Bloodshot (20 page)

No, my first call was to Pacific Northwest Information, and then to a handful of other out-of-the-way reference-type institutions, none of which were very well known and two of which were not strictly legal. Then I spent another few minutes on the Internet, and before long, I had the Minion Cal’s real name and a potential phone number.

It was risky, yes. But I needed to talk to Ian.

The digits I dialed didn’t look familiar, and I didn’t recognize the area code. I could feel myself flushing as the line rang, rang, and wasn’t answered. I was nervous—intensely nervous—about trying to contact Ian. There was always the hypothetical possibility that I was putting him in danger, and I didn’t like the thought of that even slightly.

But I needed to ask him about Isabelle deJesus. And by God, I was
gonna
.

Voice mail picked up, without a personalized message—only the electronic robot-woman informing me that customer number 8862 was not available right now, and I was welcome to leave a message.

I did. I said, “Cal, I’m looking for my client. Have him call me at this number.” And then I hung up. I knew I was leaving my callback digits in the other phone’s memory, so now it was only a matter of time and luck.

Then, on a different phone—just in case the message to Cal didn’t work out and I had to junk it—I called Horace.

He answered on the first ring, with his typical flair.

“I don’t know this number,” he began, and without taking a breath he added, “and if I don’t know you, you shouldn’t know mine, either—so I’m going to assume this is someone entitled to the information. Now speak up fast and prove me right, or this conversation is over.”

“Jesus, Horace. Lighten up.”

“Raylene!” I heard an honest element of glee. “It’s you! Jesus, woman. I was starting to wonder.”

“Wonder what?”

“Where you were. What you were up to. Did you know your voice-mail inbox is full? Well, it
is.
”

I tried not to smile too big, lest he hear it and infer that I was happy to talk to him. I said, “Since you’re one of the only people who ever calls me, I’m going to go out on a limb and guess that you’ve had something to tell me.”

“I might’ve made a call or two. Haven’t you been checking it?”

“No,” I admitted. “And you may as well trash that number. I don’t expect to be using it again anytime soon … or … well … ever. Just pretend it never happened. For the time being, you can reach me through this phone—as long as you don’t abuse the privilege.”

“Darling, is something wrong?” I heard real concern, but I knew better than to assume it was concern for me, personally. It was concern for how he was going to get his crazy white woman in touch with whatever property she wanted stolen.

“I’ve had to relocate somewhat unexpectedly.”

“Relocate?”

“Think of it as a reboot. I needed to get out of town for a bit. I might’ve attracted a little attention of the most unwanted variety.” I was taking a chance telling him that much, but I told myself that I wasn’t sharing anything he couldn’t guess.

He proved me right by making another logical leap. “That client. You put me off because you said you had a new client. Did he get you into trouble? If he did, you just let me know right now, and I personally will pay some very burly people to kick his ass.”

“It’s not his fault, Horace. It’s got something to do with his case, yeah, but he didn’t do anything, and if I thought for a moment that you could track him down or wound him, I’d have my
hands on your throat within an hour,” I lied. Horace was in New York City. It’d take me at least four or five hours.

“Be that as it may, I don’t like this. You never accepted my new case—the rich white weirdo with indigenous myth-envy.”

“And I still can’t make you any promises, not right now. This case, from this guy,” I said, and only then did I realize I’d revealed Ian’s correct pronoun. Horace had assumed it, but I’d confirmed it. I wanted to kick myself, but there wasn’t time. “I can’t explain without giving you more information than I’m prepared to share, but I need for you to understand—this guy’s case, it has something to do with me, too. His mystery and his mission have gotten personal.”

“Okay …”

“And I’m only telling you this much because I don’t want you to think I’m bailing on you to chase down cash from another source. I’m not putting this client’s needs above yours, my felonious pimp. I’m simply trying to sort out something that affects him quite deeply, yes—but it affects me, too. In a very concrete and unpleasant way,” I added under my breath, but not so quietly that he didn’t hear me.

“Old boyfriend?”

“What?”

“Is your client an old—”

“No, no. Christ, no. It’s not like that.”

“Then what’s it like?”

“It’s like …” He wasn’t going to let it go. I knew he wasn’t going to let it go, so I fished for something to throw him off the track, but meaty enough to keep him from digging further. “It’s … we have something in common,” I said. “A medical condition.” Which was sort of true, wasn’t it?

“A
medical
condition?”

“Yes, a
medical
condition. It’s rather personal and I don’t care
to explain, but suffice it to say, my client and I share a medical condition and his … erm … health is, in its way, related to mine.”
In more ways than one
, I nearly added.

“Okay, fine. You’re both sick, you’re both—”

“I didn’t say we were
sick
. I only said we shared a medical condition. For all you know, we both have green eyes, or we both pee a little when we cough.”

“And you’re the one who didn’t want to share!”

“Oh shut up, Horace.” I shifted my grip on the phone and settled down into my couch. I’d be lying if I’d said I wasn’t enjoying the conversation. I only just then realized that it’d been days since I’d simply talked to anyone apart from a salesclerk or a tollbooth operator. “The thing is, I can’t drop this guy’s case—not even if I wanted to. So your weirdo will have to take a backseat.”

