California Demon

by Debra Dunbar

  The boy followed Bea into the kitchen. Now I remembered him, that little kid that used to follow Adriana and me around, tattling on us if he caught us smoking. I watched him, wondering how this kid had seemingly gone from five years old to fourteen or fifteen overnight. There had been an elder brother as well—one I’d drooled over when I’d first come here. I hadn’t seen him in nearly a decade. I hadn’t seen Adriana in years either. I guessed they’d both moved out after high school, where I’d stayed.

  I slid my gun into the holster, still keeping it free and handy, and went over to see exactly what Javier had been doing when I’d come down the hallway and threatened him.

  Wow. He had been fixing the door. He’d already replaced part of the frame, and was beginning to put on new hinges. The new door that was propped next to the broken old one looked like it should be at the entrance of a Rodeo Drive jewelry store. It was thick steel with blurred bullet-proof glass panes that were covered with decorative steel panes. Aesthetically pleasing, and I was pretty sure it would take a small bomb to get through the thing. An intruder could always swing around to the back of the house, or go through a window, but battering at this door would give us enough warning to be ready to fight back, or to escape.

  Was I a bad person that I immediately wondered who he’d stolen this door from? And what motivated his parents to send him over here first thing in the morning to install an expensive steel door on our modest little house?

  Yeah, that probably did make me a bad person.

  I glanced toward the kitchen and narrowed my eyes, trying to calculate the risks of leaving this kid here with my family. Adriana had been okay, and I never heard anything bad about Carlotta or Luis, but I didn’t know this kid, and I was spiraling into a panic mode where I didn’t want to trust anyone.

  This was ridiculous. Bea trusted him to come by and check on the girls while she was at work. She clearly knew the family better than I did. Besides, I couldn’t stay here and stand over him with a loaded gun while he finished with the door. The clock was ticking on Nevarra’s safety.

  Forcing myself to trust that the teenage neighbor kid fixing our door wasn’t something I needed to worry about right now, I tried to put my fears away and headed into the kitchen. There I poured myself the last of the coffee, and exchanged glares with the kid while Bea chatted on about neighborhood gossip.

  “You almost done with that door, Javier?” I continued glaring at the kid over the edge of my coffee mug.

  His mouth firmed into a tight line. He put the coffee cup on the counter and stomped out of the kitchen. A few seconds later I heard the drill once more.

  “Eden, he’s helping us out,” Bea scolded. “You don’t seriously think he’s installing a heavy-duty door on the front of our house as a pretext for robbery?”

  Probably not, but as Bea had said, I was edgy after what had happened last night. Bea and I headed back into the living room where she muttered something about checking on Sadie and left me behind to drink my coffee and watch Javier as he finished the door. He swung it back and forth a few times.

  “You gonna stay here and stare at me while I put new glass in your windows?” he asked once he was satisfied that the door latched properly. “Because if you are, then I’m going to say ‘fuck you’ and just go home.”

  I needed to go see Bags. I needed to find Nevarra. I was absolutely torn between leaving two of my family behind and staying to protect them. Then I remembered my conversation with Bea. She wasn’t so injured that she couldn’t protect herself and Sadie. A broken arm didn’t mean she couldn’t shoot that gun. And besides that, Bea had ways of dealing with conflict in a non-violent fashion that I obviously lacked.

  “I have to go out.” I stepped closer to the boy. “If I come home and find either one of them has so much as a split end, I’ll hunt you down and kill you. Got it?”

  “What the fuck is wrong with you, lady?” The kid held up his hands as I took another step toward him. “Okay, okay. I get it. Like I’m gonna hurt some old woman and two girls.”

  Just in case I went back to the girls’ bedroom and gave Bea one of the extra guns I’d stolen from the warehouse last night—a sweet SIG Sauer P226—with a fully loaded magazine, because clearly it would be best if she had three pistols to defend herself and Sadie with.

  Then with another threatening glare at the neighbor kid, I headed out.

