“No thanks,” Theron said promptly, and we waited until she disappeared into the smoke-filled bar.
I wondered if she smoked—I didn’t think she’d need to, breathing that fug all day. So this could have been going on for longer. Or it could be the tail-end of the Sorrows’ operation. Too many variables. “So if it wasn’t suicide, why did Kutchner die?”
“Jacinta Kutchner was an accountant. Her office was tossed as well as her bedroom. We think she had a set of cooked and uncooked books, either in the office or in the safe in her closet. Yesterday a blue bit it—”
“Officer Winchell,” I supplied helpfully. “Was he implicated too?”
A vintage Carper shrug, his shoulder holster peeping out. He didn’t look surprised at my supplying the name. “Only up to his eyeballs. Would it surprise you to know Winchell and Kutchner’s grieving widow were having an affair?”
Huh. That puts a new shine on things. I picked up a slice of charcoaled bacon. “You do such fine police work, Carp. What do you need me for?”
“The trail dead-ends with Marv’s retirement fund disappearing. All half-a-million of it. I think the widow was about to blow the whistle on the whole dirty deal, or she double-crossed someone and hid the money. Maybe she even loved her husband, I don’t know. But without her and without the books—and without Marv and Winchell—we have exactly what we started out with. Dead wetbacks and a whole lot of nothing.”
And here I was getting all bent out of shape over victims. The thought was too bitter to let out of my mouth. “That doesn’t tell me what you want.”
“I want to know how far up this goes.” He blinked at his food as if he couldn’t believe he’d ordered it, took a long draft of coffee. “I have to tell you, Kiss, I’m willing to break a few laws to do it. And you’re one of us, but you don’t have a lot of the same… limits… that I do.”
“Someone tried to kill me the other day.” Jesus. Was that only yesterday? “They didn’t use silver-coated ammo. Which leads me to believe someone knows Monty’s called me in and feels just a wee bit threatened.”
“You think?” Carp went pale. He was sweating. If it was concern for me it was awful cute. “Marv and Winchell weren’t the only ones to end up dead over this. Six months ago Pedro Ayala over in Vice stumbled across something, gave me a call, and turned up dead less than four hours later before I could meet him. It’s filed as a random gang-related shooting, since Ay did the gang beat. He was tight with a few of the old-school 51s, their territory’s a chunk in the barrio near the Plaza. He used to run with the oldsters before he turned all law-abiding. I can’t get any of them to talk to me about him.”
I vaguely remembered Ayala from rookie orientation—slim, dark, and intense. They blur together inside my head sometimes. All those cops, each and every one of them passing through my hands before they’re allowed out on the streets.
You’d think I’d feel better about that. “Jesus.”
“Yeah. They won’t talk to me or to Bernie—his partner—but it doesn’t seem possible that one of them pulled the trigger on him. He was out of la vida since he was sixteen, but he once or twice brought in some of the 51s as material witnesses during a turf war.”
I let out a low whistle. That was a not-inconsiderable achievement. “Did they walk afterward?”
“When the killing stopped. Ay was a good cop. He didn’t deserve lungs full of lead. The coroner said it probably took him ten minutes to suffocate on his own blood.”
I could relate. Jesus. I poked at the bacon some more, nibbled at a bit of it, set it down. “You want me to go into the barrio and poke around the 51s.”
Theron made another restless movement. But he held his peace, which was more than I would have expected.
Carp held my gaze, did not look away. “I’m asking for a hot chunk of lead if I go down there. Monty’s already called you in, Jill.”
He was serious. The trouble was, I was asking for more than one hot chunk of lead if I went into the barrio. The Weres run herd out there and keep everything under control. I know the streets and alleys—there’s not a slice of my city I don’t know by now—but going into the depths of Santa Luz’s other dark half isn’t something to be done lightly if your skin is my color.
I can’t spend more time on this. There’s scurf, goddammit. And the widow and Winchell weren’t victims in the usual sense.
But still. The rope made a small sound inside my head, a human being reduced to a clock pendulum, and I knew I couldn’t let this rest. Something else was bothering me about the whole goddamn deal, but damned if I could lay a finger on it.
