Daniel Faust 03 - The Living End Read online

  “Yeah, maybe,” I said, trying to move him along. I felt bad taking his time when there were real people he could be helping.

  “Just think about it? And I promise, no religious hard sell, no jive, just a roof over your head and a hot meal in your belly. We’re here to help.”

  “Yeah, man,” I mumbled. I curled my legs up against me, folding into myself, changing my body language to shut him out. “Thanks for the sandwich.”

  He gave me a wave and strolled away, whistling under his breath as he vanished into the crowds. I sat there a minute, perfectly still, not quite sure why I wasn’t getting up.

  My fingertips were numb.

  I thought back to how he’d offered me the card. Holding it by the edges, not with his thumb and forefingers gripping the middle like most people would. I took it out of my pocket, carefully this time, and gave it a sniff. It was faint, in the swirl of odors from the street, but I could still catch the tang of chemicals.

  He fucking dosed me, I thought, pushing myself to my feet. My legs were wobbly. I would have chalked that up to the last few hours of sitting on the brutally hot concrete, but now I could tell that my reactions were off. Just a little slower than usual, just a little less steady.

  Worse, now that the Missionary and his stream of patter were gone, I could sense what he’d left in his wake: a faint trail of golden motes sparkling in the air and fading fast, invisible to the untrained eye. The aftermath of an enchantment.

  No wonder I’d trusted him at first sight and it was so hard not to fall into his eyes. His slick little aura spell, blended with whatever drug he’d slipped me, formed a lethal one-two punch: each one covered the traces of the other and amplified the effect. He made me trust him, and it wasn’t until he was long gone that I could put the pieces together. A regular joe off the street wouldn’t stand a chance against this guy. I stared at the address on the card, thinking about his offer of shelter.

  Why kidnap homeless people off the street when you could make them come to you?

  By the time I got to my car, I felt fine again. I flexed my fingers, running my thumbnail across the pads to test for sensation as I rummaged in the trunk for a plastic bag to store the card and sandwich. Then I revved up the engine, got out while I waited for the air-conditioning to kick in, and called Pixie.

  “Think I’ve got something on our missing-people problem,” I told her. “Look up everything you can on this New Life Project operation. They’re running a shelter in town. I want financials, history, anything you can get about who runs it and where they came from.”

  “If they’re a 501(c)3, that’ll all be public record,” she said. “Easy sauce. You want me to check out their office too, do some Dumpster diving?”

  “No. Stay away from there. At least until I figure out what the hell they’re up to.”

  My next call was to Harmony Black.

  We met in a Dunkin’ Donuts parking lot. I pulled up alongside her car, a dour blue government-issue Ford, facing the other way so our windows lined up. She rolled down her window and gave me a tired look.

  “What unreasonable thing do you want today?” she said.

  “You have access to a chemical lab?”

  “I do, yeah.”

  I reached out the window, offering her the plastic bag.

  “I need this analyzed,” I said.

  “Okay, you seem fundamentally confused on the nature of our relationship, Faust. You’re the criminal. You’re going to prison. I’m the fed. I’m going to put you there. I don’t run errands for you.”

  “This isn’t about us,” I said. “I’ve got a line on some homeless people going missing, and I think this is related. There’s some kind of drug residue on the back of this card, and I’d bet twenty bucks you’ll find the same chemicals in the sandwich. I need to know what the hell it is.”

  “What you need is to refer this to the local authorities. Drugging someone is a crime. Report it and turn over your evidence.”

  I leaned towards her, giving a quick glance left and right just to make sure nobody was wandering close enough to overhear.

  “The guy who slipped me this stuff is one of our kind, agent. Some kind of magician. A good one. Slippery.”

  That got her attention. She took the bag from me, wary, and in my second sight the silver bangles on her wrist glittered like diamonds in the sun. Warding spells.

  “If you really want me to throw some blind cops up against somebody like us,” I said, “maybe more than one, then you just say the word and I’ll start the meat grinder. If you ask me, though, I think this is best handled off the books.”

