I’d been at this for hours, since the whorehouse *cat had confirmed it was Jack peeling people like bananas. Nik had obtained a list of the victims from the Internet and split it between us. We didn’t know if Jack thought all humans were wicked or there was an actual reason he was choosing particular victims. Nik was hoping for the latter. Catching a killer with a pattern would be a helluva lot easier than assuming every single human in NYC was fair game. We had skills, but bodyguarding millions of people nightly wasn’t one of them.
That led me here to this particular piece of crap. There are some nuggets of info about the victims that news articles miss. You had to do it the old-fashioned way—talk to the friends and family. This was the first one I’d tracked down and I didn’t know if his sister had been Jacko’s definition of wicked, but her brother was covered head to toe in it. He was a bad, bad boy. I’d gone to the address Niko had traced from the victim’s name, talked with the half-blind and wholly pissy grandma. She’d assumed I was a “customer” and told me Big Mike was at his regular spot. I’d been curious enough to ask how she’d known I wasn’t a cop. Her cackled laughter had followed me down the three flights of tenement stairs.
When the half blind knew what you were and what you weren’t, maybe it was time to stop calling it an identity crisis and just go with identity.
Big Mike was still coming for me with all the speed of a nearly dead, morbidly obese cow and I stepped to one side, extended my arm and clotheslined him. His neck hit my arm with a meaty thud and he was back down. I stood over him as he gasped for breath, his face turning faintly blue. I bent over and nudged him in the ribs with the silencer on my gun. “You know I train every day thanks to an anal-retentive brother? Nah, I know you don’t, but I’m telling you. I could’ve broken your neck. I could’ve hit your nose and driven bone splinters up into what passes for your tiny brain. I could’ve kicked your testicles so far up into your body that you sneezed them out. But I didn’t. I took you down with a move I saw on WWF, you pathetic sack of shit. Here’s some advice: get a new job.”
Big Mike’s current job was drug dealer and occasional leg-breaker for anyone who needed that sort of thing. I glanced at my gun, snorted, and put it away. I’d planned on using it only for the fear factor, but I didn’t even need it for that. I slapped the man’s violet-colored cheek lightly. “This is how it’s going to go, Mikey. When you can breathe again . . . if you can breathe again, you’re going to tell me about your sister. What did she do before she was killed? What was she into? Was she like you or was she innocent?” After seeing Big Mike and his grandma, I was on the fence.
Nobody knew better than I did: sometimes genes do tell.
*
“Hooker,” I said over the steaming plate of Chinese. “Sixteen and new to the trade. That’s probably why it didn’t make the news.” Sixteen and a prostitute. I hadn’t blamed her genes for that. I had blamed her brother though and thoroughly enough that the world’s most dedicated plastic surgeon would pin up a picture of Frankenstein’s monster to aim for as the best possible outcome.
I’d always known I was lucky when it came to brothers, but sometimes I forgot others didn’t have that. It had been the one thing in my life I’d not once had to question and because of that might be my only true blind spot.
I stabbed at the orange chicken with my fork. I’d decided years ago that if you hadn’t grown up with them in your hand, then chopsticks were for posers. The fact that I hadn’t been able to learn to use them was coincidence. “Thanks,” I added.
Niko, who could do that catch-a-fly-with-chopsticks thing and therefore not a poser, tipped his head slightly to one side. “For what?”
I shrugged as the loud chatter in the tiny restaurant ramped up another notch. There were cockroaches in the bathroom big enough to take a plunger to the toilet themselves if it stopped up, but nobody cared. The food, whether it had an antenna or two in it or not, was too good. “Just for doing the brother thing.” And doing it in a way many brothers couldn’t be bothered to. “What’d you find out?”
“Thief and rapist.” He went for a square of tofu that shivered the same as a tiny cube of vomit-flavored Jell-O would. I grimaced and savored my chicken all the more. “I believe we have our pattern. Jack is targeting those with what some would consider to be wicked behavior and with no leniency for the unwilling, those who are actually victims.”
I frowned, not completely convinced. “But that doesn’t explain you. I mean, I get why Jack would want me if I were human. I’m a killer.”
“And you think I’m not?” Niko raised his eyebrows.
I waved my fork, dismissing the words. “You’re lethal as hell, I know, but you kill in self-defense or in defense of others. You drip nobility instead of sweat. You’re Buddha, Jesus, Mother Teresa, and the Easter Bunny rolled into one. You shouldn’t be on Jack’s Naughty versus Nice list.”
“You forget Cherish.” His eyes were clear. He had killed Promise’s daughter, but he didn’t feel guilt over it. I would have known if he did. Damn good thing too. He had not a single reason to feel blame over her.