Khanh rubbed at a stain on the floorboards with a toe. Her back was rigid, her mouth thin with disapproval.
I said, “What’s eating you?”
“What? I very quiet. Say nothing, even when you make deal with asshole for daughter life.”
Heat rushed to my face. “You think these people are going to talk to us out of the goodness of their hearts?”
“I—” She stopped. Lowered her eyes. “No. Not think that.”
“I’m going to do everything I can to find Tuyet. But I can’t promise what I don’t have.”
“You rich American. Big house. Nice truck. Two horse.”
“Jay owns the house, and Wells Fargo owns the truck. I plead guilty to the horses, but I’m a long way from rich.”
“You go bank, take out three hundred American dollar easy,” she said softly. “Seem rich to me.”
The door to the back swung open, and Salazar came out carrying a sheet of paper that looked like it had been ripped from a memo pad. He held it up, just out of reach. “Here you go. Karl Sanders. Got the address right here.”
I gave him another twenty, and he handed me the paper. I slipped it into my wallet.
With business out of the way, Salazar seemed more chipper. “That tattoo,” he said. “It’s called a manticore. Karl, oh uh, old Karl, he told me it was the perfect metaphor for a real man.”
“The perfect metaphor.”
“Body of a lion for physical strength, wings to rise above the shit life throws at you, tail of a scorpion, because a scorpion kills without mercy, and mercy is for the weak. And finally, the face of a man, for man’s superior intellect, the most dangerous weapon of all.” He chuckled, stroked his rattlesnake tattoo. “He’s a thinker, old Karl. Me, I’m more the primal type.”
He told me a story about a woman who had a fanged vagina tattooed onto each thigh and another about a woman who wanted a picture of her dead infant tattooed onto her stomach. Then he said, “I hit the jackpot in the movie biz, though. Zombie porn. It’s huge, man. I mean, huge. A few years ago, it was vampires and werewolves, and you sometimes still get some goobers askin’ for those, but zombies are the new vampires. Only, you got to be careful about the makeup, you know, cause you want the girls to be hot, and it’s hard to be hot when your skin is rotting off, you know what I mean?”
I told him I did.
When we left, he was stroking his head and reading a book called How to Eat Another Man’s Wife.
That Salazar. All class.
16
It was after nine when we left, circling around through the alley and to the parking lot. There had been a security light on when we came in, and when we came out, it had gone out. The mist had stopped, and the full moon glowed through a veil of gray clouds. To either side of it, dark striations raked the sky like claw marks.
The hairs on the back of my neck prickled. Nothing psychic about it, just something registering underneath the surface, like a shadow within a shadow, or a faint disturbance in the air, perhaps caused by a stranger’s breath.
I looked around. Saw nothing.
Khanh rubbed her upper arms and shivered.
I pulled my keys out of my pocket and flipped to the truck key. Punched the unlock button. The headlights flashed, but there was no obliging click of the locks. I punched it again. Still nothing. I pushed the key into the lock, met resistance.
“Wrong key,” Khanh said.
“It’s not the wrong key.” I bent to get a closer look at the lock.
A shadow flashed past the corner of my eye. I started to turn, saw a figure in black coming up on my left, moving fast. Big. Bulky. His face was smooth and black, completely featureless. For a moment, I thought of Salazar’s zombies, then realized no, the man was wearing a mask. His arm came up, and the dirty light of the alley glinted on the metal pipe in his hand.
I threw up my left arm as the pipe came down, the thwack of pipe against bone like a rifle shot in the dark. A burst of pain shot from my elbow to my wrist. The arm went dead, and for a moment, my mind went blank. All I wanted to do was cradle the arm and vomit.
I choked back bile and shot a kick at his knee, but he was already moving. I caught his calf with the edge of my heel as he went by.
Khanh shouted something in Vietnamese and leapt onto his back, stump clamped around his neck, fingers of her left hand clawing at his mask. He grunted and bucked her off. She stumbled backward, hit hard on her tailbone. The pipe came down, and Khanh crabbed away as it swished past her ear.
