“Wally doesn’t need your money.”
“Maybe he wants it.”
“For God’s sake! It should have been obvious to you a long time ago that you cannot pull the usual shit here. You can’t buy off or bully these people. There’s no way to blackmail them. They have their own little world, and it only comes into contact with ours when they need to kill someone or find a patsy.”
“Fuck you. I’m nobody’s patsy.”
“Fuck me? You have a living stomach lining over your whole body, and it’s going to start eating you soon. You’re a patsy. Deal with it. Whatever Wally really needed, he tried to get it with Luther. You weren’t involved.”
Ty turned toward me suddenly. “Tried? At that house?”
I didn’t like the look on his face. “Dude—”
A Range Rover screeched to a halt right in front of my car. I jammed the key into the ignition at the same moment that Ty opened the passenger door and turned invisible. The engine started as I lunged toward Ty but missed him. He was gone.
The doors of the Range Rover swung open. Meatheads One, Two, and Three piled out.
To hell with this. I threw it into reverse and tried to back out of my spot. One of the meatheads fired three rounds into my engine block.
Immediately, the engine started grinding and lost power. I cut the wheel, backing up anyway, but I didn’t have the space to make the turn, and I plowed into the street-side taillight of the car parked behind me.
By then, a man was standing by my window, tapping a pistol against the glass.
I turned off the engine and opened the door. Their ugly faces were all around me, thick, pouchy, scarred with acne. Hands pressed me against my car and patted me down the way a cop would. They found my cell and ghost knife, and this time they kept both. They also found the ten grand. Damn, I hadn’t even gotten to the end of the block with it, and now I had to listen to them laugh as they split it between them.
A woman on the sidewalk held up her cellphone and snapped a picture of us. I stared straight at her, knowing my face would be recorded. Too bad I was on the twisted path; by the time she showed the photo to someone, it would no longer look like me.
“Let’s go,” one of the men said. They dragged me into the Range Rover and shoved me into the back, where I sat squeezed between two guys who smelled like sweat and enchilada sauce.
Potato Face sat in the front seat. He looked me over and turned away. He’d caught me, but he didn’t look happy about it.
We pulled away, leaving my car with the money under the floor mats jutting into the street. An embarrassing pang of grief went through me. I’d killed too many people to be moved by the loss of an old vehicle, but I was anyway.
We drove on Beverly Glen Boulevard much too fast. The windows were open, but the freeway air blowing into my face was dry and hot—there was nothing cooling about it. I asked for water, but no one acknowledged me. I was forced to sit quietly and wonder how I was going to track down Ty again, not to mention the others, and how much time I had before he fell out of this world and let more predators in.
We pulled up to Francois’s big white house and parked at the curb. There was a blue panel van in the drive, and its back doors swung open as we got out of the car. Two more meatheads climbed out, with Arne and Lenard at gunpoint.
Arne had a nasty smile on his face. “God, it’s a beautiful day. Am I right?”
Lenard snorted. I wondered why the two of them let themselves be captured. Were they trying to keep their power a secret? I thought I was the only one concerned about that.
The three of us let ourselves be herded up the front walk toward the house.
CHAPTER THIRTEEN
Each of us had two meatheads assigned to him, with two more in back and Potato leading the way. When we entered the clean white house, the air-conditioning was so startling that I gasped aloud. It must have been 65 degrees inside, and the sweat on my face and back immediately chilled.
Lenard turned toward me, smiling at the way I gasped. “I know, huh? Let’s move in.”
One of the meatheads shoved him roughly, and we ran out of things to say. I could feel my ghost knife nearby, in the pocket of one of the men, but I didn’t call it. If Arne and Lenard were hiding their tricks, so would I.
We were taken to the same room as the last time. The sliding doors were closed, and blinds were drawn across them. The only light came from a pair of lamps in opposite corners, and they cast a sickly yellow tint over the white furniture.
Swizzle Stick sat in a plush chair in the corner. She wore the same purple bikini, but her legs and arms were crossed, and her chin tucked low, as though she didn’t want to be noticed.
Beside her chair, Francois paced back and forth. His suit this time was midnight black—maybe it made him feel tough.
He never took his eyes off Arne. Potato stopped us five feet from him. The meatheads were all around, standing so close together they were practically in one another’s way. There was a door behind Francois, another that we came through, and of course the sliding doors. The meatheads would catch me if I bolted toward Francois, and there was too much heavy flesh to shove aside to get to either of the other exits.
“Well?” Francois suddenly barked.
“Yeah,” Swizzle Stick answered. Her confidence had drained away. “It was the middle one.” She lifted her chin toward Lenard. “He was the sp—”
“Watch your fucking mouth,” Francois said. “Now get your things and call a cab.”
