Enitan’s brow knotted. “I imagine so.”
“Did you mention anything else to Franklin about my case?”
“Of course. I told him all you told me.”
“I didn’t want to tell him anything. I thought you got that message.”
“When did you tell me not to say anything?”
“The other day, when I brought him in. I didn’t want to talk in front of him. I gave you the eye signal.”
“I thought you had a twitch.”
“Seriously? Everybody knows the eye signal. We went outside to talk.”
“You said you wanted a cigarette.”
“That was a pretext!”
Enitan crossed his arms. “How was I supposed to know that? You brought Franklin to me. Two pairs of eyes are better than one, and he has a sharp mind. I thought he could help. What are you saying now? You do not trust him?”
I considered what I was trying to say. The arrival of the three goons at Benny’s on the night Laureen had shown up might not have been the only seemingly coincidental event that proved to have been deliberate. It was unusual for a total novice to wander into Benny’s and strike up a conversation with me—a novice who just happened to want to be a PI, who followed me and asked lots of questions about my case, who turned out to be an expert on religious history at a moment when that was precisely what I needed. If my freshly flowered suspicions were correct, Franklin knew way more about this business than he was letting on and was trying to worm his way into my graces for a very specific reason.
“I’m saying I find it peculiar that, a few days after letting Franklin in here, you turn up a manuscript you have no memory of buying, one that miraculously gives us a name, an accurate drawing, and a purpose for a box nobody in human history had heard of until a few days ago. I think Franklin may have written this particular tome and planted it. He wanted you to read it and tell me what you found. I think our friend might not be who he says he is.”
“I do not believe it. He looks so innocent. If he is not Franklin, then who is he?”
That was a good question. If he was the Administrator who’d paid Sebastian to steal the box, it would make sense for him to get close to me as I zeroed in on the current owner. But then why had the goons gone for him in the bar? And why, if he was their employer, would they still be blundering around after Sebastian? Surely he would have known those Neanderthals would get in my way. And then, if he was the dodgy Administrator or even a previously unknown third party, why go to the trouble of writing a document that gave me more information on the box—if what he’d written could be believed?
“I don’t know,” I said, “but I aim to find out. Do you know where he is?”
“No. He said he would be gone the rest of the day.”
“Making himself scarce so it would seem like you were the one who uncovered the information. Do me a favor: don’t tell him anything else, particularly about the auction. When he comes back, show him the manuscript and act like you don’t suspect anything. See how he reacts. And call me.”
“I will do as you ask, although I think you are being paranoid.”
“A healthy dose of paranoia never hurt anybody.”
It worried me that I might have gotten Franklin so badly wrong, that he might have fooled me. I needed to be on top of my game now more than ever, and if my antennae were malfunctioning, I would be blundering around in the dark.
Enitan cleared his throat. “It is almost time,” he said. “For me, at least.”
I patted my pocket for the car keys but realized leaving now wouldn’t be my best move. If I set out across town minutes before Torment time, it would look suspicious to my tails, who were most likely preparing to suffer where they stood. Nor could I slip out when they were under the influence. Once they woke up, they would expect me to still be in Enitan’s. If I wasn’t, it would look odd. I didn’t want them to suspect that I had the advantage of freedom of movement. I would need to use it later.
“I know this is a big ask,” I said, “but do you mind if I stay here while . . . you know? I’ve got good reason; otherwise, I wouldn’t ask.”
Enitan didn’t say anything for a while. He was already withdrawing into himself. When he spoke, his voice was hoarse. “It does not matter to me. I will be elsewhere.”
“I’ll sit next door,” I said.
Before I left to wait in the front shop, I squeezed his shoulder. He didn’t seem to notice.