I tugged the Glock out of my shoulder holster, tried to rack it, but my left hand was still numb. It didn’t want to cooperate. The masked man’s foot slammed into Khanh’s gut, and the breath went out of her in a whoosh. Her back slammed hard against the wall of Salazar’s shop, and she slumped against it, small and boneless in her poncho.
I hooked the rear site of the Glock on my belt loop and chambered the round. Pointed it at the guy in the mask. “Hey!”
He swung his head toward me, and his gaze froze on the gun. He hadn’t made a sound yet, but now he chuckled. “I do not think you will,” he rasped, a touch of Eastern Europe in his voice.
My finger twitched toward the trigger. If I killed him, we’d lose our only connection to Tuyet. While I wavered, he stepped into the shadows between the barbershop and the comic book store. The pipe clanged to the pavement, and he bolted for the alley.
I bolted after him, ignoring the throbbing in my arm. We plunged into the alley and down it, across a vacant lot. Brambles caught at my jeans. Bits of broken glass crunched beneath my feet. I splashed through a puddle, stumbled on uneven ground, twisted an ankle, bit back a curse.
Halfway across the lot, he turned and tugged something out of his waistband. His arm came up, and this time there was a pistol in it, something heavy and military-looking. It was too dark to see the make.
I threw myself to the left and rolled. Another burst of pain as my arm hit the ground. Then I was up and scrambling for cover, gritting my teeth against the fire in my arm and ankle. The gun popped twice, the paf paf of suppressed rounds, and a chunk of grass and earth flew up a few inches from my boot. I raised the Glock and fired back, the crack of the pistol loud in the empty lot. He grunted and staggered back.
His gun came up again. I ducked around the corner of the comic store, and half a second later, there was another paf paf, and a spray of brick dust stung my face.
For a moment, I stood there, back pressed against the brick, heart pounding and breath coming in ragged gasps. When I peered around the corner again, he was gone.
Nausea roiled over me and through me. I leaned a hand against the wall to steady myself. Why hadn’t I shot him when I had the chance? Maybe I could have hamstrung him, forced him to tell us where Tuyet was.
Of course, I might have killed him instead, and we’d be no closer to Tuyet than we were now. This might not even be related to Tuyet. Maybe it was sheer coincidence that a guy in a mask tried to kill me the same week I was turning the city upside down, looking for the man with the manticore tattoo.
I forced my gorge back down and hobbled back to Salazar’s parking lot. Khanh was picking herself up, brushing dirt and gravel from her pants. One knee of her trousers was torn, and a bloody scrape covered most of her good arm, from elbow to palm. Blood seeped from a gash on her forehead.
“You all right?” I said. My left arm throbbed like . . . well, like someone had bashed it with a lead pipe.
She nodded. “One week America, already mug.”
I picked up my keys and poked one at the lock on the driver’s side. It wouldn’t go in. I pressed a button on my key chain and shone a beam of blue light on the lock. A clear bead glinted in the keyhole. It looked like a droplet of water, but a tap of the key said otherwise. Super Glue. I checked the passenger side. Same thing.
I said, “We didn’t get mugged.”
Her eyebrows lifted, but I didn’t elaborate. Instead, I pressed my injured arm against my stomach, took Khanh gently by
the upper arm, and limped to Salazar’s front door. The Closed sign was up. Not good business, considering the hours most of his customers kept, but probably a good idea when you’d just arranged for one to be murdered. I pounded on the door.
No answer. I pounded some more.
By the time he answered, my right hand felt bruised.
“Jesus,” he said. “You can’t read the sign?”
“Who did you call?” I said.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“You went into the back, and when you came out, you wanted to sit around and tell war stories. You were stalling us to give him time to get here.”
“Give who time? You’re not making any sense.”
“You set us up. It’s just blind luck we’re not in a hole in the ground.”
His sooty skin blanched. “Wait a minute. I don’t know nothing about no killing.”
“What? You thought he wanted to take us out for a beer?”
