No Rest for the Wicked (9 page)

“You're an asshole,” I told him, holding my head to make it stop vibrating.

“Yeah. Well.” Breathing hard, Caballo threw himself back into the chair, picking up his game again and resuming play, despite a swollen eye and split lip. “Takes one to know one.”

“I don't ever want one of you bastards anywhere near him.”

“Got the message loud and clear.” Caballo grinned. “Hell, he must be something else.”

“He is,” I said quietly.

Caballo gave me a look with his one good eye. “Listen to me. You know why I hook up with a different one every night? I don't want to get attached to them.”

“Them?” What the hell was he talking about?

“Mortals, man. Life is short, Adam. Really short.”

My lip was bleeding. I touched it with the back of my hand and said, “Asshole. Just stay away from him.”

The van lurched to a stop, and Drew turned around in his seat, calling through the tiny window, “We're home, boys.”

Betsy gave Caballo and me the eye when we walked in bloody and disheveled, but all she said was, “Have a seat.”

Betsy's dark hair, dark eyes, and diminutive frame were not the only things about her that reminded me of a rat. She was a hoarder. Headquarters was filled with the various objects she'd ferreted out of dumpsters or found abandoned by the curb. The only reason the rooms weren't an intolerable rat's nest of her treasures was Drew, who would surreptitiously cart the trash out again. One night, Betsy had scavenged a long folding table and some really uncomfortable chairs from somewhere. Unfortunately, Drew hadn't been able to dispose of these yet, and periodically Betsy would make us all sit at the table and have a meeting.

It reminded me of the murder room at the old Hollywood station, actually. We even had a patch of moldy carpeting and a water stain in the asbestos tile hanging overhead. As I sat there watching Drew and Betsy set up, I remembered a night years back when I was still working with Peter in Hollywood Homicide, when the rain had come right through the tile. Peter and I had been going over a case with Leroy Smith and Bernice, back before Bernice had been made adjutant to the chief. We were closing the files. We had the guy and were now involved in the lengthy process of dotting all the i's for the DA's office. Peter and I had just discovered that we batted for the same team, and I looked up and saw Peter gazing at me across the top of a file, his eyes hot. And I was just thinking that maybe tonight I should follow him home when the steady
drip drip
of the rain outside suddenly became a rushing noise, and then the whole wall behind Peter was covered with bits of asbestos tile and dirty water.

“Adam, are you listening?”

I snapped to attention, pulling my feet off the table and leaning forward so the chair righted itself and both my feet hit the floor. “Yeah?”

Betsy leveled a murderous look down the long table. “You're the one who wants us to work with the cops. Least you could do is pay attention.” Frank sat in a chair near her elbow, and she put a hand on his head. Betsy had dressed him in an overly cute rose-colored shirt with a smiling cat on it, and she'd styled his hair. He vibrated continuously, the whites of his eyes showing every time he glanced at Caballo. He resembled nothing so much as one of those terrified little dogs women carry around in their purses.

Betsy lay a comforting hand on his head and pet him exactly like a shih tzu. “Don't worry,”

she crooned.

“I'm hungry,” whispered Frank. When he talked, his tiny white canines showed. Poor kid had absolutely no control, and I wondered suddenly if that had something to do with the age at which he'd been turned.

“You've consumed thirteen pints in less than twelve hours,” said Drew, sounding interested. “That's twice the normal amount for an adult.”

Frank's eyeballs seemed bigger than his entire face. “I'm hungry,” he said again. “I can't help it.”

“You can eat when we're through here,” said Betsy. She turned back to a computer monitor that Drew had mounted on a desk at the head of the table.

“Drew was online, following info about your stiff at the Chinese, and he found this Web site.”

The monitor featured a highly dynamic Web site, animated letters proclaiming TAKE

OUT THE TRASH whipping across flashing images of bad guys held in compromising positions by ninjalike warriors. Fast, stylized, black and red, it looked like a comic book.

“Check it out.” Caballo selected a button on the screen, and a young, lithe woman fully clothed in black latex appeared to jump-kick the camera lens. He clicked on another button, and a man efficiently decimated four ugly thugs à la Jackie Chan. Another, and a scrolling list of prices and services appeared.

There was no contest. The new kids on the block were cooler than us.