  Getting in to see Bags was going to be a bit tricky. Normally I just strolled right on up to the door and inside, but I was sure his place was currently under surveillance. The tax collectors were clearly hot to bring me in. After not finding me last night and trashing my house, the Fixers would probably assume that I’d gone to ground somewhere. A person could only hide for so long, and with my salvage license no doubt suspended, I’d need to pawn stuff for cash at a place where I could do it off the record. That required the salvager to have an established relationship with the pawnshop. Bear State had been my go-to, and even though they’d tossed the place and smacked Bags around, they knew I wouldn’t have many, if any, other options.

  They were right. I didn’t. Not just for fencing salvage either. I could trust Bags. I knew he’d be straight with me, not turn me in, give me information, protect me from anyone who wished to do me harm.

  He was a friend. I guess he’d always been a friend, but in my weird paranoid mind, he’d only just moved into that category last night.

  After parking a few blocks away and making a roundabout approach, I crouched behind a crumbled concrete retaining wall and watched two men loiter in the general vicinity of the pawnshop. One had taken up a post on the east corner of the short block, making the absolute minimum effort to conceal his intent. Besides puffing away on a cigarette, his body was tense, his expression sharp and alert as his gaze darted up and down each street. The dude on the west corner was at least trying to look like a homeless man propped up against a lamp post, but he had to have been the cleanest, best-dressed homeless man I’d ever seen. And if that didn’t give him away, the clearly visible hip holster did.

  Obviously the Fixers hadn’t sent their best and brightest to do this job. The bounty on my head might be sizable, but it must not have been big enough to have everyone lining up to take on boring-as-shit surveillance duty. Still, with their positioning, it would be hard to get past these two morons unnoticed—at least if I went through the front or emergency side doors. What they, and probably just about everyone, didn’t know was that there was a cellar door into the pawnshop. It looked as if it had been rusted shut and chained up for decades with rotted leaves and old trash littering the stairway down, but Bags was too smart not to have a back way out in case he needed to make a quick escape from the shop. The chains were attached to nothing but the door itself, and the rusty-looking hinges were only painted to look that way. The door would swing open with absolute silence. The lack of a doorknob deterred anyone attempting to get in, but I knew there was a pressure plate, cleverly hidden behind some ivy, that would pop the door open.

  I just needed to get around to the back of the building and down the stairwell without either of these two goons seeing me.

  My opportunity came in the unlikely guise of a junky trying to score. A battered yellow Toyota Camry slowed down at the corner where the smoking guy stood, the passenger lowering the window as the car rolled to a stop. The Fixer tried to wave the guy on, but he clearly was desperate for a buy. After a brief argument, the Fixer decided to put out his cigarette, pull out a baggie from his pocket and do a little deal on the side.

  That left the fake homeless man.

  The moment he turned to look down a side street, I made my move, moving low and quick to the back of the building. Not waiting to find out if I was seen, I headed down the steps, careful not to slip on the mildewed leaves. At the door, I grimaced and stuck my hand into the spider-filled ivy to push the pressure plate. The door silently popped open. I shuddered and frantically brushed the spiders from my hand as I darted through.

  �
�Bags? It’s me,” I called softly waving to the camera in the corner. There was a silent alarm on the door, and I really didn’t want to get shot while coming up the steps to the store. I waited, not only to make sure that Bags knew it was me, but just in case there were any customers upstairs. After a few minutes, the upstairs door opened, spilling thin golden light down the stairs.

  “Come on up, Eden,” Bags whispered down the steps. “Keep close to the floor and go to the break room. I’ll be there in a few.”

  I did as he said. The break room was a six-by-eight space with chipped linoleum flooring, some mismatched cabinetry, a bar sink, a dented fridge, a stained coffee maker, and an electric hot plate on a Formica counter. A small but sturdy wooden table sat in the middle of the room, its surface covered with cigarette burns and brown rings. Two hard chairs sat next to the table. In the corner was a cot with a rumpled set of sheets and a lumpy pillow. I searched the fridge, grabbed a soda, and sat down at the table to wait.

