“And two, I liked Nico. There was no bullshitting in him. He was a good cop, he knew when to take, and when to look the other way. He had a line, you fucked with him and he’d fuck you back, hard. His dying was bad for everyone’s business, especially mine. Why kill cops when you can rent ’em? Nico was all right, but you, Ballard, you I hated the first time I laid eyes on your shit-kickin’ smart-ass. You wanna know who got Nico killed? You look in the fuckin’ mirror, if you haven’t already hocked your reflection.”
“I want to know about Brett Glide, and about Crystal Myth.”
Blue laughed and then drained his drink. I saw the ice shift in my full glass. It was goddamned obscene to let smooth-as-silk whiskey just sit there and get watered down, sacrilege. I flicked my eyes back to Blue’s; they were my eyes. “The light fuckin’ dawns!” He saluted me with his empty glass. “How many years you been sniffin’ around that shit, and you finally got a fuckin’ clue. Good for you!”
“I don’t take you for a Dugpa, Rolly,” I said. “So I figure you for being their pimp. How’s it work, exactly? Glide aims women that have potential as sacrifices toward you and then you tag-team them to drag them down into the sewer, something like that?”
“Close enough,” Blue said, rising and refilling his drink. “You, ah, you need anything, Ballard, while I’m up?” I shook my head curtly, tried not to look at the drink on the desk. “Y’know, you’re looking in the fuckin’ bag, awful rough, awful old. You need to do better by you. Life’s too fuckin’ short.”
“Your concern is touching, Rolly, really. All I’m looking for is the girl, Crystal. My client can make it worth your while. I’m going to shut the Dugpa down, but you don’t have to be part of that if you help me.” Blue returned back to his desk with a fresh drink. Mine was sitting there, sweating and getting nastier by the second. It was bad manners. I was being a bad guest.
“Your client?” Blue said. “You mean, Theo Ankou, her pops, right?” I kept my gaze even, tried to not give him anything. Blue nodded, “Yeah, her old man. The Ankous, they got some juice, but I hope you’re not plannin’ on getting paid, Ballard, I already barked up that tree.”
“What the hell are you talking about?” I asked.
“That fuckin’ piece o’ shit, Glide,” Blue said. “He discovered her, Crystal, whateva’ her fuckin’ name was, and eventually he aimed her at me. We both knew she wasn’t human, that she was Fae, and oh man, let me tell you what a sweet piece a’ ass she was too. You ever bite into a ripe piece of fruit and have it dribble down your chin—fuckin’ sick, man.
“So, the way this little bitch talks and acts, all lace curtain, I figure her for slummin’ and I figure that mumzie and dadzie will pay big not to see their little princess taking a pipe on YouTube, so I start diggin’ and I find out she’s the fucking Thin White Duke, Theodore Ankou’s, fuckin’ daughter. Holy shit, right? Like hitting the fuckin’ Powerball, you’d think.”
“You telling me you reached out to Ankou about his daughter?” I leaned forward. My nerves were screaming. I couldn’t tell if it was what Blue was saying or my aching thirst for that drink, but I felt jumpy as hell.
“Nah, I never got the chance,” he said. “Crystal took off on me, on Glide, on everybody. I was going to rescue her from Glide and the Dugpa and get her old man to give me a nice retirement reward so I could head for warmer, safer climes.”
“‘Rescue’?” I said. Blue shrugged and sipped his whiskey. Behind and below him, the crowd howled as the performance on the stage reached some new hallmark of depravity. “You seriously going to give up L.A., Rolly? All that power you’ve been scraping for your whole miserable life? That doesn’t sound like you.”
“I cross the Dugpa over the girl, I can’t stay here,” he said. “They’d already given Crystal the sacrificial mark. You know about that, right? Yeah, I figured, you’re a fucking professor, Ballard. I fuck them over for Ankou, I’d end up as one of their sick fucking psychological experiments, end up offing myself, or somethin’, or they’d send old Crash Cart out for me. No thanks.”
“You saying you couldn’t handle the heat from a bunch of pervy Buddhists, Rolly?” My nerves felt like they were being plucked by talons of ice. I was breathing heavier, sweating a little. I wasn’t sure why. Maybe it was fighting off the urge to drink. “How the mighty have fallen.”
“You joke all you want, Laytham,” Blue said. “Those fuckers been creeping around this city a long time before you and me were swimmin’ in our pops’ balls, as far back as there have been people comin’ here with dreams. That’s power, baby, hard-core, hardwired power. They own L.A., shit, they own me, and a lot more than me. They used to own you too, and you were too fucking stupid to know it. Why you think I’m being so goddamned accommodating to you, telling you all this shit? They told me you were coming, told me to expect you, told me that you’d spoken with that psycho, Manson. They told me you weren’t to be harmed unless you got unreasonable. They got plans for you, Ballard.”
“Who runs the cult, Rolly?” I asked. “Who’s
