Wild Hunt (7 page)

“Great-uncle. My grandfather’s elder by ten years.” The picture showed a very young man, stuck in among men in their thirties, with the exception of one very polished man with white hair. “He had the sense not to do what my grandfather did.”

She was silent again. I glanced at the other men—and one woman, I finally noticed, though she had faded into the background so much that there might have been an aversion ward on the photograph. She stood behind the man with the impressive mustache, possessively close to him, and her dark features and the feather knotted into her hair marked her as more of a native than any of the men. There was something vaguely familiar about not just her, an element of her stillness maybe, but also about the man she was with. Maybe without the mustache…

Elizabeth turned the photo over to show the blank, unfaded spots on the back and the rusting staples that had held the two sought-after pages. “They couldn’t get the pages, and they taped my mouth before I could tell them I’d burned the foul things. But they were partly successful.” She turned the photo around again, this time so that she could examine it, and a sad smile flickered around her lips. “They stole the jar that once held my grandfather.”

I
got maybe ten paces out of the Three Cranes before noticing the guy on the corner. He wasn’t one of the three idiots who’d robbed the place; he was older, maybe in his fifties, and lacking the rough-edged incompetence that had been their greatest strength. He wore a black suit, more than a little at odds with his sunburned skin, and the lazy carelessness in how he leaned against a bus sign seemed to imply that he’d be much more at home in a smoky room with a drink to hand.

It’s an easy trick to tell when you’re being watched; anyone can do it, and we do, regularly. The trouble is telling who’s watching you. I had something of an advantage in that regard, but even so, I couldn’t quite tell where this guy’s heavily hooded eyes were looking. All I had was that prickle on the back of my neck.

After a day like today, though, that was enough. I tracked the man back to his aging sports car, then followed him out of Chinatown and into the vast wasteland of parking lots on the far side of Fort Point Channel, and that’s where I lost him. It wasn’t entirely my fault; traffic had thinned out to the point where I couldn’t keep up by weaving through the jams, and every third car in these lots was too similar to the one I’d followed. I slowed as I passed the courthouse, angling between rows of parked cars.

Which was when someone entirely new came out from behind an SUV with a baseball bat. I yelled and twisted out of the way, but there are some maneuvers that aren’t safe on gravel-choked pavement, and that’s one of them. The bike went down and I went with it, scraping my left leg all to hell. My cleats caught in the pedal again, and I dragged my other foot out of the way, digging a divot out of my shin.

“Shit!” I rolled away from the bike, then rolled again, this time away from the guy with the bat, who didn’t seem to hold to the principle of helping up a fallen opponent. His stained shirt read
YANKEES SUCK
in flaking letters, a sentiment that I’d normally agree with if the owner weren’t trying to bash my head in. The bat hit the ground between me and the bike, splintering a little, and at the back of my brain the uninvolved, gibbering part of me got pissed off that he was ruining a good baseball bat.

I finally found my footing and managed to block the next hit by catching the bat with both hands as he raised it, before he could put any weight behind the swing. “What the fuck are you doing?” I snarled, some stupid instinct telling me to keep my voice down.

Yankees Suck managed a shrug—I’m not sure how he managed it while trying to wrest the bat back from me, but the meaning came across. “Just a job.”

“Just a—”

The perky chime of a cell phone interrupted me. Yankees Suck immediately reached back with one hand. “Yeah,” he answered, paying no attention to my utter bewilderment. “Yeah, she’s here. It’s for you.” He held out the phone to me.

There was only so much bizarro-world I could take in a day, and this was rapidly approaching my limit. I yanked the bat away from him, then took the phone, backing away as I did so. “Yeah?”

“Sorry, Hound,” said a man’s voice. “Wanted to see how you react in a crisis.”

My mom always said that if I left my mouth open,
flies would get in, and it’s a wonder I didn’t get a mouthful right then. Plus, my leg was starting to throb from the skinning I’d given it. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“Over to the left. Sorry, my left, your right.” I glanced off to the right (Yankees Suck didn’t move; in fact, he seemed to have lost interest completely) and saw the man in black standing on the other side of the chain fence that separated parking lot from sidewalk. He waved, and I started to wave back before realizing that I still held the bat. “Can we talk?”

“Can I have my phone back now?” Yankees Suck said.

“Jesus Christ on a three-legged mule,” I muttered, and clicked the phone shut. Yankees Suck took it out of my hand, but when I—out of whatever shock-induced courtesy—held up the bat, just shook his head. Yeah, I didn’t want it either. I dragged my bike upright, checking to make sure it hadn’t suffered any damage (it hadn’t; I’d taken the worst of it), and glanced at the man in black.

