The three lookouts responded, “Clear Alpha.” “Clear Beta.” “Clear Delta.”
I opened the woman’s pocketbook to find a .22 with an illegal suppressor. The end of the barrel was attached to the end of the purse with a swiveling coupler like nothing I’d ever seen before. I maneuvered the gun. It didn’t come lose. The .22 was hooked in, but attached in such a way that she couldn’t have gotten her hand around the grip. Which was just plain weird. The only other things in the bottom of the purse were an extra magazine, a pair of reading glasses, and a tube of L’Oréal lipstick. I twirled the lipstick up. “Coral. An interesting shade. Sedate, maybe just a little bit saucy. A good choice for a woman who’s looking less and less like Angel Tit’s best pal.”
I held the purse up, inspecting it closer, and accidentally slid my fingers through the side panel. I pushed on the panel and held it up to her. “Nice. Very nice. I like. You can be walking along, an office clerk on her lunch hour, maybe getting close to a guy on a park bench, shove your hand into the purse through here”—I showed the guys the panel, which was hinged with tiny brass jewelry hinges—“aim this little gun, swiveling it in the coupler, give a two-tap through this small hole on the other end”—I tapped my finger on the barrel—“and walk on.”
I looked at Derek and Angel. “The handler sent someone to take Angel out. Seems he’s become a problem, somehow. Let’s drive.” I handed Derek the purse, turned off the radio system, and took off the headpiece.
“You know who I am?” I asked the woman. She nodded once, jerkily, angry eyes above the tape. “You know what we’ll do to you if you don’t volunteer the info we want?” Her pupils dilated and her sweat smelled of fear, but she didn’t look away or shrink back. She had moxie, I’d give her that.
To Derek I asked, “Who is she?”
He was going through her bag now and held up a respiratory rescue inhaler. “That’s it. Except for—” He snapped open a side pocket on the purse and pulled out a set of keys. One was an electronic key with a remote engine start. Derek grinned. It was a rookie mistake. “Circle the block,” he instructed the driver. “Then if we don’t find what we’re looking for, we’ll widen the search perimeter.” We circled back and drove around for ten minutes, Derek pressing the key, looking for lights blinking on parked cars. We found the woman’s car in a small private lot on a side street up from Decatur.
Derek pulled off his T-shirt to reveal another one underneath and jumped out. I watched as he tossed the stoner watching the lot a twenty, climbed into the running car, and drove it away. We followed. The stoner went back to sleep.
Derek wove slowly through the Quarter, through traffic, and pulled into a hotel on St. Charles Avenue. He tossed the keys to the valet and went into the hotel. Moments later he jogged around from the back and jumped into the van. He pulled on the original T-shirt and hat and grinned, handing me the contents of the car and its glove box in a grocery store plastic bag. Derek was having fun. The woman we had kidnapped, however, was not, and I could see why. There were three different .22 handguns in the bag—two pistols and one semiautomatic. Twenty-twos were the weapons of choice for made men and contract killers. I was betting on contract killer for our tiny, not-so-efficient hostage. Our enemy liked hit men. If he had sent a hit man to take out Angel, then we could no longer use the former marine to draw him out. Checkmate. Dang it. I’d never gone up against someone who was always one step ahead of me.
I gave the driver an address on South Broad Street, suggesting that he ride around some more and get there in fifteen minutes. He looked at me funny, but I ignored it and pulled on nitrile gloves to open the bag. “So. Sophia,” I said, paging through the papers Derek had lifted from her car. “Sophia Gallaud.”
“Guh-lode,” Derek said, correcting my pronunciation.
“Gallaud. Sorry,” I said. Seemed like Derek was going to be good cop to my bad. “Local address on a Louisiana driver’s license, local dry cleaning stub.” I held it up. “Local shooting range membership. I’ve been to that one. I like the black-painted floors. It’s easy to police your brass. Goodness, congrats on the nephew’s Catholic thingamajiggy.” I passed the invitation to Derek.
“Confirmation,” he said. “It’s a Roman Catholic rite of passage. Like laying on of hands.”
“Like a special Mass or something?” I asked.
“Seems so.” To Sophia he said, “I was raised Baptist, myself. None of that Latin stuff or rolling in the aisles either. Now, Yellowrock, here, she’s Cherokee. They practice blood rites. The Injuns ever use human sacrifice? Scalping or stuff?”
“We didn’t scalp. That was a white man thing. And no sacrifice in religious practices. Cherokees were known to use knives to great effect in other ways, however, like killing enemies. Yeah, we were real good at that.” If I sounded bitter, no one called me on it. I handed him my biggest vamp-killer, a new knife to replace the eighteen-inch blade destroyed in Asheville. “Like this one.”
He took it gingerly. “You ever killed anyone with it?”
“Not yet.” The words brought me up short. They said awful things about my job, but it was the truth. “But the blade that one replaced . . .” I looked away, unable to hide my reaction to the memory of the silvered blade sliding into Evangelina’s belly. The feel of the hotter than human blood pulsing out. “That was a bad one,” I said more softly.