I hate that feeling. It usually means something is about to take a big bite out of my ass in a very unpleasant way. “All right. Hand over the paper.”
His hand slid under the table and came up with a manila file, rubber-banded closed. It was dauntingly thick. “This is what I’ve got so far. A collection of fucking dead ends. If you can make something of it…”
“Dead ends don’t mean the same thing to me that they do to you.” I pushed the bacon across the table, took the file, and laid a ten down to cover a bit of breakfast. “Keep your head down, Carp. I would hate to lose you just when I’ve gotten you toilet trained.”
His reply was unrepeatable. I slid out of the booth, following Theron’s graceful motion. I tipped Carp a salute, he shot me the finger, and we parted, friends as usual.
As soon as we got up the stairs and stepped outside, the Were took in a deep breath, rolling it around his mouth like champagne. “No news,” he announced, needlessly. “Maybe that was the main nest, maybe we got them all.”
I’m not so sure. They were too old. “I’d feel better if we knew instead of guessing.” I slid my shades on; the sun was a hammerblow even this early in the morning. “And I’d feel a lot better if we could have ID’d some of the scurf as our missing people.” Good fucking luck doing that, scurf all look the same. “Or if I could have asked that skunk-haired ’breed some questions.”
“I’d feel a lot better if you hadn’t just volunteered to go down in the barrio.” He fixed me with a sidelong stare. “I suppose this is something else I’m not supposed to tell Saul about?”
“I never told you not to tell him anything.” I set off for my Impala, parked in a convenient alley some two blocks away. It was going to be another desert scorcher of a day. “I go where I have to, Theron.”
“This sounds like a human affair.” His tone was carefully neutral.
“So are scurf, if you look at it the right way.” Sarcasm dripped from each word. “Don’t ride me, Were. I know what I’m doing.”
“Easy, hunter. I’m just pointing it out.” He didn’t crowd me like Saul would have. He didn’t smell like Saul, not really. He was just similar enough, his bulk just familiar enough, to remind me of what I was missing.
“Thanks.” You don’t have to come along. But that would be a direct insult, since Theron had appointed himself my backup. It would imply I didn’t have any faith in his capacity to defend himself.
Weres are funny about things like that.
He apparently decided he’d pushed me far enough. “When are you going in?”
Well, if I wait for nightfall it will only get more dangerous. But sunlight’s best for hunting scurf. “If they find anything while doing sweeps you’ll know, right?”
“Of course.” He didn’t sound offended that I’d asked. “Do you think they’re connected?”
A hot breeze came off the river, ruffled my hair. Carp hadn’t said anything about me looking torn-up and exhausted. Dim light and some breakfast must have done me some good, though I’d never win any prizes in the looks department. “What?”
“The scurf, and this.”
Jesus in a sidecar, I hope not. “I don’t know. I’m not assuming they are. There’s no visible connection.” But he knew as well as I did that I wasn’t ruling it out, either.
He digested this. “Something’s off. They were too old, and too many of them.”
Just what I’d been thinking. “I know. But a hellbreed, busting in on a scurf nest…” There’s one small note off here, and it’s throwing the entire orchestra out of whack. “If this gets much deeper I’m going to have to do something drastic.”
“Huh.” He visibly restrained himself from making a smartass comment. “Like what?”
“Like something unsafe.”
“More unsafe than the barrio?”
Visiting Perry makes the barrio look like a cakewalk, Were. “Much, Theron. Now shut up, I need to think.”
“I’ll say you do.”
I let it go. A Were sometimes needs the last word. It makes them feel better.
Chapter Fourteen
Santa Luz’s barrio isn’t a shantytown, though it has a forest of shacks on the edge between “suburb” and “desert” where even the Weres go in pairs when they have to run through. There is the Plaza Centro, which used to be a railroad station but is now a mercado with a giant mezzanine, the center of the barrio’s seethe. There are bodegas on every corner, and Catholic or Pentecostal churches sprinkled throughout, sometimes even in abandoned storefronts.
