The Love-Haight Case Files

by Jean Rabe, Donald J. Bingle

  Thomas followed, taking a short cut through the diners and passing through the wall and out onto the street. The dog-like men had long, quick strides, and Thomas did his best to keep up, but quickly fell behind. He rose higher, following them visually, and then losing sight.

  Thomas spotted them again, still shoulder-to-shoulder, still in black jackets, but their dog-visages had been replaced by human faces. He hurried toward them … as much as he was capable of hurrying. It was the same pair that had ridden the bus and went after Evelyn in front of Glide Memorial and had warned her off the case. At the end of the next block they entered another restaurant. He drifted in that direction, disappointed that at best he traveled half the speed of a living man. Were he still breathing, he could have stayed even. He’d been an athlete.

  He reached the next restaurant, a German place with Bavarian dishes advertised on a placard out front, just as the pair emerged, again with dog heads. Neither spotted Thomas, but he was in “stealth mode,” and they pointed across the intersection and took off at a jog, ignoring the red traffic light. The thin one flipped a finger at a taxi driver who laid on the horn.

  Thomas managed to barely get inside the next establishment they visited, a vintage clothing store, just in time to see them whirl away from a clerk at the counter. They rushed through Thomas on their way back outside, and he glided after them, finally giving up four blocks later when they appeared human once more and he lost them. He’d hoped they would have stopped at one of their apartments, or stayed in one spot long enough so he could catch up and learn more about them. He wanted to turn the information over to the police and get some justice for Evelyn. More than that, he wanted to know why they didn’t want Evelyn to defend Dimitar.

  Frustrated, he pointed himself toward the Golden Pumpkin. The sun had set. Time for a conversation with Javor Vujetic.

  He wished he could have gone through the restaurant’s front door and glided across the dining room. Instead, Thomas had drifted around the back. A waitress stood next to a Dumpster, a human in her early thirties, smoking and looking at her watch, tapping her foot. She was waiting for something. A few moments later a man in a chef’s apron came out the rear door. Thomas’s vision was keen, able to see in utter darkness, and so even with the shadows he noted the paleness of the man’s skin and that his chest didn’t rise and fall. A vampire; Evelyn had said the cooks—at least in the evening—were vampires.

  The two embraced.

  “You’re late.” This from the woman. “And now I’m going to be late for my shift.”

  The vampire’s answer was to smother her lips. The kiss went on for a while, and emotions flitted through Thomas—jealousy and envy … he couldn’t touch a woman, shame that he was so voyeuristic, and suddenly revulsion. He was in the realm of TMI: too much information.

  The woman placed her hands on the side of the chef’s face and extricated herself from the kiss. “Please, Jerry, please take just a little.”

  The vampire—Jerry—shook his head. “Javor does not permit this here. Javor—”

  “Just a little.” She pulled his face down to her neck, and the vampire obliged her. The woman made a purring noise, her eyelids fluttered closed, and she smiled dreamily as the vampire made a soft slurping sound. “Jerry … Jerry.” The woman swooned and the vampire caught her and held her against the brick, raised his face and wiped the blood from his mouth.

  He didn’t look quite as pale as before, or was that Thomas’s imagination?

  The woman tugged the collar of her uniform up and took a few deep breaths. “You go back first.”

  The vampire kissed the top of her head and went into the kitchen. Thomas waited for several minutes more, seeing the waitress pull out a lighted compact and check her face and her neck, smooth at her skirt, and arrange her curls. The waitress entered through the alley door, announcing that she was tardy because she’d missed her bus.

  Thomas spent the next hour hovering in the kitchen. It had a drop ceiling, and he floated there, poking his head halfway through it and spying on the crew. There were four vampires in the kitchen staff, two ghoul dishwashers … washing by hand, no machine, and an assortment of human waitresses. The chatter centered on politics, music, the city’s recent ban on public nudity, and finally on Dimitar.

  “Do you think Javor will give in?” This from one of the cooks.

