I stared at him, then was forced to say, “No. I didn’t think of it.”
“Also check ownership by the Akiyama, Johansson, and Moncrieff Families. You may find that bars run by demons aren’t necessarily owned by them. But you can rule out the Leprechaun’s Den.” He winked at me. “I own that one, and the djinn who manages it wouldn’t dare broker a hit on a cop.”
It turned out that David Moncrieff, an uncle of mine, was a silent partner, along with Martin Johansson, in a bar near one of our suspects’ address. A check with the labor department showed that most of the employees were Rifters.
I left Novak with the rest of the lists I’d run and took off to check out the Devil’s Reef. The bar was located on the border between a human slum and a demon slum—the kind of bar where low-level minor demons with mud for brains beat each other up and ripped each other off.
To my surprise, the place wasn’t a total dive. It wasn’t the kind of place I would normally frequent, but it was reasonably clean, and the people in the place at three o’clock in the afternoon smelled like they had bathed in the past couple of days. Any semblance of respectability was destroyed, however, when I discovered the bouncer was a ghoul.
I spotted two lust demon waitresses—one a lilith, the other a succubus—and a female devil tending bar. I sat down on a barstool and waited for her to notice me.
“What’ll you have, sweet buns?” she asked when she sauntered over.
“Beer. Whatever’s on draft,” I said.
She pulled me what looked like a light lager and set it down. I paid her, but instead of turning away, she stood there giving me a good stare before asking, “Who are you looking for?”
“What makes you think I’m looking for someone?”
“C’mon. You’re not a hooker, and you’re certainly not our usual clientele, so you’re either here to meet someone, or you’re a cop.”
I glanced around and saw what she meant. The women in the place consisted of obvious hookers, bikers’ honeys, overage and overweight divorcees, and a few slutty-dressed girls who might or might not have been of age.
“You got me. I’m your boss’s new girlfriend.”
She barked out a laugh. “I don’t think so, but if you really get off on screwing an ifrit, his office is down that hall.”
I thanked her, tossed another bill on the bar, and wandered on down the hall.
Ifrits were probably the most human-looking demons, but their personalities left something to be desired. Maybe they just got a bad rap, but their reputation as sexual and emotional sadists didn’t really appeal to me. Even other human-looking demons, such as the devil bartender and the lust demon waitresses, steered clear of ifrits.
I didn’t expect to have trouble with the ifrit—I expected a demon who ran a human bar to be reasonably socialized—but just in case, I cupped my little lightning box in my left hand.
I walked past the restrooms, assumed the solid door was a janitor’s closet, and knocked on the door with a clouded-glass window.
“Yeah? What the hell do ya want?”
The voice sounded like the hiss of a snake combined with a cement mixer. Bracing myself, I turned the knob and pushed the door open. The being sitting behind the desk did look very human, if you didn’t worry about the orange hair and skin. Little piggy eyes squinted out of a fleshy face, and his mouth was twisted in a permanent sneer. It had never occurred to me that a demon could get fat.
“Mr. Gecid?” I held up my badge. “I’m Lieutenant James, Metropolitan Police. I’d like to ask you some questions about some of your customers.”
“I’m not responsible for my customers.”
I held up a face picture of the guy I’d shot. “Do you know this man?”
He peered at the photo. “He might come in here. I don’t pay attention as long as they pay.”
It was difficult to interpret demon body language and facial expressions. In addition, if a demon opened its mouth, you had to assume it was lying. I decided to force the issue.
“Well, he says that you hired him to kill me. I’m sure you understand that—” I never got to finish my sentence because he stuck his hand in his desk drawer, pulled out a pistol, and fired.
His shot missed. Mine didn’t. In the vids, the good guy always manages to wound the bad guy or shoot the gun out of his hand. In reality, I hit him near the right collarbone, and damned near blew his head off. So much for getting any information out of him.
I didn’t spend time worrying about it. I secured his weapon, then checked the rest of the office to make sure no one else with murder on their mind was hiding in the filing cabinet or under his desk. The office wasn’t large enough to hide a human, but imps came in a variety of compact sizes. And who knew what other kinds of small demons there might be.
That didn’t take long.
I stuck my head out into the hall and heard nothing. Cautiously making my way down the hall, I came to the bar’s main room. It was empty. Not a single patron remained. The waitresses, bouncer, and bartender were also gone. As a testament to the type of clientele the place attracted, almost every glass and bottle sitting out was empty. You had to hand it to people whose first instinct when the shooting started was to drain their beer before stampeding toward the door.
I called dispatch to report a shooting, but I shouldn’t have bothered. The detectives tailing me stuck their heads—and their pistols—through the front door while the phone was still ringing. Sirens I could hear in the distance seemed to be getting louder, so I hung up.
“He’s still alive,” someone said. I was standing in the bar talking
