'Better at giving favors than receiving them?'
'Name's Angel. Fuck you.'
'You owe me something for that shirt you just wasted.'
She looked at the dripping cloth she'd been wiping herself with. 'Yeah, you and every Ziphead this side of nirvana.'
'Your trip an old debt coming home?'
'Wow, Kit, you have a grasp of the obvious that's worthy of a cop.' She stood up—most of the filth was 10ft
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out of her spotted brown fur—walked over to the window and slapped the wet shirt across his midsection.
'Your shirt.'
Nohar wrung out the shirt and tied it around his waist. 'Thanks, Angel— Can you help? I need someone with better vision than I have.'
Angel sighed. 'What you want?'
'I need to find a window overlooking a ranch house with a shot-out picture window.'
'You say shot?' A real smile overcame the ghost of the scar.
'Yes. I can't pick it out—'
She shook her head. 'Kit, I didn't know the cops were hiring—'
'I am not a cop!'
Angel stepped back, still smiling, showing a pair of prominent front teeth. 'Sore point? What are you, then? What you looking for?'
'I'm a private detective. I'm trying to find a sniper.'
She laughed and said, 'I can tell you who. What I get?'
It took Nohar half a second to realize she was serious. He closed the distance between them in an instant and grabbed her shoulders. There was a brief adrenaline rush, but he contained it.
'Tell me.'
'Not for nothing.'
'What do you want?'
'You played the savior, play it all the way. I want protection. You're a big one, Kit. Keep Zipheads from expressing me to nowhere again.'
She had him. He'd gone to the trouble of saving her life. Now, he had to make it worth something.
Nohar looked into her eyes and she stopped smiling. 'I will, if you tell me two things. First, why are they after you?'
She shrugged. 'Made stupid mistake. I tried to keep Stigmata, my gang, going after the Zips moved in.
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Didn't know then that they were backed from downtown. My clutch didn't fall off the map, so got erased.'
Nohar could live with that. 'You on flush—or anything else?'
'Do I look stupid?'
He told himself not to answer that.
He might as well play the Samaritan while he could.
'You get the couch.'
CHAPTER 10
Nohar didn't see any rats when he parked the Jerboa across from his office. He hoped that meant Fearless Leader and his cronies were laying low. Even so, he was nervous, and Angel was more so. He gave her his shirt—it dragged on the ground when she wore it—and had her hold her ears down.
With ears down and her body covered, she could pass for a deformed rat.
It was the longest three blocks Nohar had ever walked.
They got to his apartment, and no ambush was waiting for them. Nohar breathed easier once he managed to unwedge the warped door and close it behind them.
Cat ran up, as usual, and seemed puzzled to find one of Nohar's shirts moving under its own power. When Angel lowered a hand, Cat shied away and hissed, but the moment she stopped paying attention to him, Cat attacked the end of her foot that stuck out from under the edge of the shirt.
'Ouch! Shit, Kit, put a leash on it.'
'His name is Cat. If you have an argument with his behavior, you have to take it up with him. He doesn't listen to me.'
Cat backed up, crouched, shook his ass back and forth, and pounced on Angel's exposed toes.
Angel jerked her foot up and Cat tumbled back into the living room. She twitched her nose and snorted. 'You think that name up by yourself?'
Angel unbuttoned the shirt and took it off. She FORESTS OF THE NIGHT
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tossed it so it landed on Cat. Cat found the shirt more absorbing than Angel's toes, and he started rolling across the living room floor buried inside it. Occasionally a paw would come out and swipe at the air. Angel made for the
couch. Nohar went into the kitchen and filled a bottle of water. When he returned with it, she took the bottle and started drinking greedily.
By the time she'd finished her first bottle, Nohar had already made the trip for the second one. She drank this one more leisurely, and her story came out. Angel had seen the sniper on the twenty-fourth, the stormy Thursday. 'Ancient history now,' she said. Stigmata still had a few loyal holdouts at the time.
By then, though, the Zips had confined Stigmata's turf to the tower. War was about to break out all over. Everyone knew that. The Zips were going to vanish the remaining gangs. Only three were left—Babylon, Vixen, and Stigmata. According to Angel, Vixen's last shred of territory was the strip of Mayfield Road between Kenelworth and the concrete barrier, and Babylon was hunkered down in an enclave somewhere on Morey Hill.
Everyone was edgy. There was always someone watching, hidden behind a wall of rubble in the lobby. Angel, and the rest of them, wanted the chance to take some ratboys down with them. The twenty-fourth was her watch and Thursday was the night all hell broke loose. Angel thought Stigmata must've been the first of the mopup because the Zips must've realized there were only six members left.
The Zips weren't subtle about it. They announced their presence by having a burning station wagon rocket into the building. She told him car wrecks were a territorial symbol for the Zips. The wagon was loaded with explosives and went off in the lobby. Not enough to do any major damage, but enough to spook the whole building and knock Angel out before she could get warning upstairs.
She was only out a few minutes, just long enough
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for her and the ratboys to miss each other. The rats had made their way upstairs and she could hear gunfire and fighting above her. The Zips had left three as rearguard to catch stragglers. Two brown males and a white female hung around the open stairwell. Angel said she wanted to be sure of taking down one particular rodent. They didn't know she was there, the fighting covered her noise and the garbage covered her smell. She aimed her Nicaraguan ten-millimeter at the white one's head. Their leader, Angel said.
She was about to lay a slug right between the white rat's eyes when the canine showed.
'This guy was a chiller, Kit. Should've seen that righteous weapon.'
From Angel's description, that 'righteous weapon' had to be a Levitt. It was two meters long, with a scope the length and twice the diameter of Angel's forearm. The canine was carrying the weapon in one hand, a tripod in
