The Foul Mouth and the Cat Killing Coyotes (The King Henry Tapes) (12 page)

“At least it doesn’t have bullet—“

“You want to go to jail or you going to leave already?”

“Fine, fine
. . .”

I heard car doors slamming shut and more sirens.  The sirens seemed further away, which means backup coming. 
For that much damage and brass I might see SWAT.
  “Go, I’ll stall them.”

Shutting the backdoor behind me, I jogged back into my shop before I paused. 
Fresno cops
.  Right.  Thing is, Fresno is a shithole, but . . . you know how in some cities you hear about how officers arrived and fired fifty shots and no one was wounded but the suspect, blah blah blah?  With Fresno cops you are a lot more likely to read about how they fired
two
shots and the suspect was killed on the scene.

Way smoother
bastards than Suit and his boys.

Thoughts of all those news
stories filling my head, I paused, planning ahead instead of going my usual route of bashing into something and then tricking my way around it. 
Let them come to me
, I figured.  Plus, I took off my mancer coat.  Nothing bulky to hide a gun with.  Right, that’s better.

I stood there in my shop, leaning against my table
. . . just waiting for the cops to get me.

[CLICK]

“Tell me about the shop.”

Lead cop was gone.  I’d upgraded to a full out detective and won myself a car ride downtown to the Fresno Police Headquarters.

Owing it’s me,
my upgrade ended up female and one of them ready to tear me a new asshole.  Let me tell you something . . . those TV shows with the hot women cops?  Fucking lies.  Detective Ribera was built like a block . . . not even a pear . . . just shoulders and no ass and muscles in places I’ve never even read about in magazines.

She also had no-bullshit eyes.

On account of her being a not-so-pretty-princess and having those eyes, I decided they’d pitted me against one of the best detectives the Fresno PD has.  Yeah, yeah, I’m being misogynistic or sexist or something.  Lies.  This ain’t me.  This is human society.  Good looking people advance easier than ugly looking people.  Probably advance further than they should too, most the time.

Call it King Henry’s Rule of
Fugly.

Still don’t believe me?

See any ugly women running for president lately?

Didn’t think so
. . . I assure you that the first woman president is going to be a serious MILF.

But Detective Ribera?  Not so MILFY.

“Before or after?” I asked.  They’d been nice enough to give me a cup of coffee, so I sipped it.  I wasn’t cuffed.  Wasn’t under arrest.  Just a talk.  In the interrogation room.  With the camera going.  We’re not processing you; we just need to hold the items on you for your safety. 
Nothing to worry about
, they said.  When someone says those words . . . that’s when a smart human being actually starts worrying.

“Let’s go with
before
.”

The interrogation
room or whatever you call it smelled like leaking ass.  Guess they didn’t get many clean upstanding citizens like myself in the place.

“I sold antiques,” I said with a straight face, but being that it’s
my
face it didn’t look very truthful.

“Sold?”

“Yeah. 
Sold
.”

“As in, won’t any longer?”

“Yeah.  Being that my stock just got shot up . . . seems like the time for a change.  You happen to know if Apple stores are franchised?  Could do with a younger demographic I think.”

“Lots of elderly buying your antiques?”

“Only ones mostly.” I took another sip of my coffee.  It was stale coffee but at least it’s something to do.  As far as caffeine goes . . . it’s a better habit than smoking. “Old likes old, I guess.  Likes to remember all those years they got stacked up.  Buy them a piece of their past all rolled up into a fucking teapot.”

Detective Ribera didn’t have time for philosophy.  “
King Henry Price, yes?”

“Yeah.”

“The full name?”

“
King
by itself just sounds stupid, don’t it?”

“
King
with something else sounds pretty stupid too.”

“Zing
. . .”

“You have no record.”

“Not even a little bit?” I asked, kind of surprised and insulted that some cop didn’t put a warning in a file somewhere back in Visalia.

“Nothing.
”  Detective Ribera seemed to think this was interesting.

“Guessing that’s the way it is for most people.”

“There’s nothing and then there’s
nothing
.  You disappeared off the system for seven years.”

“I didn’t disappear, I was in school.”

She dropped it, went back further.  “You were born in Visalia.”

“It’s only been a few hours since this all be
gan,” I pointed out.  “Must got some serious Google-fu in you.”

She
didn’t smile, Detective Ribera didn’t have it in her to smile, but her face muscles twitched as she reached into her pocket and pulled out my ID card.  Not the driver’s license.  The mancer ID card.

. . .
That isn’t good
.

“Has your birth
date and your birthplace on it, your height . . . are you kidding by the way?”

“Tippy-toes don’t count?”

“Not for my boy.”

“Got yourself family?”

“Adopted . . . he’s four.”

“How about that
?”

She waited on me then.  Wanted me to crack or slip or something or other that wouldn’t be good for me.  I could give her a
crack alright.  Crack the see-through window behind her head.  Crack the table.  Crack the cuffs she’d set on the table but not made me wear.  Want to play it tough?  I’ll show you tough.  I wanted nothing but to let loose and unleash the Mancy on someone.

Coyote Nation
shot my place up.  Tried to kill me . . . or at least maim me.  And I got the shit-bucket.  I got the cops. 
Be lucky, assholes; praise that queen-bitch Fate . . . Detective Ribera is the only person in this world keeping me from finding you and smashing your faces in, especially you, Suit
.