The rest of the barrio is quiet, watchful streets. Violence occurs pretty rarely in most of its sprawl, but it’s always a breath away. The feeling is like a storm hanging overhead, ready to toss thunderbolts at the slightest provocation. A crackling edge of expectation blurs the air, and your entire skin turns into a sensitive canvas, ready to catch any breath, any faint tingle that might warn you a half-second before a bullet punches through your meat.
The 51s run in the south part of the barrio, in a wedge-shaped territory with its thin end pointing at the Plaza Centro and the wider, trailing hind end spreading almost halfway through the closest slice of shackville—what bigots in my fair city mostly call Cholo Central or, in slightly more politically correct terms, “that goddamn sinkhole.”
I surveyed the pockmarked sloping street. Ranchero music blared from the bodega on the corner, cholos lounged on every front porch. Two driveways down, a vintage orange Nova was up on blocks with someone’s head under the hood, two men in flannel shirts with only the top button buttoned offering advice while clutching cold bottles of Corona. Frijoles and sweat, beer and cumin, chili sauce and hot burning wax from novenas all mixed together, with the tang of poverty underneath—a bald edge of desperation, marijuana fumes, and old food.
Theron slammed his door. Down here he looked normal—the darker tone of his skin and the strangeness of his bone structure became mestizo instead of just-plain-brown-person. “You sure you want to do this?”
I shrugged. “I go where I have to. Why don’t you put that nose of yours to good use and find me a 51?”
“This whole street is theirs, hunter. But we’re going to see Ramon.”
“Head honcho?” I didn’t ask how he knew all this—he was a Were; this was his part of town. Most Weres in Santa Luz live either on the fringe of the barrio or in a narrow corridor between it and Mayfair Hill where the houses have been in the same families, packs, and prides for generations.
“Lieutenant. He’ll give you a safe-conduct if you act nice and polite. Let me do the talking.”
“I wouldn’t have it any other way.” I slid my shades on, silver chiming in my hair. The sensation of eyes on me was palpable, my hackles rising and the scar prickling with dense wet heat. Almost-living heat, like a flower opening under sunlight.
It’s not growing. Don’t even think about that.
Instead, I thought about the black-market trade in organs. I would have to meet up with Sullivan and the Badger if I had time, and if I could do it without endangering them. I thought about why a hellbreed would burst in on a scurf nest in the middle of a fight, and the thing that occurred to me was so plain and simple I stopped in my tracks for a good five seconds.
“Jill?” Theron looked over his shoulder. Morning sunlight touched off a furnace of highlights in his dark hair. “Everything copacetic?”
“Scurf don’t attack hellbreed. Their ichor doesn’t carry any hemoglobin or the right proteins for the viral agents.”
He didn’t think my revelation was worth the name. “No shit.”
I suddenly wished for Saul. He would have understood the way my thoughts were wending. “Which means someone might have laid the scurf like bait in a trap. A nightsider who’s not only able to handle them, but who knows I’d go after them with Weres.”
“Yeah?” Theron folded his arms. Time’s a-wasting, his body language said.
“So someone is probably profiting from the scurf. Nobody would want to kill me in the middle of a scurf hole just because I’m annoying. Someone is making some money, and there could be a connection to this other case. Profit’s a strong incentive. And what makes scurf so dangerous?”
“They’re contagious,” he said, flatly. But his head tilted a little, listening instead of dismissing.
“And cannibalistic. What better way to get rid of bodies?” I hated to assume these two cases were linked, but it wasn’t out of the ballpark. And part of not assuming, as every hunter is trained to realize, is also not ruling out the possible. “Murder attempts from nightsiders and normals when I’m working a nightside and a normal case means they could very well be connected.”
“It’s a lot of assuming.” Theron scratched at his temple, thinking. His dark eyes had gone distant.
“If a better idea comes along, I’ll latch onto it.” I fell into step beside him as he set off again, heading for a ratty adobe house sandwiched between a gas station and a ramshackle tenement taking up most of a block. Its sliver of lawn was weedy but neat, and the sidewalk in front of the chain-link gate had been freshly swept and sprinkled with Florida water, if the ghost of orange perfume in the air was any indication.
