I was almost thinking I'd pull through this mess in one piece until I heard the sandpaper-against-a-bass-drum voice that answered. Angry, full of bile. How do I put it? It was the kind of voice that even if you knew the owner was supposed to protect you, you'd rather take your chances with the crooks.
“You've got a
lawyer
stuck down there, dipshit! Get that twisted hunk of crap away from the door before I put you in lockup and introduce your fat ass to some real criminals.”
Boyle blew out his lighter. A metal groan filled the dark.
“Hey, man, easy on my bike, okay?”
So the wash-and-werewolf had survived the impact. Only two bodies, then.
He was told to shut the fuck up. The mangled doorknob jiggled; the door shifted like a sarcophagus lid, then froze. It wouldn't give.
I heard that voice again: “There a Sturgeon down there?”
From the gloom, my client's shiny head rose like a miniature sun. He shifted past the quiet dead, a twitchy smile on his face, and stopped at the base of the stairs.
“Turgeon. William Turgeon. Yes. Could you . . . identify yourself?”
“You hurt?”
“I don't think so. I'm not bleeding. Could you identify yourself, please?”
“He won't answer,” I whispered. “Not even with the magic word. It's Tom Booth, head of Fort Hammer homicide.”
Turgeon gave me a quizzical look. “Isn't he . . . ?”
I nodded. “My old boss.”
Also the man who diddled my wife and found me standing in a pool of her blood. Small world. Tiny world. So tiny, sometimes I wish I could put it between my thumb and forefinger and crush the damn thing. Booth must have caught a night shift, thanks to the budget cuts. Dragging his ass out here was the last thing either of us needed.
A stubborn son of a bitch, he went at the door again, pulling, yanking, kicking, growling. Much as he might be our savior, no one from our side helped. I could feel the dead stiffen around me, worried they'd fallen from the pan into the fire. They must have heard me say his name. Booth hated me most, but after that, it was any other chak. He figured we were all RAR. Any overturned conviction was like someone tracking mud across his nice clean kitchen floor.
After a few full, long minutes, the yanking stopped.
“Could you ladies stop scratching your ball sacs and get some kind of wedge for this thing? A crowbar, something? Just give me one of those chak arms lying on the floor.”
Big charmer, Booth.
The next crunch was loudest. With a sound like Bigfoot's fingernails against a blackboard, the door swung back into the hall and fell off its lower hinge. A flashlight beam danced down the steps, Booth right behind it. Lantern jaw and a curly red fuzz on his head, he looked as strong as I used to wish I could be. Good-looking, too, if it wasn't for the pug nose that said canine in a big way. A show dog, but a dog.
Turgeon motioned for Boyle to join him at the base of the stairs. Ashby gave off a nervous
heh-heh
and followed. Turgeon looked at me to do the same, but I shook my head. With Booth, I was better off hiding with the mob. Fortunately, Turgeon understood and didn't ask twice.
Spotting Turgeon's pinker flesh, Booth waved him up the stairs. “Let's move it.”
Turgeon pulled at Boyle and Ashby. “These men are with me.”
At the word
men
Booth twitched and turned away like he couldn't stand the smell.
All the while, I was backing up, hoping to disappear into the darkness. No such luck. After they were a few steps up, Boyle, thinking he was doing me a favor, pointed me out. Unlike the nosy Turgeon, he didn't know the history.
“You, too, Mann. You're with us.”
Booth tensed up so fast I heard his bones crack. Hiding was no longer an option.
After a pregnant pause, Turgeon managed to speak up. “Yes. He's working for me,” he said. Then he lowered his big head and flinched as if expecting to be hit.
Booth pivoted his flashlight into my face. I winced, not because I had to. My pupils don't work quite the same way anymore. I was hoping it'd made him feel better if it looked like I was squirming. It didn't.
“Hessius Mann.” There was so much venom in his tone that even though the basement was packed, everyone around me stepped back.
Saying nothing seemed worse than saying something, so I shielded my eyes with my hand, and nodded. “Tom.”
He turned to Turgeon like he was ready to push him back down the stairs. “Do you know what it did?”
