“Just conversation,” the man, Luke, said. “The Maven wants a word with you.”
SEVENTEEN
Sections of Chinatown are a little run-down, not the kind of places a tourist would, or should, go. You’d drive by the brick, three-story warehouse on North Spring Street that was the home of AAA Distribution without giving it a second glance, never realizing one of the most powerful sorceresses in the world worked there.
The two Nightwise goons, Luke and Bridgette, parked their Range Rover on the street and led me inside the warehouse. It was close to midnight by then. AAA received all kinds of cheap goods manufactured in China, stuff like menus, fortune cookies, those wooden chopsticks in red paper envelopes for American Chinese restaurants, flimsy folding Chinese fans and parasols made of paper, and small smiling Buddhas carved from red teak or fake jade, the kind of tourist-chow sold a few blocks over in souvenir shops. We walked past crates and plastic-wrapped pallets of that stuff on our way to the venerable, closet-sized elevator that led up to the business offices of AAA. It was like stepping back in time, the sawdust and ginger smell of the place, the dim metal-cage-covered lights hanging from the exposed steel beams of the ceiling. Even the stiff, formal way my chaperones were on guard around me. Ah, it was like I’d never left the order.
There had almost been a throw-down when Bridgette had explained that my invite to see the Maven was for me only. Vigil had been adamant in his refusal to let me out of his sight, and I thought the situation was about to get very Tarantino very quickly, but between Dragon and myself reassuring him that no harm would befall me, he finally relented to search the crime scene with my ex-partner and then head back to the Hard Limit.
My shadows and I crowded into the elevator. There was a little less than a foot of open space with all three of us in the car. The old, dented, and scarred door slid shut and the elevator groaned and lurched as it lifted us. I looked over at Luke. He was watching me, but his eyes darted away from my gaze. I smiled.
“I don’t bite, rookie,” I said. His complexion darkened.
“You try it, and I bust your teeth in, Ballard,” he said tersely, but he knew behind the cop-talk I saw his nervousness.
“How’d you get partnered up with a fire hazard like old Bridgette, here?” I asked, looking over to his partner. She had been with the order for a few years about the time I had left L.A. Bridgette narrowed her eyes at me, not bothering to disguise her revulsion.
“Behave yourself, Ballard. Don’t let this broken-down old skell rattle you, Luke. He’s not worth spit anymore.”
“Very true,” I said.
“What’s it like to be the biggest fuck-up in the Life?” she asked. “The order’s greatest mistake?”
“It’s sort of like this,” I began. I drove my knee into Luke’s balls as I crunched my elbow into Bridgette’s face, hard, driving her head back into the wall of the car. As she slid to the floor, leaving a red smear from the back of her head, I gave Luke, who had instinctively bent forward in the crowded car, an uppercut that lifted him straight off his feet. He slid down on the opposite side of the car from his partner. The door opened on the third floor with a feeble ding, and I stepped out, letting the sprawling bodies of the two Nightwise slump over and jam the door open.
I walked down the hall past the door labeled ACCOUNTING and the one that said DISTRIBUTION AND SALES to the inconspicuous door at the end of the hall labeled only PRIVATE. I opened it without knocking.
The office was cramped and looked like it belonged perfectly in this dingy warehouse. There was a whiteboard on the back wall, covered with obscure alchemical formulas. The desk looked like something picked up at an old city school surplus sale. There were two folding metal chairs in front of the desk and a several-years-old PC and monitor on it along with a corded, multi-line telephone. Two dented, gray file cabinets rested side by side in the corner opposite the door. There was a window on the left wall. The old, tattered metal blinds were pulled up to accommodate a decades-old air-conditioning unit that was almost more duct tape than plastic.
“Nice to see you redecorated,” I said to the woman behind the desk. “That new tape on the AC?” The woman was in her mid-sixties, with a body still hard from a daily regimen of swimming, racquetball, and kickboxing. Her hair was silver more than gray and worn high, always up at the office, but I suspected it still fell to her shoulders when she allowed it to come down. Her features were noble, almost haughty, in their proportions and beauty. She had the face of someone who commanded obedience and was used to getting it. There was nothing soft about her, including those piercing, blue, intelligent eyes. Looking at her brought back up some of the feelings I’d had for her over thirty years ago. She was powerful, beautiful, terrible like a storm, and I still felt the power of her pull. Her name was Gida Templeton, and she was the High Maven of the Nightwise.
“What did you do to them?” She sighed, closing the file in front of her.
“They’re napping in the elevator,” I said, sitting down in one of the folding chairs before her desk.
“I warned them,” she said, “but you can come off so … unassuming. You look terrible, Laytham. Are you taking care of yourself?”
“As quickly as I can,” I said, smiling as I rummaged for a cigarette, “but I keep putting up a fight. What do you want, Gida?”
“I want to know why you’re crashing about my city, stirring up elements of the Life and the gangs, leaving chaos and dead bodies in your wake, like
