The Killing Floor Blues (22 page)

I’d come to Eisenberg Correctional in a bus, and I left the same way. A Greyhound this time, barreling down a long, dry desert highway. No dust, no diesel fumes, just clear blue sky and sunlight. I got off in Salt Lake City and grabbed lunch at a McDonald’s while I waited for my next bus. A two-dollar cheeseburger tasted like filet mignon. I sat there, savoring every bite, looking at the people around me and marveling. Because I could.

I didn’t know what freedom was worth until I lost it. I would never, I quietly vowed to myself, lose it again. Never.

The waiting lounge at the bus terminal had a television set mounted on brackets high in one corner of the room. I paused for a moment. The video was already headline news, the story of the day, and two pundits behind a curved desk were spinning up a storm.

“—our beloved colleague found dead in his home, allegedly of a self-inflicted gunshot wound just like—as we learned twenty minutes ago—Warden Lancaster himself. Now even if that wasn’t his face and voice on the recording, and frankly our in-studio experts have serious questions about that, clearly he believed he’d already been tried in the court of public opinion—”

“And that’s exactly it. That’s exactly it. We’re hearing reports of
dozens
of indictments being handed down this afternoon. Was he even named? Isn’t it far more likely that instead of being a patron of this ‘fight club,’ he was reporting undercover and planning to expose it? And why isn’t anyone asking the
real
question: why isn’t this graphic, violent footage, which could be seen by children, being erased from the Internet immediately? Doesn’t the attorney general
care
about children? That’s where we should be focusing all our attention right now.”

I smiled, shook my head, and moved on. Some things never changed.

The next bus ride was a straight shot down I-15, all the way to Las Vegas. Six and a half hours on the road, and I moved closer to the edge of my seat with every passing mile. My seatmate made small talk now and then, in between naps; he was an airplane-parts salesman. I didn’t know anything about that, so I asked him some questions I didn’t care about the answers to and let him ramble, responding with nods and “hmms” here and there. It was good background noise.

The sky turned gold; then it turned black. No stars shone above us. The city ahead, looming large in the dusty bus window, had put them out of business. My Vegas, sacred lady of halogen and neon. The spotlight from the Karnak pyramid touched a white-hot beckoning finger to the sky.

“Think you’re gonna win big?” my seatmate asked.

The bus wheezed as it pulled into the terminal. Hard light flowed in through the window, washing over me like a baptism.

“I’ll give it my best shot,” I told him.

Caitlin waited for me out in the parking lot, leaning against the hood of her snow-white Audi Quattro. She’d traded in her coat and her weapons for a gray silk jersey dress, and she curled her arms around my neck to pull me close.

“I’ve been watching the news all day,” she murmured once our lips parted. “Nicely played. You know, those celebrities…you
could
have blackmailed them.”

“I know. I decided to be the good guy for a change.”

She arched an eyebrow. “Oh? Did you like it?”

“Not enough to make a habit out of it. It’s
really
expensive and kind of exhausting. Have we heard from Pixie?”

“She’s on board.” Caitlin plucked at the shoulder of my oversized jacket. “
This
needs to be fixed. You look like a vaudeville comedian.”

“I’ll steal clothes from a smaller guy next time I break out of prison.”

“I’m taking you shopping,” she said. “But first, you have a much-overdue doctor’s appointment.”

*     *     *

“For a dead man,” Doc Savoy murmured, “you sure are spry.”

I sat on the edge of a cold steel mortuary slab, following the movements of his penlight as he shone it in one eye, then the other, swiveling the light from side to side. The doc’s “office” was the quiet mortuary behind the Rosewood Funeral Home; he’d sometimes joke that if he ever lost a patient, coffin-fitting was just fifty feet away.

He didn’t lose many patients though. Doc was pushing seventy, and his eyes were rheumy behind his wire-rimmed glasses, but everybody in the Vegas underground knew he was the best off-the-books sawbones in the business. If you took a gunshot wound or anything else you didn’t want the authorities asking questions about, he’d patch you up good as new—and more importantly, he’d keep his lips sealed.