He rubbed his hands over his head. It looked like he was petting the snake. “You gotta believe me, man, I didn’t know—”
I leaned in close. “Your shit better be in order, Salazar, because cops are gonna be so far up your ass, you’re gonna think you got a colonoscopy.”
His shoulders slumped. “Why you gotta jam me up, man? I mean, how was I supposed to know what he was gonna do?”
“Because you have half a brain? Okay, maybe a quarter. Some fraction of a brain, anyway.” I nodded toward Khanh. “The lady’s bleeding. You got a clean towel? Emphasis on clean. Maybe some hydrogen peroxide and a bandage?”
“Do I look like a Doc-in-a-Box?”
“You look like a shitheel with a snake on his head. But I figure, this neighborhood, you’ve gotta have a first-aid kit.”
“No call to get personal. Let me see what I can find. You gonna keep pounding on the door, you might as well come in and wait.”
While he hunted down a first-aid kit, I dialed 911 and then a twenty-four-hour locksmith. The police said they’d send someone right away. The locksmith said he’d be there within the hour. I wouldn’t have made book on who’d get there first. I debated calling Frank, decided it was too late to bother him, then changed my mind and tapped in his number. If it were my case, I’d want to get the call. It went to voice mail, and I left a detailed message.
Salazar came back with a roll of medical gauze and a bottle of peroxide. Khanh winced as the peroxide bubbled in her wounds, but by the time I taped the bandages on, she’d reclaimed her stoic expression.
Thirty minutes later, a patrol car pulled up to the curb, and a young guy who looked about a year out of college football climbed out. Khanh and I met him on the sidewalk, and he gave us a quick once-over. “The dispatcher said you didn’t need an ambulance. You kind of look like you need one.”
I looked at Khanh. “You need a hospital?”
She touched a finger to the bandage on her forehead and shook her head. “Like say in movie, only flesh wound.”
I wasn’t sure I could say the same, but I put on a brave face and looked back at the young cop. “We’ll run by the ER after we get things straightened out here. You might want to fax your report to Frank Campanella and Lieutenant Malone at the West Precinct. There’s a good chance it’s related to a homicide they’re working.”
A line formed between his eyebrows. “Maybe you should tell me what this is all about.”
Before I had to explain it, Frank’s Crown Vic rounded the corner and rolled to a stop behind the patrol car. Frank climbed out and stumped over, hands jammed into the pockets of a baggy trench coat. Beneath the coat was a wrinkled gray suit with a loosely knotted tie. After he’d greeted and dismissed the kid, he said, “You want I should drive you to the hospital? Get that arm looked at?”
“I can drive. But thanks.”
“You both look like you could use some rest. You up for making a statement?”
“I’m up. But I don’t know how much I can give you.”
“Let’s start with whatever you remember about the guy who attacked you.”
“He was dressed in black and wearing a mask. There’s not much to remember.”
“Your message said he spoke to you. Anything distinctive about his voice?”
“I think he had an accent. It was hard to tell. He hardly said anything. Just that he didn’t think I’d shoot him.”
“Probably just as well you didn’t. You don’t have another link to the girl, do you?”
“Apparently, I don’t have this one.”
“Would you recognize his voice if you heard it again?”
“I doubt it. He was . . . not whispering, exactly, kind of rasping.”
He rubbed a hand over his stubbled jaw. “You didn’t see his face, and you wouldn’t recognize his voice. That’s going to make it hard for us to identify him.”
“You have Salazar’s phone records.”
“Which I’m running even as we speak, thanks to the wonders of modern technology. And now I’m gonna go in and check his cell phone. But what do you want to bet there’s nothing on it?”
“Sucker bet,” I said. “But we might get lucky.”
He laughed, but there was no humor in it. “That would be a nice change. You know what I’m wondering?”
“Same thing I am. Why use the pipe when he had a gun?”
“Million dollar question. Maybe he didn’t want to kill you.”
I thought of the burst of brick dust inches from my head. “When he started shooting, I don’t think he was missing on purpose.”
“So he changed his mind. But what changed it?”
