“They sent me to look in on you,” he said. “Make sure progress was being made on the case. On Russ Meyer.”
I shut my eyes. The Duboises had found out my former suspect’s name. Crap. “I’m sorry,” I said, smiling mightily at Skinny. “I can’t confirm or deny any rumors about an open case, Mr.…?”
“Teddy will do for now, Lieutenant.”
“Teddy. Is that supposed to be one of those ironic nicknames? Never mind, I don’t care. You can tell the Duboises that I’m sorry for their loss, but this case is none of your business, Teddy, so why don’t you toddle on back to 1987, where those shades came from?”
He showed some teeth, fangs at the ready. Great, he was in a bad mood as well as a bad dresser. I gently set down the two paper bags of food on the bench at the trolley stop by the curb. No sense in my lunch getting mangled.
“I’m here to ensure that nothing is overlooked,” Teddy said. “And that the police give Russ Meyer the strongest justice possible. If they fail, I’ll report that back to the Duboises, too.”
“Listen,” I said. “I don’t know where you’re getting your intel from, but it’s old. Russ Meyer has an alibi, and I don’t like being harassed while I’m just trying to buy a gods-damned beef burrito.”
“Well,” said Teddy. “If you were doing your job instead of stuffing your face, maybe it wouldn’t be necessary for the pack to check up on your progress.”
He just had to go there. I grabbed Teddy by his string tie and pulled him down so our faces were even. “You know what else I don’t like, Miami Vice? Pack thugs sticking their snouts into my police work.”
I heard a click and saw the sheen of a switchblade in Teddy’s hand. He was fast, even for a were. “Let go of me,” he warned. “You don’t, you’re going against the pack.”
You can tell a lot about a man by how far he’s willing to go against a cop, especially a lady cop like myself. If they back off and don’t get into trouble, it means they’re sane, or at least reasonable. If they pull a weapon without a flinch, they’re either a psychopath or they think they’re untouchable. I was betting Big Teddy figured on the latter.
Oh, well. He wouldn’t be the first to make that mistake.
“Hex you,” I told Teddy, “and Hex your pack.” I flicked the top off the habanero salsa with my thumb and tossed the contents of the tub into his face. Chilies burn plain humans—in a were’s eyes and soft tissue, they’re worse than taking a Taser jolt straight up the nose.
Teddy let out a scream and dropped the knife, falling on the sidewalk and clawing at his face in what Ithought, perhaps uncharitably, was an overdramatic and hysterical manner. I pocketed the switchblade, which was black enamel with bone inlay—very James Dean—and turned to the taco truck clerk, who was watching the whole proceeding with interest. “Agua, por favor, ” I said. He passed me a bottle and I doused Teddy’s head with it, washing away the peppers and specks of cilantro.
“You tell Nate Dubois that I’m doing my job,” I said, bending over him.
“Bitch,” he moaned. “I’m blind.”
“And yet, your mouth still works,” I said. “So you can also tell him that I resent being muscled like some cheap gutterwolf whore and if he sends one of his thugs after me again, I’m going to forget that he’s just lost his daughter and get real damn pissy.”
Bryson came to my elbow, looking down at Teddy. To his credit, he didn’t seem the least bit surprised. “You okay, Wilder?” he said, picking up the food from the trolley bench.
I looked at Teddy. “Are we?”
After a long moment he glared at me, and nodded once. “Fine. But you can’t find the killer, we find you.”
“Don’t threaten me while you’re lying on the ground with salsa all over your face,” I said. “It’s not effective.” I turned and left him there. Once I was in the car, my hands started to shake, a delayed reaction from my body letting me know how close to bleeding I’d come.
The Duboises were leaning hard, and I knew that if I didn’t produce results soon, their pack would take its pound of flesh out of me first and the killer second. I really hoped this Johnny Boy was good for it.
I parked in the employee lot at the Plaza and let Bryson take lunch to the SCS while I went into Pete’s office.
“What do you know about fake IDs?” I said, passing him an enchilada and extra cheese.
“I know that I got kicked out of a bar in college using one my buddy and I made with Photoshop,” he said.
“Never had much use for them since.”
“You got kicked out of a bar in this city?” I said, raising my eyebrows. I didn’t know there were any college taverns that actually enforced ID laws in my town.
“Not here,” Pete said. “I was at Stanford for my undergrad.”
I sat down on his rolling stool, fishing Lily’s bogus license out of my pocket. “Don’t take this the wrong way, Pete, but if that’s the case, then what the hell are you doing working for the police?”
“I like the work and the coffee is better than at a research lab,” Pete said, solemn. “What’ve you got there?”
“Lily Dubois’s fake ID,” I said. “I was hoping we could find out who made it, trace her descent into the tawdry nightlife, that sort of thing.”
“I can’t,” Pete said. “But I’m sure one of my buddies from the ID Bureau can. I keep in touch with those guys.”
“Great,” I said, taking it back. “Come on.” I walked us down to the fire door and through a dank stairwell into the lower floor of the old bomb shelter, a tunnel that ran between the morgue and Justice Plaza. It was a handy shortcut, but