I didn’t mind that he was really a veterinarian. Decades of experience had to count for
something
, right?

Caitlin stood behind him, arms crossed, eyeing my shirtless chest. There was nothing lascivious in her look: my skin was a tapestry of fading blotches, the ugly coat of bruises finally starting to heal. I was getting around all right now—the headaches and nausea notwithstanding—but every once in a while I’d move the wrong way and wince at a sudden muscle twinge.

“I’m just experimenting with being dead as a fashion statement,” I told him.

He snickered at my suit, folded neatly on the slab beside me. “I thought
that
was a fashion statement.”

“First man to ever escape from Eisenberg Correctional, and I get no respect.”

“Aw, you weren’t even the first,” the Doc said. “Didn’t you hear? Couple of guys on ATVs busted out the day before you did, clear across the desert. You should have hitched a ride with them, would’ve saved you a whole mess of trouble.
They
had the right idea.”

He checked my eyes once more and took a step back.

“Hm. Well, no doubt about it, you took a hit to the noggin. Good news is, with plenty of rest—I’m gonna say ten days, minimum—you should be right as rain. Go home, go to bed, and stay there.”

I shook my head. “No can do. Can’t you give me some medication or something?”

“For a concussion?” he said. “Sure. Tylenol. It’ll help with the headaches. Past that, there’s no way around it: you’ve
got
to rest. No physical exertion, no mental exertion, no booze—”

“Wait a second. I just broke out of prison, and I can’t even have a drink to celebrate?”

He beamed, rubbing his hands against his old butcher’s smock. “Sure you can! In ten days.
After
you come in for a follow-up and I give you a clean bill of health.”

“This isn’t working for me,” I said.

“Does permanent brain damage work for you? ’Cause that’s what you’re risking if you go running around acting crazy out there. You take
one
more solid hit to that thick head of yours, you could end up with internal bleeding, maybe even second-impact syndrome. Makes your brain swell up ’til there’s no more room in your skull and then, well, that’s all she wrote. Lousy way to die, my friend.”

“He
will
rest,” Caitlin said, locking eyes with me.

“By the by,” Doc said, “you know my stance on doctor-patient privilege. That’s something I don’t break—”

“Which I appreciate,” I told him.

“—but
that said
, I can speak in the vaguest of generalities. Something’s brewing out there, Dan, and it sure isn’t good.”

“Brewing how?”

“My business is brisk these last few days.
Too
brisk.” Doc Savoy nodded toward the door. “I’m selling bandages and caskets like they were going out of style. Lots of street kids coming in all messed up, lots more than just the usual bloody faces and scuffed-up knuckles.”

“More gang fights than usual?”

“Looks to me like a few alliances, both the explicit and the formerly presumed kind, are breaking down out there. Nicky Agnelli was no saint, but he held this city together. Now that he’s gone…”

He spread his hands. I got the message, loud and clear. The Vegas underworld worked because Nicky ran the city like a seasoned CEO. Sometimes he was a tyrant, sometimes a dealmaker, usually a little of both. Whatever he needed to be to keep the pot from boiling over. That worked great until the feds finally got the “evidence” they needed—courtesy of the Chicago Outfit—to put him away for good.

With the King of Vegas on the run, nobody had any incentive to play nice. And
everybody
would have their eyes on Nicky’s throne.

“If you ask me,” Doc said, “somebody needs to find Nicky and
make
him come back. That or find a darn good replacement, and pronto. Otherwise things are bound to get a whole lot worse.”

*     *     *

We had one last stop before getting down to business: Crystals. A shopping mall nestled in the heart of the Las Vegas strip, Crystals was sprawling and sleek and aimed squarely at catering to the lifestyles of the rich and famous. Caitlin and I walked along the polished tan floors past marquee after glowing marquee. Bottega Veneta, Porsche Design, Versace…I cleared my throat, keeping my head down.

