City of the Lost (20 page)

I don’t feel the same kind of disgust I did with the whore. Because she was a woman? Because I hunted her down? Because I can rationalize this one better? They did set a dog on me, after all.

Maybe I’m just getting a taste for it.

This is getting insane. I can’t be killing people and making zombies every night. Eventually, somebody’s going to notice. What if one of them gets loose?

I hose myself off and cover my front seat with a tarp. Maybe I should hose my car out, too.

No answers just more questions. What the fuck is Imperial Enterprises ? Giavetti’s company. He’s been around god knows how long, he’s got to have put together a decent bankroll.

It doesn’t make sense. The guy who owned the stone lived in a house owned by Imperial Enterprises. Why would Giavetti get him in there and then steal it from him? Unless that was part of the plan. If the stone’s in the house then it’s vulnerable. Giavetti would have had access to all the security codes. He could have arranged for anybody to just waltz in and get it. Even three thugs without a brain cell between them.

Giavetti’s got twists and turns that I can’t begin to figure out. That’s part of my problem. I don’t know him, not really.

I need to talk to someone who does.

Samantha’s building is a 1920s
Mediterranean-style hotel converted into condos overlooking the bluffs in Santa Monica. It’s surrounded by buildings half its age with half its character.

The sun is just a hazy glow on the eastern horizon, peeking over the rooftops like it’s not sure it wants to get up. Less than three blocks from the beach, her building is shrouded in the early morning fog coming off the Pacific. I step through a small gate into the central courtyard, water dripping off the wrought iron bars. The fog will burn off in an hour, but right now it might as well be London.

Finding her wasn’t tough. After taking a shower to get all the slime off me, all I had to do was hit Google.

Something about her that I haven’t been able to shake since I met her in the club. She’s not my type, but then I’m not sure you can call strippers and washed-up porn starlets a type. My dates aren’t known for their conversational skills.

Maybe that’s what it is. She’s different. I can’t pin her down. She’s something between normal and the weird-ass rabbit hole I’ve fallen down.

Maybe it’s just because she hasn’t hit me up for Giavetti’s stone yet.

There’s a doorman who looks more like a bouncer standing just inside the foyer. I was hoping for a surprise entrance. Bang on her door. Catch her tired with her guard down.

“Who are you here to see, sir?” he says, like it’s noon and strangers wander into the building all the time. I can smell gun oil on him, barely make out the telltale bulge under his armpit.

“Samantha Morgan.”

“And you are?”

“Joe Sunday.”

“Go right on up, sir,” he says, gesturing toward the elevator. “She’s expecting you. The elevator will take you to the penthouse.”

I look at my watch. “She say when she was expecting me?”

“Couldn’t say, sir. She called down about fifteen minutes ago to let me know you were coming.”

So much for the surprise entrance.

The elevator lets me off right inside a foyer decked out in teak and mahogany, and the minute I see her I know I’m out of my league.

Samantha’s waiting for me in a rattan chair next to a potted palm. A white sundress, strappy sandals. A thin, gold chain around one ankle. Hair pulled back in a ponytail.

“You were hoping to catch me in my pajamas, weren’t you?” she says as I step out of the elevator.

“Something like that.”

“Joke’s on you. I don’t wear any.” She glances over my shoulder at a clock on the wall. “I’m off my game,” she says, sipping a cup of tea. “I expected you here ten minutes ago.”

“I like to keep people guessing,” I say.

“Of that I have no doubt.” She stands and steps toward me. Too close. Her scent is overpowering. I could get drunk off it. For a second I’m afraid I’m about to zombie out. But this is different. It’s not hunger, not like that, but it’s definitely desire.

She looks up into my eyes, studies my face. “I was starting to think maybe you didn’t like me,” she says.

“No chance of that,” I say before I can stop myself.

Her face breaks into a smile. “Good.”

I pull myself together. “But that’s not why I’m here.”

She sighs. “Of course not. Come on. I’ve more comfortable rooms than this one.”

She leads me through a wide connecting hall into a living room of dark hardwood floors, wrought iron, stained glass. The place is something between a Moorish castle and an art museum. Asian and African masks litter the walls.

And playing cards, like at Neumann’s and Gabriela’s. But done up like art, not stuffed haphazardly into doorjambs. Collages, mosaics. Antique cards mounted on the wall behind glass like miniature portraits.

She leads me into a living room filled with plush chairs and sofas. French doors open onto the penthouse deck. Fog so close I could touch it, the ocean nothing but a hint of sea air.

“What’s with the cards?” I say, following her to a sofa. “I didn’t know it was such the in thing.”

She glances at them. “Sort of a security system.”

Something I’ve been thinking about after seeing Gabriela’s shirt keeping her invisible. It’s as if magic is more about the metaphor than the reality. A camouflage shirt to hide yourself, miming a telephone to call a real one. All of the cards I’ve seen are face cards. “Eyes and ears?” I say, thinking I’ve caught on.

“No,” she says, “but I get what you’re going for. It’s more like,” she pauses, searching for a word. “Static. All the cards have personalities. Tarot cards are best, but playing cards are pretty much the same thing. Some people would see us sitting in a crowded room. Much more difficult for those sorts of people to see past it all.”

“Huh. And I just thought you all had a gambling fetish.”

“Sorry. I’m more a fishnets and leather kind of gal. And much as I’d hoped, I don’t suppose that’s what you came to talk to me about.”

Fishnets, leather, and her is a powerful image, and it throws me for a moment. “No,” I say, finally. “I need to talk to you about Giavetti.”

“I figured as much. He did something rude, didn’t he? I swear that man is like a five-year-old with a hand grenade.”

“He ripped a guy’s arm off in a hotel at the airport.”

“Is that all?”

“He was a friend of mine.”

