“Son of a bitch,” I said. “If Brett was a kid in 1984, he wasn’t involved in the initial ritual murders. That had to be Max.”
“Yeah, it took some doing, but I found some indications that Winder was involved very covertly with the porn industry in the late seventies and early eighties. He may have produced some films back then, had a few ties to the Mob, they were big into porno production back then. Almost all of this is pre-computer era stuff, so it’s hard as hell to find anything solid. Hollywood gossip, rumors, scraps. I sifted and didn’t come up with enough for anything but a guess. L.A.’s porn scene was the Wild West back then, man. Winder was a ghost in it.”
“So Max is the big kahuna of the Dugpa cult and he raised his boy, Brett, in the faith.”
“Yeah, after Max got all legit and respectable, he’d be too high profile to rub elbows with the money-shot crowd,” Grinner said, “but his son, raised off the grid at various private schools, he could come back with a new identity and slip right in. I found payments to seven out of the nine victims from Red Hat, all paid out the money from Pentacle. I think we found your cult and your cult leader, bubba.”
“Keep the old slaughter house going,” I said. “How insulated is he, how connected? The Illuminati? The Benefactors? The Glass Gallery? God, help me, the Fae?”
Grinner shook his head.
“Nope. He’s nonexistent in the Life. No connections, no patrons or debts. Same with Brett. Looks like Roland Blue was their only exposure there.”
“Good,” I said. I rubbed my face, felt the stubble of a beard. I wanted a drink, I wanted several. But with the Nightwise on my ass and the Dugpa to hunt, I couldn’t afford to fuck this up. I still wanted that drink, bad. I thought of Caern tossing away that cigarette and it gave me a few breaths of reprieve from the screaming ache in my mind. I told Grinner about my phone call with Dragon, that I was now wanted for Roland’s murder.
“No fucking way!” he said, his massive fist striking the steering wheel. He hit it a few more times for good measure. “What is wrong with these fucking people!? We got to get the hell out of here now!” He closed the laptop. “I can get you a package, full identity, in less than an hour. That will buy you enough time to get out to bumfuck Egypt. Make it a little harder to track you.”
“I’m not going, not just yet,” I said.
“Ballard, this is as bad as it gets,” he said. “They will roast your ass if you look at them funny. The Nightwise make the LAPD look like the ACLU!”
“Yeah, yeah, I know,” I said. “I need to square up with Ankou, and I need to make sure these Dugpa bastards go down hard.”
“No way in hell I’m taking off and leaving you behind. What’s the plan?”
“The plan is you get on your fucking plane and go back to your family,” I said. “Don’t fucking argue with me. You know what Christine would do to me if anything happened to you?”
“I’ve already seen this movie,” Grinner said. “You piss off everyone that gives a shit about you, and they leave and you go do your lone gunslinger bit. Well here’s a news flash, desperado, you ain’t getting any younger. The Nightwise, they’re as sneaky as you, as skilled as you, younger and leaner and more full of piss and vinegar than you are, and they will kill you, and that will be the end of the legend of Laytham Ballard, capiche?”
“Not a bad way to go out,” I said. “As far as legends go. But I’m in no hurry to check out. I just need to close some deals and get the Nightwise off my ass.”
Grinner checked his smart watch. “I got a little under an hour ’til flight time. You sure you don’t want me to stay, man?”
“That baby is making you soft,” I said.
“Fuck you,” he grunted back.
“Yeah, you get all that foul language out before you get home, Daddy,” I said. “I need you to do a few things for me, but it shouldn’t be anything you can’t do and still make your plane.”
* * *
I told Grinner what I needed and he did it. We said good-bye and he shuffled off toward the terminal and I caught a cab out to Ankou’s mansion in Beverly Park. Two of Vigil’s security detail met me at the gate when I buzzed to be let in and they drove me up the hill to the house.
“Luuuucy, I’m home!” I called out in my most devastating Ricky Ricardo, my voice echoing off the Venetian tile. I walked into the huge foyer, fumbling in my jeans pocket for a cigarette and my Zippo. I heard the doors click behind me, locked. I heard the sound of oiled steel, bolts and slides snicking into place all around me, above me. There were about a dozen security men in the foyer and on the balcony to the second floor, above, all pointing guns at me. I hadn’t had a shiver in my chakras, hadn’t sensed the masking enchantments until now, until it was too late.
Lord Theodore Ankou stood before me and I understood why I had sensed nothing. The Fae’s magic was most powerful and subtle when it came to spells of misdirection, illusion, and concealment. Vigil stood behind his lord, to his left. He face was as unreadable as it had been the first time I met him.
“Welcome home, Mr. Ballard,” Ankou said. “You’ve got some explaining to do.”
TWENTY-FOUR
They tied me to a very comfy chair in a conference room in the basement of Ankou’s mansion. There was no roughing me up, no threats, very polite, just lots of guns aimed at me in between the pleases and thank-yous. It was the classiest I had