I took a seat in a battered armchair by the front entrance, as far away from Enitan’s bookish haven as possible. I didn’t want to risk overhearing his muttering. A few grim-faced stragglers passed the window. When I glanced up the street, I saw that my companions had retreated into their vehicles—all except Yolanda, who stood with her head held high, staring in the direction of the tower. An old grandfather clock ticked in the corner, lulling me into a daze that I jumped out of when something rattled. I looked up to see the doorknob shaking. Black fluid appeared and spread until it covered most of the door. The fluid thickened into sludge, which expanded outward and began to take form as though flooding an invisible mold.
“Door wasn’t locked,” I said to the Torment. “Or do you like a big entrance?”
The weak joke did nothing to dispel the chills caused by the creature’s proximity. It stalked forward, intent on one thing, and melted through the door leading to the back room. Enitan moaned. Even though I knew there was nothing I could do, his voice was so fear loaded that I felt the urge to kick the door in. Enitan began talking, his voice loud enough to hear through the closed door. I put my fingers in my ears and waited it out.
18
As soon as the Torment had finished its ugly business, I made myself scarce. Enitan didn’t know we cried out while under the influence. If I’d waited until he emerged, still wrapped in the cocoon of his guilt, my face might have betrayed what I’d overheard. Several times, he’d shouted for his mother in anguish. Even when I went outside to hover on the deserted street for a smoke, I heard him when he screamed, so loud that his voice cracked, “I don’t want the money anymore. Take it back, please, take it back!” I still couldn’t bring myself to judge him. He was a good man—I could sense it in our every interaction; he was just a good man who’d done something bad in a moment of desperation. And who was I to judge? I was living in a glass house with a whole heap of jagged stones lying around outside.
I made sure to appear unsteady on my legs, holding on to the fender of my car as the Torments winged home overhead. Even though Laureen had told me they were mindless beasts, I felt an urge to whip out my gun and fire into the air. It would have been a waste of bullets. From my vantage point on the hill, I’d seen plenty of sinners empty their clips into a Torment to zero effect. My guard of honor was still there, huddled inside their cars. I gave them a few minutes to recover before I climbed behind the wheel and made my way across town. I wanted to drive fast, eager both to distance myself from my unintentional violation of Enitan’s privacy and to see if any more messages had arrived during my absence. I reined in my impatience and drove at the funereal pace befitting a woman still suffering from shell shock.
As I pulled up outside the apartment, I noted two men leaning against a lamppost and apparently engaging in casual conversation. Adnan’s watchers had joined the party. I wasn’t the only one to spot them. Yolanda unfurled her legs from the car and glared daggers at the newcomers. They didn’t appear intimidated, although it was gloomy enough outside the circles of light cast by the streetlamps that they probably couldn’t see how ferocious she looked. If they made the mistake of messing with her, they’d find out. I left them to their standoff and took the stairs. I had no way of knowing if I’d missed any calls, but I was hoping that if one of the last two Trustees had tried and failed to ring, they would have dropped off a note.
I was slack. With the ever-accumulating clump of henchmen outside, I’d assumed I would be safe. I hadn’t accounted for the stupidity of Jake and his double shadow. The first I k
new of their presence was when I shouldered open the door and clicked on the light, my eyes on the carpet for some sign of communication, and heard an intake of breath. Jake had squeezed his bulk into the armchair facing the door and was pointing a gun at me. They must have sneaked into the apartment earlier on, when I’d taken my tails over to Enitan’s.
“Surprise!” Jake said.
The pistol cracked. I had a millisecond to register the impact before everything went black. When I came back, heaving the first rasping breath into my lungs and grabbing at the phantom hole in my forehead, I was splayed on the sofa.
“I owed you one,” Jake said. “Where’s the box?”
I groaned, pretending to be suffering from the aftermath of my resurrection, and rolled to the floor. I used the opportunity to mark the location of his two pals, stationed on either side of the door like extremely ugly gargoyles. I reached for my holster. It was empty.
“Looking for this?” Jake said, waggling my gun. “I’ll ask you again. Where’s the box?”
