I don't know why, but I released him. Dumas straightened his jacket, picked his cap up off the sidewalk, and gestured for me to head inside.
He led me to a booth in the back – his usual, it seemed, the one I'd met him in before – and flagged down the bartender, ordering a beer and a shot apiece. When they arrived, Dumas downed his shot and took a pull of beer. I ignored mine. He eyed me a moment, giving me a chance to reconsider, and then shrugged.
'Listen,' he said, 'I'm real sorry about this mornin'. You weren't meant to see that.'
'That doesn't change the fact I did.'
'You're right, of course. I guess I owe you an explanation.'
'What good is explaining gonna do?' I said. 'I'm no dope peddler.'
'Nor am I, Sam – nor am I. But I am in shipping, and if there are people willing to pay mightily for their shipments to arrive in time and unmolested, who am I to turn them away? What is in those shipments is their concern, not mine. And OK, yeah, maybe this time, I knew what was in the suitcase, but so what? These folks ain't giving this shit to schoolchildren, they're running a business. As in, if people wanna buy it, it's none o' mine.'
'You can't expect me to just look the other way, pretend I never saw what I saw. The world doesn't work that way.'
'Believe me, Sam, people see what they choose to see every damn day of their lives. Besides, I'm not the bad guy here, and neither are my clients. You wanna blame somebody, you blame Uncle Sam. These clients o' mine, they were perfectly happy running booze across the border, and wasn't nobody complaining then. But then Repeal yanked the rug right out from under 'em, and what do you expect 'em all to do? They got a right to make a living, after all.'
'Sure, they got a right, only I don't want any part in the living they choose to make. The catch is, now I'm stuck with a car full of dope and nowhere to put it. Or rather, you are, 'cause I'm out.' I slid the keys across the table toward Dumas. They came to rest against his substantial belly, which pressed tight against the table's edge.
'You're out.'
'That's right.'
Dumas nodded, raised his hands in acquiescence. 'All right,' he said. 'I can see you've thought this through. I guess all that's left is the matter of your wife, then. Or had you forgotten?'
'You leave Elizabeth out of this.'
'It'd be a damn shame if she got dropped from the program now – I hear she's makin' such progress, after all.'
'Damn it, she hasn't done anything wrong. You wanna punish me, you go ahead, but you leave her be.'
'Oh, don't worry, Sam, you'll get yours, but the deal was you work for me, your Elizabeth gets the treatment she so desperately needs. You don't work for me, she doesn't – it's as simple as that.'
'You'd really do that to her? You'd really let an honest woman die?'
'Oh, no, Sam – not me. You. You go back on this deal of ours now, it's you who's letting her die. Her blood is on your hands.'
I dropped my gaze then, to the shot that lay in front of me, and to the beer. I stared at them a while, not moving, not speaking. Then I tossed the former back, and chased it with the latter, glugging away at the beer until there was nothing left but foam.
'All right,' I said. 'Just tell me what I need to do.'
Back in the factory, Anders sat huddled beside Pinch, one arm slung around the boy's shoulders. Pinch was shaking, and tears welled in his eyes, but he bit them back. A tough kid, I thought, but still just a kid. I felt sorry for him. I felt sorry for them all.
The sound of sirens cut through the still night air, drifting through the empty window frames and reverberating off the factory walls like an unholy orchestra. We didn't have a lot of time.
I searched the charred wreckage of the chair for the remains of the ceramic cat, but they'd been mostly ground to dust – there wasn't enough left of them to threaten a cockroach, much less a full-sized demon. That left only the shard that I'd removed from Merihem's mouth, its slight weight in my shirt pocket an uncomfortable reminder of just how tenuous a protection it was.
I ushered them out the door and into the van, slamming shut the doors behind them. A glimpse of flashing red and white through an alley, a siren's wail approaching. The van's engine didn't want to catch. Just a sputter, then nothing, over and over again. Eventually, though, it fired to life, and I dropped it into gear, lurching away from the curb without lights and screaming down the street.
'Where are we going?' Kate asked.
'Don't know. First thing is, we've got to find a spot to ditch the van – somebody might've seen us snatch Merihem, and even if they didn't, the thing's too hot to hold for long. After that, you three are gonna hafta hole up a while. I'm gonna try and get some answers.'
'But with Merihem gone, aren't you kinda out of sources?'
'No,' I said, my face set in a frown. 'There is one other.'
19.
'Collector,' she said, a smile dancing across her luscious lips – lips painted a red so deep they looked black by the pale glow of the moon. The color of lust, I thought. Of blood. 'I confess, I was surprised you called – and as you know, I don't surprise easily.'
