A Plain-Dealing Villain

by Craig Schaefer

  * * *

  Back in my room at the Four Seasons, I gave them the grisly details. Not too grisly. Pixie didn’t need to hear that, and everyone else had a damn good idea of what Coop was going through.

  “That kind of zombie,” Margaux mused, “is easy to raise up, if you know what you’re doing. Even easier to put down. Remember those soul traps Lauren passed out to her followers? The little leather pouches? Same thing, it’s just that Coop’s own body is the pouch. Force his mouth open, his soul flies free.”

  Pixie sat beside her at the end table by the window, powering up her laptop. She glanced at Margaux over the screen. “That kind? How many kinds of zombies are there?”

  “There’s the kind that eat people, the kind that don’t eat people…” Margaux’s voice trailed off as she thought it over. “Two. Two kinds. Plenty of variations, but when you’re looking at a dead man walkin’ your way, that’s the one question you need answered fast.”

  “And don’t shoot for the head, that just pisses ’em off,” Corman said, nursing a whiskey and Coke he’d assembled from the minibar. He sat on the edge of the bed. Behind him, cross-legged, Bentley kneaded the tension from his shoulders.

  Caitlin’s hands mirrored Bentley’s, though she was gentle with my bruises. We stood at the window, the sun slowly setting and coating Lake Michigan in sparkles of golden light, and she massaged the back of my neck while we talked. It felt like she’d had one hand on me at all times since she’d arrived. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to smooth my ruffled feathers, or if she was feeling awkward after running into an old flame. Either way, the nearer we stood, the more relaxed I felt and the happier she looked.

  “Damien Ecko is keeping Coop in some kind of industrial building,” I said, thinking back to the video he’d sent. “Concrete floors, cinder-block walls, maybe a warehouse or an abandoned hospital. Looked pretty big. Pixie, he contacted me by phone and sent over a video file and some texts. Is there any way to locate him with that?”

  “Might be, unless he covered his tracks. Is he tech-savvy?”

  I rubbed my chin, dubious. “Don’t think so. He’s more into the twenty-first dynasty than the twenty-first century.”

  “Most modern cell phones have a built-in GPS chip, even if you don’t have any kind of GPS software. Allegedly to make it easier for emergency services to find you when you dial 911.”

  “Allegedly?” Caitlin asked.

  “It also makes it easier for our burgeoning police state to keep tabs on innocent citizens,” Pixie said. “Have I told you what the NSA does with voicemail—”

  I cleared my throat. “So we can track the chip in his phone?”

  “He tracked himself for us. Everything you record on a smartphone—pictures, video, whatever—has geotags embedded in the metadata. You can’t see it, unless you know how to look, but it’s there. It’s a little hidden chunk of text that says not only when the image was recorded but where, latitude and longitude. It’s easy to scrub—even easier to fake if you want to make it look like you’re someplace you aren’t—but most people either don’t know about the geotags or don’t care.”

  I thought back to Ecko’s jewelry store and his outdated motion sensor. Then I held up the burner phone and tossed it over to Pixie.

  “I have a hunch he’s a little behind the times,” I told her. “See what you can get off that. And, uh…you don’t need to watch the video, okay? Nothing you want to see. So, next problem. Getting that coin out of the Bast Club.”

  “We went there a couple of times in the nineties,” Corman said. “Does it still look like Jules Verne built a brothel?”

  I nodded. “I think they call that steampunk now, but yeah. It’s also got free-roaming man-eating shadows for a security system. And does anyone know who owns the place? The locals just call it ‘Management.’”

  “It was the same, back in the day,” Bentley said. “According to Halima, folks claim the club just appeared sometime in the 1950s. She’s fairly certain the lot it sits on didn’t exist before that either, like the streets moved overnight to accommodate it and all the maps changed to fit. Whoever Management is, he or she prefers to work from the shadows. And with the shadows.”

  I glanced out the window. The lake was turning to turquoise as dusk slithered over the city, and the streets blazed with a thousand pinpricks of electric light.