“When do you think you’ll be back on the pony?” he asked, every vowel oozing impatience.

“Later,” I said with more confidence than I felt. “Give me another couple of weeks here, and then you can start bothering me.”

“I don’t know if she’ll wait a couple of weeks.”

“Then go find someone else to put a smile on her face, because I won’t make bargains any sooner than that.” I’d be lucky to take a new gig even that soon, all things considered.

“A couple of weeks,” he said, but he said it funny, like he was only repeating what I’d said—and like he had a pen in his mouth. He was probably looking for a calendar, circling the day on which he could begin to harass me without fear of reprisal. “All right, a couple of weeks. You’re a hard negotiator, Ray-Baby.”

“I’m going to get a lot harder if you call me that again.”

“Give me a minute. Less than a minute. I’m almost certain I can make a filthy joke in response to that.”

“No,” I told him. “No, for the love of God,
don’t.
”

“Oh fine. But I’ve got you down for two more weeks of peace
and quiet, and then … then I’ll come calling again. I recognize this area code, don’t I? Where’s it from …,” he asked, not really asking me, but asking his memory.

“Don’t do that, Horace. I’ll come to you, or I’ll call you.” He’d figure it out soon enough, but let him. Atlanta’s a huge place, filled with millions of people spread out over dozens of square miles. If he could track me down by an area code, I deserved to be tracked down and berated by a fierce and pissy little man who wanted me to steal things.

An awkward silence passed between us before he broke it by saying, “So everything’s all right, then?” He wasn’t accustomed to pretending to care, and it came out stilted.

“Everything’s all right,” I said, whether it was true or not. “I’m going to go ahead and hang up, but if something crazy or pressing comes across your plate, go ahead and give me a call.”

“Works for me,” he said, and closed his cell phone before I could close mine.

I stared at the other phone for a few seconds, willing it to ring in the wake of Horace’s forced interest, but Cal didn’t reply and neither did Ian. I considered trying to give the major another call, but thought better of it. It might be tempting fate, considering that I’d been all but chased from my home by some form of organized long black car brigade, and I’d freshly broken into a military storage facility.

But it might be worth checking to see if he’d responded to my previous email.

Sure enough.

Christ on a cracker, I hated that guy. But that didn’t stop me from writing him back, since I had the laptop open and everything. I did a lot of self-editing, believe you me. And this is what I sent back.

That wasn’t too much, right? I was trying to walk a line between credibly curious and not overly snoopy. Didn’t want him to get the idea I was prying, or otherwise behaving suspiciously. As if emailing some dude about breaking into abandoned buildings in order to perform “reconnaissance” wasn’t amazingly suspicious already.

Was it ballsy to ask about my own building? Perhaps. But it was also well within the realm of possible questions a prospective employee might ask. And since I’d gotten “lucky” with my find in Alpha Building Four, I might as well see if lightning would strike twice and I’d learn something good.

I hit
SEND
and hung around on the Internet for a bit, leeching off some neighbor who didn’t know any better than to leave his WiFi connection unsecured. I visited a few blogs, read some Hollywood gossip, and generally pissed away thirty minutes doing not much of anything.

When much to my surprise, the major wrote back.

I checked my watch. It was pretty damn late for business.

Then he’d cut-and-pasted a link to a Google Map pointing directly to my warehouse.

His email gave me chills. Such chills that I sat there and stared at it, rereading it for a few minutes, trying to milk every last drop of information from it. I unpacked it until my eyes crossed.

Then I fired off one more quick email, in case he was still online—and in order to feel like I’d gotten the last word in.

The line about the convention might come back to haunt me, but I was willing to bet it wouldn’t. It’s Washington, D.C., and I defy you to find a single weekend wherein not one single convention is being held there. For all he knew, I was scooting into the District for a
Star Trek
event or a gun enthusiast show. I just hoped he wouldn’t call me on it.

I wanted to dwell on this, to fester over it and try to paste together some psychic defense against it, but it was coming up on nine o’clock at night.

This meant it was still entirely too early to check out the Poppycock Review (a name I loved, by the way) … or so I’d assumed, until I managed to convince myself otherwise. The night may be too young for me to show up as a customer, but the time was damn
near perfect if I wanted to get in and out in a sneakier fashion without battling the disco-darlings and their tribe.

Who was I kidding? I was bored, and out of ideas, and only trying to justify getting out of the condo when I was almost too frightened to do so. A little fresh air would help calm me down. Probably.

I skipped the MARTA and drove myself back down toward the deJesus residence, then took a handful of turns that led me deeper into the frat-boy-and-bachlorette-party-plagued blocks where the bitch-techno blared and the locals complained about all the slumming straights. The pure agony of finding a place to park made me almost reconsider my loathing of the public transportation system, but eventually I found a narrow slot in which to leave my vehicle. I had to bash the bumper of an SUV to squeeze into the nook, but I didn’t exactly shed a tear over the event and no, I didn’t leave a note. That’s what they get for parking too close to a fire hydrant, with one wheel on the curb. An asshole who leaves his (or her) vehicle in such a fashion deserves whatever automotive detailing inconvenience comes his (or her) way.