California Bones (8 page)

Gently, he took her hands away from her face. The bags beneath her eyes were gone. The jowls were smooth, the flesh of her neck taut.

As the hawker began struggling to manage the fistfuls of cash people thrust at him, the woman made her way through the crowd, out onto open sidewalk.

Daniel followed.

“So, you’re a thirty-seven-year-old woman now?” he said, drawing up even with her.

“I’ve been a woman before.”

“Well, okay, but last time I saw you, you were a sixty-year-old dude, so…”

“You know me. Whatever the job requires.” A police cruiser puttered down the canal, and Daniel turned his face away. But Jo Alverado didn’t have to worry about being recognized. She could always change her face again.

“You call this a job?” Daniel said, once the cruiser turned onto Vine. “Why are you hanging around a low-rent grifter like that anyway?”

“You don’t have to insult Fargo.”

“Mr. It-Slices-It-Dices? Nothing against him, but with your talent, you should be doing jewelry stores and banks. Hell, you could be stealing real skull-stones.”

“How do you know they’re not real skull-stones?” she said, stepping around Shirley Temple’s star.

Daniel tapped his nose and sniffed conspicuously. “Look, I didn’t come here to question your life choices. I have a job.”

“Oh?” She looked up at him, curious. She’d given herself a very cute nose and a sensuous mouth, and Daniel reminded himself that the last time he’d seen her, she was a dead ringer for W. C. Fields. “Lucrative?”

“Remember the warehouse in Rosemead?”

“With all the griffin claw?”

“That’s the one. This job is worth, oh, sixty times that.”

She stopped dead on Alan Ladd.

“It’s not an Otis job, is it?” she said.

“What if it is?”

“I don’t work for Otis anymore. I’m not one of his.”

Daniel smiled his most confident, convincing smile. It was the one she’d taught him. “And that, Jo, is exactly why I need you on my crew.”

*   *   *

Tommy’s, Big Tommy’s, Original Tommy’s, Tom’s Number 5, Tomy’s, Big Tomy’s. And there were more, spread all over Los Angeles and beyond, from Simi Valley to the San Gabriel Valley, all the way down to San Diego. The burger joints shared two things in common: the oddly compelling generic meat flavor of the chili, and the ubiquitous presence of his friend Moth, whose lifelong meal plan consisted of a circuitous pilgrimage to every one of the Tommy’s variants.

Daniel caught up to him near closing time at the Big Tomy’s in West LA, at Pico and Sawtelle. Moth was just about to tuck into what was probably his third or fourth or seventh chili burger of the day when he saw Daniel approach and rose to engulf him.

“Man, I’ve missed you,” Moth purred, like the lowest note on a cello. “But you gotta fuck off.”

“Well, aren’t you Mr. Hot and Cold. What’s up?”

“I’m meeting people in ten minutes. Working a deal.”

“Here? What happened to not shitting where you eat?”

“Not
here,
here,” Moth said. “But close enough I don’t want you around.”

It was then that Daniel noticed the plastic lunch cooler on the cracked tile floor.

“What’s in the box?”

“Ah, you don’t want to know.” Moth wouldn’t meet his eyes.

“Moth? What’s in the box?”

Moth blew out a puff of air. He looked around to make sure nobody was eavesdropping. “Okay, fine, it’s a kidney. I’m selling a kidney. Are you happy?”

“Please tell me it’s not your kidney?”

“Well, fuck, who else’s kidney would I be selling?”

Daniel buried his face in his hands.

He’d first met Moth on an asphalt basketball court at Venice High, a school neither of them attended. They’d been on opposite teams for a pickup game, and Moth had used his superior size to foul Daniel on every possession, whether or not Daniel was driving with the ball or stopping to tie his shoe. When Daniel finally had enough, he charged Moth with fists windmilling in a suicide bid for vengeance. Moth easily absorbed Daniel’s blows and sent him sprawling on his ass. But he was impressed by Daniel’s recklessness and declared that he was switching teams to Daniel’s side. He’d been on Daniel’s side ever since. They’d had a lot of good times, Daniel and Cassandra and Moth and Jo and Punch, graduating from junior-varsity store break-ins and home burglaries to warehouses and secure storage facilities and jobs that could properly be called heists.

But at the end of those years, things were different. Daniel and Cassandra were no longer a couple, Jo was out of the business, Moth was changed on a cellular level, and Punch was dead.

“Moth, I shouldn’t have to keep saying this: It’s just not healthy to be selling your own kidneys.”