  A ghoul dishwasher shook her head. “Never. Not Javor. He hired a good attorney for his brother. He will spend more on the attorney than he would have on protection money. Javor is about the principle.” The ghoul’s voice was scratchy and sounded forced, reminding Thomas of a previous client he worked with: Emmanuel Holder.

  “I think he should give in.” This from the waitress who’d had some blood drained. She sashayed into the kitchen and with a flourish placed an order in front of the closest chef. “Javor is rolling in money and property. Why not cave and give the Libyans their share? Since the damned dogs have expanded their territory, everyone else on O’Farrell shells out to them.”

  The dishwasher sat down her drying towel. “It is the principle, Kit. The Libyans don’t need to muscle into this neighborhood. Javor has drawn that so-called line in the sand, and I’m with him.”

  “Me, too,” two of the vampire chefs said in unison.

  The waitress shook her head. “Damn good thing for all of us, then, that the Libyans are picking on Javor’s brother rather than on one of us. But I’m keeping my options open. Any of us gets set up for something, gets beaten because Javor won’t pay … I’m high-tailing it out of the Tenderloin. Told Javor that a little while ago when he called. He’ll be in late tonight, said he was stopping by the jail to visit Dimmy.”

  The chefs were meticulous in their preparation of each dish, arranging the food artistically before handing the plates to the waitresses. The conversations spun while they worked, and Thomas continued to soak it in.

  “Besides,” one of the chefs said, ending the matter. “Why should we pay protection money to the Libyans when we don’t need protection?” He smiled, showing sparkling white fangs. “Maybe the Libyans should be paying us.”

  “How about them Forty Niners,” the other ghoul dishwasher said. “They made the playoffs this year.”

  Chapter 3.13

  The imp scooted for the exit, glaring at Dagger and saying something that was lost in the bar clamor.

  Eight dog-heads in the room that he had noticed, three directly in front of him at the end of the bar. Dagger took in their scents as he closed the distance. They smelled of smoke and alcohol and the streets. The largest had a crooked ear, and he stepped to the fore, nose quivering as he was undoubtedly taking in Dagger’s scent. That was the one Dagger wanted to talk with privately, the pack leader.

  He growled and Dagger raised his lip in response. “Just want to talk,” Dagger said. “Got an office? Or will the alley do?”

  The man’s hair melted like hot butter, the snout receded, and a human visage appeared. “We don’t serve your kind here.”

  “I can quote Star Wars, too.” Dagger scowled. “Don’t consider me really ‘here’ then. I’m just passing through.” He paused. “Dagger McKenzie. I’m an investigator looking—”

  “—for trouble.” This came from a second dog-head, who likewise did the melting routine and in an instant appeared wholly human. This one was younger and had a handsome chiseled face, the eyes slightly hooded.

  Dagger studied the face a moment; he’d seen it briefly, in the e-mail materials Pete had sent him. The dog-head’s name was Fahim Yar’Adua, and suddenly everything made crystal clear sense. Fahim, the D.A. witness, had set up Dimitar Vujetic. Was it part of a turf war?

  “You should leave, wolf. Only purebreds are allowed in this place.” The third dog-head didn’t bother with a human visage, and so the words were harder to pick through, sounding guttural. Maybe alcohol blurred them, Dagger thought. A line of drool spilled from his snout to the floor. “Leave before you get hurt.”

  Dagger gri
nned. “How about nobody gets hurt and you tell me why you set up a harmless overweight vampire to take the fall for stealing blood.” He directed this to Fahim, and he saw the man’s hard expression break for a second. “We can settle this peacefully. How about we talk outside, where it’s a little easier to hear. This disco music is so … so yesterday. Hurts my ears.”

  Fahim opened his mouth to reply, but the pack leader took another step forward. Dagger noticed that the man’s human ear was also missing a notch, and he had a scar running down the side of his neck, ugly and crooked like it came from a fight. “This has nothing to do with you, McKenzie. The Tenderloin is ours, all of it, and this bar is our territory—”

  “—clearly marked. I picked up on that out front. Smells like you’ve pretty well marked the whole place.” He sniffed and made a sour face, and then he stepped aside just as the leader drove his fist through the air where Dagger’s stomach had been. It might have been a mistake, coming in here, taking this approach.