  “That’s not your call,” she said, setting the bag on her passenger’s seat. She pursed her lips, staring at it like it might bite her, then looked back at me. “All right. I’ll check into it, and that’s all I’m offering. I’ll be in touch.”

  The hum of her engine hadn’t even faded away when my phone started buzzing. Nicky, said the caller ID. I almost let it go to voicemail, then second-guessed myself and picked up on the fourth ring.

  “Dan,” he said. “We need to talk.”

  “About?”

  “Not on the phone. Come to the corner of Polaris and West Russell. Ten minutes.”

  “I’m not in town,” I said.

  “Yeah, you are. Ten minutes.”

  The line went dead. I cursed under my breath and shifted into first gear, rolling out into the busy street. Part of me wanted to let him stew, but I needed to figure out where his head was at—for my and Jennifer’s sake, not to mention everybody else who would be wearing an orange jumpsuit if he decided to take a deal from the feds before we did.

  Still, I didn’t like it. Nicky wasn’t terse by nature, and I’d seen what happened when he thought he was being backed into a corner. That was when bodies dropped.

  He was waiting for me on the corner, dressed in a gray silk sports coat and titanium-rimmed glasses, looking like a movie producer on the hustle for a hot new deal. I pulled over to the curb, and he jumped in.

  “Not here,” he said. “Keep driving. Take the next left. What are you wearing? You look like a bum.”

  “Where are we going?”

  “Just a little ride, that’s all. Not far.”

  At the next light, I casually glanced toward his hip. His jacket was custom tailored, but I could still make out the bulge of his shoulder holster.

  “This isn’t the way to the Gentlemen’s Bet,” I said, trying to keep my tone light. I knew what happened when people went for “little rides” with Nicky Agnelli. I’d been in the backseat for more than one of them.

  He knew I had to be thinking it too, and that was a lousy way of setting somebody up for a kill. Even so, he didn’t have a single reassuring word for me. I decided to play it cool until I could figure out his game.

  “I’m not working out of the Bet right now,” he said. “You know, with all this stuff going on, these wild allegations? I’m trying to stay mobile. Agile.”

  His directions took us out to Eldorado, in North Vegas. Lots of sleepy little suburban houses baking in the sun, far from Nicky’s usual flair for glitz and glamor. We turned onto an access road and rolled into a half-finished housing development. It reminded me of those old pictures showing the evolution of man from ape. All along a freshly paved street the development grew from empty plots, to skeletons of plywood and drywall, to vacant and shiny houses waiting for buyers.

  “This is us,” Nicky said. “Number twenty, right here.”

  I pulled into a driveway and gave the freshly built house a hard look.

  “Nice place. Thought you liked living closer to the action, though.”

  “Thought I’d buy myself a quiet little getaway,” Nicky said. “C’mon, I wanna show you something. Let’s go around the back.”

  I wondered, idly, if I could take Nicky in a fight. I’d never given it much thought before. I only knew one thing for sure: whatever he wanted to show me, it was nothing I wanted to see.

  Twelv
e

  I followed Nicky into a small yard shielded from the rest of the block by a birch picket fence. He turned to me and let out a heavy sigh, shaking his head.

  “Danny, I’m gonna have to ask you something, and I know it’s gonna insult you, but I hope you’ll take it in the spirit of the situation and accept my honest apologies.”

  “Yeah?” I said. “What’s that?”

  “I need you to raise your arms.”

  “So you can see if I’m wearing a wire,” I said.

  “That’s right.”

  “You son of a bitch.”

  Nicky’s shoulders slumped.

  “C’mon, buddy,” he said. “With all the shit that’s flying around here, you know I have to check. I have to. Now we can do this the friendly way, or we can do this the not-friendly way. Don’t make us go there. You know me, I wouldn’t ask if—”

  “And you know me,” I said. “I’m no rat, Nicky.”

  “I know, okay?” he said. “But given this whole situation…I gotta check. For my peace of mind. So please, pretty please, put your fucking arms up.”

  I stared him down as I lifted my arms in a T, not even blinking as he awkwardly patted my chest, back, and hips. His hand closed over the bulge in my hip pocket.

