I glanced at her with an embarrassed smile. “Sorry. Some people think I have a hard time not getting personally involved in my cases.” With all the street fighting going on in the Weird the last couple of nights, the Josef Kaspar murder scored one sentence on the evening news. The one mention in the local section of the newspaper I found was an inside item. It’s hard not to get aggravated about it.
Whenever a crime involves the fey, a report goes to the Guild. They’re the best equipped to handle them. In reality, they picked and chose what they wanted and left the rest to the Boston P.D., which usually didn’t know what to do with them. More often than not, most of the cases got filed and ignored. Especially if they involved the Weird. It’s bad enough too many poor people don’t ever see justice done. It’s worse when officials claimed it was someone else’s problem to solve. If it weren’t for people like Murdock, people who didn’t care where you lived or what you were or how much money you made, the Weird would have had no hope at all.
Murdock stretched his neck and sighed. “Okay then, we should start cross-referencing the victims, see if we can find a connection.”
I wandered down the steps as he and Liz hashed through procedures. A large telephone switching unit stood on the curb across the street. It would make an inconspicuous place to stand with a straight-shot view of Merced’s building. I kept my body language casual so that the scene gawkers wouldn’t follow me. Sure enough, as soon as I neared the big silver box, I felt the essence. The killer had lingered there, using the box to hide behind. From the strength of the essence she had left, I’d guess she waited an hour or two. Again, I felt the strange layer of an essence signature that I could almost recognize. Familiar, but off somehow.
Olivia Merced lived on the first floor. The neighbor had said he heard a buzzer around 7 A.M., which would have been around dawn. The killer would have watched her lights come on and waited until she was sure Merced would be dressed to come to the door. That made twice the killer had shown up early and waited. Whoever she was, she was patient.
The metal surface registered several patches of the same druidess essence. She must have touched the box or leaned on it. I waved over one of the patrol officers and asked him to secure the area. It was a long shot, but they might be able to lift a fingerprint.
Murdock came down the stairs, and I joined him at the car. As I slid into the passenger seat, I gave Liz a wave, and she returned it. I took it as a sign she wasn’t angry. “Old friend?”
Murdock didn’t react as he pulled a U-turn. “Yep.”
“That’s all I get?”
“Yep.” Murdock kept his social life close to the vest. I couldn’t complain, though. I hadn’t told him much about what was going on with me and Meryl.
We rode back to the Weird in bumper-to-bumper traffic, watching the neighborhood change from a livable stretch in Dorchester, to a desolate stretch under the Southeast Express-way and elevated subway tracks, and into the residential section of South Boston. Home once. Long ago, my brother Callin and I played stickball on those streets. Cars were fewer then, and more families raised their kids in town.
Murdock knew those streets, too. His own family lived down on K Street. His sisters had an apartment together nearby, but he and his brothers still lived with their father, who was the police commissioner. They had all joined the force, except Kevin, the youngest, who was a fireman. Public service had become genetic.
With a few turns through side streets, Murdock avoided the lights and ran a straight shot up D Street. As we neared the Weird, the streets got dirtier, the sidewalks more crumbled, and the houses more run-down. Late-October weather made it all worse, with the vestigial front yards dried and patchy, and the few surviving trees bare. We slipped into the warehouse alleys and left South Boston.
Everyone who grew up in Southie and left says they want to move back there. But I had nothing to draw me back. My parents sold years ago and moved to Ireland, and my brother Callin lived who knows where. No, for me, Southie was just a memory. A good one, mostly, but not a place I could go back to.
Murdock pulled up in front of my building. “I’ll send you the file when I get it from Liz.”
I hopped out. “Trust me. We’re going to find an obvious connection on this one.”
Murdock gave me a crooked smile. “Yeah. It always works that way.”
7
As I waited for Carmine to arrive, the cold wind off the harbor couldn’t hide the odor of rot wafting up from the Fish Pier. No matter how often the loading docks were washed down, the parking lots swept, and the dumpsters sealed, the accumulation of years of dead fish permeated the concrete and asphalt. It was enough to put me off tuna. Only almost. If I knew how most of the food I ate had gotten on my plate, I’d probably be vegan. Clams might look like something hacked up from a watery hell, but, damn, they tasted fine with beer.