I'll say this for Baby-head: He was frightened, but held his ground. “He was exonerated, no? Partly because you beat him during his arrest?”
Booth sneered. I could smell the wood burning. More than likely he was pondering the downside of caving in Turgeon's head with the flashlight. But Turgeon was a liveblood, and where the living were concerned, in the end, Booth followed the rules.
Besides, he still had his favorite chew toy to play with, me.
“Remember what I said I'd do if I ever saw you again, Mann?”
Crap. I didn't. I knew it was something colorful, earthy, involving body parts detached and being forced into various orifices, but the details escaped me. I tried to remember; I really did. I even had it recorded somewhere.
I kept my voice even. “It's not like I was expecting you.”
Turgeon cleared his throat. “Detective, I'd like . . .”
The sentence ended with Booth's finger an inch from Turgeon's nose. “You know what I'd like? I'd like you to shut up. We've got two dead bodies, the real kind, upstairs. One with a mangled face, so I can guess what happened there, but the other has a nice neat bullet hole.” He tapped Turgeon's forehead. “Right about there. I'm guessing, but the entry wound looks to me like a nine-millimeter reduced-velocity, maybe a Walther P99.” Finger still on my client's forehead, Booth turned to me again. “That'd be a good gun for a chak. You wouldn't have one on you, would you, Mann?”
Matter of fact I did, tucked back in my waistband. “Why would I be carrying, Tom? It's illegal, last I heard.”
He came down the steps and leaned his face in, daring me to twitch, but my body only does that at random. There was broiled chicken and barbecue sauce on his breath. Home-cooked, I think. He'd been pulled away from a meal.
“Because you're one of the âsmart' ones,” he said. “And it'd be stupid to show up here tonight without a gun.”
“Nice of you to say so, but I'm not feeling very smart right now.” No shit. If he frisked me, it'd be all over. Even our cut-rate ballistics department would match the bullet to my piece in under an hour.
“I bet,” he said. “What is it they do to killer chakz?” He held two fingers up and scissored them, imitating the clippers they use on our heads. “D-cap.”
I knew Booth pretty well, and one of the things I remembered was that he always held his breath when he patted down a chak. First, though, he'd give himself a good breath. He never warned them; he just inhaled and started patting.
If he inhaled, I knew I was in trouble.
He turned away and sucked down some air. Oh, shit.
“I shot that man,” Turgeon squeaked. “With a Walter . . . uh . . . that gun you said.”
We both turned to him. Booth clenched the flashlight tighter. “You?”
“I had to. He was about to kill someone with a machete.”
“A chak?”
“It was dark. But that wouldn't make any difference in court, would it? If you bring charges. And I do have witnesses.”
“I saw it,” I said.
“So did I,” Boyle put in.
Booth laughed. “Chakz can't be sworn in. Let's see the gun.”
Turgeon cleared his throat. He sounded dry. “I . . . must have dropped it.”
Booth exhaled and looked around. I knew what he was thinking. If he pursued the shooting, he'd also have to pursue the technically illegal hakker attack. The livebloods had fled, chakz his only witnesses. He grunted.
“Get out. Take them with you.”
He didn't have to say it twice. The four of us filed up the stairs, Ashby first, me last. As I passed Booth, I tried to ask him about Lenore. I don't know whyâmaybe because I used to admire the guy, maybe because I still had a thing for the truth, maybe because there were things he'd seen that might fill in the blanks for me.
“Tom, I didn't . . .”
“Don't. Don't even think about it. Keep shambling.”
“My mistake.”
Back in the hallway, a few uniforms blocked our path until Booth reluctantly said, “Let them the fuck through.”
“Heh-heh,” Ashby said. “We're going through. We're going the fuck through.”
“Sh,” Boyle said. “Sh.”
I wished the night had been cooler, but it was thick with August heat, so the humidity held the smell of rotting meat high in the air. As we walked, Boyle put his hand on Ashby's head and tried to steer the kid's gaze down at the ground so he wouldn't see all the mangled bodies. But even the floor was littered with parts.