  “What’s this?” he said, squinting.

  He jumped back as a stream of playing cards launched from my pocket. They flashed through the air in a stream of red and black and riffled into my outstretched hand. I caught the last card and turned my palm to show him. Bicycle Dragon Backs, my usual brand.

  “Just a deck of cards,” I said.

  I saw his throat bulge as he swallowed. Nicky knew, better than most people, what I could do with a deck of cards.

  “Yeah, all right,” he said. “You’re clean.”

  “Now tell me something I don’t know.”

  “Do better than that,” he said, turning to the back door and jiggling a key in the lock. “I’ll show you.”

  I put the cards away and followed him in.

  The kitchen had never seen a speck of dirt, outside of what we tracked in on our shoes. Nicky’s new place had beech cabinets, yellow-and-white-checkered linoleum, and not a single utensil to be seen. Up the hall I could see a living room with brand new carpets the color of gold leaf, unmarred by footprints or furniture.

  “This place is nice,” Nicky said. “The developers went bust a few months back and they’re sorting out who owes what to who, so you don’t have a lot of real estate agents poking around, trying to—”

  Beneath our feet, someone screamed. The muffled howl was primal, mingled fear and pain, setting my teeth on edge.

  “Another nice thing,” Nicky said. “It has a basement. Basements aren’t cheap out here, you know? It’s because of the caliche. The sedimentary rock. Digging that shit out is a ton of work. You pay out the ass for the square footage.”

  “What’s going on here, Nicky?”

  He opened a door just off the kitchen. Unfinished stone steps led the way down, under the cold glow of a dangling workman’s light. He looked back at me, and I couldn’t read his expression.

  “Follow me. I’ll show you,” he said.

  I stood my ground.

  “C’mon,” Nicky said. “This little party ain’t for you. If it was, you think I ever would’ve let you see it coming? Jeez, Dan, gimme some fuckin’ credit.”

  I followed him down the basement steps. Another muffled scream broke the air, over a sizzling, metallic noise. The stale, humid air down below smelled like burnt pork.

  A naked man dangled by his handcuffed wrists from a ceiling beam. His toes barely brushed the concrete floor. His body was a canvas of bruises, cuts, and cigarette burns. One eye was swollen shut and the other, staring out behind a clump of matted black hair, was a thousand miles away from sane.

  “Danny!” cheered Juliette, waving her arms frantically and flashing a pearly smile. She would have seemed more welcoming if her face and curly blond hair weren’t spattered with fresh blood, and if she wasn’t wearing a black leather apron and matching elbow-length gloves. Justine, her twin sister, stood by a rolling cart and held up a pair of jumper cables like she was about to give away the grand prize on a game show.

  “What,” I breathed, “the fuck, Nicky?”

  “What, this guy right here?” Nicky said. He walked over to join the twins and patted the dangling man on the back. “Dan, meet Clay Boswell. Clay ran a little crew in Summerlin for me. Or at least he did, until he decided there was more of a future in law enforcement.”

  Juliette handed Nicky a white silk handkerchief. He wiped his fingers delicately. Clay tried to talk, mumbling incoherently behind the filthy gag in his mouth, his chapped and bloody lips twitching.

  “Which means it’s time to play our favorite game”—Justine tapped the jumper cables together and showered the cement floor in a violent explosion of sparks—”attitude adjustment!”

  Nicky walked back over to me. Behind him, Justine lunged in and pressed the cables to Clay’s chest. He shrieked and thrashed like a fish on a hook. The stench of burnt flesh twisted my stomach.

  “Clay’s been a bad boy,” Nicky said. “Offered me up to Agent Black in exchange for immunity. Of course we caught him before he could hand over any evidence she didn’t already have. Right now, Clay’s making a painful and life-changing discovery. You know what that is, Dan?”

  “Go ahead and tell me,” I said through gritted teeth.

  He moved in, standing almost toe to toe with me. “There’s no such thing as immunity from me.”

  Another blast of sparks. Another muffled scream. I tried not to look.

