have a name, an address, anything?”
“Not this time. I think G scared him-he kept asking the poor guy all these stupid questions.”
“They weren’t stupid!” Garcia was full of righteous indignation. “I just asked him what his deal was.”
I winced. If the poor guy was legit he couldn’t have enjoyed that. If he wasn’t…well, let’s just say he was now definitely aware he was under suspicion. “Hold on, slow down. Ms. Walker, a second ago you said, ‘Not this time.’ Does that mean he gave you a card or something another time he was here?”
“I think so, yeah.”
I did my best to remain calm. “Any possibility it’s still around? That you could find it?”
“It might be in the crud drawer. That’s where the rubber bands from the newspaper and, like, twist ties and all the useless stuff like that goes.” She smiled beatifically, as if this breakthrough in domestic order was hers and hers alone.
I smiled back as charmingly as I could manage. “Any chance you could go see if it’s there, Ms. Walker?” Because if this guy
Two minutes later, after a great deal of rummaging noises and mumbled curses, Posie Walker reappeared in triumph waving a white cardboard rectangle. “Found it!”
I tried not to look too eager as I reached out for it. G-Man was watching me with the kind of hero- worshipping attention that I knew was going to cause trouble somewhere up the line. The card itself was simple- just a few lines in the same neat black italics as the folder I’d photographed:
There was a phone number too, which I immediately dialed. No longer in service, of course. “How long ago did you say he left?”
“’Bout half an hour,” Garcia informed me. “You gonna go after him? Can I tag?”
I briefly considered telling him my real feelings, but decided I might need something from him or Posie later on. “No, I need you to stay here in case he gets in touch again. And if he does,
“Under control, Mr. Dollar.” He all but saluted. A couple of days ago he had been waving a gun in my face, now this dumbass was ready to follow me around like a baby duck. I don’t know, sometimes I think I’m an idiot magnet.
I was back on the Bayshore a few minutes later, this time heading toward Southport. I knew East Charleston Road fairly well because it wasn’t that far from where Sam lived, a neighborhood that had fallen on tough times twice, first in the seventies when the cargo-handling industry took a hit from competition across the bay, then again twenty years later when Shoreline Amusement Park closed for good. What remained were little business parks, storage lockers, and party supply warehouses, as well as a few apartment buildings and stores catering to a local population of retired longshoremen, general rummies, and of course the occasional angel.
As I made my way down Charleston toward the bay I could see the skeletal remains of Shoreline Park off to my right, the great fretwork arch of the Whirlaway coaster draped across the face of the waxing moon like a spiderweb. People were always coming up with new projects that were going to turn the little manmade island back into a dynamo of the local economy-hotels, office complexes, even one plan for a mid-bay golf course-but somehow they all came to nothing, and the abandoned amusement park just kept getting rustier and more decrepit. Nowadays it mainly got used as a location for low-budget zombie apocalypse movies.
4442 East Charleston was pretty much what I’d figured it would be, one of those single-story warehouse condos for small wholesalers and light retail, the business equivalent of the Island of Misfit Toys. Suite D was empty and shuttered, also as I expected. I should have brought my break-in tools (again, none of your business) but they were in one of the packing boxes from my apartment, and I hadn’t had the time to find them. Anyway, it was impossible to tell from outside when anyone had last occupied the office suite, but just for due diligence I knocked loudly several times.
No response from the Magian Society folks, but a dissheveled guy with several days’ growth of beard finally came out of the C space next door and asked me who I was looking for. I wondered if his wife had kicked him out and he’d moved into his shop (which turned out to be true). He ran a little grinding business, specializing in the sharpening of some kind of exotic industrial cutting blades, and was quite willing to talk-a little too willing. He told me within the first minute that he’d never seen the tenants of Suite D, had no idea what they did or sold, and had often wondered if anyone was using the space at all, but it took me another ten minutes to get away from him, and I had to admire some of his machinery and reject several offers of a beer first.
All the way back across the city to my motel I rolled the newest bits around in my mind. I had confirmation of a connection between the African gentleman and the Magian Society, and I had a name for him, or at least a pseudonym. Also, judging by how quickly he’d scuttled over to cover his tracks at the Walker place, I was pretty sure that he knew I was looking for him. I had got the name of the landlord for the Charleston address from the grinder guy and decided that might be a place to start tomorrow, if luck kept the local deaths down to a minimum, so I had some free time.
Of course, no sooner did I think this than the phone rang, summoning me to a heart attack in a Spanishtown apartment building.
The deceased, who seemed to be the beloved patriarch of a large Honduran-American family, eventually turned out to be a nasty old bastard who defeated my best efforts to paint him as a product of his culture and era. He hadn’t actually killed or raped anyone, but his record was poor, and I was lucky to get him off with about a thousand years in Purgatory. I couldn’t help hoping it would do him some good, because even as his soul stood looking at his own corpse and his dry-eyed family, he was complaining that he deserved better. He was still bitching when the light took him.
Anyway, it was a nasty grind, and by the time I stepped out of the Zipper and back into real-world Spanishtown, it was nearly two in the morning. (Time continues to pass Inside while you’re Outside, if I didn’t already mention that, although not always at exactly the same rate.) All I wanted to do was get back to my motel, pour a drink, and call Fatback, who would have cycled to man-brain-and-pig-body by now, then fall into bed. But I was also on edge due to recent events, so when I heard a noise at the other end of the client’s apartment garage, I stopped in my tracks and yanked out my.38. Yes, my pulse was elevated. You damn betcha.
“Just to let you know, whoever you are,” I announced loudly, “I’m tired, nervous, and armed. Let’s avoid a serious mistake, shall we? Come out where I can see you.”
The figure that stepped out of the shadows was so big that for a freaky moment I feared the worst, but I quickly saw this shape was far more human than the
“I wish we had some more time, Dollar,” he said. “I’d love to see you try to stop me with that popgun before I folded you up like a napkin.”
“Yeah, it’s a shame we don’t have time to try that, you big cutie,” I said. “Seriously, if you want to waltz around, come back when I’m not so tired and we’ll do it properly. Because right now I want to go to bed so bad that I’ll just put a few slugs in your skull, which will at least keep you out of my hair long enough for me to get some shut-eye.”
“You talk big, halo boy.”
“Look, what do you want?” I wasn’t kidding-I really was willing to shoot him just to get into bed sooner.
“Somebody wants to talk to you. She’s waiting.”
My heart sped. It couldn’t be good to have an archdemon looking for you in the middle of the night, but for some reason I still found it exciting in a sick kind of way. “All right. One thing, though, Carob? Wait-Cocoa, was it?”
He wasn’t amused. “It’s Candy.”
“Oh, sorry, right. I just wanted to know-where’s your buddy with the porn ‘stache?”
“Cinnamon? He’s driving the car.”
“I hope so. Because please notice where I’m holding my gun. If someone suddenly appears out of the bushes I’m going to blow your dick off on general principles.”