  I didn’t have to wait long before Bags came in, propping the door open and positioning his chair so he could see out to the shop before sitting down. He looked better than he had last night, but the makeshift splints on the fingers of his right hand would be a hindrance if he needed to shoot someone. Good thing Bags was almost as decent a shot with his left hand as he was with his right.

  “How’s your family?” he asked practically before his butt hit the chair. “Shit, Eden. I didn’t even know you had a family. Mom and Dad? Husband and kids?”

  I didn’t know if Bags had a family or not either. We never asked, never discussed those things.

  “My foster mom, Bea, and two foster sisters,” I told him. “Bea got beat up. Sadie, the youngest, was shot by accident while she was hiding. They took my other sister, Nevarra, with them. She’s only fourteen.”

  Bags knew exactly what that meant. He swore, a pulse jumping in his throat as he clenched his teeth. “Damned Fixers. Have you found her yet? Did you go to the police? You need to see Bishop. Whatever it costs.”

  “I already saw Bishop. He tracked Nevarra to a warehouse in Hawthorne. The Fixers sold her to the Disciples. The trail is magically shielded, so Bishop can’t help me further, but I got some information. The guy from the Disciples who brokered the deal and took Nevarra with him was a tall, thin, white guy with black hair and a scar on his face.”

  “Fender.” Bags grunted. “Nasty son-of-a-bitch.”

  “That’s who I was thinking it was too. Tell me about him, about the Disciples. Tell me everything you know.”

  “The Disciples.” Bags thought for a moment. “They keep their own storerooms, barter and fence a lot of their stuff directly and off the books to avoid taxes. I don’t see them all that often, but I know they’re a big group, structured with lieutenants and sub-bosses. They don’t claim as much physical territory as the Gray Dogs, but they work their business all over the state. They’re not the sort of gang that pushes dope or sells laptops off the back of a truck like the Dogs do. They deal with distributors and companies. They sell and barter in bulk, establish connections between sellers and buyers, ensure safe deliveries and commerce transactions.”

  “So, they’re middlemen running protection rackets?”

  Bags held up his hand and wiggled it back and forth. “Kinda. Not the sort of protection racket where a local pool hall pays them monthly or gets tossed. They’ll go to somewhere like Conway Food Products and offer to make sure their food shipments actually make it to the grocery stores or restaurants.”

  And all of this had sprung up in the last two years. I shook my head, amazed at the agility and enterprising nature of some people.

  “They take risks and go for the big jobs, leaving the little stuff to other people.” Bags glanced out into his shop, then leaned in close. “They have the means to actually handle the big jobs. Automatic weapons. Military grade crap. Those armored tanklike transport vehicles. Bombs. Magic.”

  My palms were sweating just thinking about all that. And here I was with a couple of pistols. I was so outgunned.

  It didn’t matter. Outgunned or not, I had no choice but to go up against these guys.

  “And Fender?” I asked.

  “Scary as he is, he’s not even one of their Lieutenants. He’s a team lead at best, and their top gopher/knee breaker. He and a guy named Piers handle most of the Disciple business in the Valley. I don’t think he’ll have your sister with him. He would have picked her up and delivered her to someone else.”

  Great. This was going to be one long follow-the-breadcrumb trail to find my sister. Hopefully, she hadn’t changed hands too often, because each time she went to another person and another location, the longer it would take me to find her.

  “Who do you think Fender might have transferred her to?” I asked, hoping to cut out some of the middlemen on this and head right to where Nevarra was likely to be.

  “I honestly don’t know. The only side of the Disciples I really know about is their protection racket and who they use to fence their stolen goods. If the Fixers brought the Disciples in, that means they probably have a division in their organization that deals with human trafficking.” Bags shrugged. “It makes sense. They play big, and there’s big money to be had in selling people.”

  “Someone has to know who those people are,” I mused. “You can’t run a human trafficking operation if no one knows you’ve got people to buy.”

