by Martha Carr
The dwarf shrugged. “Whatever you’re having.”
“All right.” She nodded at the man behind the counter. “Get me two roast beef sandwiches. And I’m also looking for Pete.”
The man raised his eyebrows and set to work making the sandwiches. “Pete’s finished for the night. Come back tomorrow.”
“Even if you want us to think he went home,” Johnny said, “he’s still here. Go tell him we wanna talk.”
The man took a handful of meat from the display case and gave him and the hounds a scowling examination. “No one reads the damn sign anymore. No dogs allowed.”
“The dogs stay with me.” He pulled a chair noisily from beneath one of the grungy, dented tables and sat. His boots thumped on the other chair beside him, and after a snap of his fingers and a raised index finger, both hounds sat beside him. “And we’re stayin’ here until Pete comes for a chat.”
The man sucked something out of his teeth and flopped the meat onto two open hoagie rolls. “This ain’t about the sandwiches.”
“Nope.” Lisa folded her arms and watched him swipe mayo and mustard across the bread with a huge spreading knife. “This is a different kinda business.”
The only sounds in the deli now came from the hum of the fridge and the display case, the man adding lettuce and tomatoes to the sandwiches, and Rex and Luther panting heavily. Once he’d wrapped their orders and thumped them onto the top of the display case, the man fixed Liza with an expectant look. “Twenty-one eighty-four.”
“For two sandwiches?” Johnny grumbled.
“If you want cheaper grub that tastes like shit, you shoulda gone to the Bronx.”
The agent withdrew her wallet from the pocket of her jacket and handed the man her card. He rang it up and slapped her card on the display case. That done, he fixed Johnny and the dogs with a disapproving look. “Five minutes. If I see those dogs walkin’ around, I’m tossin’ all three of your asses outta here.”
The dwarf dropped the ropes from his hands and folded his arms. Rex and Luther stayed where they were beside him. “That’s not gonna happen.”
Finally, the man turned, stepped into the back, and cast them all a final baleful glance before he disappeared.
Lisa took the sandwiches and joined him at the table. “Just so we’re clear, I’m not buying all your meals for you.”
“If I’d known we were stoppin’ for supper, I would’ve suggested something different.”
She raised her eyebrows. “Supper.”
“You obviously haven’t spent any time in the south.”
Shaking her head, she slid one of the wrapped sandwiches across the table toward him and opened hers. “If you wanna get anything in this city, you have to pay for it one way or another. If we buy a few sandwiches, Pete’s far more likely to come down and chat.”
“He thinks we wanna talk drug business in Washington Heights.”
“Let him think that.” She shrugged. “This is the first good lead on someone who has the most direct contact with Boneblade, even if it’s only by knowing when and where to stay away from them.”
“Johnny.” Luther’s tail thumped once against the scuffed linoleum floors. “Johnny, open the sandwich.”
Lisa bit into hers and nodded at the dwarf. “Are you gonna eat that?”
“I’ll wait.” He scanned the empty deli again and ignored the sound of the sauce dripping out of her hands and onto the paper wrapper beneath her sandwich.
She was halfway through when the guy manning the counter stepped out of the back room. He glared at the dogs seated obediently beside the dwarf. Both stared at the still wrapped sandwich on the table. The bell over the door dinged again, and a young couple in their twenties walked in to place their order. The woman stepped quickly away from the coonhounds but didn’t say anything as she headed toward the counter.
In the next moment, the door on the far side opened and a huge bald man wearing black-and-red flannel pajama pants and a white undershirt beneath an apron stepped into the front room. The apron was covered with streaks and spatters of blood and grease, and he didn’t bother to take it off as he entered his establishment. The man behind the counter met his gaze and nodded toward Lisa and Johnny.
The owner took the empty seat at the table, which groaned beneath his weight. “I heard you wanna talk business.”
Lisa nodded at him and wrapped the rest of her sandwich. “Are you Pete?”
“Last time I checked. What do you want?”