“Uh, Cait,” I murmured, “I usually can’t afford to shop here on a
good
week, and when I got busted…well, almost everything I owned was in my wallet or my car, and the cops took both. I can’t afford to breathe the air in here.”

“What? Don’t be silly. I’m expensing it.”

She flashed her credit card at me. It was a Corporate Platinum AmEx, and the block letters at the bottom read “
Caitlin Brody / Southern Tropics Import/Export Company.
”

“Wait a second. How can you possibly justify buying me clothes as a business expense?”

She sniffed at me. “Simple. You are my consort. If you look poorly, it reflects badly on me. And if I look bad, it makes my prince look bad. Therefore, by buying you clothes, I’m serving my prince. Quite easily done.”

“That’s…devious.”

“Thank you.” She steered me by the shoulder, guiding me through a gleaming arch and into a store on the left. “Yes. Brunello Cucinelli. A good place to begin, I think.”

If I thought Doc Savoy had poked and prodded me, that was nothing compared to the attentions of a staff of tailors and fashion experts. Caitlin perused the racks of imported Italian styles while every part of my body was tape-measured and double tape-measured.

“He’ll need a sport coat,” Caitlin told one clerk, who followed her like a puppy dog. “Blazer style, I think. Two buttons, something slimming.”

He draped a length of black fabric over one arm, holding it out for her to touch.

“Ultralight twill,” he said as she ran her fingertips down his arm. “It’s a silk blend, durable but thin as a whisper, perfect for the climate.”

“Very nice. Do you have it in black or navy?”

“Both,” he said.

“Then we’ll take both.”

“And shirts?” he offered her another length of fabric. “May I recommend cotton poplin?”

“Cait,” I called over, “how much is this going to cost?”

Sudden silence. Every eye in the room fell upon me, cold as winter ice.

“Right,” I said, holding up a hand. “I’m just gonna maybe shut up now.”

It took a while, but we made it to the end. Caitlin tugged my hand and steered me over to a full-length mirror.

The battered, bedraggled convict in prison beige was gone. The man in the mirror was sleek in midnight black and ivory, from his narrow silk tie down to the tips of his polished Italian shoes.

“I think I’m back,” I said. “Do I look okay?”

“I think,” Caitlin said, curling her arms around me from behind and beaming at our shared reflection, “you look like a man who’s ready to do some serious damage.”

It was long after closing hour, but soft lights still burned behind the window of the Scrivener’s Nook. The Dickensian clutter of a bookshop was an odd place for a late-night clandestine rendezvous, but it was an easy place to rally the troops. As Caitlin and I arrived, Bentley hustled us into the shop and locked the door behind us.

“It’s my fault,” Mama Margaux said, pulling me into a rib-squeezing hug. “I should have been keeping better watch over her.”

“Not your job,” I told her. “Jennifer got bushwhacked, that’s all. Happens to the best of us. The important thing is, for now, she’s alive.”

Pixie gave me a nod from the counter, where she’d set up her laptop, but didn’t say a word. I wasn’t sure if we were on speaking terms or not. The rest of us congregated in the middle of the shop, making a ragged circle.

“Here’s the situation,” I said. “We know Jennifer’s being held by traitors inside the Cinco Calles, led by a man named Cesar Gallegos. Cesar’s the right hand of Gabriel, the Calles’ top dog; looks like he’s tired of waiting for Gabriel to retire, so he’s making a side deal with the Chicago Outfit. We don’t know how many men he’s got on his side. Could be a handful, could be half the gang.”

Caitlin looked to Pixie. “They’re smart enough not to make Jennifer bleed, but they very much want to interrogate her. To that end, Chicago is loaning them a torture specialist.”

“How much time do we have?” Pixie asked her.

“Precious little.”

“We’ve got two jobs,” I said. “First, track down Cesar Gallegos and make him give Jennifer back. Second, find the Chicago delegation and take them out.”

Bentley raised a frail finger.