  “Fight!” one of the girls on the pole hollered. “Dog fight!”

  The pack leader’s dog-head returned, fast as a light being switched on. That was one of the differences between the Hounds of the Tenderloin and Dagger’s ilk. Dagger’s change was more gradual, and he hadn’t been born with the ability.

  It wasn’t a full moon, and so Dagger had to put some serious effort into his transformation. It was painful, like being pulled through a knothole. His heart beat faster, finding a rhythm that matched the music pulsing through the floor: appropriately “Le Freak” by Chic. He dodged another blow from the pack leader, but took a kick to his right knee from a heavy-set dog-head. Dagger hadn’t anticipated a fight in the middle of the bar; rather had figured he’d be “taking it out back” with one or two of them. It was rare for his expectations to be proven wrong, and this time he’d have bruises—or worse—to show for his lapse in judgment.

  He felt the change expanding his chest, pressing at the seams of his shirt, his arms lengthening, straining the confines of his jacket, a snake exploding its skin, his palms broadening, fingers elongating, nails turning into claws. Coarse black hair grew everywhere. His pelt was thick and parts of it looked fuchsia and blue reflecting the neon lights.

  Patrons whipped out cell phones and snapped pictures.

  “Dog fight! Fight!”

  “Fifty on Okar! I’ve got fifty on Okar!”

  “I’ll put twenty on the werewolf!”

  Dagger’s face changed too, and that was the most painful part. He swiped forward with a paw, his razor-sharp claws cutting through the shirt of one of his attackers. Dagger’s facial bones popped and moved, rearranged themselves as he grew a snout. His ears shifted and he screamed against the agony, even as he pummeled the closest dog-head. The scream turned into a howl as he dropped to all fours, slavering jowls closing around the leg of Fahim, biting hard, and watching the man drop and crawl back.

  From a corner of his mind, Dagger watched the beast rage, finding it all compelling and disturbing. He wasn’t wholly in control of himself, and when he spoke he had to repeat himself for the words to come out clear enough.

  “Why set him up?”

  “Because it was easy, wolf.” This came from a dog-head behind Dagger.

  “So very easy.” The pack leader howled, and two of his fellows swooped in and started kicking Dagger. They darted in and out, all eight taking turns. “We don’t care about a fat vampire. It’s his brother we send a message to! And there’ll be more messages after Dimitar.”

  One of the dog-heads doing the kicking added: “We do it because his rich brother won’t pay! We send a good message.”

  Dagger lashed out at the lead dog, his claws ripping through designer jeans and finding the flesh beneath. Blood sprayed in an arc. More cell phones flashed, and he thought he heard someone calling the police. “You’re expanding your territory! To the businesses on O’Farrell.”

  “Duh! One day all of the city will be ours! One day!” The lead dog balled his hands into one big fist and brought it down on Dagger’s head. The blow was strong and for a moment the room’s neon spun. Dagger felt like he was floating in one of the bar’s lava lights.

  “But for now it’s just all of the Tenderloin, right?” Dagger crouched and shot forward, opening his jaws and closing them so hard onto the calf of one of his attackers that he heard a bone snap. The dog-head yelped and dropped, and one of the dancers pulled him back.

  “Forty on Kalu? Anyone take forty on Kalu?”

  “The Tenderloin, all of it. And everyone in the territory pays!” the pack leader snarled. “Everyone!”

  “Why Dimitar?” Dagger repeated. He wanted to keep them talking, needed to hear them clearly admit to the frame. There could not be any room for interpretation. “Why frame Dimitar?”

  “The fat vampire?” Another one howled. “Like we said, we framed Dimitar because we could. Because we could. The stupid, fat vampire has no clue. He does not know it is about his rich brother. And that is just the start, wolf. We will pick apart Javor’s family until he pays. Everyone pays!”

  “You’ll pay!” This from yet another dog-head. “You’ll pay with your life.”