While you could find someone to pay for sex almost anywhere in the Weird, the Fish Pier was ground zero for it. That’s what people came down here for. Only steamy windows kept the place from becoming an orgy late at night. If people could see what was going on in the car next to them, I had no doubt they’d join in. Car after car circled in and out, cruising the loading docks to survey the merchandise huddling against the closed doors of the truck bays. Someone would see something he liked, point his car at the bay, and flash his lights. If more than one worker stood in the bay, the regular johns had a system for flashing their blinker lights to indicate whom they were interested in. The seller would respond with a sending giving a menu and prices. If the john was interested, he flashed again, and they closed the deal somewhere else in the lot. The city could do little to stop it. There was no verbal solicitation to record, and no fey who could lure a john with a sending worked on the force. The entire situation drove the Boston P.D. crazy.
Because of the cold, Murdock offered to drive me to the meeting so I wouldn’t freeze standing out in the frigid air. He slumped in the driver’s seat, not wrinkling his clothes by some miracle. From outside the car, someone might think he was asleep, but up close, no one could mistake his alert eyes. I leaned against the door, trying to keep awake against the onslaught of heat from the vents. The temperature control in Murdock’s car was nonexistent. Joe fluttered around in the backseat, singing dirty bar songs and making us chuckle.
“He knows you’re here, right?” Murdock asked.
I nodded. “He’ll be here.”
Joe fluttered up and hooked his knees around the rearview mirror. He seemed to be into hanging upside down lately. “He’ll be here. I had lunch with Carmine this morning.”
“You had lunch in the morning?” I asked.
When Joe nodded, it amused me that it works the same upside down but wasn’t nearly as nauseating to see when I was sober. “Well . . . wait . . . or was it breakfast last night? What do you call it when you eat at dawn and then go to bed?”
“Drunk pizza,” said Murdock.
Joe laughed so hard, he slipped off the mirror and hit his head on the police radio. The whiff of alcohol on his way down told me there was pizza in his future. He crawled in the back, muttering about unstable car accessories.
“I got a subpoena from the Guild today,” Murdock said.
Last spring, Murdock was hit with a stray bolt of essence during a fight with a crazed fey guy. He went into a brief coma, and when he woke up, his body essence had increased. Since then, he seemed to be some kind of living dynamo. He’s not fey, though. His body essence still reads human, but what a human from Faerie might feel like. I don’t know for sure. The humans in Faerie didn’t come through during Convergence, so I don’t know precisely what their essence would be like.
Murdock had been at Forest Hills. His strange essence had kicked in, and he plowed through the fighting like a bulldozer. The last thing I remembered about Murdock that night was hiding in a grave with him hoping no one would kill us. According to Meryl, he was out cold when the big stuff hit the fan. “Don’t let Ceridwen rattle yo
u. She’s only a mouthpiece.”
Joe hooted. “Ha! Don’t let her hear you say that. The underQueens all want to be High Queen, only Maeve knows how to keep everyone arguing with each other long enough to leave her alone.”
“What the hell is an underQueen?” asked Murdock.
“It’s a queen who hasn’t figured out how to kill the High Queen without anyone realizing she did it so that she can get elected the new High Queen,” said Joe.
I threw Joe an amused look. He threw his hands in the air. “What? You think I don’t pay attention?”
A black stretch limo pulled in and parked not far away from us. Carmine liked to be careful when he met someone in private. If he’s feeling safe, the limo will be in sight. If he’s not, strange people start telling you you’re trespassing. He’s been elf-shot and stabbed more times than I can remember, so he makes sure he knows who’s coming at him.
The lights on the limo flashed. “I’ll be right back,” I said.
I left Murdock in his overheated car and approached the limo with my hands out to the side, not so wide as to draw attention from the customers nearby but wide enough to show I didn’t have a knife or gun. Carmine knows I lost my abilities, so while I’ve never given him a reason to fear me, he still prefers to know I’m not holding steel in my hand. People like him live longer that way.