“What’s the Institution of Elements?” Ribera finally asked when the silence told her I wasn’t slipping.

“It’s a boarding school.  Some turn of the last century meets Buddha stuff.”

“Religious?”

“Not organized . . . not like that, just . . . original education ideas.”

She tapped my ID with a finger, just above my photo.  “What’s this bit? 
Mancy
type?”

Trust me . . .
I looked as pissed off as always in the photo.  Why?  The very situation I now found myself in.  Why the Asylum think it’s a smart idea to make photo IDs about a
secret magic school
?  Bunch of genius all around, Learning Council, bunch of genius all around.

“Think of it as a
n astrological sign,” was the explanation I went with.

“Geomancer?”

“Love me some dirt.”

“Ultra?”

“
Really
love me some dirt.”

Some more silence.

I still didn’t fill it in.  It was hard.  Damn was it hard.  Every bit of anger in me bubbled.  The Mancy screamed at me.  Draw some anima, King Henry, get the fuck out of here already.  Go deal with the Coyotes . . . screw the police, they got nothing on you.  You haven’t broken a single law.  They haven’t booked you.  Just a nice chat.  You could leave.

Nothing to worry about
.

But then I’d really be
Suspect Number One.

All I needed was some cops following me around
. . .

“Back to the store,” Ribera decided.

“Think we covered it all.  Antiques . . . old people . . . teapots.”

“My question is more this:  why is a twenty-two-year-old man running an antique store?”

“Got to be more questions than just that one . . .”

Ribera nodded, finally putting the heat on.  “Why is an antique store getting shot up by a gang?  Which gang are we talking about?  Who
drove the car that fled the scene?  What happened to the truck?  And why, Mr. Price, do you look so amused about all this instead of scared for your life?”

I thought about it.  She did
have a point.  All them machineguns and not a bit of scared in me.  I’d just looked at the whole situation like a problem and worked to solve it.  T-Bone, I’m pretty sure he really did piss his pants.  Me . . . not a bit.  Not once had I thought about dying.

I mean
. . . I do have the Mancy, but I think we’ve already established that it’s a paper-shield.  My artifacts . . . those were better.  I made them, I could count on them.  Two-hundred-something bullets and I hadn’t been scared a bit . . . just pissed off.  Responses, reactions, clenching those cheeks, throwing myself on the floor not to get hit, yes, but fear?

Nothing.

To think I can still be surprised by the depths of how much I got screwed up by my parents and the Asylum
.  Two-hundred-something bullets and I’d never thought about one cutting through me . . .

“I’ve always been confident in my ability to protect myself,” I eventually said.

“You own a gun?”

“No.”

“In a rival gang?”

“No.”

“Just an idiot who thinks his fists and muscles are going to stop a bullet then?”

“Like that, yeah.”

Ribera stood up from her seat, glanced at the window behind her, then shook her head.  “Is your store a front, Mr. Price?”

“No.”

“Why are you running an antique store of all things?”

“In this economy?”

“Pays good, does it?”

“I’m more than happy to talk to you about my personal life but business is business, you understand.  What if all the other antique stores in town heard about my hard times?”
Damn, was that hard not to smirk over.

“You said you were getting out of the antique business.”

“Seems like a good time, but that don’t mean I’m one-hundred percent on it yet.”

Ribera changed it up again.  “Did you know any of the men who attacked you?”

“Not my type of crowd.”

“Did you recognize the truck?”

“Not that I recall.  It’s a big city . . . I suppose we could have driven past each other before.”

“Can you think of any reason someone would attack you?”

“Sure, not with machineguns though.”

“Ex-girlfriends?”

“Love me some crazy sex . . . but the crazy breakups . . .”

“How did you survive?”

“I was on the floor.”

“Were you alone in the shop?”

“I think I’ve been very nice about this, but I remind you:  I’m the one who got shot at.”

Ribera
finally smiled.  Damn, you only had to see that thing once to realize why she rarely did it.  “I don’t need reminding about that, Mr. Price.”

I took a moment to briefly wonder how much trouble I was actually in.  I doubt I
’d go to jail.  I hadn’t done anything worth going to jail over . . .
yet
.  But having the cops up my ass? Probably in my future.  More trips downtown?  Yup.  Cops stopping by my shop?  Yup.  Ceinwyn being all pissed off at me . . .
double yup
.

Ceinwyn
. . . wonder what the Learning Council could do about this?  I didn’t want to have to call her though.  I’d have to tell her about the Coyotes and then she’d be freaking out.  If she was at the Asylum I’d have
her
up my ass in a few hours too.

My life had to stay open.  Cops and Ceinwyn both had to stay away from me.  At least long enough for me to have a chat with King
Vega and his boy Suit.  Of course . . . I had no idea where the Coyotes were at . . .
shit . . .

Who could find out for me?

Ceinwyn . . .

Runny ice cream shit
. . .

T-Bone
?

Like he reminded me earlier, h
e worked on a number of security systems for the cops and sheriffs and stuff . . . he might be able to do some searching for me. 
Only he’s too much of a polite stand-up guy to actually break any rules . . .

“Tell me about the backroom,” Ribera said, crossing her arms and staring me down.  Nope, not MILFY at all.  That face didn’t buy a single thing I was selling.  She knew something was strange about me.  She wanted to know what it was
. . . and what it had to do with gang warfare in Fresno.