“Dealing with one problem,” he said, “will easily solve the other. If Cesar is already planning to meet with these outsiders, he’ll know where they’re going to be. An ambush would be simple enough.”

I nodded. “Agreed, so let’s focus on Gallegos.”

“Gabriel would know where to find him, right?” Pixie asked. “I mean, if we went and told him that his right-hand man’s a traitor, wouldn’t he help us?”

“The problem there,” I said, “is we don’t know who
else
in the Calles is dirty. Jen converted an entire tenement by the airport into an urban fortress. If we walk in there, we might not walk out again if we say the wrong thing to the wrong person. And no matter what, word would get back to Cesar that the jig is up. He might kill Jennifer before we can get to him.”

“Could we catch Gabriel alone somewhere and talk to him in private?”

“The guy runs one of the biggest street gangs in Las Vegas. I guarantee he’s
never
alone. And if his number-two man’s turned traitor on him, it’s possible his bodyguards have turned too.” I paused, a thought occurring to me. I snapped my fingers. “But I think I know someone, someone
outside
the Calles, who might be able to tell us where Cesar hangs out. I’ll be back in half an hour.”

“And in the meantime?” Corman asked.

“Just sit tight for now. I need to see this guy alone. He’s going to be hard to deal with.” I paused, looking around the room, suddenly sheepish. “And, uh, could I borrow somebody’s car? Mine’s impounded and I can’t reclaim it because I’m kinda legally dead right now.”

“Take a taxi.” Caitlin handed me a couple of twenty-dollar bills. “No driving until the doctor says otherwise.”

Pixie followed me to the door, keeping a safe distance. She didn’t speak up until we were both out on the sidewalk, wrapped in a cool night breeze.

“Hey,” she said.

I paused and looked back at her.

“Hey yourself.”

“I was really mad at you.” She crossed her arms over her chest and looked down at the sidewalk. “When you wouldn’t let me help, going after Damien Ecko. I mean I was really,
really
mad.”

“You had every right to be.”

She looked up at me, frowning.

“That was some patronizing bullshit, you know that? I’m a grown woman. I don’t need to be protected from the consequences of my own decisions.”

I shrugged. “True.”

Pixie stubbed the toe of her sneaker against the sidewalk. She sighed.

“Then, on the flight home, I kept thinking about what you said to me. About not getting blood on my hands if I didn’t have to. About how once you go down that road, you can’t come back. And…I think you’re right. I
don’t
want to be like you. I don’t ever want it to be easy to hurt somebody.”

I didn’t answer. She needed to talk. I just needed to listen.

“I left town for a few days. Went to the coast, just to get my head clear. I sat on the beach. Thought about staying there, just…never coming back. But I kept thinking about Coop. Margaux said you took down Stanwyck, but Ecko got away.”

“Yeah, well,” I said, “we did our best. We didn’t figure he had a warehouse filled with living mummies in crates. In retrospect, probably should have seen that coming. But look, Pix, nobody’s giving up. Ecko’s the most wanted man in the western United States right now. When he pokes his head out of hiding—and he will, eventually—I’m going after him with everything I’ve got.”

“And that’s why I came back,” Pixie said.

“For Damien Ecko?”

“For Coop. Because he was my friend, and until Ecko pays for what he—what he
did
to him, I can’t rest. I’m not asking to be in on the kill, Faust. You’re right, I don’t need blood on my hands. I don’t want it. But when it comes to the
hunt?
You call me.”

I gave her a tired smile.

“I wouldn’t call anybody else.”

“Good.” She nodded. “Now let’s get Jennifer back, huh?”

“On it,” I told her. “I just have to pay a visit to an old friend.”

*     *     *

“Friend” was probably the wrong choice of words. At least that’d be my guess given the look on his face when Gary Kemper, Las Vegas Metro detective, walked through the door of his studio apartment and found me sitting on his couch.

“No,” he said, clutching the grocery bags in his arms, “no, no,
no
. This can’t be fucking happening.”