The rear door popped open, thumping R&B rhythms into the night air. I slid inside. Two young fairies, a male and female, slept cuddled next to Carmine while a solitary fey with green, scaly skin sat saucer-eyed, staring out the side window. Up front, beyond the closed privacy window, two dwarves watched the action on the docks.
Carmine lounged in the middle of the side seat wearing a gold lamé suit that matched his hair color and enhanced his crimson complexion. Even though he was a solitary fairy, he had no fear of any other fey. That told me Power lurked within him that he was willing to show. He flashed his row of tiny triangular teeth. “Connor, Connor, Connor, long time, no see. Are you looking to party?”
Once upon a time, I traveled in certain circles that enjoyed a good bacchanal, and Carmine often supplied entertainment. The fey have different notions about sex and drugs than humans do. We’re not restricted by Judeo-Christian ethics for one thing. Most fey don’t breed well for another. Recreational sex was much more recreational than human normals were comfortable with. As long as everyone has fun and no one gets hurt, pretty much anything goes, and when Carmine planned a party, the emphasis would be on the “anything.” “My budget’s a little thin at the moment.”
He laughed, a soft, high-pitched giggle. “Ah, when you lost your abilities, my friend, I lost a good customer. Welcome to my humble carriage.”
Carmine’s charm is so transparently insincere, it’s hard not to be amused. “Thanks.”
He sipped champagne from a glass flute, his eyes thin slits above hard, brick-colored cheekbones. “I understand you’re looking into the death of Josef Kaspar.”
It dawned on me that the warehouse where Josef Kaspar was found was near the Fish Pier, and the Fish Pier, of course, was Carmine’s territory. Anything that happened in a radius of a few blocks, Carmine heard about it. “He turned up dead in a warehouse around the corner from here. Do you know something about it?” I asked.
Carmine hummed, rustling his hair with a few shakes. “Kaspar, poor thing. He dreamed his old despair would end in love, but his love ended in a dream of despair.”
“You knew him, then?”
Carmine shrugged. “Not really. Like all of us, he was in love once. Like some of us, he let it defeat him when it wasn’t returned. He did occasional errands for me in exchange for a little company from my girls.”
“He died of essence shock,” I said.
The ridge of skin above Carmine’s eyes rippled. “Did he now? That’s nasty. He didn’t bother anyone I’m aware of.”
“I think he may have been stalked by a druidess,” I said.
A mischievous smile crossed his face. “We’ve all been there, haven’t we?” He leaned forward and poured himself more champagne. He gestured at me with the bottle, but I shook my head. With Carmine, I couldn’t be sure that alcohol was the only stimulant in the bottle. I wasn’t in the mood for anything unexpected.
Joe took that moment to appear. “De da, fear dearg!”
Carmine flashed his tiny sharp teeth. “Ah, Master Flit, and how is your head this evening?”
Joe did a tight loop around the green solitary, who had not budged an inch. “Couldn’t tell you. I’m keeping myself inebrilated.”
Carmine chuckled. “Indeed, Master Flit. If we could all enjoy the world as much as you, it would be a finer place and I would be a richer man.”
Carmine settled against the seat, sliding his bare feet onto the legs of one of the sleeping fairies. “A woman came around a couple of weeks ago looking for Kaspar. A druidess. Rather shady if you ask me.”
Carmine’s calling someone “shady” bordered on hilarious. “Shady?”
A corner of his mouth twitched in wry amusement. “She was slumming and thought she was getting away with it. Thought if she tarted herself up with secondhand clothes and a spacey voice, I wouldn’t notice that her essence lit up like a lighthouse in a dead calm.”
Joe wandered aimlessly around the floor of the limo. He was half-drunk when he showed up in Murdock’s car, and the faint haze in the limo was making him stagger. He tripped and fell at the feet of the sleeping fairies and decided to lie there.
“Did you tell her where to find Kaspar?” I asked Carmine.
He shook his head. “No. I know she hung around for some time afterward. Either she found Kaspar on her own or found someone willing to talk.”
“Why didn’t you tell her?”