Moth sat back down and took a massive bite out of his chili burger. “I know, but my ‘Hey, there’s a finger in my soup’ scam is played out. And a man’s gotta earn a living.”

“Not this way. I have a job for us.”

Moth chewed. “What is it?”

“Let’s get out of here, and we can talk about it.”

Moth made a paper napkin translucent by wiping orange grease off his lips. “First I finish my deal, and then we can talk about it.”

“Who’re you selling to, anyway?”

He hunkered down, as if by doing so he could make his broad, six-foot-six frame less noticeable. “Sawtelle Boys.”

“Are you fucking crazy?” Daniel whispered. “Because the Sawtelle Boys are.”

“Aw, they’re not so bad, once you get to know them.”

“I am never going to get to know them.” The Sawtelles were leeches. They acquired bones and organs and corpses of magic users and leeched whatever osteomantic residues they could recover for resale. Daniel really, really didn’t like these guys. “Moth, listen. The job. It’s the Ossuary. It’ll pay way better than whatever the Sawtelles are paying for your kidney. Let’s just go. I’ll take you to Original Tommy’s, I’ll lay out the details, we’ll—”

Moth jiggled the ice in his soft drink cup and slurped on his straw. “I’m receptive. But I have to finish this little deal first. Because I said I would. So, how about I meet you at Original Tommy’s in an hour, and you can give me the whole pitch. I gotta go now.”

Daniel wanted to scream.

“Fine,” he spat. “Fine. Sell your stupid kidney if you have to, but I’m coming with you.”

They had a good, long stare-down. Moth’s stare was definitely more frightening than Daniel’s, but Daniel wasn’t going to let Moth deal with the Sawtelle Boys without backup. In the end, Moth said nothing. He picked up his cooler and headed out the door, and Daniel followed.

They walked several blocks beneath the 405 flumeway without talking, the sounds of rushing water and boat engines mixing into a white-noise roar over their heads.

The Sawtelles had sent five guys. They slouched around a support column in their red bandanas and voluminous khakis. Dirt crunched beneath Moth’s and Daniel’s shoes as they approached.

“Who’s the gristle?” one of them said, tilting his chin at Daniel. He was short and pudgy, and his sleeveless T-shirt revealed little muscle. Nothing about him suggested leadership qualities. But since he’d spoken first, Daniel decided to watch him closest.

“Just a friend,” Moth said, clearly annoyed at Daniel. “Is it a problem? ’Cause you got four other guys with you, so.”

Short-Pudgy grinned jade teeth and laughed as if something funny had just occurred. “I don’t care, everyone needs backup, and we’re all carrying.” There were a lot of hands in pockets. “You got the meat?”

Moth set his cooler on the ground and popped it open. Short-Pudgy took a couple of steps forward and leaned over. Sealed in a plastic sandwich bag and packed in ice was a bloody purplish shiny thing, shaped like a flattened potato.

“Okay,” Short-Pudgy said.

Moth shut the cooler and began a sentence that was probably about the money when the guns came out and the shooting started.

The Sawtelles were such fuckers.

Daniel didn’t see much, because Moth had thrown him to the dirt. He landed facedown, and when he rolled over onto his side, it was a storm of muzzle flash and gunshots. Daniel screamed as a spray of something struck his cheek, but it was only gravel from bullets striking the ground. Moth wasn’t so lucky. Blooms of red appeared in his side and back as bullets tore through him, but the gunfire tapered off as he reached the shooters, and then the sounds became high-pitched screams and snapping bones. Moth laughed hideously, which meant he was hurt and in pain and also really angry, and by the time Daniel managed to reach for smell-memories and bring a fuzz of kraken electricity to his fingers, the five Sawtelle Boys were sprawled on the ground, cradling broken limbs. Short-Pudgy shrieked like a tropical bird and stared at the white, splintered bone emerging from his calf. The shrieking died in a gurgle of pain as Moth jostled him, searching his pockets for money.

“I don’t think they have any.” Daniel got back to his feet.

“I know, but I at least need to check,” Moth said, somber.

“I could have told you it would play out like this.”

“D, I’m shot. Like, a whole bunch of times. So let’s not do I-told-you-so.”

“Okay, I’m sorry. But can we go? In case of cops?”

The Sawtelle Boys, those who could still move, rolled in the dirt, groaning or weeping. Moth gave up on his cash and picked up his cooler with a bleeding hand.

“Total waste of a kidney,” he said.

“You’ll grow an even better one,” Daniel soothed.