Johnny glanced at the couple placing their order. The woman looked over her shoulder at them and turned quickly toward the display case. “Do you wanna have this chat right here in front of everyone?”
“Anyone stupid enough to repeat anything they hear in my deli shouldn’t be steppin’ foot inside.” Pete folded his arms and glanced at the dogs. “They shouldn’t bring mutts into my shop either.”
The dwarf turned his head to look at the man. “Trust me, they won’t tell anyone.”
“Except for you,” Rex said and licked his muzzle.
Luther shifted his front paws on the floor but remained seated. “Johnny, the sandwich.”
“So start talkin’,” Pete said. “I’m kinda in the middle of somethin’.”
“We’re looking for the Boneblade,” Lisa said and lowered her voice. “I heard you might know where to find them.”
The man turned toward her and narrowed his dark, beady eyes to glare at her. “Lady, I don’t know who dropped you on your head when you was a baby, but you’re fuckin’ insane.”
“You run at least twenty square blocks up here, right?” Johnny unwrapped the sandwich in front of him slowly.
“Twenty-five.” Pete glanced from the undercover agent to the grizzled, red-bearded dwarf. “I thought you wanted to talk about that.”
“We don’t care about what you do in your territory,” Lisa assured him. “We’re merely looking for the edge of Boneblade’s.”
“Well, they sure as shit don’t come around here.”
Johnny snatched the sandwich and ripped it in half. Pieces of meat and cheese and globs of sauce plopped onto the paper. “They took someone, Pete. And we need to find her.”
The man chuckled and rubbed the top of his bald head with a bloodstained hand. “That don’t make you special. If you’re askin’ about those motherfuckers, you know what they do.”
“They don’t know what we do. It gives us a leg up, don’t it?” Without looking away from the proprietor, he dropped both halves of the sandwich on the ground, one in front of each of his hounds.
“Yes!” Luther wolfed his half in one mouthful, snapped his jaws twice, and swallowed the whole thing before he licked the floor. “Got any more? Rex, how about you give me—”
A low growl issued from Rex’s throat as he snacked on his sandwich half. “Mine.”
“Jeez. Fine.” Luther looked at his master again with puppy-dog eyes. “I can at least lick the paper, yeah?”
Johnny ignored him.
Pete scowled at the dogs eating his sandwich and glanced at his employee behind the display case. The man who’d made dinner for two coonhounds glared at the dwarf and shook his head slowly.
“It won’t come back to you, Pete,” Lisa said. “We’re not trying to make things hard for anyone but the Boneblade.”
“And yourselves.” The man shook his head. “They don’t like people asking questions.”
Johnny scowled. “Too fucking bad. We’re asking.”
“They don’t like people givin’ out information about ʼem, either. If anyone finds out I told you—”
Johnny snapped his fingers and both hounds looked at him expectantly. “If you don’t tell us, you’ll have more than pig blood on your apron, I can promise you that.”
Lisa cast him a sharp glance but covered it in a split second.
Rex sniffed the air and fixed his eyes on Pete. “He already does.”
“Pig blood. Cow blood. Human blood.” Luther uttered a low growl. “Not his, J
ohnny.”
Pete shook his head. “I ain’t scared of a couple of pups and two green assholes who think they can walk in here and start askin’ the kinda questions that’ll get them killed.”
Johnny’s hand moved to his hip faster than anyone could follow. The click and glint of his dual action automatic blade followed as it opened, and a second later, the blade had buried itself in the top of the table’s edge directly in front of the man.
The bald man stared at it but didn’t even flinch.
The click of a pistol hammer being drawn back came from behind the counter as the man there aimed his weapon at the dwarf. “Don’t even fuckin’ think about it.”
The couple who’d just bought their sandwiches darted out of the deli. The door slammed open and shut behind them and the bell dinged, and no one else moved.
“Well, that’s one way to make a point,” Lisa said flatly. “Everyone needs to calm down.”
“I’m calm.” Johnny leaned toward Pete and jerked his chin up. “As long as you and your bodyguard stay calm too, we’ll all walk away from this with what we want.”