Drew looked chagrined. “I could have done something like that, but Betsy wanted to keep a low profile.”

“Don't be stupid,” said Betsy.

“Anyway, these same guys are offering a lot of money to anyone who comes up with the cloud code,” said Drew.

“From what you told me, every cyber freak in the world is looking for that code. What makes you think there's a connection?”

“Frank, tell Adam what the man told you.”

Frank stared at me, his Adam's apple bobbing as he swallowed hard and whispered, “He said I'd be able to beat the shit out of my stepfather. He said they'd teach me how to fight.”

Frank's brow produced two deep worried lines, and he looked up at Betsy. “I didn't understand.”

She petted his hair again. “I know you didn't.” She looked at me. “They're recruiting kids.

They asked Frank first if he'd ever been arrested.”

I studied the kid. No arrests would mean no fingerprints on file. No way to trace the doers.

When the Mexican vampire gang had recruited bikers, they'd been turning men with criminal records. Peter had been able to use DNA left on the bite wounds to identify the killers and track their whereabouts through known associates. These kids would have no records, no trace.

“So, I sent them an e-mail, and a dude named Mitch invited me to their rave tonight,” said Drew.

“Who's the DJ?” asked Caballo.

“Dead Mouse.”

Caballo stretched, cracking muscles in his back as he did so. “I'm in.”

“This isn't a party,” snapped Betsy.

“We should bring Peter in on this,” I insisted. “Especially if underage citizens are at risk.”

“What do you think will happen to these kids once the system gets hold of them? Foster care? Back to their parents? Are you kidding, Adam?”

She had a valid point. “Peter will figure something out.”

Betsy looked doubtful. Her estimation of the LAPD was somewhat lower than mine. “I want to talk to him. Get something in writing.”

I tried to imagine what kind of legally binding document Peter could produce to protect underage living dead runaways. “I'll get him to come up with something.”

Betsy had a truculent expression, but she nodded and I pressed my speed dial.

“Hey,” I said when Peter answered. “Were your ears burning?”

“Everything is burning,” he said in a congested voice. “I feel like shit. But that's not the worst of it. Suits has disappeared.”

“I thought he was in protective custody.”

Peter coughed, wheezed. “He was. Somebody claiming to be LAPD called his house yesterday, according to his wife. Changed the location of the pickup.”

“You know who this somebody was by any chance?”

“Jesus Christ, of course not. Anyway, the FBI has boxed everything up and carted it away.

It's like the whole case never existed.”

“So you're off the case?” I asked hopefully.

“No, Adam,” he said testily. “I'm on the case. I just don't have access to any of the information I need to solve it.” He paused and I heard the honking sound of him blowing his nose. “I have to fill out a form just to see the murder book.”

“Well, then, we might have a lead for you.”

“That's the sexiest thing you've ever said to me,” he declared. “What is it?”

“Thing is, there's underage kids involved.”

“Crap.”

“Betsy wants assurances about them.”

“What kind of assurances?”

As if she knew what he'd asked, Betsy said, “He has to promise he won't turn them in to Social Services without talking to me first.”

“She wants you to leave them in her hands.”

“Adam, you know I can't…”

“Right.” I looked up at Betsy, and gave her a nod. “He says you got it.”

Betsy's cunning far outstripped her intellect. Her eyes narrowed suspiciously. “I want it in writing.”

“Sure. Sure. He'll have everything by tonight.”

“What?” said Peter into my ear. “What are you promising her, Adam?”

I held Betsy's gaze as I rattled the address of the warehouse into the phone.

“Good,” said Peter, taking it down. “What's your plan?”

“We've got a lead into the place. Drew is set to meet somebody at a rave.”

“Nancy might have a surveillance team at her disposal,” he said excitedly. “Where can we meet you?”

I put my finger over the receiver. “You want him to come here?”

“I don't want him knowing our location.”

“You've got to be kidding me.”

She lit a cigarette and exhaled before saying, “He's your friend, not mine.”

She had a point. “Peter,” I said. “I'll pick you up at your place and lead you to a meet location.” Betsy crossed her arms and nodded.

He sighed. “Fine. Hold on.” He moved the phone away from his mouth then, and I could hear his voice, quick, terse, and low, talking to someone else. Then he came back on the line.