Interesting. But of course, down in the barrio you find all sorts of… interesting… things.
Theron opened the gate for me, and the feeling of being watched intensified. My hands itched to touch a gun butt, but I carefully kept them loose and easy. I know I look odd—wandering around in a black ankle-length leather trenchcoat in the middle of a Southwestern summery simmer isn’t the best way to appear harmless. Plus there was the silver in my long dark curling hair, throwing back darts of light. And the pale cast to my skin wasn’t guaranteed to blend me in either.
The porch creaked under my boots and Theron’s weight. He opened the screen door and knocked, and I heard stealthy little sounds inside the house, my ears pricking. All human.
The thought that I had my back to the street touched my nape with gooseflesh. It was too quiet, eerie-quiet, under the ranchero blast from up the street. The kind of deep silence right before a gunshot and screaming.
The door opened, and a young cholo with a fedora, a white dress shirt, red suspenders, and a pair of natty sharp-creased chinos eyed us. He had a face that could have come off a codex, it wouldn’t have looked out-of-place under a quetzal-feather headdress. Dark eyes met mine, flicked down my body, and dismissed me, moving over to Theron. “Eh, gato, que ondo?”
“Que ondo, homes.” Theron actually grinned, showing a lot of teeth. “Ramon in?”
“Who’s la puta?”
“This is la señora bruja grande de Santa Luz, cabron. Watch your mouth. Is Ramon in, or do I get to go to the cantina?”
“Bruja grande?” The boy snorted. He peered at my face again, I slid my shades a touch down my nose and gave him the double-barrel impact of my mismatched stare.
The reaction was gratifying. Sudden chemical fear glazed his smell of healthy young man, and he forked the evil eye at me. “Madre de Dios,” he muttered, and looked hurriedly away, at Theron.
“Ramon,” the Were said, quietly, irresistibly. “It’s business.”
The cholo backed away from the door. “Mi casa, su casa, gato.” But the sweat breaking out on his forehead said different.
Don’t worry, kid, I’m harmless. At least, to you. I didn’t say it, just followed Theron over the threshold and
into the quiet cool of a real adobe. The floor was tile, and my steelshod heels clicked on it.
“Iron,” the kid said, in the entryway’s gloom. My eyes adjusted to see his swift gesture, index fingers out, thumbs up, a short stabbing motion.
“Come on.” Theron gave short shrift to the notion, probably guessing there was no way in hell I’d hand my weapons over to this kid. “You know the iron mean less than nothing. Who the hell are you, anyway?”
“Paco. Ramon’s mi tio.”
“Then go fetch him, Paquito. I don’t like waiting.” Theron still hadn’t put his teeth away. He also seemed to get a few inches taller, his shoulders broadening, and a slight crackle told me he was puffing up for my benefit.
Gangs are all about face, really. Paco was in that dangerous stage where he was still a young wannabe and not a full-fledged is. Which meant if Theron made this a pissing match, the boy might feel compelled to throw him some sauce.
The prospect was amusing, but I didn’t have time to fuck around. Sunlight was wasting and someone was planning on trying to kill me again, I could just feel it.
Theron stepped forward, looming over Paco, still showing his teeth. The boy flinched, covered it up well, and retreated up two swift steps before turning on his heel and hurrying into the adobe’s gloom.
“I take it these are friends of yours.” My fingers relaxed, and I controlled a sharp flare of irritation. My heart rate had picked up, walloping along harder than it should. Theron shut the door with a click and leaned against the wall, all hipshot Were grace.
“We like to know who’s doing what out here. You okay?”
“Peachy.” Adrenaline coated my tongue with copper. I was all twitched-up. Dying a couple of times a day will do that to you, redline your responses even to garden-variety aggressiveness. As hard as hunters are trained to deliver maximum violence in minimum time, we’re also trained to clamp down on the chemical soup of the body’s dumb meat responding inappropriately.
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