There was not even a faint charge of sexual energy from the bed, the bedroom. If she’d had raging hormones like most teenagers, she kept them in check like a Trappist monk, at least at this address. Some of this began to make some sense. Daddy set all this up and obliviously paid the bills here. This would be the last place on Earth you’d get any sense of the real girl. I started opening cabinets and rummaging through things as a last, feeble attempt to find anything I could use, or track. I’m sure every gumshoe and private dick before me had done the same.
I found a half-full bag of cat litter, two empty bowls, and some cat toys under the cabinet beneath the kitchen sink, next to the household cleaners, folded paper grocery bags, and packages of yellow rubber gloves. I knelt down and found a few cans of wet cat food specially formulated for kittens near the back of the cabinet. During my rummaging and scrounging, I found something else. It was faint, faded from age and distance, I’d imagine, but there was a trace of some of Caern’s Anahata, her heart energy, here. The energy was drifting lazily around the toys, appearing like tiny green fizzy soda bubbles to my perception. She had loved this cat, loved it so much that it still showed years later.
A bit more hunting, and I was able to find a tuft of gray cat fur in the cabinet. I could work with this. I found plastic sandwich bags neatly stored in one of the kitchen drawers, and I carefully placed the fur in one bag and a few of the frayed feathers from the end of a much-abused cat toy in another bag. I sealed them, folded them up, and tucked them in the pocket of my jeans. I also took a small, pink, gnawed-on rubber mouse. I squeezed it, and it squeaked. I stuffed the mouse toy in my pocket too.
I left everything as I had found it, and then switched off the lights on my way out. Waiting for me across the street from the condo, leaning against the red Ducati Desmosedici, was Burris, with his arms crossed, giving me “that look.” He stood as I crossed the street toward him and the Streetfighter.
“You know, young man, speed kills,” I said. “You’re lucky to be ali—” I didn’t get to finish my smart-ass remark. Vigil drove a jab into my jaw and followed it up a beat later with a half-knuckle strike to my solar plexus. I fell back onto my ass and couldn’t breathe and sure as hell couldn’t incant any snappy magical Latin retorts. He took a step toward me and as fluidly as water runs, drew a handgun from a holster located at the small of his back and thumbed back the trigger with a click.
“You ever try that shit again,” he said calmly, “and I will put a bullet in your fucking kneecap. You don’t need a kneecap to be a drunken piece of shit has-been, still pretending to be a legend.”
“Fair … enough,” I wheezed, as my breath came back to me. He slowly lowered the hammer on the gun, holstered it with one hand, and offered me the other hand to help me up off the street. I took it, and as I rose, and he pulled, I drove a nasty sucker-punch into the side of his face. He staggered back, his lip split, just like mine. We were matchies now.
“That’s fair enough too,” I said and spit some blood into the cleanest gutter I had ever seen. I pulled my forearms in and kept them up, like my old boxing coach had screamed at me about a million times, and shuffled back. Vigil rubbed his jaw and lip, examined his blood, rubbed it between his fingers and thumb, and then looked up at me.
“You throw a pretty good hook for an old, white drunk,” he said. “What finishing school of the mystic arts you learn that at?”
“Million Dollar Boxing Gym,” I said, “Hull Street, Richmond, Virginia. The Hogwarts Pugilism Society wouldn’t take me ’cause the sorting hat said I was with House Huffle-Puff-Puff-Pass. You?”
“Over-the-Rhine, Cincinnati,” he said. “Finals were a bitch.”
A Greek cop on a Vespa slowed and looked at the two of us facing off on the sidewalk. He was a cop for the tourists, in a short-sleeved, light blue, button-down shirt with epaulets, dark blue pants, and a cap. For the genteel folk of Spetses, he seemed to have left his riot gear and truncheon at home tonight. He looked more like an airline pilot than a cop, and he was smiling, which was weird. He flashed the beam of a Maglite over us and asked something in Greek. I got the gist of it, which was the polite these-guys-may-be-richer-than-Bill-Gates version of “What the fuck are you two skells doing here?”
Vigil did the talking, keeping his gun out of view. He offered his identification to the cop, and I heard the name “Ankou” tossed out liberally. The cop nodded, still smiling and seeming to apologize. He waved to us and putt-putted away on his little scooter.
“This shit is just surreal,” I said. Vigil, standing next to me, nodded.
“You never get used to it if you didn’t grow up in it,” he said. “Different world for these people, different cops, different laws. We’ll always be tourists, hired help.”
“You want to get something to eat?” I asked.
“Cool,” Vigil said. “Chasing a moron on a two-hundred-thousand-dollar bike down a hill without a perfectly good road, in the dark, always makes me hungry.” We both began to climb onto our bikes. Vigil picked up his
