Pursing his lips, Joe scanned the store ahead of us. Wherever Enrique was, he wasn't near the front. “You sure, Lucy?”
“Positive,” said I. “I'm a real charmer when I want to be.”
Joe rolled his eyes. “Whatever, man. Just don't mess this up. I don't want to get screamed at by the Chief, OK?”
The two of us pushed deeper into the store, past the displays of hemp soap and the gaggles of soccer moms perusing the selection of cruelty-free deodorants. We didn't have to go far before we struck gold.
Standing in the produce section, looking every bit as nasty as Ernie had promised, was our guy.
I moved in on him.
Just strike up a little conversation with him, I thought to myself. Get him laughing. Then, maybe, you can get him to follow you out to the parking lot.
Pretending that I had taken a great interest in the two-for-one broccoli crowns, I made a couple of side-steps his way and then shot him a narrow glance. “Say,” I began, “you look familiar.” I wasn't sure where I was going with this, but my ad-lib game was normally pretty good and I decided to just go with the flow.
The heavily-tattooed guy, standing a foot taller than me, had enough metal in his face to build himself a rocket to Uglytown. His earlobes were stretched to the sizes of small saucers by black gauges and, unless I was mistaken, he had silicone implants near both temples that were supposed to resemble budding horns. Darling. He was holding two bunches of crisp-looking chou-frisé, but if we're being honest, he didn't much look like a chou-frisé kind of guy. He turned to look at me, eyes narrowing. “Sorry?”
“Yeah,” I continued, nodding. “You, uh... you look like that guy...” I glanced up at the ceiling, pretending to fall into thought. “Enrique? From the music videos in the nineties?” I snapped my fingers. “Enrique Iglesias, am I right?”
The guy cracked a smile, revealing stubby, yellow teeth. “Nah, not me.”
That smile of his sickened me. Just knowing what kind of guy he was, what kind of work he did, where the money for these hippy-dippy vegetables was coming from, made me sick. No, it was more than repulsion; I wanted to crack him across the jaw right then and there. The sort of operation that this dude was facilitating was just about the most evil thing I'd ever run across. Painting the stone-tiled floors with his blood seemed like a perfectly good idea. Somehow, though, I restrained myself, tried to keep up my pleasant ruse.
“No, no, you're totally him, aren't you?” I waggled my eyebrows. “You did that song... 'Bailamos,' am I right? I loved that shit, man. Can I get a selfie with you?” I got closer to him, pulled out my phone.
He frowned, apparently tiring of my joke. The frown was just as off-putting as the smile he'd had on. His shoulders stiffened, fists tightened. These changes in his body language told me I'd just about worn out my welcome. I needed to take a few steps back, lay off of the guy.
But I couldn't help myself.
Hands in my pockets, I shrugged. “Ah, my mistake, then. I must be getting my Enriques mixed up, huh? You're not the singer. But... your name is Enrique, isn't it?”
He turned to face me, his gaze steely as the rings in his nostrils. “Yeah, that's right. What do you want?”
“Come with me, I wanna chat with you outside,” I offered. “This really isn't the best place.”
He stood there, the bulldog grimace on his lips telling me that he had no intention of moving. “No. What do you want?” he demanded.
“What do I want?” I played dumb, looked up at the ceiling as though I were about to list off the items on my bucket list. “Oh, just to have a little talk with your bosses. I don't imagine you could tell me where to find them? The Kaminsky brothers?”
Now it was his turn to play dumb. “W-who are you talking about?” He waved one of his chubby hands at me. “You've got the wrong guy.”
I sniffed the air, nodding sympathetically. I also took this opportunity to take a step towards him, hoping to cut him off in case he darted to my right. “No, I don't think I do. You're the one who works for a pair of werewolves and shuttles kids off to the Beyond, ain't that right?” I clicked my tongue. “I knew from the minute I'd laid eyes on you that you'd never been in a fucking music video.”