They turned and walked away and left the leeches behind.

“How’re you feeling?”

“Enh,” Moth said. “Hurts like a meanie, but I’m healing pretty good. New one should be ripe in a few hours.”

“I meant the bullets.”

Moth grinned like a maniac. “Little bullets,” he said.

When they reached Daniel’s boat, Daniel tossed Moth a towel from the trunk. “Still up for Original Tommy’s?”

“Let’s make it Tom’s Number 5, and I’ll hear you out about this job.”

Daniel opened the passenger door and let Moth squeeze gingerly onto the seat.

“I’ve missed you, buddy,” Daniel said.

“You, too,” Moth said. He set the cooler containing his kidney on his lap and buckled in.

EIGHT

Daniel could tell Otis was serious about security by the number of guys standing watch around his warehouse, and by the armed guys outside the door to his office, and by the wraiths milling around, prepared to throw themselves in the line of fire in the unlikely event the Hierarch’s cops showed up and Otis needed time to bail.

His office was outfitted with a folding picnic table, chairs, a chalkboard on a rolling stand, and a big bucket of fried livers from Pioneer Chicken. Moth and Jo were bonding over some bootlegged Broadway musical Jo had acquired, while Emma sat a few chairs away, observing them. Cassandra leaned against piled sacks of birdseed. She observed Emma.

Daniel took a seat.

“You’ve all met,” Otis began, taking a position in front of the chalkboard. “But let’s do formal introductions. Moth is our utility muscle. Josephine is our shifter. Cassandra is our yegg—”

Emma raised her hand. “Excuse me, I’m somewhat new to this. Yegg?”

“Can-opener, peterman, boxman, safecracker,” Jo cheerily provided, “and all-around thief.”

“How delightfully colorful,” said Emma. “My apologies.”

“Daniel is our osteomancer and field leader,” Otis went on. “And Emma will be our guide.”

Otis handed Emma a piece of chalk as if passing a baton and yielded his position at the chalkboard.

With a courtly little bow, Emma began. “You’ve all worked together, whereas I am new to your enterprise. An unknown quantity, and one about whom you are rightfully suspicious. I have no magic words that will make you suddenly trust me. What I have, instead, is invaluable knowledge that will make you all fabulously wealthy.”

Moth popped a chicken liver in his mouth. “It’s a weekday. Did you call in sick? Nobody at the Ossuary is missing you right now?”

“I’m not the kind of person who has to punch a clock,” Emma said. “I won’t be missed.”

Moth chewed, unconvinced.

Emma flipped over the board to reveal a chalk-drawn map of Westside Los Angeles and drew a circle where the Santa Monica and Wilshire canals split off, and from there, a line to Rodeo Canal.

“This will be our breach point: Cross and Carsson’s.”

Daniel already had an obvious objection, but Cassandra saved him the trouble of voicing it. Cross and Carsson’s used to be an osteomancy boutique, right in the heart of Beverly Hills’ most famous shopping district.

“There is no Cross and Carsson’s,” Cassandra said. “Not anymore.”

“Yes, the earthquake. Well, the shop is naught but swept rubble, but the vault below remains intact. Of course it is well guarded, above by human security, and below by Hyakume eyes. Also, the vault door … Well, we’ll get to that later. Moving on, things get more difficult.”

Jo snorted. “More difficult than Hyakume eyes? Have you ever tried to walk past Hyakume eyes, Emma?”

“No, and nor could I. Because I am not a brilliant thief, unless you count the chocolate bar I nicked from Sainsbury’s when I was six. But you are all brilliant and I assume you have the skill to get past Hyakume eyes. From here,” Emma continued, unperturbed, “we will have to travel three-point-six miles by way of a decommissioned subterranean utility canal. The canal is sealed by a two-foot-thick concrete wall. We’ll have to find a way through it. From there, through the catacombs, and finally to here.” She tapped a spot near the La Brea Tar Pits, site of the Ministry of Osteomancy’s headquarters. “More precisely, eight levels below, which is where we will find the Hierarch’s Ossuary.”

She flashed a happy smile, her eyes crinkling.

“The Ossuary is guarded by enhanced sentries,” Emma continued. “Their senses are heightened with cerberus wolf. Their fighting skills are lethal. Included among them are the most aggressive Garm hounds bred in the Hierarch’s kennels. And there are passive wards as well. Sphinx riddles. Confusion spells. That’s in addition to conventional surveillance and alarm systems.”

Daniel still said nothing. He allowed his friends go through their own thought processes.