“Is that Mrs. Winter's arm? Heh-heh.”
Boyle tried to keep him quiet, but Ashby kept naming limbs, recognizing who they belonged to from the torn clothing or the jewelry. Fortunately, when the kid spotted the Humvee, that grabbed all his attention.
“Nice car! Will we ride in the nice car?”
“Yes, Ashby.”
“Heh-heh.”
Once we were crunching along the road, the kid stopped using words altogether. He just made that little
heh-heh
noise. Turgeon looked like it was driving him crazy. Me, I was so relieved to be heading away from Bedland, it was as good as a song on the radio.
Turgeon didn't speak until the dull glow of the city was visible; then he half stammered, “That was . . . close.”
He'd pulled my ass out of the fire with Booth, so I was feeling generous.
“Any landing you can walk away from, right, Mr. Turgeon?” I said. “And, hell, you were right about coming tonight. If you'd listened to me and waited until morning, we'd be trying to find Frank Boyle's pieces, no offense.”
“None taken,” Boyle said.
“I was . . . happy to thwart that Detective Booth,” Turgeon said.
I shrugged. “He's not so bad. Good cop. Just has a blind spot.”
“Are you joking?” he asked. When I didn't answer, he added, “You might want to leave that gun with me. I can . . . you know . . . make sure it disappears.”
I pulled out the Walther, emptied the clip, and handed it over. “Not the kind of thing I'd expect from a liveblood attorney, sticking his neck out for a chak. Mind my asking if you do that sort of thing a lot?”
“No,” he said. “Never.”
He opened his glove compartment, tossed in the gun, and pulled out an envelope stuffed with cash.
“How many of those do you usually carry?”
“As many as I think I might need.”
After he handed me the envelope, we all got quiet for a while, but it was a long ride. At some point I turned to the man of the hour, the guy we'd risked our necks for. “Boyle, you really going to use the money to build some kind of shelter for chakz?”
“That's the plan. What do you think, Ashby?”
“Sounds good. Good. Good. Heh-heh.”
I believed him. So who knew? Maybe it was worth it. But every silver lining has a cloud. Something told me I just hadn't found this one yet.
As we passed through the edge of the Bones, I spotted a familiar silhouette by a vacant lot. It was Misty, rubbing a rag against her skirt like she was trying to set it on fire. The shadows farther back in the lot shifted, telling me she wasn't alone.
There was only one thing I could think of that would get her out at this hour: scoring meth. Damn.
“Turgeon, pull over here. Let me out.”
When she saw the Humvee, Misty reared like a deer and looked ready to book. Worried I'd have to chase her down, I popped the door and unbuckled my belt. To my surprise, the minute she saw my kisser, she gave me a big smile. It wasn't drugs then, not with that grin.
Relief washed over me, uncomfortable as any emotion, but not unwelcome. Remembering my manners, I turned back to Turgeon. “Guess this concludes our contract.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“Thanks for helping me out with Booth.”
“You're welcome.”
I was going to tell him he wasn't so bad, but seeing as I hadn't said he was bad in the first place, it didn't seem appropriate. He was probably exhausted from all the excitement, eager to get to some comfy hotel bed, and I doubted I'd be contacting him for an effusive letter of reference anytime soon. So that was about it.
“Good-bye, Mr. Detective, heh-heh.”
“Bye, Ashby. Hey, Boyle?”
“Yeah?”
“You have any trouble when you try to set up that home, you let me know, okay?”
“Will do, Mann.”
I closed the door. The environmental terror headed down the road, a big, bright yellow toy in a junkyard. Case closed.
“What took you so long?” Misty said.
“Traffic,” I said, pointing out at the barren streets. “But what're you doing out at this hour, young lady?”
She made a face, pulled off a flat, and rubbed the bottom of her foot. “That chak you sent me to clean up? He may have had trouble with his finger, but there was nothing wrong with his feet. Took me two hours to chase him down. I had to get Jonesey to help. Got damn bleach all over my skirt. It's ruined.”
One of the shadows shifted into the light. It was Jonesey. The gang was all here.