The sentence ended with Booth’s finger an inch from Turgeon’s nose. “You know what I’d like? I’d like you to shut up. We’ve got two dead bodies, the real kind, upstairs. One with a mangled face, so I can guess what happened there, but the other has a nice neat bullet hole.” He tapped Turgeon’s forehead. “Right about there. I’m guessing, but the entry wound looks to me like a nine-millimeter reduced-velocity, maybe a Walther P99.” Finger still on my client’s forehead, Booth turned to me again. “That’d be a good gun for a chak. You wouldn’t have one on you, would you, Mann?”
Matter of fact I did, tucked back in my waistband. “Why would I be carrying, Tom? It’s illegal, last I heard.”
He came down the steps and leaned his face in, daring me to twitch, but my body only does that at random. There was broiled chicken and barbecue sauce on his breath. Home-cooked, I think. He’d been pulled away from a meal.
“Because you’re one of the ‘smart’ ones,” he said. “And it’d be stupid to show up here tonight without a gun.”
“Nice of you to say so, but I’m not feeling very smart right now.” No shit. If he frisked me, it’d be all over. Even our cut-rate ballistics department would match the bullet to my piece in under an hour.
“I bet,” he said. “What is it they do to killer chakz?” He held two fingers up and scissored them, imitating the clippers they use on our heads. “D-cap.”
I knew Booth pretty well, and one of the things I remembered was that he always held his breath when he patted down a chak. First, though, he’d give himself a good breath. He never warned them; he just inhaled and started patting.
If he inhaled, I knew I was in trouble.
He turned away and sucked down some air. Oh, shit.
“I shot that man,” Turgeon squeaked. “With a Walter . . . uh . . . that gun you said.”
We both turned to him. Booth clenched the flashlight tighter. “You?”
“I had to. He was about to kill someone with a machete.”
“A chak?”
“It was dark. But that wouldn’t make any difference in court, would it? If you bring charges. And I do have witnesses.”
“I saw it,” I said.
“So did I,” Boyle put in.
Booth laughed. “Chakz can’t be sworn in. Let’s see the gun.”
Turgeon cleared his throat. He sounded dry. “I . . . must have dropped it.”
Booth exhaled and looked around. I knew what he was thinking. If he pursued the shooting, he’d also have to pursue the technically illegal hakker attack. The livebloods had fled, chakz his only witnesses. He grunted.
“Get out. Take them with you.”
He didn’t have to say it twice. The four of us filed up the stairs, Ashby first, me last. As I passed Booth, I tried to ask him about Lenore. I don’t know why—maybe because I used to admire the guy, maybe because I still had a thing for the truth, maybe because there were things he’d seen that might fill in the blanks for me.
“Tom, I didn’t . . .”
“Don’t. Don’t even think about it. Keep shambling.”
“My mistake.”
Back in the hallway, a few uniforms blocked our path until Booth reluctantly said, “Let them the fuck through.”
“Heh-heh,” Ashby said. “We’re going through. We’re going the fuck through.”
“Sh,” Boyle said. “Sh.”
I wished the night had been cooler, but it was thick with August heat, so the humidity held the smell of rotting meat high in the air. As we walked, Boyle put his hand on Ashby’s head and tried to steer the kid’s gaze down at the ground so he wouldn’t see all the mangled bodies. But even the floor was littered with parts.
“Is that Mrs. Winter’s arm? Heh-heh.”
Boyle tried to keep him quiet, but Ashby kept naming limbs, recognizing who they belonged to from the torn clothing or the jewelry. Fortunately, when the kid spotted the Humvee, that grabbed all his attention.
“Nice car! Will we ride in the nice car?”
“Yes, Ashby.”
“Heh-heh.”
Once we were crunching along the road, the kid stopped using words altogether. He just made that little
Turgeon didn’t speak until the dull glow of the city was visible; then he half stammered, “That was . . . close.”
He’d pulled my ass out of the fire with Booth, so I was feeling generous.
“Any landing you can walk away from, right, Mr. Turgeon?” I said. “And, hell, you were right about coming tonight. If you’d listened to me and waited until morning, we’d be trying to find Frank Boyle’s pieces, no offense.”
“None taken,” Boyle said.
“I was . . . happy to thwart that Detective Booth,” Turgeon said.
I shrugged. “He’s not so bad. Good cop. Just has a blind spot.”
“Are you joking?” he asked. When I didn’t answer, he added, “You might want to leave that gun with me. I can . . . you know . . . make sure it disappears.”
I pulled out the Walther, emptied the clip, and handed it over. “Not the kind of thing I’d expect from a liveblood attorney, sticking his neck out for a chak. Mind my asking if you do that sort of thing a lot?”
“No,” he said. “Never.”
He opened his glove compartment, tossed in the gun, and pulled out an envelope stuffed with cash.
“How many of those do you usually carry?”
“As many as I think I might need.”
After he handed me the envelope, we all got quiet for a while, but it was a long ride. At some point I turned to the man of the hour, the guy we’d risked our necks for. “Boyle, you really going to use the money to build some kind of shelter for chakz?”
“That’s the plan. What do you think, Ashby?”
“Sounds good. Good. Good. Heh-heh.”
I believed him. So who knew? Maybe it was worth it. But every silver lining has a cloud. Something told me I just hadn’t found this one yet.
As we passed through the edge of the Bones, I spotted a familiar silhouette by a vacant lot. It was Misty, rubbing a rag against her skirt like she was trying to set it on fire. The shadows farther back in the lot shifted, telling me she wasn’t alone.
There was only one thing I could think of that would get her out at this hour: scoring meth. Damn.
“Turgeon, pull over here. Let me out.”
When she saw the Humvee, Misty reared like a deer and looked ready to book. Worried I’d have to chase her down, I popped the door and unbuckled my belt. To my surprise, the minute she saw my kisser, she gave me a big smile. It wasn’t drugs then, not with that grin.
Relief washed over me, uncomfortable as any emotion, but not unwelcome. Remembering my manners, I turned back to Turgeon. “Guess this concludes our contract.”
“Uh-huh,” he said.
“Thanks for helping me out with Booth.”
“You’re welcome.”
I was going to tell him he wasn’t so bad, but seeing as I hadn’t said he was bad in the first place, it didn’t seem appropriate. He was probably exhausted from all the excitement, eager to get to some comfy hotel bed, and I doubted I’d be contacting him for an effusive letter of reference anytime soon. So that was about it.
“Good-bye, Mr. Detective, heh-heh.”
“Bye, Ashby. Hey, Boyle?”