His backup piece, a .22 I’d found hidden in his nightstand, dangled easy in my hand. I didn’t point it at him; it was just there to keep the conversation civil.

“Oh, yeah,” I said. “It’s happening.”

I’d met Gary Kemper when Harmony Black’s all-star task force set me in their sights. He was Agent Black’s local liaison, a superstar in the gang-crimes unit. He was also a member of the Redemption Choir, a pack of cambion terrorists.
And
he had been working for Lauren Carmichael.

They say a man can’t serve two masters, let alone three, so I simplified his life for him. Thanks to a little bit of blackmail, soon he only had one boss to worry about. Me.

“You son of a bitch,” he seethed. “You made me think Harmony and Lars were dead!”

“I needed you to get me close to my targets, and frankly, you aren’t that good of an actor. You had to
believe
it. If Sullivan smelled a lie on you, he would have killed us both.”

Kemper’s shoulders slumped. He kicked the door closed behind him, walked into the kitchen nook, and set his grocery bags down on the counter between us. I watched to see if he’d go for the gun on his hip. He didn’t even bother.

“Yeah, well, maybe. I spent a week in this crack den of a ‘safe house’ in Los Angeles. Word got back that Sullivan was dead, and everybody just…drifted off. The end of the Redemption Choir.”

“You wanted out of the Choir. I got you out. A little gratitude wouldn’t hurt anybody.”

He mustered a tired glare as he unpacked his groceries. Bananas, a six-pack of Sam Adams, a stack of microwave dinners, another six-pack.

“I heard you got sent to Eisenberg Correctional,” he said. “Then today I heard you were dead. Either of those true?”

The last of his groceries was a tiny chocolate cake under a plastic dome, dipped in fudge, sized for one.

“Both, sort of. Hey.” I nodded at the cake. “What’s with the fancy dessert? Are you…are you
celebrating
my death?”

He wrinkled his nose. “It’s my birthday tomorrow, smartass. I’m down for a twelve-hour shift, so maybe I’m gonna want a little cake and a beer afterward. Nothing wrong with that.”

“Twelve hours. Yeah, I can imagine, with all the gang violence now that Nicky’s gone.”

He twisted the cap off a bottle of beer and tossed back a swig.

“Clusterfuck. Unmitigated clusterfuck. We were supposed to take down Nicky
and
his entire organization in one big sweep. Sparkly clean Vegas streets and nice big headlines. Now? It’s total chaos out there. The task force is over, too. Lars went on disability leave from the DEA, and Harmony…hell, that’s just a pile of weird.”

“How do you mean?”

“She left.” He took a long pull from the bottle. “I figured back to the Seattle FBI office, right? But no, turns out she got reassigned to the ‘critical incident response group,’ whatever the hell that is. So I poke around, find out she’s supposedly running field investigations for a higher-up named Walburgh.”

He stepped around the counter and leaned against it, eyeing his bottle.

“I got a pal in the Bureau, and I asked him to get me in touch. Thinking hey, I never really got to say a proper goodbye before Harmony left town, and I’d like to give her a call. Well, wherever she is, she can’t be reached. And this Walburgh guy? As far as we can tell, he
doesn’t exist
. He’s a voicemail box in an empty office. There’s some shady shit going down in the Bureau, and Harmony’s neck-deep in it.”

I wished I could say I was surprised, but Agent Black had intimated that her connections in Washington ran deeper—and to far stranger corners—than anyone would have guessed. Whatever she was into, I just wanted to keep under her radar and out of her way.

And as long as Daniel Faust stayed dead and buried, I had a pretty good shot.

“Whatever it is you’re here for,” Gary told me, “say it and get out. You can’t blackmail me anymore. Sullivan and Lauren are both six feet under.”

“Technically he’s about fifteen feet under,” I said, “but that’s arguing semantics. I’m here to ask for your help.”

He blinked. “Help
you?
Why the hell would I do that?”

“Because,” I said, “you and me are gonna save some lives together.”