All of the color on the fella's face that hadn't been put there by a needle drained away. His eyes, dark things that were probably unaccustomed to widening in fear, suddenly bolted open. He'd been found out. One of his big, black boots hit the floor with a deep thud as he took a step away. Then another.
And then he was running, all three-hundred or so pounds of him, full-tilt, for the exit.
Fuck.
The chump was sprinting towards the front of the store, bumping into other shoppers and stacks of merchandise while navigating the cramped aisles. So much for keeping the whole thing discrete.
Kubo hadn't wanted us to make a scene, but now that the guy was on the run, what choice did I have? If he made it out that door there was no telling whether we'd be able to find him again. It was too big a risk, and so I pushed past a cute granola girl reaching for a container of yogurt and gave chase. Joe was running, too, coming up on my right, cursing.
“You should have boxed him in somehow, Lucy!” he spat. “Now he's going to make a break for it!”
“Oh, yeah? Maybe you should have stood in his damn way, then! What were you doing while I was talking to him?” I barked. “Trying all of the free samples?”
Enrique bobbed and weaved between the aisles, knocking down displays of soy crisps and bottles of coffee-based drinks as he went. He was going to get to the door before we did, and nothing short of a ranged attack was going to slow him down.
I cut to the right of the store, whipping an empty shopping cart from one of the center aisles and started into a sprint, the cart charging just ahead of me like a battering ram. A few girls in yoga pants looked on in horror as I barreled past the refrigerables and came up on Enrique's six. Behind me, I could hear Joe fussing with his Zippo. What was he hoping to do with that here? Give all of the shoppers a front-row ticket to a real magic show? Tossing fireballs at the guy was way too conspicuous.
I opted for something just a little more subtle.
Gripping the handle of the shopping cart, I hoisted it over my head and then threw it across the store with everything I had.
The cashiers hit the deck as the metal cage flew through the air and connected with Enrique. The guy lost his balance, the cart smacking him in the back, and fell into a delicately stacked pyramid of soda twelve-packs. I felt like I'd just made a Superbowl-winning pass.
Joe and I found our opening. While Enrique struggled to get back up, we gained on him, dashing past the registers and taking hold of his arms. He was out of breath, sweating profusely for the brief chase, but still tried to pull himself free.
He succeeded in evading Joe's grasp, but he wasn't strong enough to out-muscle me. I let my fingers sink deep into the meat of his flabby biceps till his legs went weak. Then, yanking him towards the door, the three of us made our way into the warm night. Idling near the entrance was Kubo in his black SUV. He rolled down the passenger-side window just far enough to curse at me. “I told you not to make a goddamn scene!”
Joe opened one of the doors and we piled in, the quaking Enrique getting dragged into an open seat like a sack of sweaty garbage. I hadn't loosened my grip any since leaving the store and his arm had gone limp. Tears streamed down his painted cheeks, a nifty compliment to the teardrop tattoos he wore. I let go of him.
When the doors were shut and we were roaring down the road at ninety-plus, Enrique finally spoke. “W-who are you people? What do you want?” he gulped, massaging his fingers as the feeling slowly returned. “Are you... are y-you cops?”
Kubo glanced at him in the rearview, flashing his sharp teeth in a grin. “No, we aren't cops. But by the time we're through with you, you're going to wish we were just cops.”
The soundtrack to the remainder of the car ride was a grown man's stifled weeping.
Kubo nodded. “You know how he is. I handed him a silver dollar and he just took off, said he had some walking yet to do tonight.”
Joe furrowed his brow. “What's his obsession with silver? I mean, can a ghost even use money?”
“He's saving up to buy himself a yacht. Wants to make the trip down the River Styx in style,” replied Kubo, cracking a grin.
I wasn't paying attention to those two. I was focused solely on our captive, Enrique. As we tore down the street to God-knew-where, I had just one question for the guy.
“So,” I said, leaning forward from the third row and eyeing Enrique expectantly, “why do you do it?”