I said nothing for a moment, trying to parse this new development. Their appearance didn’t make sense if they were working for Franklin. He’d gone to the trouble of setting up the book ploy with the likely intention of making me confide details of the investigation. Maybe I was missing something, but setting the hounds on me didn’t strike me as a smart play.
“I don’t keep my money box here,” I said. “Bit of a rough area. Can’t trust the neighbors. We’ll need to go down to the bank.”
Jake didn’t have much variety in the way of facial expressions and so gave me the lopsided snarl again. “Don’t get smart. I heard about your auction. Strikes me you might be selling something that belongs to us.”
Although I’d expected the Trustees to try to keep the auction quiet to fend off other interested parties, I knew there were enough curious ears pricked up around their enterprises to overhear the information. Still, I hadn’t expected the news to spread so quickly, which was partly why I’d let these idiots take me by surprise. That was no excuse. First, there was my possible misjudgment of Franklin, and now this. I was definitely slipping. “I would say possession is nine-tenths of the law, but there is no law here. Plus I don’t have it.”
“So what you selling, hot air? You got enough of that to be a millionaire, I guess.”
“You’re trying to make jokes now? I thought you didn’t like funny. Maybe you should beat yourself up. Let me know if you need any help.”
“The only person who’s going to get beaten around here is you, unless you start talking.”
“I’ll talk, but not to you. Let’s go meet your boss.”
“My boss likes his privacy.” He lowered the barrel of the gun and pointed it at my leg. “Last chance. Where’s the box?”
“You don’t want to fire again,” I said.
“I think I do,” he said and pulled the trigger.
The bullet thudded into my thigh. Sure it stung, but I’d been shot enough times to absorb the pain in silence. On this occasion, taking my punishment stoically wasn’t the smart play. I screamed at the top of my lungs and got onto my hands and knees. I crawled over to the window overlooking the street below, as if searching for an escape route, and slapped my hand against the glass.
“Please don’t shoot me again!” I screeched.
Jake grinned. “Ha! I knew you were a phony. Acting all tough. You’re just a typical whiny woman. I’m going to keep shooting until you give it up. A bullet in each limb, then I start on the tender areas.”
His single eyebrow dropped in the middle, like a cheap mattress sagging under the weight of a big ass, as I returned his grin with interest. Footsteps were pounding the stairs.
“And you’re just a typical blustering man,” I said, “with a hair trigger and a brain too soaked in testosterone to think about the consequences of shooting your load.”
Jake swung his arm toward the door as Yolanda scorched into the room. He got one shot off, but she was already diving for the floor. The bullet caught one of his buddies in the shoulder, sending him reeling against the wall. Yolanda turned the dive into a roll, curled up onto the balls of her feet, and leaned every ounce of her momentum into a ferocious punch that walloped Jake square in the balls. He let out so much air, I thought he was going to deflate completely. While Jake fought for enough breath to fend off the savage follow-up blows Yolanda was raining on his head, his uninjured pal clawed for his piece. He managed to get it out of his jacket in time for one of Hrag’s boys to arrive and hack a machete into the rising gun arm.
There were four people, including me, bleeding profusely onto my carpet. As the room filled with the remaining henchmen, all I could think of was how difficult it would be to get the stains out. I started to laugh hysterically, light-headed from blood loss. That was when I realized the bullet must have nicked my femoral artery. I raised a hand, trying to find my voice and ask everyone to stop pounding Jake and his chums into tenderized steak. Now that they were subdued and more likely to be malleable, I wanted to grill them about who’d hired them. Yolanda, however, continued to purge her pent-up aggression on Jake’s now decidedly misshapen face. His two chums were faring just as badly. I tried to get up, which proved the last straw for my body. I faded into unconsciousness; the last thing I saw was Yolanda snapping Jake’s fingers.
I must have been out for a good ten minutes or so before I died, because when I did my second Lazarus act of the night, the apartment was empty. I rose woozily and looked out of the window to see Yolanda sitting on the curbside, licking her knuckles. Of Jake’s cohort and the rest of Yama’s crew, there was no sign. Too tired to walk downstairs, I opened the window.