“I want you the fuck outta my place,” the proprietor grumbled. He raised his hand toward the handle of Johnny’s knife but stopped when Luther snarled and uttered a low growl. He glanced at the hound suddenly beside him and leaned away. “Man, this is why the sign says no fuckin’ dogs. Get ʼem outta here.”
“Give us a territory line, Pete.” He inclined his head and fixed him with a hard stare. “That’s all.”
“Do you want me to take care of ʼem?” the man behind the counter asked. “The fucker fed my sandwich to his dogs. I’m happy to do it.”
Pete glanced at his employee and shook his head. “They’ll be dead before they find who they’re looking for.”
“We’ll take our chances,” Lisa said. “All you have to do is point us in the right direction and everything you’re doing here keeps running the way you want it to.” She reached into her pocket and pulled her badge out to flash it quickly at the man. “Otherwise, I might have to call a few friends. Shake things up in here, you know?”
“Shit.” Pete scowled at her. “I knew you was too straight to be runnin’ anything. Cam, put the fuckin’ gun down.”
Behind the counter, Cam pushed the gun’s hammer up and returned it to its place under the counter. “Fuckin’ Feds.”
Lisa ignored the comment and raised her eyebrows at the proprietor. “So where do we find them?”
The man scowled at Luther, who snarled in response but didn’t move. “We don’t go south past Hell’s Kitchen for a start. That’s where my deals end, at least. I can’t tell you much more than that ʼcause I’m smart enough to stay the hell away.”
“Do they make it clear to not cross that line, or are you merely throwin’ out a guess?” Johnny asked.
“You don’t wanna guess with this shit, man. Now get the hell out.” Pete’s chair scraped noisily across the floor when he stood. “If I see those dogs in here again—”
“You won’t,” the dwarf assured him with a grim smile. “Unless you’re jerkin’ us around.”
Shaking his head, Pete stormed across the deli toward the door in the back. “We’re closin’ early, Cam.”
“Yeah, no shit.”
Johnny stood and jerked his knife out of the table before he slid it onto his belt. He picked up both ropes attached to his hounds’ collars and turned toward the door.
“Good sandwich.” Lisa picked up the rest of hers and slid it into the pocket of her jacket. “Have a nice night.”
Cam didn’t say anything and instead, glared at them as they exited the deli and stepped onto the street. Once the agent and the dwarf with his snarling fucking dogs disappeared from view, the clerk stepped around the end of the counter and headed to the front door to turn the Open sign off and lock up. He didn’t need to turn to know his boss stood behind him in the center of the deli. “Are you gonna make the call?”
“We’re both dead if I don’t.” With a grunt, Pete pulled his cell phone out. “Next time some dipshits ask for me, you’d better make sure they’re legit. That asshole in the back’s probably passed out by now. It’s gonna be real hard to wake him again.”
“Did he tell you what you wanna know?”
The man pressed the call button and lifted the phone to his ear. “Not yet.”
Chapter Six
“You have some kinda finesse,” Lisa said as she drew the uneaten half of her sandwich back out of her pocket. “Is pulling a switchblade out your regular go-to method these days?”
Johnny stared directly ahead as they walked down the sidewalk toward mid-town. Car horns blared around them, and the drilling buzz of construction across the street cut through despite the darkening sky. “It’s a dual-action hunting knife.”
“Right.” She stopped beside an overflowing trashcan and almost threw the rest of her sandwich in it before Luther uttered a low whine.
“Hey, that’s perfectly good food.”
“Johnny, we could eat it.”
She glanced at the hounds. “I’m not gonna feed your dogs, but do they want it?”
He sighed dramatically and snatched the sandwich from her hand. In silence, he unwrapped it, tossed the paper onto the overflowing bin, and divided the rest of Lisa’s meal in half and fed it to his hounds. The food vanished in seconds.
“You’re the best.” Luther sniffed the trashcan. “What about the chicken in there, huh?”