  “I think most of it is done online.” Bags dug in his pocket and pulled out his cell phone and a pen, then grabbed a crumpled, greasy napkin and started writing. “Here. This is who you might want to call. I also wrote down where the Disciples like to congregate in the Valley.”

  An auto parts place and a fast food joint. At least it was a starting point. But it wasn’t the Disciples’ hangout locations that had me staring at the napkin in disbelief, it was the name and phone number Bags had written down.

  “Detective Sarah Juke?”

  “I knew her father; he was an honest cop.” He pointed to the napkin. “I’ve known Sarah since she was a baby. I got invited to her birthday parties, sent her a card when she graduated from the academy. I trusted her dad, and I’d trust her too.”

  I couldn’t believe Bags was recommending I walk straight into the lion’s den. “I can’t go to the cops. I’m in the system from some shit back when I was a teen. And I’m flagged right now because of this mess with the taxes. She’ll turn me over to the Fixers, or give me straight to the tax collectors.”

  “Maybe. Maybe not.” Bags lifted his hands. “From what I know of Sarah, I don’t think she’d turn you in. All I’m saying is you’ve got a kid sister who’s about to be sold to the highest bidder. Sarah worked for the LA human trafficking division before the demons came. She’s still here and on the force, and although she might not be in that division anymore, she’s got to have contacts and information you could use. She’s someone you want to talk to.”

  I eyed the napkin again, weighing my chances. “What makes you think what she knew from two years ago is still applicable today?”

  “Because I’m pretty sure it’s still most of the same players, they’re just bolder and busier now than they were two years ago.” Bags leaned forward and tapped the corner of the napkin. “We had Gray Dogs, Fixers, Disciples, and the militias before the demons came, they just were smaller and more careful. Someone back then knew how to sell bodies, who the buyers are and how to get the most for a kid, then they’re still doing it today.”

  He had a point. I was still going to track down some of the Disciples and see if I could find out who had Nevarra, but if this Detective could also get me some names, it would help.

  I stuck the napkin in my pocket, thanked Bags for his assistance, then snuck out the back door.

  Chapter 10

  I needed a phone—a phone that couldn’t be traced to me, but one on which I could receive a return phone call. That meant I needed to steal one because I didn’t want to waste the little money we had left on a burn
er.

  As much as I wanted to take down one of the Fixers watching Bags’s place and rob him blind, I didn’t. First, any phone I lifted off one of the Fixers was bound to be traced and I didn’t want those guys knowing where I was. Secondly, killing one of the guys watching the pawnshop would probably work that group up into even more of a frenzy. Right now, finding me would be a payday for them, but nothing more. Killing one of their surveillance guys would make finding me personal. They’d know it was me who’d killed one of the men watching the pawnshop where I was known to go. I wasn’t going to risk it, not even for the satisfying sense of vengeance killing one or both of them would give me, and certainly not for a phone.

  I needed to lift it off a civilian. As much as I hated stealing from a regular old Joe or Jane, it would be safer than stealing from a bad guy.

  So, I drove into Burbank, eyeing the people who were heading to work, stopping off to get gas or a paper or a cup of coffee. My pickpocket skills were subpar at best and I was feeling a little guilty, so I bypassed the obviously blue-collar folk and looked for someone driving a late model car who looked like he or she might be heading into an office job.

  My luck seemed to be turning around because while I was getting gas, I saw a man who looked like he was heading to the golf course pumping gas into his BMW at the pump next to mine. We nodded at each other, then he dashed in to grab a cup of coffee, leaving his phone in the cupholder.

  I was gone before he’d even paid for his caffeine fix, and rode a few blocks before I pulled over and examined the phone.

  Hoping this was going to work, I dug around in one of my pockets. Lock picks. A bungee cord. A multi-tool. Ah, there it was.

  I pulled out something that looked like a memory stick with an adapter for just about any phone, computer, or electronic device. This thing had cost me more than my surveillance camera jammer, but it was about to be worth every penny. Picking the correct adapter, I attached my thingie to the phone, and pushed the little button on the end.