On Midnight Wings

16 CAPTURED IN CHARCOAL NEW ORLEANS CLUB HELL

VON TOSSED THE LAST bruised and battered intruder—a dude with GQ cheekbones wearing a sleek European suit—onto the pile of black garbage bags heaped up in the gutter in front of the pizza place next door. One of which split open, its decaying contents spilling out in a stinking sludge of garlic, spoiled sausage, coffee grounds, and rotting lettuce.

Gasping for air, Cheekbones staggered up to his feet and began brushing frantically at his suit.

“Haul ass,” Von suggested in a low growl.

Cheekbones looked around and, realizing he was alone, set off in a stumbling run down the narrow street. Something white fell from his pocket, floating to the street, a pale leaf.

“What’s that?” Merri asked.

“Dunno.”

Von stepped off the curb, walked out into the street, and picked up a folded sheet of paper—thick paper, like an artist would use. A sketch, maybe. A dark, vanilla-spiced tobacco odor permeated the paper, an odor that reminded him of the cigarettes that Vincent seemed to chain-smoke. Although he didn’t see the Magazine Street lord often, every time they had crossed paths, Vincent had been puffing away on one of the Pink Elephants he favored.

And Vincent was an artist.

Straightening, Von unfolded the paper. And realized with a sharp pang as he stared at the oh-so-familiar face it revealed, that the Magazine Street lord was not only an artist, but a damned good one.

The sketch also revealed why Mauvais’s crew had broken into the club—they believed Dante and Vincent friendly enough to play artist and model.

Dante in charcoal—his eyes closed, jaw tight, caught in the act of wiping a dark trickle of blood from his nose with a hoodie sleeve, moonlight glinting from the ring in his collar.

A simple drawing, not yet completed, or so it looked to Von, but somehow Vincent had managed to capture not only Dante’s beauty, tension, and pain in bold strokes of gray and black, but had symbolized in that casual swipe of a hoodie sleeve the quiet will that kept Dante on his feet, kept him moving, kept him fighting.

At the bottom of the sketch, printed in charcoal letters: Secrets.

Von reached for Dante. <Keep fighting and stay stubborn, you sonuvabitch, or I’ll kick your ass when I find you. Kick your ass into tomorrow.>

But all Von received was more silence prickling with barbed-wire pain.

“Is that Dante?” Merri asked as she joined him out in the street, her scent electric with interest. She’d only seen Dante in photos, Von realized, had never met him.

“Yup,” Von replied, his voice rough. He quickly folded up the sketch, then slipped it into his jacket pocket. “Vincent’s work.”

“You never mentioned he was an artist.”

“Never mentioned a lot of things.”

“True,” Merri said without rancor. “The sketch—is that normal? I mean, does Dante often get nosebleeds during what I’m guessing to be a killer headache?”

Von hesitated for a moment, then said, “Normal for Dante, yeah.”

“Christ. Sorry to hear that.”

Returning to the sidewalk, Merri paused in front of the club’s battered green shutter-style doors and lit up one of her clove cigarettes. They were alone. Silver was inside, salvaging what he could from his room and keeping an eye on Thibodaux.

“So spill, nomad. Let’s hear what you didn’t want to say inside about your artist friend.”

Lucien’s old-school Chevy van with its blacked-out side and back windows was parked at the curb, so Von rested his back against it. He folded his arms over his chest, bomber jacket creaking. “Vincent ain’t my friend.”

“I’m hearing history . . .”

“Just the usual. Two cocky bastards. One town. Yada, yada. Not to mention that Vincent was playing two sides—namely, Dante and goddamned Guy Mauvais—against the middle.”

“The Lord of New Orleans?” Merri questioned, frowning. “He’s the mofo who ordered the house you all lived in torched, killing your friend in the fire, right?”

“Simone, her name was Simone,” Von said, voice harsher than he’d intended. “And, yeah, Mauvais was the one. He also had Dante grabbed and held long enough to ensure he couldn’t do a damned thing about it.” He shook his head, throat too tight for words.

But we felt her burn. Felt the fire devour her. Heard her screams.

“Shit,” Merri said. “Then what happened?”

“Lake Pontchartrain.”

“Tell me,” she said softly.

“Is your nosiness natural or something the SB trained into you?”

Merri snorted. “I’m a born snoop, nomad. Get used to it.”

“Nosy and full of sass,” Von observed, grinning. “I like that in a woman.”

Merri laughed, shook her head. “Shee-it. Look, no need to play the old flirtation distraction game with me. If you don’t want to tell me about what happened at Lake Pontchartrain, no problem.”

“Ooo. Minus points for being touchy. But”—Von unfolded his arms and held up a just-be- patient hand when she scowled, brows knitting over her velvet-brown eyes—“I don’t mind telling you what went down.”

Von drew in a deep breath, one laced with smoke fragrant with spice and cloves and tobacco, then released it and started talking. Some things he kept to himself, like Dante’s creawdwr abilities and how he turned a ticking time bomb of a yacht into a living, breathing leviathan—or mostly, anyway.

And what he did to Trey.

Dante holds Trey’s face—a face that now flickers and shifts, a face that seems composed of blue neon ones and zeros—between his blue-flamed hands. Trey’s dreads, transformed into gleaming and twisted bundles of wire, snake into the burning air . . .

But he told Merri the rest in a low, flat voice—Vincent informing Dante that Mauvais would be meeting the arsonists responsible for the fire and Simone’s death at a wharf on Lake Pontchartrain and picking them up; Dante’s determination to avenge Simone, to give her brother Trey a reason to keep breathing; the nearly empty yacht, minus Mauvais, a decoy; the explosion.

“After all the shit that went down on Lake Pontchartrain,” Von concluded, sweeping his gaze along the busy street, “Vincent probably figured someone—Mauvais or Dante—would be coming to rip him and his entire household new ones for being treacherous SOBs, so I’d bet my left rim he went into hiding.”

“So was he?” Merri asked, dark eyes glinting. “A treacherous SOB?”

“Well, now, that depends on who you ask,” Von replied, smoothing his thumb and index finger along his mustache. “Vincent was definitely betraying Mauvais when he gave us the info he did; but since the info was false and it led to a trap, he screwed us as well—even if it was an unintentional screwing.”

“If Vincent was the guy whose web-runner you planned to borrow, then that unintentional screwing isn’t over yet,” Merri said softly.

“The screwing that just keeps on giving and giving,” Von agreed. He trailed a hand through his unbound hair; Jack seemed to be lacking in hair ties, but not gator print shirts, go figure. “I think my search plan just got flushed down the toilet.”

So far they had only one piece of the puzzle leading to Heather’s whereabouts and that had come from Heather herself: Strickland. Lucien had questioned a fed in Portland and learned that James Wallace had been unaware that the Bureau had been using him as a means to Heather.