  “Can’t count on getting the coin the fair way,” I said. “I’ll play my best, but they call it gambling for a reason. Besides, I’m pretty sure Royce will do whatever he can to knock me out of the game, short of blatantly cheating. It’s a cheap way to insult Caitlin’s court.”

  “Don’t rule out the cheating,” Caitlin muttered. Her fingertips squeezed the back of my neck a little bit harder.

  Margaux shrugged. “I don’t see any other way to get at that coin, unless we pull an all-out siege like we did at the Silverlode Hotel. And then they’ll know we took it. You can’t cover tracks that big.”

  “How do you steal from a theft-proof building,” I mused aloud, “especially when the guy who owns the prize already knows you’re after it?”

  I snapped my fingers and pointed at Bentley and Corman.

  “We pull a Kansas City Shuffle.”

  Bentley’s eyes lit up. “Kansas City Shuffle.”

  “Excuse me,” Pixie said, holding up her hand and looking back and forth between us. “What’s a Kansas City Shuffle?”

  Corman grinned. “Bet you five bucks you can’t tell me what state Kansas City is in.”

  Pixie frowned and furrowed her brow. “Well, it’s obviously not Kansas. Let me think, maybe a neighboring state…God, I suck at geography. Kansas River, drains from…Missouri? Is that right? I’m guessing Missouri.”

  “Bzzt. Sorry, kiddo. There is a Kansas City in Kansas. But here’s the important question: why was that the first answer you thought of, and the first one you threw away?”

  “Because it was too easy. You were obviously trying to trick me into thinking the answer was Kansas,” Pixie said. “Wait. It was Kansas.”

  Bentley chuckled. “Most confidence games depend on the mark not knowing they’re being conned. The Kansas City Shuffle depends on the mark knowing it. Not only do they have to see you coming, they have to figure out your entire plan before it happens.”

  “Problem being,” Corman said, “they’re working to stop the wrong con. You get ’em looking left, while you rob ’em blind on the right.”

  “We can’t take the coin out of the building,” I said, “but Royce can. So let’s give him a reason to do it.”

  * * *

  My stomach growled, and I wasn’t the only one running on empty. We moved the party downstairs to the seventh floor. Allium, the Four Seasons’s in-house restaurant, invited us in with warm, dusky mahogany and candlelight. We didn’t have to wait long for a table.

  “Forty-two-dollar strip steak?” Pixie murmured, looking over the menu. “For real?”

  “Don’t worry about it,” I told her. “Trevor Manderley, our kindly benefactor, is paying for everyone’s dinner tonight. And for your rooms. Serves him right.”

  “And that’s the next piece of business,” Corman said. “So he’s sponsoring this Stanwyck guy for the tourney. I got two questions, kiddo.”

  “Shoot.”

  “Number one, can you keep it together when Stanwyck sits down at your table to play cards?”

  I had to think about that.

  “Yeah,” I said. “Payback will keep. That’s for later.”

  Corman rapped his fingers on his closed menu. “Second question. What about later?”

  “I promised Coop two things before he died,” I said. “One, I’d get his cut of the score to his wife. Two, I’d send Stanwyck to hell where he belongs. I’m keeping those promises.”

  “The latter,” Caitlin said dryly, running a sharp red fingernail down her menu as she read it over, “can be arranged, with pleasure.”

  “I’m in,” Pixie said. “Let’s kill him.
”

  The table fell quiet.

  “You’re here to run intel,” I told her. “Then you’re going back to Vegas.”

  I’d seen Pixie angry, and I’d seen her determined, but until that night I’d never seen her eyes that hard and cold.

  “I said, I’m in. For all of it.”

  I shook my head. “Pixie, you don’t…that’s not your kind of work.”

  “Once you cross that bridge, you don’t walk back,” Margaux told her. She reached out and put her hand over Pixie’s. Pixie didn’t pull her hand away, but the cold resolve in her eyes didn’t soften.

  “I worked with Coop,” she said. “He was a good guy. I liked him. And this man, Stanwyck, he just…he shot two people for what, a lousy six thousand dollars? And now Coop’s some kind of zombie? He needs to go. That’s all. Stanwyck needs to go.”

  “Yeah, he does,” I said, “but that’s not your job to handle.”