“Feeling better now you’ve smacked somebody around?” I called down.
“Absolutely,” Yolanda said. “Thanks for the opportunity.”
“You’re welcome. I don’t suppose you can tell me where they’ve gone?”
“Your pals? For some reeducation. You’re welcome, by the way.”
I cursed under my breath. My shot at interrogating Jake had gone. If they were released after the next few hours of unpleasantness in Yama’s dungeons, they surely wouldn’t be so stupid as to come back for me now that they knew I had protection.
“You have my undying gratitude,” I said, not wanting to seem ungrateful to a woman who could rip my head off without breaking a sweat.
“You know how to repay me,” she said and went back to nursing her grazed knuckles.
I headed for the kitchen, intending to grab a bucket and cloth and sponge up the worst of the blood before it dried—the way my funds were diminishing on this gig, I wouldn’t be able to replace the carpet. I stopped when I saw a folded piece of paper, kicked into the corner behind the front door. I unfolded it, smiling as I realized the night wasn’t a total write-off. The note was from Jean-Paul, expressing his interest in the auction. We had a winner for chief suspect: Flo.
19
I spent the next morning preparing to breach Flo’s apartments, which seemed the most likely place for him to keep his valuables. Even though he would likely know I was on the trail of the box, I hadn’t heard a peep from him. Maybe he thought I was bluffing; maybe he was just odd, as his hermit behavior suggested; maybe he put a lot of faith in his security measures. All guests had to check their weapons upon entry to the casino, and a steel door, guarded around the clock, sealed his private quarters. The casino rose so far above the surrounding constructions that there was no way to get onto the roof from adjoining buildings other than grabbing onto a Torment’s legs and jumping as it passed over.
Unbeknownst to Flo, I retained the advantage of being able to stroll through the casino unmolested as everyone suffered. I only had to get through the door to his apartment. If I was lucky, one of the guards would have the key in his pocket. To be safe, I laid out a hammer, a crowbar, a flashlight, and a heavy-duty drill and then ventured out to the Seven Gates—with all my buddies plus a couple of extras from Jean-Paul and Wayne in tow—to
purchase some plastic explosives. There remained the possibility that Flo wasn’t interested, that one of the others was in possession of the prize and had been smart enough to throw me off the scent by joining the auction. This was my best shot, however, and I had to take it.
I toyed with the idea of giving Laureen a status update but decided against it. She would ask how I’d narrowed down the list of suspects, and my chosen method didn’t fit her desire for a low-key investigation. She would hear about the auction soon enough. By that point, I would hopefully be in a position to return the box and soothe her fevered brow. I was hoping she would be relieved enough to accede to my request for a bonus. After the melee in my apartment, I’d concluded that I would never be able to untangle the mess I’d created. The Trustees were giddy at the prospect of getting their mitts on something from Avici Rise; their disappointment when it didn’t materialize would manifest itself in a desire to exact revenge on my sorry hide. I was going to ask her to inform the Trustees that I was off-limits. I didn’t know if she would agree or if the Trustees were scared enough of her to comply if she did, but it was the one chance I had of remaining unscathed in the coming weeks and months.
I’d just finished packing all the necessaries into my kit bag when the phone rang. It was Enitan again.
“Franklin has returned,” he said in a whisper. “He is next door looking at the manuscript.”
“How’d he react when you showed it to him?”
“He came across as genuine. Surprised, excited, and a little scared.”
“We already know he’s a good actor.”
“Or you are a bad judge of character.”
In a way, I hoped I’d gotten it wrong. I’d been so sure I had Franklin down when I met him that I hadn’t questioned his appearance at Benny’s on a night of such significance. If he really wasn’t who he said he was, I’d been duped too easily. Still, I had time to rectify my mistake and confirm whether Franklin had written the manuscript. For that, I needed Enitan’s assistance. “Tell me, during all this research, has he been taking notes?”
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