What the fuck. Why not? If I didn’t, he’d pull something like this again. At least this way I could tell him to go away. I took a deep breath to shake the worst of the adrenaline away (it didn’t work; I’d still have the shakes pretty soon), and nodded.

The man waited till we’d reached a gap in the fence, then handed Yankees Suck a wad of bills, and Yankees Suck walked off counting them. I eyed him as he passed, but he paid me no attention. The new guy, though…despite his Johnny Cash aesthetic, the clothes didn’t look quite right for him. He wasn’t bad-looking, though, in that older-man kind of way, and the smile he turned on me was pure charm. “I’ve got something for your leg, if you need it. Sorry about that; I asked him to scare you, not outright attack.”

I shook my head. Faced with this blasé response, I didn’t think shouting would do much good. “However much you paid him, it’s not enough.” I pointed over
my shoulder. “You see that big brick building? That’s a federal courthouse. You want to know what assault on federal property works out to?”

He grinned and pushed away from the fence. Something about the movement seemed familiar; I’d seen that simple grace before, in someone else. “I don’t see anyone riding to your rescue.”

Okay, so he had a point.

He waited until I crossed the gate to the sidewalk, then ambled over to me. He had white-blond hair and a nasty sunburn, or else he was just so pale that blood showed up too easily; I felt a faint twinge of sympathy and rubbed at the dark spots on my hands—tan now, but reminders of the burn I’d had at the beginning of the summer. “You’re a hard woman to get hold of,” he said. “Got a few minutes?”

“You could have just left a message.”

“Okay, okay, you’re a busy woman, I understand that.” He raised both hands. “Ten minutes. That’s all.”

After a stunt like that, I’d normally have been inclined to say fuck off, but at that moment I realized why he seemed so out of place in the city. It was his smell. It wasn’t that he smelled wrong—few people do, when you get down to it—but something about it just…got to me. There was an element of musk to it, and sweat, and hair, and combined with the aftershave he was wearing (one of the cheap brands that passed for expensive) it gave me the feeling that he was wearing a mask of some kind, hiding something a bit more animal than the smiling face before me.

Nothing against animals—by some standards, I was one, and my scent had its own mark of wet dog on certain days—but somehow this one went straight to my hindbrain and twaddled everything there, mixing up flight responses with confusion and an odd fascination.
Just till I figure this out
, I told myself.
Just for ten minutes
.

“Karl Janssen,” he said, holding out one red and callused hand.

I didn’t shake it just yet. Instead I looked him up and down, then unclipped my helmet and shook my hair out. Ever since my involuntary haircut, I’d had to get used to the lack of a braid down my back, and for some reason it made me feel naked. “Not here,” I said. “If we’re going to talk, let’s not do it right out here on the street.”

Janssen grinned. The man was like a damn jack-in-the-box. “Anywhere’s fine. Dinner, maybe, or I can buy you a drink.”

It should have come off as sleazier than it did; this man was old enough to be my father. But there was an edge of charisma to it, long blunted, that weird kind of allure that makes you feel like you’re the center of the universe. “This way,” I said finally, and turned toward the channel.

I led him down under the bridge to the boardwalk that runs between the Children’s Museum and the Barking Crab. Our feet thudded over the boards, echoing off the low bridge above. Someone had stashed a blanket in one of the niches, and a seagull had found it, jabbing at it in case there was food. It flew away as we approached, crying an idiot lament.

I paused halfway under the bridge, the flow of traffic above me, the flow of tides before me. It wasn’t truly protected, but the currents were enough to disrupt anyone trying to watch, and on the more mundane level, there were people to either side. And if something went wrong—which, after all, was a possibility—I could attract attention easily.

Janssen sniffed at the culinary scents from the Barking Crab. “Here?”

“Here’s fine.”

He chuckled. “I never did understand all the weird conditions you guys had for meetings. Bridges, islands—would you believe one of your lot had me meet him in a subway tunnel?”

“I’d believe it.”
One of your lot
? The hell?

I must have let something show on my face, because he stepped back, raising his hands as if to push me away. “Sorry, sorry. Didn’t mean to associate you with them. You’re different, yeah, I understand that.” He did a weird sort of head tilt too, lifting his chin as if to point with it, exposing the shadow of an Adam’s apple in his throat.