“Okay. Nancy is getting her team together. We'll meet up at my place. I'll call and confirm with you at sunset.”

“You got it.” I disconnected and looked up to see Caballo watching me from across the table.

“So I finally get to meet the hottie boyfriend?”

“What is your problem?”

“Me? I got no problem, dog. You're the one's got a problem.” He grinned wolfishly, and his gaze went from me to where Betsy was feeding Frank across the room. “You the one hates hisself.”

“I don't need psychoanalysis from some whore gangbanger,” I said, standing and going to the door that led to the roof access stairs. “I'm going up top.”

“Running away from the truth,” Caballo called after me. “Ain't that what Jerry Springer would say?”

“Fuck off.” I shut the door on his knowing expression.

* * *

Up top was a four-by-four tar paper and concrete shell on the roof of our building. It was the only place we could smoke during daylight hours and it was hot and uncomfortable and, for the likes of me, an edgy, itchy place, with the sunlight inches away, its heat crawling through the hairs on my arms.

I liked to hang out there anyway. It wasn't easy being shut up in the dark. Plus, the proximity to certain immolation gave me a tense, aware feeling I'd craved in life and seldom felt now that I was dead.

I lit up and tossed the match across the line where the shadow of the doorway crossed into the sun. A pile of those twisted sticks lay out there. I smoked and studied the buildings across the way, trying not to think about what Caballo had said.

Across from the Empress Diner was a two-story building that housed a series of beauty parlors, black-market DVD distributors, dry cleaners, and a Chinese market that featured a four-feet-high barrel of dried mushrooms. I'd spent enough hours in this sweat box, smoking and watching, that I'd memorized every Chinese character painted across the windows and noticed any change.

Today, I saw a couple of figures in the noticeable red uniform of the Red Patrol, the privately financed, Chinese American security group that worked in tandem with the Chinese businessmen and the LAPD, having a serious conversation with the old woman who ran the grocery. They were showing her some photographs, I guessed. The old lady was shaking her head repeatedly.

I watched as they headed to the next shop. After some minutes a skinny old man holding a broom came to the door with them. He pointed at our diner, and I saw the faces with their high-tech headphones and helmets turn our way.

Chinatown is its own ecosystem. The Red Patrol has been found to be useful at getting past the brick wall of the community. I wondered who they might be searching for and who might have sent them.

I stashed the information away for further use. The one thing we did
not
want was the LAPD searching our building. Four refrigerator units filled with neatly labeled semilegal blood would be a hell of a thing to explain.

I stubbed out my cigarette and jumped down to the floor below. Betsy and Frank were out of sight. Caballo was curled up in a corner, making a pig of himself with a bag of blood, and Drew had moved from the meeting table to his gaming setup. I saw a cartoon character that looked a lot like a vampire on there and was drawn to stand behind him and frown at it.

“The Red Patrol is searching for someone,” I told Drew. “Where's Betsy?”

“She's talking to Frank.” The vampire in Drew's game had a cape that fell to his ankles.

Not very practical, if you asked me.

“What's that?”

“My avatar for Quake.”

“Is that the game that Caballo was talking about?”

Drew rolled his eyes up and looked at me like I was lame and old and impossible—which, well yeah, guilty.

“Dude, everybody knows Quake.” He slipped his headphones on and began slamming the mouse on the desktop.

I wondered if there was any more of the O in the fridge and was rifling through the bags there when Caballo sidled up and said, low, “Hey, man. Betsy wants to talk to me in private.”

Caballo had a look and a leer that told me what that talk would be about. I glanced at Drew. Poor little robot had no idea.

“Keep the kid and the geek busy,” said Caballo. “Help yourself to blood, and if you look in the cabinet there, I scored some of those crullers you like.”

“Sure. C'mere kid.” Frank rolled his eyes toward me and came a little closer at a kind of sideways crabwalk, one eye on the doors to Betsy's room.

I made Frank and myself a lunch of blood and doughnuts. Hey, don't knock it till you've tried it. I stuck Caballo's Game Boy in the kid's hands and then I moved over to Drew's workstation, pulling out a chair. There was a digital timer on one of his monitors that reported the exact time of sunset in Los Angeles. It told me I had over two hours to kill.