“When I find him, I’ll ask him.”
He reached out and took my left arm gently in his hands. It throbbed at the touch, but it was bearable. “It’s swollen,” he said. “Make sure you get this looked at. Your sister’s head too. I’ll call you when I find something.”
“Or when you don’t.”
“Either way,” he said. “And keep your eyes open. He didn’t get what he wanted. Which means, whatever it is, he still wants it.”
17
Frank had gotten it right: the only call on Salazar’s cell phone was to a throwaway phone that couldn’t be traced. It had probably already been ditched. Frank gave me the news with a weary resignation. It was what we’d both expected.
“Sure you don’t want me to wait until your guy shows?” he said.
“We’ll be okay. He should be on his way.”
“I’ll keep the phone by the bed. Call me if you need a ride.”
I waggled the phone at him, repeated the line he’d given me at the murder scene. “Got you on speed dial. Go home and get some sleep.”
We went back inside to wait. Salazar, somehow managing to look both contrite and put-upon, brought us two cups of coffee in Styrofoam cups. I took a sip and set it on the counter. It tasted like dirt. “You just blew a shot at three hundred and fifty dollars,” I said. “So he must have offered you more.”
He went around to the cash register, puttered with the receipt printer beside it. “Man, I got him here. It ain’t my fault you couldn’t hold onto him.”
“Some warning would have helped. But that aside, how was he going to pay you?”
“I didn’t—”
I reached across the counter. Grabbed the front of his T-shirt with my good hand. “Don’t fuck with me, Salazar.”
He raised his hands and shrank into himself like a salted snail. “His woman, man. She’s supposed to bring it here.”
“What woman? Tell me about her.”
“I don’t know nothing about her, don’t even know her name.” I tightened my grip, and he let out a squeal. “I only met her once, at the tattoo shop.”
“She was a customer?”
“It was his idea, I think, but yeah. She got some kind of bird. Yellow, I think. With a broke wing.”
“Name of the shop?”
“Place called Art & Souls. Dude . . . Let go.”
I did, and he
sank back against the wall, rubbing his chest. He said, “You find her, am I gonna get my three fifty?”
I bobbed my chin toward my aching arm, still cradled across my stomach. “If we find her, maybe I won’t come back and stuff that shirt down your throat.”
The cell phone in my jacket pocket buzzed. No name, unknown number. I flipped open the case and pushed the Answer button.
Ms. Ina said, “Bridget didn’t come to work tonight.”
“I take it that’s unusual.”
“If it weren’t, I wouldn’t be calling. No, she has a very good work ethic. She rarely misses, and when she does, she always calls.”
“But not this time.”
“No, and she doesn’t answer her cell phone. I even tried texting her. Nothing.”
“When’s the last time you heard from her?”
“Three days ago. She was off yesterday and the day before.”
Technically, she’d only been missing for a few hours, but I had a bad feeling all the same. “Have you told the police?”
“And say what? A stripper didn’t show up for work? Don’t be naive.”
I pinched the bridge of my nose, ignored the quizzical looks from Khanh and Salazar. “What time was she supposed to come in?”
“Two hours ago. Could you go and check on her? And let me know what you find?”
“Is this the favor?”
“Certainly not. This you’ll do because you’re a decent human being.” She rattled off an address. “It’s off the beaten path. She’s living with her grandmother while she gets on her feet.”
“Could she be with a guy?”
“I doubt it. Her divorce was ugly. I got the feeling she’s sworn off men for a while.”
She’d barely looked old enough to be married, let alone divorced, but then, thanks to nature, makeup, and cosmetic surgery, I found it almost impossible to pinpoint the age of any woman between sixteen and forty.
It was too soon to be worried. Maybe she’d had a flat tire. Maybe she’d let her cell phone die. My niece Caitlin was always running down her battery playing Angry Birds or Bubble Witch, or whatever the latest, hottest, game was. “Can’t talk long, Uncle Jared,” she’d say. “My phone is about to die. I just wanted to call and say hi. And . . . well, you know.”
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