“Unless Glide was lying to you,” Anna said. “Roland Blue wants you dead, Laytham.”
“Feeling’s mutual,” I said. “But I have an unlimited checkbook on legs with uncanny fashion sense and serious ass-kicking skills going in there with me.”
Vigil shook his head. “Don’t remind me.”
“I’ll keep trying to pry loose whatever I can on Red Hat Productions and Glide,” Grinner said. “And I’ll pack up to get the hell out of Dodge too.”
“I have an idea,” Anna said, reaching for her leather coat. “Give me that piece of a prescription pad you found at Elextra’s murder scene.” I handed her the torn slip of paper as she slid her on her coat and slung her messenger bag. “I’ll get back to you on this,” she said, examining the scrap.
“You be care—” I began. Anna silenced me with a finger over my lips.
“Shh,” she said. She kissed me. Her kisses tasted like sunshine flashing, brilliant, through cool rain. “You were about to say something stupid.”
NINETEEN
Westmont was in a stranglehold between Inglewood and Watts in South Central L.A. It was mostly Crips turf, which I never thought I’d be glad of, but MS-13 was nowhere to been seen around here, and that was good, because I can only deal with so many assholes at once. The Iron Cauldron was an institution of the Life in the city of angels. The Cauldron had been started as part of Roland Blue’s fledgling empire built on grotto. Roland pioneered grotto, the fusion of the supernatural with the sex industry. If gonzo porn was the extreme and dangerous edge of mainstream smut, then grotto was the Life’s version of gonzo, turned up to eleven.
The Trevita purred like a big cat on the hunt as we glided up Van Ness Avenue. The radio was playing Bishop Briggs’s “River.” I had less than three hours before I was supposed to be on a plane, or Gida was going to sic the most powerful, feared, and disciplined wizards in the world on my ass. I was driving, and Vigil was watching the streets slip by us, hungry faces, staring, washed in neon and ink.
“It never really changes,” Vigil said.
“Just the names on the jerseys,” I said, flicking away my third cigarette of the trip. “You good? You and Dwayne coordinated?”
Vigil nodded.
“Yeah. He’s got us covered outside. Man’s got his act together. Do I know him from somewhere? He famous or something?”
“He was huge in the MMA when he was younger, was going to be a world champion. Then this city started talking to him and he chucked it all to become a shaman. He’s the best hand-to-hand man I’ve ever seen.”
We pulled up on the street before the slumbering shadow of the Cauldron. The reason the Nightwise had never been able to shut it down was that Roland’s best friend and the Cauldron’s original owner, Dirty Fifi, had worked a powerful magic over the old warehouse. Besides being all TARDIS-y, bigger on the inside than on the outside, it also just vanished and reappeared at random around the city, usually when the Nightwise were close to finding it again. The club sensed your intent, took your measure—kind of an anti–Brilliant Badge. A man like Vigil would never have found his way to the Iron Cauldron in a million years, or been allowed inside alone. Welcome to my sewer.
“You are going to see some sick, next-level shit in here,” I said, lighting another smoke. “I’m not talking about a bunch of Silicon Valley execs puking their unresolved traumas out over a hot cup of ayahuasca. This can get bad, and bad quick. It’s the place the jaded and the bored and the truly disturbed go to be surprised, so I need you to be cool, okay?” Vigil said nothing.
You couldn’t hear the music until you were up on the two fire doors around the back of the warehouse that acted as the Cauldron’s main entrance. The doors were flanked by seven-foot-tall bouncers. The two giants had skin like dried and cracking gray plaster. Tiny, intricate, Hebrew kabbalic cipher-symbols were painstakingly carved into their flesh in lines. They both wore do-rags that covered the prominent symbol on their foreheads, and they were dressed in dark Vivienne Westwood track suits, the hoods up, shrouding their faces. They didn’t carry weapons; they had no need for them. “Hey, Bartel, Adir!” I said as Vigil and I walked up on them. “Good to see you guys found work after Sal passed, god rest his soul.”
“What do you want, Ballard?” Adir asked. His voice was strangely melodic and well-modulated, not harsh at all, almost beautiful.
“Seems odd you’d be working for the guy that whacked your old boss, though,” I said, “Sal being your creator and all.”
“How about I rip your ugly head off your shoulders,” Bartel said, “shut that redneck mouth of yours once and for all?” Adir raised his hand, placed it on his brother’s chest.
“Don’t let him bait you, Bart,” Adir said. “What, Ballard?”
“Here to see the man,” I said. “No trouble, just conversation and spend a little money.”
Both Vigil and I allowed Adir to frisk us. We had no weapons on us.
“You bring trouble with you,” Adir said. “But Mr. Blue said you might show up, though, and he told us to let you in. Don’t give us a reason to break you and your friend, scumbag.”
I smiled my best Sunday-school-teacher smile. “You, ah, going to get the door for us?” Bartel almost came at me, but Adir calmed him and opened the doors for us.
“Here’s your tip,” I said. “Invest in Spackle, you’re looking a little crumbly.” We walked in, and I didn’t look back. The doors closed, and I could almost imagine Dwayne and Gretchen moving out of the darkness, closing on the two golems. I felt sorry for the stone