I set my helmet at my feet, then straightened up, aware on some visceral level of how he looked at the gap where my shirt fell open. It wasn’t even a come-on, just an acknowledgment of my femininity, what little of it there was. It said a lot about my state of mind that I was grateful for even that. “Do you mean the community-watch thing? They haven’t had any meetings beyond the first one, as far as I know. And yeah, you can associate me with them if you like.” Not that it made much of a difference.

Janssen smiled. “No, no…cute, but no. I’m talking about the big guys. You know them?”

Even if this wasn’t undercurrent cryptic, it was still cryptic, and I didn’t much care for it. “Not really. Look, what do you want from me?”

“Well, you’re the Hound, right? Wanted to be sure I got that right.” He waited, and after a moment, I nodded. Not like I could hide that, these days. “Okay. Well, first of all, I gotta say I like how the city is now. I’ve been in and out of this town coming on four decades, and this whole shakeup is, way I see it, good for everyone involved.”

“Get to the point.” A seagull dove under the bridge and veered around us, squalling.

Janssen shook his head. “Not much for small talk, are you? Or what was it you folks call it? Blarney?”

Any Irish I had in me was outnumbered by generic pasty mongrel, but I knew that wasn’t what he meant. The part of me that drove my talent was Irish, and old-blood Irish at that. Very old.

Janssen didn’t seem to care that I hadn’t agreed or
disagreed. “What I’m saying is this: I understand that there’s a new setup in the city. I’m fine with that—I’m flexible.”

New setup?
He doesn’t mean Sarah’s group
, I thought, and the back of my neck went cold.

“But you’re going to need contacts,” he went on. “Go-betweens. Especially if you’re planning the sort of action that I’ve heard about—and by the way, I will forgive you for not cutting me in on that, but I don’t mind telling you that you lost out on a lot by not contacting me first. I mean, you could get a much better deal through me than on your own. I’m hurt, really I am.” He waited to see if I’d elaborate; not knowing a thing about it, I stayed mute. “Besides, I am the best of the best when it comes to easing the way for dealings with the big guys. You’ll want help.”

I swallowed, hoping still that I’d misinterpreted what he’d said. “And what makes you think I’m the person to go to?”

Janssen shrugged. “Stands to reason, doesn’t it? I mean, I know the bright boys have gone under, and you’re the one who gets credited as the cause of it. Now, I’m not sure I buy everything they’re saying—I mean, no offense to you, you look pretty capable, but anything on that scale isn’t a one-man setup. So you must have had some good backers.”

I didn’t answer. Yeah, I’d had good backers. Divine intervention, even, depending on how narrowly you wanted to define
divine
.

Janssen seemed relieved that I didn’t argue the point. “So I know the traditions you guys had. The one who brings down the old boss becomes the new boss.” He glanced at the children running up and down the boardwalk, then sidled closer. “You didn’t really bite his head off, did you? Because damn, that’s hardcore.”

“I didn’t.” Not technically. My mouth was full of the remembered taste of blood. “And that’s why you figure I’m in charge now?”

“That’s how it’s done here.” He said it as one might
state any other fact: the sky is clear, the ocean is salty, Genevieve Scelan is the Hound. “I mean, that’s how it’s done everywhere. Even if it’s not technically the guy who held the gun stepping into the boss’s shoes, it’s still the same chain, the same pattern.”

I turned red under my sunburn and had to swallow before answering, forcing down my gut reaction—which was mostly profanity, and there were kids nearby.
String him along
, the rational part of me thought,
keep him talking, get what you can out of him and then go home and wash off the slime
.

But the slime itself was becoming almost irrelevant to the keening at the back of my mind. The Fiana were gone, their power broken, the last stragglers leaving one by one. I hadn’t killed Boru just to take his place. Had I?

Did it even matter
why
I’d done it?

A truck rumbled overhead, drowning out thought and speech both. “And so you want to be part of the new situation,” I said thickly once it was gone. “That’s a little crass, isn’t it?”

“That’s business,” he said, again simple as truth. “I’m not a partisan—I can’t afford to be, in my work. I don’t make alliances, I make connections, and if one connection goes dead there’s a dozen others. I can’t afford to get a name as someone who gets tied to one faction.” A boat coasted down the channel behind him, trailing gas rainbows in its wake, and he waved. No one on the boat acknowledged him. “Besides, you need me,” he added in an undertone.

Now the spotlight charm seemed something else, like I was caught in a greasy flame rather than the center of the universe. The man had all the oiliness of a cheese left out in the sun.
Time to end this
, I thought. “I think we’re done here,” I said, and started back toward the street.