I wasn't sure just where Kubo planned to stop. We'd been driving about twenty minutes already and the guy showed no signs of slowing down. I thought we might hop onto the highway and go to the Veiled Order's headquarters, a massive concrete complex sitting in the middle of nowhere and surrounded by tall, black gates, but he kept to the side streets. Probably he was just looking for some place where we could shake the guy up without attracting too much attention.
While Joe flicked the cap to his lighter open and closed, Enrique played the fool. “I don't want to say anything until I've spoken to my lawyer.”
“You damned idiot!” I barked, slapping the back of his head. “You work for two monsters, grabbing kids off of the street, so that they can sell them to other monsters. If I were a cop I'd have killed you execution-style by now!”
Kubo shot me a glance, shook his head as if to say, “Cool it.”
I sighed. “I just want to know why you'd do that kind of work. You know what happens to those kids after they're snatched up, right?”
Enrique was sweating. Big, fat drops of perspiration dripped from his forehead, traced the gauges in his ears till they were glistening. He looked up at Kubo, summoning his voice feebly. “W-where are you taking me?”
Unfortunately for him, I was the only one in the vehicle willing to chat with him.
“I asked you a question.” I gave the demon in me a bit of slack to play with, let him use my eyes to deliver a chilling glare that made the trembling guy sit upright. I could practically see the hairs on the back of his neck standing up, one after another, as Gadreel's presence filled the space. “I don't like being ignored.”
Finally, Enrique gulped, hand squeezing the armrest. “I, uh... I do it for the money,” he said. Trying to sport a grin, he added, “You've gotta do what you can to get by. Rent's still due at the end of the month. You know?”
It was such a poor excuse for doing his heinous work, such a predictable reply, that I could have spit in his face, punched his head clean off his shoulders. But what really got under my skin about Enrique's weak excuse was that I'd heard it all before.
You know, I don't like to talk about it much these days, but once I wasn't such a nice, upstanding guy myself.
OK, sure, I'm not exactly a Boy Scout. Some would insist that I'm still not a nice, upstanding guy. That's besides the point.
Anyhow, a few years back, after earning a master's in Art History, I'd had a hell of a time finding a good job. Turns out that people don't really care about whether you can differentiate between a legitimate DaVinci or a fake, how many papers you've written on the works of Frida Kahlo. And so, I turned to something that paid well, something that didn't require a degree of any kind, and whose only qualification was persistence. I became a debt collector.
I spent a few years knocking on doors, collecting money from people who couldn't afford to repay their debts. And I did worse, too. Slashed tires, kicked in doors. Real Hollywood shit. Whatever it took to get my “clients” on a payment plan.
If asked, my excuse was always something like what Enrique had spat out. “Oh, well, I do it because I need the money. It's a dog-eat-dog world out there, right? A man's gotta eat.” And it was all bullshit. I'd done things at that job that I couldn't take back, had probably ruined more lives than I knew. Over time, I'd left the repo agency and started doing work for private clients, recovering pieces of stolen art. But the gist was the same. Violence for money. It was while doing a job for one of those clients that I'd gotten mowed down by witches and had, subsequently, been given the demon's heart.
I laughed for a little while, leaning back in my seat. Then I reached over and slapped Enrique in the head again. A little harder this time. “That's horseshit, and you know it. There are countless ways to make money that don't involve selling off human children to the inhabitants of the Beyond. You're a piece of shit.”
For the first time in a while, Enrique actually managed to reply in an even tone of voice. “Maybe. But it seems to me that you already had your mind made up about me before you asked the question. So, why'd you bother?”
I frowned, kicking the back of his seat. “Chief, where are we taking this dirtbag?”
Kubo turned into a large, empty lot flanked by long-abandoned brick buildings as if in answer to my question. We were in an old part of town, a neighborhood I couldn't even name, and as I scanned our surroundings through the tinted glass I wondered how long it'd been since we'd seen a pedestrian or another car on the road. Out here, most of the streetlights were out. The air looked kind of smoky, like the wind seldom blew through these parts and the filth just remained suspended in a semi-permanent haze.