He took a long sip of his champagne. “That’s why I wanted to talk to you. Strangers have been asking questions about people in the Weird. This woman was seen associating with these people. When I received word she wanted to talk to me about someone, I was immediately suspicious.”
I shifted in my seat. “What do you mean by ‘strangers’?”
Carmine licked his lips as if deciding whether to keep talking. “People of a distinct Teutonic persuasion, shall we say? They are asking for information about the Red Man. You can guess why that might give me pause.”
He did pause, as if I needed time to notice his rich red skin tone. I thought of my dream of the red and black figures. “What was the druidess wearing?” I asked.
I couldn’t blame Carmine for the surprised look on his face. “A ridiculous clown outfit of secondhand clothes. Why ask?”
A man wearing a gold lamé suit insulted by poor fashion sense can only amuse. “Just curious. Were these people maybe, um, unhappy with your services?”
Carmine shook his head with exaggerated slowness. “On occasion I have a dissatisfied customer, but not groups of them. Too many for it to be a coincidence and too many pretending to need my services. Naturally, it made me a bit cautious. They’re not local, so it’s either the Guild or the Teutonic Consortium. I only spoke to the druidess because I thought I might find out what was going on. Instead, I seem to have picked the one person who had her own agenda. I don’t like hidden agendas that aren’t mine.”
I chuckled. “How do you know I don’t have a hidden agenda?”
He stared at me with hooded eyes, so long that I thought he might be more drugged than I imagined. He broke into a startling smile. “Don’t take this wrong, Connor, dear friend, but your motives are often transparent to me. One of my talents is to sense desires. When you wanted to make money, you made money and didn’t care who knew it. When you wanted to get laid, you practically wrote ‘one-night stand’ on your forehead. And when you wanted to catch someone, only a blind fool would stand in your way. You always have your reasons, but you’re not very good at hiding them.”
I reminded myself not to ask questions I didn’t want to hear the answers to. I was about to protest, in what I’m sure would have sound
ed a pathetic, self-defensive way, when a shiver of pain made me wince. The essence inside the limo became visible as my ability came alive. Carmine gleamed a shade of gold, while the fairies glowed pale white. The other solitary shone with dim blue light so faint, I wondered if she were dying. Joe looked his normal pink self.
“Did you see her alone?” I asked.
His eye ridge flexed. “I consider you a friend, Connor. Are we alone?”
“Then maybe you caught her off guard, and she bluffed about having an interest in Kaspar,” I said.
Carmine showed his row of fine, sharp teeth. “And then killed poor Kaspar to cover herself? That’s a level of deceit even I find impressive.”
He had a point. “What would you like me to do, Carmine?”
He tilted his glass again in a toast to me. “Bear in mind, our druidess may have friends. Dig a little deeper, and I won’t have to.”
He drained his glass and stared, a hard glint in his eye. Carmine might have a party-man reputation, but he knew how to take care of himself and his business. I had no doubt that included eliminating distractions and threats to either. “I’ll keep it in mind.”
The dwarves in the front seat sprang into motion and hustled out of the car. Carmine leaned forward and stared out the windshield. “We have a little problem.”
I peered out the driver’s side of the car. Near the loading docks, the green and black of tainted essence wavered between two parked cars. An essence-bolt flashed in one of the cars. Carmine leaned back again. “Damned Taint. It’s upsetting my staff terribly. We try to keep the trouble to a minimum, but business has been off.”
Before I could say anything, Murdock ran across the parking lot. “Damn. Gotta go, Carmine. Thanks for the talk.”
I jumped out. The green-black Taint danced on an eddy of wind that trapped it between the cars and the loading dock. The dwarves pounded on the windows of one car, while Murdock tried to see inside the other. Once I was away from Carmine’s music, I could hear screaming.
An explosion of essence from the first car blew the passenger door off. It struck one of the dwarves full on the chest and knocked him to the ground. An angry fairy wearing only a short skirt emerged from the car. Bright flashes popped in her agitated wings as her eyes blazed a neon yellow. She shot into the air and fired down at the car. The driver inside ducked as the windshield shattered and a rain of glass showered in on him.
Unfallen Dead Page 7
