Lord Highfire,” he told himself strictly. “Turn yourself around right this minute.”
But he didn’t turn around because Squib was a good kid. Good and loyal.
I’m rewarding loyalty in humans. Next thing I’ll be swearing allegiance to a goddamn sheep.
And still Vern did not turn around. Hooke’s actions could not be allowed to stand, even if it was an obvious trap.
Vern flew low across the Gulf, enjoying the warm updraft in his membranes.
Enjoying the updraft, are you?
Well then, Almighty Wyvern, if you ain’t turning around, then at least get your goddamn head in the game.
Which was a fair comment.
He might be a powerful dragon, and they might be nothing but a clatter of dumb humans all conveniently clustered together for easy slaughter, but sometimes dumb gets lucky and powerful gets dead.
Focus, Vern baby. Remember the time Grendel took out that longhouse of Vikings? Let’s do it just like that. Except for the Vikings, read Italians. The longhouse is a downtown hotel. And the swords are semiautomatic weapons.
Vern was beginning to realize that metaphors were not his strong suit.
NEW ORLEANS WAS lit up like the whole town was a carnival. Monolithic slabs of skyscrapers, garish tombstones against the night, were not half as pretty as their painted-on reflections. Especially the Superdome, a purple boob of a building which reminded Vern of a lady dragon he’d met one time in Brazil, as it was now called.
South American drago-ladies. Shit.
Vern drifted over the Delacroix marshes barely ten feet above the Mississippi port. He kept his wings as tucked as possible, and his mouth shut tight. A single hint of flame and he’d be lighting himself up for whatever cameras were pointed his way. And if there was one thing Vern knew, once you hit civilization in this century, there was always some dick with a camera. And nowadays the dick could even be a robot. Roll on a dystopian technology-free future, then things might get a little easier for a dragon just trying to survive.
Vern sent a message to his pigment cells, which blended him in pretty well with the Mississippi to the casual observer, gave himself a little lift to avoid the party cruises, but stuck to the river, following it northwest to the French Quarter. From there his sense of smell went insane with the sheer variety of scents drifting up from the streets, a cornucopia of spices and perfumes which were making it difficult to think about anything except gumbo.
I need a little cover, Vern realized. Some space to spy on the hotel in the photos; then I grab that motherfucker Hooke and rip his pumpkin head clean off and maybe pickle his balls in vodka.
And then a moment later, a little shamefaced, And also rescue Squib. Do that first.
VERN HOOKED A talon around St. Louis Cathedral’s middle spire and squared himself away in the shadows way up there with a bird’s-eye view on the modern-day Gomorrah laid out below him.
I must look amazing, he thought. Big badass dragon hanging off a steeple. Christopher Nolan would shit himself if he saw this.
No one would see him, though. That was the whole point. Resisting the urge to show off for the crowd was how he’d stayed alive so long. But it was so difficult for a guy who was totally magnificent in action to rein that in. Vern thought he would give a decade of his life to cut loose just once.
I don’t even know how much damage I could do, he realized. That’s how long it’s been.
The Quarter below had that downtown vibe where gloss was painted over vice, so the tourists could stuff po’boys down their gullets or flash their college breasts without actually feeling threatened. Or, if they got really loaded, maybe buy some fake voodoo charm to get into someone’s pants.
That used to be a carnival thing. Now it’s all the damn time, thought Vern. The dicks are coming out, too. I’m surprised it took menfolk so long to get into the game.
But the French Quarter’s paint job was patchy, and the underworld poked through at the corners and down the alleys. Vern smelled the scouring sweetness of cheap spirits, the oily plastic stink of burned crack, the rank musk of all-day drinkers. He saw the boisterous out-of-towners all whooping and hollering like they were invincible, like there wasn’t a 9mm or switchblade within five feet on every side. Like they couldn’t be snuffed out without much thought or effort. He saw the workers, industrious as ants, moving through the crowds, selling baggies, picking pockets, wheedling marks into their establishments. It was all going on as it had for centuries, apart from a week of reduced service due to multiple FEMA fuckups after Katrina flooded eighty percent of the city.
On another evening, Vern might have enjoyed the exotic change of scenery, but tonight he was on a mission to avenge Waxman’s savage murder, rescue his boy, and bury Constable Hooke so deep they’d need an archaeologist to find him.
Vern knew from way too much experience that revenge wouldn’t magically make that feeling go away but it sure would dull it some.
Vern spotted the Marcello Hotel right away. This guy Ivory sure liked his columns. Must’ve been half a dozen of them out front of his establishment, couple of blocks behind Rampart, knocking up against Treme, all painted gold in the grooves, festooned with concrete vines and grapes. And, of course, the sign was gold, too: “The Marcello Tower. Classic Elegance.”
Where did this guy think he was? New York in the ’20s?
It occurred to Vern that once upon a brighter day, he would have torched the entire building simply because the sign irritated him.
Glory days, he thought. You said it, Bruce.
He fancied a closer look, so he risked a five-second glide to the building opposite the Marcello, which was a redbrick apartment building with honest-to-God gargoyle heads peeking over the rooftop.
How convenient, thought Vern.
There was one guy on the roof, all set up for the evening with a lounger and reefer. Vern dropped down behind him like he was on a wire and breathed a lungful of fumes all over the guy’s head, knocking the stoner out cold.
“Cheaper than weed,” said Vern, “but a bitch of a sulfur hangover.”
The dragon dropped to all fours and crawled to the lip of the roof, where the gargoyle heads sat up on the cornerstones. From there he had a decent view of the Marcello. Even better, he wasn’t overlooked on any side.
There was no real need for him to do what he was about to do, he realized, as his pigment cells were still okay at this distance, crude as his coloring was.
But what the hell. Live a little.
He wriggled one taloned finger into the seam of desiccated concrete connecting one gargoyle to the wall and in less than a minute had the bust separated from its groove.