Easing down on the break, Kubo brought the SUV to a stop and then shifted into park. He checked to make sure he'd locked the doors before studying Enrique with a scowl. “So, we want to know one thing and one thing only, Enrique. Unlike Lucy back there, I'm not interested in knowing why you do this work. I just want to know where I can find your bosses, the Kaminsky brothers. I know you can direct me to them. Do so, quickly, and I'll let you out here.”
Enrique considered this for a long while, dabbing at his forehead and toying nervously with the silicon horns beneath his skin. “A-and if I refuse?” He had to wrestle out the words.
Kubo's eyes had never left the man. His stare came in as sharp as a razor as he responded. Reaching into his jacket, he unholstered a massive, silver handgun and set it down on the dash before him. “Let's try it the easy way first, yeah?”
Enrique stared at the gun with wide-eyed horror and worked over his lower lip with trembling fingers. “I, uh... I've worked for the, uh... Kaminsky brothers... for a couple of years now. They have a lot of guys working for them, mostly like me. Guys who need the money. Guys who—”
Kubo snapped his fingers, still staring the prisoner down in the mirror. “Now, that ain't what I asked, is it?” His gaze drifted to the gun on the dash for an instant before returning to meet Enrique's. “I want to know one thing, and one thing only. You got me? Where are they?”
I watched the exchange from the third row, wondering how long it'd take the guy to crack. Even for me, Kubo was a pretty intimidating presence. He had all the warmth of a drill sergeant and was willing to go to whatever lengths necessary to get what he wanted. I had zero doubt that Kubo would put a bullet between his eyes if he didn't cooperate, and the prisoner seemed to realize it.
Still, Enrique beat around the bush. “My bosses, you see... they pay me very well. I don't have to do much in the way of dirty work. I just... you know, I delegate. I map out the routes and tell the other guys where to go. When they find kids, they—”
I grabbed his shoulder and shook him hard. “Yeah, yeah, you're just their fucking door-greeter, right? Spit it out, Enrique. Quit your stalling.”
Suddenly, Joe turned and glanced through the window. He'd quit playing with his lighter at some point, and was now clutching it in his palm. He pressed his face to the glass, his breath fogging it up. “C-chief?”
“Not now,” replied Kubo. “Enrique, I—”
The Chief and I noticed it at the same time. Something dark blotted out what little light there was outside. The nearest working streetlamp was blocked for an instant as something seem
ed to streak past it. Joe, Kubo and I all stopped what we were doing and looked out the windows, searching for the source of the disturbance. Maybe a bird, or a bat?
Enrique began to chuckle.
“What's so funny, asshole?” I asked.
Kubo's eyes were searching the night for something while his hand sought out the gun on the dash. He grit his teeth, sparing a quick glance at the captive. “How many are there?” he asked.
Enrique shrugged, his lips peeled back in a wicked grin.
Suddenly, I understood.
His bosses had been keeping an eye on him, had sent someone to rescue him from us. And he'd known it the whole time. He'd merely been stalling, waiting for them to show themselves.
The SUV rocked on its suspension as something solid landed on its roof. A second something, very dark and apparently bipedal, landed on the hood, leaning down so that its two, ruby-red eyes could be seen through the windshield.
Kubo cursed, throwing open his door. “Gargoyles.”
Kubo was out of the car first, and Joe wasn't far behind. I, on the other hand, fumbled to get over the second row of seating and out one of the side doors. All the while, Enrique appeared positively tickled. His backup was here, and his captors were about to get what was coming to them.
Or so he thought.
It wasn't until I'd clambered out of the SUV and found myself face-to-face with one of the nasty-looking things that I began to understand what we were up against. There appeared to be three figures in total, one for each of us, all built of dark grey stone. They were uniform in appearance; towering at something like seven feet and featuring the same, snarling expressions, they looked like they'd just been plucked off of one of the nice old buildings downtown.
Loosing grating, inhuman cries, the gargoyles moved around with surprising deftness despite their great weight.
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