“Johnny, I like her.” Rex panted, his tail wagging as he stared at Lisa. “You like her too, right? Good one. You should get her to—”
Johnny snapped his fingers, and both dogs quit talking in his head to fall into step beside him. “It wasn’t my first time squeezin’ information out of some low-level asshole. And the knife got him to talk.”
“Are you sure it was the knife? ʼCause I remember having to flash my badge.”
“That was the unnecessary part.” He glanced at a middle-aged woman and her daughter yelling at each other about curfews on the front stoop of their apartment. “If that guy talks—”
“Who’s he gonna talk to, Johnny? The guy’s too scared of Boneblade to tell them there was a federal agent in his shop asking questions. With good reason, too.”
“He might not say you were a Fed but he wasn’t nearly scared enough to keep his mouth shut. If you’d let me keep goin’ my way, he would’ve been.”
“And put ‘more than pig blood’ on his apron?” Lisa shoved her hands into her jacket pockets and shook her head. “What was that?”
“A warning. If this tip goes bad, you can at least bring your friends into that deli. I’d bet my truck he was doing an interrogation when we interrupted him.”
“Because a guy who owns and runs a deli and probably makes the butcher’s cuts himself in the back had blood on his apron? Come on.”
“Because a guy who runs a low-level drug enterprise in Washington Heights didn’t only have pig blood on his apron.”
Lisa frowned at him. “How do you know that?”
Johnny shrugged. “It’s merely an observation.”
“What?” Luther looked at his master. “You’re gonna take the credit for that one?”
Rex snorted. “Typical.”
The dwarf ignored them. She’ll keep trying to crack me if I say my hounds told me. “So, what? Another twenty blocks to go?”
“Something like that. Do you think you can keep your knife on your belt for that long?”
He scowled “We’ll see what happens.”
They made it twelve blocks before Rex and Luther both barked sharply.
“Hey, you smell that?”
“Yeah. Same smell in the deli. On that dented square on the floor.”
Johnny stopped on the dark street corner. “Hold on.”
Lisa had almost stepped onto the crosswalk in the street before she realized he wasn’t beside her anymore. “What?”
“Somethin’s off.”
She fixed him wi
th an irritated look. “Johnny, you gotta give me more than that.”
“Hold on a sec.” He looked at his hounds, both of whom had turned at the ends of their ropes. Their tails pointed straight out behind them as they faced the alley they’d passed. “In the alley.”
“We still have almost ten blocks to go until—”
Rex interrupted with a long coonhound bay, his head tilted toward the sky. Luther growled.
“When my hounds pick a scent up, Agent Breyer, I don’t let that go.”
“You still won’t call me Lisa, huh?”
Johnny bent to quickly untie the ropes from his dogs’ collars and they rushed toward the alley. “Come on.”
“Are you serious?”
“As a heart attack.”
She sighed and hurried after him. “Do you mind explaining to me how your dogs picked up a scent we want to track when we haven’t even found Boneblade yet?”
“Pete was lying. He’s had more interaction with them than he wants anyone to think.”
They turned into the alley that branched at the end between the rows of buildings around them. Lisa unzipped her jacket so she’d have better access to the service pistol strapped in her shoulder holster. “How do you know that?”
“Look, if you don’t understand how hound dogs work, I’m not about to explain it to you.”
Rex and Luther trotted down the alley, their noses to the ground as they followed the scent. “Stronger now.”
“Real strong, Johnny. Damn, these guys stink.”
“What are we lookin’ at, boys?”
“Right. Like they’re gonna tell you—” Lisa’s shoe kicked a discarded soda can and it clattered down the alley.
“Magicals,” Rex said. “Like that witch in Goodland. But dirty.”
Then we’re on the right track.
Luther bayed this time and the howl echoed through the narrow alley.
It cut off abruptly when a sneering man in a tan bomber jacket rounded the corner on their left. A bolt of yellow light sprang from his fingertips and cracked against the wall on Johnny’s right, inches from the dwarf’s head.
“Would you look at this, fellas?” The wizard chuckled. “These idiots did our job for us.”