She stops, her face softening.

“I’m sorry,” she says. “I—I know that sounded callous. It’s sort of a defense mechanism, and sometimes I forget things. How to be.... I’m very sorry.”

“Not your fault,” I say. I don’t know what it was she was about to say. I let it slide.

“Can I do anything to help?”

I can think of a good dozen things, none of which will get me closer to Giavetti. “You ever hear of Imperial Enterprises?”

She cocks an eyebrow. “You’ve been busy.”

“You know it?”

“Sandro has investments. A good dozen companies set up to handle his finances. Most of them are legitimate. Some aren’t.”

“So it’s his company?”

“One of them, yes. I’m sure he has others that I don’t know about. I think he uses this one to handle property on the Pacific Rim, but I’m not sure.”

“How do you know about it?”

She gives me a Don’t-Be-Stupid look. “I keep tabs on him. I thought that much was obvious. We used to be sort of an item. Back in the day.”

“Still got a thing for him?”

“Please. Sandro is
sooo
yesterday. I broke it off with him a long time ago.”

“How long?” The way she moves, the way she’s acting. She’s sure of herself, that much is certain, but there’s something else under that. Something not quite right. I’ve got an idea, but I want to hear her say it.

“I’m so rude,” she says, changing the subject. “Can I get you a drink or something? You must think I’m a horrible host.” She hurries through to the kitchen. I get up and follow her.

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Well, I need a refill.” She fills her cup from a silver teapot on the stove.

I try a different tack. “How’d it end?”

She winces. “Badly. Sandro’s been looking for immortality, some kind of fountain of youth since before I met him. He’s never been entirely successful. At least not on himself.”

“His coming back from the dead trick?”

She nods. “That’s right. You saw him in the morgue, didn’t you? You saw the other bodies? How they were desiccated? I don’t know exactly how he does it, but how long it takes him to come back depends on what’s around him. One time he was dead for over three years.”

“You know why he looks so old?”

She laughs. “It’s because he is. He’s still aging, just very slowly. But he’s been around a very long time.”

“You said ‘not on himself.’ ” I get an image of more people who turned out like Julio. I wonder if any of them turned out like me. “He’s always experimented on others first?”

“Of course. He’s not stupid. That’s what finally made me leave him.”

“What happened?”

She gives me a look like I’m dense, and when I figure it out, I realize I am.

“How old are you?” I ask.

“How old do I look?”

“About twenty-three.”

“I’m hurt,” she says with a little pout. “When he murdered me I was nineteen.”

She gives me a sly smile. I follow her back into the living room. “I need something stronger than tea,” she says. She pours brandy into a glass, curls up on the couch. The way she drapes herself, curling up against its back, she might as well be a cat. I never really had a good idea what “lithe” meant. Now I know.

I flop into the chair opposite her. The silence stretches out. I’m the one who finally breaks it.

“He brought you back,” I say. “Like me.”

She shakes her head. “Not quite.” She sets down her drink, reaches over the coffee table between us to take my hand. Compared to my room temperature mitt, her hands are burning up.

“You’re still warm,” I say.

“I’m still alive.” She turns my hand in hers, her fingers delicate against my wrist. “Does it hurt? Not having a heartbeat? Not breathing?”

“No,” I say. “I don’t feel a thing.”

She lets my hand fall, and a look of something passes her face. Is it envy?

“I got the immortality Sandro wanted for himself,” she says. “He made a deal with something in East Africa,” she says. “I was never very clear on what. And if he’d trusted it, we probably wouldn’t be having this conversation. But he decided to try it out on me first.”

“And he had to kill you to do it?”

She nods. “It was . . . unpleasant. And when he tried to do it again on himself, the thing he’d bargained with told him it was a one-shot deal.” She laughs. “He slit his throat like he’d slit mine. Took him three days to come back from that one. He’d wasted his chance at living forever on me. Last I heard, the thing he’d bargained with wasn’t returning his calls.”

“So you can’t die?”

“Not permanently. A day, maybe two at most. It’s like waking up from a bad dream, and I go on about my day.”

“Must be nice.” I wouldn’t mind the whole living forever thing if I wasn’t rotting once a day.

“It’s been useful a time or two,” she says.

“You know, you still haven’t told me how old you are.”

“Nobody’s ever told you it’s rude to ask a lady that question?” When I don’t answer the glib pretense falls away. She closes her eyes, almost as if she’s ashamed.

“I’ll be four hundred eight in January,” she says. “At least, I think it’s January. We weren’t quite as big on calendars back then.”

That’s what it is. All of her charm and poise is well practiced, but it’s like she’s going off a script. It’s slightly unnatural.

After four hundred years, she’s forgotten how to be normal.

She gets up, moves to the open French doors facing away from me. “I knew you were going to ask that,” she says. “But I still wish you hadn’t.”

I come up behind her. She leans back into me, all warm and soft. I put my arms around her, not sure what I’m doing but knowing that it feels right.

“I’m sorry,” I say and mean it. And I’m even sorrier for my next question. “What’s your angle in this? Neumann I get. Giavetti I get. But what about you?”

“Sandro is about seven hundred years old,” she says. She lets me chew on that one for a moment. I knew he was old, but seven hundred years is a number that doesn’t fit in my head. Four hundred is bad enough. It’s good information to know. Fucking frightening, but still. I nod, and she continues.

“I met him when I was eight,” she says. “He protected me, raised me. When I was old enough to not be a child to him anymore, he was my lover. You don’t know this yet, but living this long is a special kind of lonely. I’ve lost count of the times I’ve been married. How many lovers I’ve had. There’s only one man I’ve known almost my entire life. I can’t turn my back on him. Everyone I’ve known has died or will die. Everyone but me and Sandro. And now you.”