  “I don’t know what he’s supposed to tell you with that gag in his mouth,” I said.

  “Tell me?” Nicky said. “Nothing. He’s already told me everything he knows. I don’t want to hear another word out of him for the rest of his short and miserable life.”

  “Then why the fuck are you still torturing him?”

  “To make a point. Dan, are you familiar with the castle doctrine?”

  “Sure,” I said. “Somebody invades your house, you’ve got the right to use lethal force.”

  Nicky put his arm around my shoulder. To my credit, I didn’t flinch.

  “I’m the king, Dan. That makes Vegas my castle. And when someone invades my castle, that means I have the right—no, the moral and ethical duty—to use any means necessary in its defense.”

  While Juliette whispered in Clay’s ear, Justine put down the jumper cables and picked up a cordless drill.

  “Our friend Clay, here?” Nicky said. “He’s an object lesson. First, to make it clear that actions have consequences and disloyalty is something I take very, very personally. Second, to reassure everyone that I have this situation under control. The feds don’t have anything. They’re not going to get anything, and everyone just needs to chill out.”

  The drill whirred to life. Justine held it up to the light, so Clay’s good eye could see what was coming next.

  “I want you to spread the word,” Nicky said. “Feds or no feds, Nicky Agnelli still owns Las Vegas. When the storm blows over, everybody who stayed cool is going to get a little something special in their Christmas stocking. Those who break ranks, on the other hand? I got more basements, Dan. There’s always more basements.”

  “Fine,” I said. “Message delivered. Now I’m leaving.”

  His grip tightened on my shoulder.

  “Just one more minute. Stay and watch this part. This is gonna be good.”

  Justine looked over at me. Her eyes blazed orange in the shadows, like a candle burning inside a mad jack-o’-lantern. A forked tongue slithered from her sister’s mouth, tasting the blood on Clay’s ragged ear.

  “Stay and watch, Danny,” Justine cooed. She moved closer with the drill. “We’re just getting warmed up.”

  • • •

  I emerged into sunshine and heat like a long-lost cave explorer, slamming the kitchen door behind me. Then I stag
gered over to the picket fence, doubled over, and threw up on the freshly mowed grass. I leaned against the rough wooden fencepost with one hand until I could catch my breath.

  After the basement, the quiet and peaceful suburban street was surreal. Nothing seemed real, nothing but the memory of that burning-flesh stench. I could still taste it in the back of my throat, no matter how many lungfuls of dry, hot air I gulped down.

  Nicky knew. I had two encounters with Harmony Black in two days, and suddenly I got a front-row seat at his little torture show? I was a magician, and “coincidence” wasn’t a word in our vocabulary. He wanted to make sure I wasn’t getting too chummy with the enemy. After all, I knew more of his dirty secrets than almost anyone alive. If I wanted to burn him, I could.

  And I did. I wanted to burn him to the fucking ground. Problem was, hurting him meant hurting people I cared about, too, people who would get dragged down by his sinking ship. Until I found a way around that, I was still Nicky’s guardian angel.

  I called Jennifer from the car and asked for a meet. She hadn’t been too discreet about her unhappiness with Nicky lately, and I was pretty sure that “object lesson” in the basement wasn’t just for my benefit.

  I cruised back to Bentley and Corman’s place to grab a shower and a change of clothes. I left the stubble on my cheeks, though. I had a feeling I’d be paying a recon visit to the good folks at the New Life Project in the very near future.

  Night fell and the city woke up. I parked the car and walked half a block over to Fremont Street, drawn to the roiling of the drunken crowds and the blare of hard rock from towering speakers that were all volume, no finesse. A band on the open-air stage was ripping their way through a Van Halen tribute set and bouncing around like spandex-wrapped monkeys on crack. I waded through the cheering crowd, feeling underdressed without a plastic beer cup in my hand.

  Meditation in motion was an acquired skill. I focused on my breathing and let the thoughts slip from my mind the same way I slipped through the press of bodies, letting my feet carry me along to the tempo of the drums. In the space between two heartbeats, I was nowhere at all.