  I gave Caitlin a look. She shrugged.

  “Don’t know what you want me to say,” Caitlin said. “I don’t understand why humans get so worked up over killing in the first place. This is pest control. You kill him, he goes to hell, he hopefully gets put to good use. Nuisance solved.”

  “Listen to Daniel and Margaux,” Bentley said, his voice gentle. “Please, young lady. You’re no killer. That’s not a burden you should have to carry.”

  The waitress swung by our table with a tray of drinks, throwing a blanket over the conversation. Still, as I took my Crown and Coke and waited for her to leave, I realized this was one more wrinkle I’d have to iron out. No way in hell was I letting Pixie anywhere near the Stanwyck takedown.

  In the circles I ran in, innocence was a rare and precious commodity. Pixie was a criminal, sure, but her crimes were bloodless and her heart was usually in the right place. More often than mine was, anyway.

  Damned if I’d drag her down to my level.

  24.

  When the waitress returned to take our orders, Caitlin’s smile lit up the room.

  “I’ll go clockwise,” Caitlin said, nodding my way. “He will start with the buffalo rock shrimp. For the entree, the Wagyu skirt steak with cheese and herb fries and roasted market vegetables on the side. Let’s pair that with a 2009 Cabernet—”

  As she continued, moving on to Bentley’s meal, Pixie leaned back in her chair—on the other side of Caitlin—and whispered, “Is she actually ordering for all of us?”

  “Yes. Yes, she is.”

  Pixie arched an eyebrow. “Why?”

  “Because she can,” I whispered back.

  “I kinda had my meal picked out already.”

  “My best advice,” I told her, “is to just surrender and let this happen.”

  Not much later, Pixie stared wide-eyed at her fork, chewing slowly.

  “What is this, again?”

  “Hamachi crudo,” Caitlin said. “It’s essentially an Italian take on sushi. Clean and simple. Fresh sliced yellow tail, a sprinkling of cracked black pepper and sea salt, a dash of lime juice, drizzle on some extra-virgin olive oil, and there you go. A delicate dish for a refined palate.”

  “I love it. I mean, I never would have thought to even try this, but I love it.”

  “I knew you would.” Caitlin patted her napkin to her lips, looking smug.

  I craned my neck, making sure we had privacy before getting down to business.

  “Okay, so the key to this grift is playing on Royce’s paranoia. He has to believe that it isn’t safe to keep the Judas Coin at the club. That if he doesn’t move it, we’ll snatch it out from under him.”

  “Start simple,” Bentley said, lifting a forkful of salad. “A whisper campaign. We can ‘accidentally’ let it slip that you’re in town to steal the coin, not to win it. You’ll deny everything, of course. Which, if you do it properly, will only make him more certain of your guilt.”

  “Dumb question,” Pixie said, “but do demons, um, go online at all? I could whip up some anonymous deep-web traffic mentioning the coin and pretend to be a buyer offering a bounty for it.”

  Caitlin wagged her fork at her. “Excellent idea. Royce has an affection for technology. If he doesn’t hear about it himself, one of his worker bees will report it to him.”

  “Can you backdate the post so it looks like the bounty went up a few days ago?” I asked.

  Pixie gave me a look. “Have you met me?”

  “If you really want to spook him,” Margaux said, “he needs to hear the story from inside his own house, from someone he trusts.”

  “Naavarasi is a Flowers noblewoman, but she’s in Denver,” Caitlin mused. “Wouldn’t want to use her for this, regardless. She’s too valuable an asset. Still, she might know someone local who she wouldn’t mind putting to good use…I’ll call her after dinner.”

  “At least the knife is secure,” I said. “We’re halfway to setting Coop free.”

  Pixie raised her fork. “About that.”

  “Yeah?”

  “You’re trading the knife and the coin to this Ecko guy to get Coop back, right?” she asked.

  “That’s right.”

  “So,” she said slowly, “how are you going to get the money to his widow from selling the knife?”

  I shrugged. “The cash will have to come from someplace else. Least of my concerns right now.”

  “What if we just kill Ecko?”

  I didn’t respond, not right away.