  Dagger’s mind whirled. The Hounds knew better than to strike at Javor directly. Threatening loved ones always worked better and could avoid a direct all-out war Hounds-versus-vamps.

  “Dog fight! Dog fight!” a patron shouted. “Dog fight!”

  “A hundred on Kalu!”

  Patrons clapped and cheered.

  “Fight. Fight. Fight.” The chant was a wave that broke over the room and hammered against Dagger’s eardrums. An image came to his mind, from the movie Rocky. He saw himself as the cow carcass Sylvester Stallone’s character pounded into at the meat locker.

  Over and over and over.

  Chapter 3.14

  Pete had managed to get his troll shaman to third level and figured out that “berserking” let him cast spells faster. His character—Grimsnot, Pete had named him—could regenerate and was seriously kick-ass. But it was just the free trial, and if he really wanted to do something with the game, which he noticed had some addicting qualities, he would have to buy a full, downloadable version.

  Maybe he’d ask for that as part of his salary. And maybe if the law firm really got rolling Evelyn would buy him a computer and his own desk.

  He closed down the game and decided to tackle Dagger’s request for information on the recent Hound activity in the Tenderloin. Probably should’ve done it right away, but there were some beasts that needed slaying in the game, and then a quest to follow. Good thing Pete didn’t pay attention to the clock. He suspected maybe he’d devoted a little too much time to Warcraft.

  Geez, that whole Mists of Pandaria thing looked awesome.

  He Googled various angles of Hounds and San Francisco, discarding some sites and bookmarking others, printing out a few pages, and wondering if his next character should be a shape-shifting druid with dog-like abilities. That might be cool.

  “Interesting.” Pete stretched a hand toward the phone and touched the #3. It rang several times before going to Dagger’s voicemail. “This is Permythius. You there? Yo, Dagger, you there?”

  Maybe the private investigator had gone to bed. It was black as pitch out. The bars across the street had closed down. Evelyn had come back from her revival quite some time ago. She’d jogged up the steps, run a bath, and then, he figured, she’d called it a night.

  “Dagger? Well, hey, I’ll just leave a message then. I’ve found out some things about your Hounds. All recent rumors. Gonna send it through e-mail.” Pete clicked the button again, and then called up Evelyn’s Hotmail account. He selected the files to send to McKenzie, reading them a second time.

  The Tenderloin’s Hounds traced their roots to Libya and other parts of Africa. In the late 1700s they settled in New York, and a group of fifty or sixty later provided the muscle for Tammany Hall’s corrupt politicians. The United States Army recruited the Hounds during the wa
r against Mexico, and after the fighting concluded, they moved into San Francisco. Even though the unit had been disbanded, the Hounds wore their uniforms and patrolled the streets, persecuting Mexicans and Latin Americans trying to build lives here.

  In early 1849, they named themselves the Regulators and started collecting protection money from city residents, saying they needed “wages” for keeping San Francisco clean and pure. It escalated. They robbed from stores and threatened merchants … never physically hurting those they sought money from. They became experts at extortion, and learned how to threaten their marks by going after families.

  That summer things went too far, and the Hounds attacked a Chilean settlement within the city. The mayor called for volunteers, and more than two hundred citizens—many of them who’d been targeted in the protection racket—took up arms against the Hounds and caught many of them. The Hounds were stashed in a jail on an abandoned ship in the harbor, a trial was held, and all of them were heavily fined. A handful of them were given prison sentences, two of them marked for ten years of hard time. But corrupt politicians managed to free them, and they’d left the city for a time.

  They were back in force now, in the Tenderloin.

  Pete typed a note on the bottom: “Dagger, watch yourself. I know you’re one mean &^$%^*#@.” The gargoyle used a series of symbols in case Evelyn skimmed the e-mails sent in the morning. He didn’t want her to see profanity. “They have a pack mentality. And while it looks like they favor extortion over physical violence, I wouldn’t put that physical violence past them. They could hurt you.”

  He hit “send,” got up and took another beer out of the fridge, and settled in for another session with Grimsnot, the kick-ass troll shaman.