  “Think about it,” Pixie said. “If I can locate this place of his with the geotags from the phone, why bother with the coin at all? It can’t be that hard to scrounge up some guns in this city. Let’s go kill him, kill Stanwyck, free Coop, you sell the knife to your original client, and we all go home.”

  I tugged the cloth napkin off my lap, loosely folded it, and dropped it next to my plate.

  “Pix, may I have a word with you? In private?”

  I led her away from the table, over to a vacant corner near the kitchen doors.

  “Okay,” I said, standing close and looking her in the eyes. “Out with it.”

  “Out with what?”

  “Out with the reason why Pixie, radical anarcho-progressive hacktivist for peace, is eagerly calling for the heads of two men she’s never met.” I put my hands on my hips. “This isn’t you. This isn’t the woman who nearly refused to ever speak to me again, after the fallout with Ben and the Redemption Choir, because you were that adamant about not letting anyone get killed.”

  “People change.”

  “In my experience,” I said, “no, they really don’t. Little bits, maybe, superficial things, but Gandhi doesn’t pick up an AK-47, and Pixie doesn’t volunteer to splash blood on her hands. What’s gotten into you?”

  She looked away. Her breathing went shallow. I could sense her trying to piece the words together, but she needed a little time. I waited until she was ready.

  “Before we came downstairs,” she eventually said, her voice soft, “remember I used your bathroom?”

  “Yeah?”

  She turned to face me. “While I was in there…I watched the video.”

  The video Ecko had sent me. The video of Coop, undead, chained to the floor, tortured. My heart sank.

  “Pix…I told you that was nothing you wanted to see.”

  Her brow furrowed. “Well, maybe I needed to see it. I just can’t understand…who does something like that, Faust? Why? Coop was a good guy. He didn’t deserve this, any of this.”

  “Stanwyck is a gambling addict. He shot Coop and Augie because he needed the money. Ecko…for him, what he’s doing to Coop, it’s leverage to get what he wants. It’s just business, Pix. That’s all.”

  “And the fact that you can say that,” Pixie told me with a tremor in her voice, “just that you can say it, that something that fucking evil is ‘just business’—”

  “I know,” I said.

  Her eyes glistened. “No. You don’t. You don’t get it. I’m—I’m in this world now, your world, whether I like it or not
. But I’m not in it, not like you and Caitlin and everybody else. Which means I could be the next one to end up just like Coop. I thought if I—if I toughened up, if I was more like you, if I could kill someone and not have it tear me up inside, maybe I’d stand a chance of surviving all this.”

  Sometimes the consequences of your actions were immediate and obvious. Other times they lurked in the shadows, waiting for the chance to jump out and punch you square in the gut.

  “Pix, you actually thought…” I shook my head. “You want to know the reason I can pull a trigger on somebody without flinching? Because I’ve done it too many times. Way too many times. And for some shitty reasons. Hurting people, it…it doesn’t toughen you up. It makes less of you. You can’t take a life—good or bad, whether they’ve got it coming or not—you can’t take a life without burning out a little of the light in your heart. And you’ve only got so much light.”

  I reached out and took hold of her shoulder. Then I tried to pull her into a hug. She let me. Stiff-armed, quavering, but she let me. I bowed my head so I could whisper in her ear as I stroked her hair.

  “I’m too far gone to save,” I told her, “but you’ve still got some light. Cling to it. Cling to it with everything you’ve got, because the last thing you ever want to be…is me.”

  “I’m just scared,” she whispered back.

  “Don’t be. Because you’re family. And every single person at that table would jump in front of a gun to keep you safe. That’s what family is.”

  She pulled away slowly and tugged her glasses down. She rubbed the back of her hand over her eyes, smearing her tears.

  “And to answer your question back there,” I told her, “we’re not going after Damien Ecko because we don’t even know what he is. I’m pretty sure he’s not a demon, but beyond that, your guess is as good as mine. He might just be a skilled necromancer—which is all kinds of trouble in and of itself—but I’ve got a bad feeling there’s more to him than that. In my line of work, you don’t go gunning for somebody unless you know you can kill him.”

  “I know what he is. He’s a monster.”