“Yeah,” I said, my appetite gone. “Thanks, Amar. Appreciate it.”
Nobody said a word after that, as we weighed the implications. Amar vanished with his tray. Eventually Jennifer broke the silence.
“That heinous bitch.”
“Sounds like Kirmira was a rakshasa after all,” Corman said. “Which means her whole spiel about being ‘the last of her kind’ after Prince Malphas sieged her jungle was a load of crap all along. What do we actually know about Naavarasi?”
“We know she’s a heinous bitch,” Jennifer snapped, glaring down at the tape recorder. “Her own kid. She set up her own kid and killed him, just to make us think she was on our side.”
“And so I’d owe her a favor,” I said, “which she then used to bait her trap for Caitlin later down the line. Kirmira didn’t just start working for the Chicago Outfit last month; he’d been serving the boss’s kid for years. How long ago did she start setting this up?”
“Well, did her a fat lot of good in the end,” Jennifer said.
I wished I could believe that. I wanted to think we’d blown Naavarasi’s plans apart and left her bleeding, bleeding bad enough that it’d be a dog’s age before she tried anything like that again, but I didn’t buy it. Mainly because I suspected enslaving Caitlin wasn’t her endgame. It was just another layer of her plan.
“Sit on the tape for now.” I pushed my chair back. That second drink beckoned to me, but I needed a clear head. “I’m going to try to be productive tonight and learn as much as I can about the rules of my new ‘honored position’ in Sitri’s court.”
“Like where the loopholes are?” Corman asked.
“Just like you taught me. And in the meantime, I’m looking for Santiago. Something tells me Elmer Donaghy didn’t spirit him and his partner away on a first-class jet to Paris, which means there’s a good chance they’re still in town. And if they’re here, I want them.”
21.
I had one solid source in Metro, though he had a strangely lopsided view of our relationship. Just because Gary Kemper had blackmail on me and could end my life with a single phone call to the FBI, he seemed to believe he was the one in charge. People get strange ideas sometimes.
We met in the parking lot of a Five Guys a few blocks from the Strip. No particular reason for the choice of rendezvous spot, except I was in the mood for a cheeseburger. I wasn’t sure if the party tonight was going to have catering, or if the food would be anything I’d want to eat, so stocking up ahead of time felt like my best move. He pulled his unmarked car up facing opposite to my rented Elantra, so we could talk between our driver-side windows.
My first thought, as his window rolled down, was that seeing that kid break his own neck in holding had rattled Gary deep and hard. Usually he’d greet me with annoyance and a reminder that I wasn’t calling the shots anymore. Today all he had was a terse “What’ve you got?” and a furtive glance at the passing cars.
“The ink from the house party was tainted on purpose,” I told him. “It was a long-range hit, courtesy of the Network.”
I didn’t tell him that I was the one they were trying to lure out. Gary already thought he might be right to make that call to the FBI, and I didn’t need to give him any more reasons to burn me.
“Who was the target?”
“Still working on that. I can tell you that the man in charge of the Vegas Network cell left the country last night.”
“‘Left the country’? That a euphemism?” he asked.
“No. He ran, but he’ll be back. And we’ll be waiting for him. In the meantime, you might have a couple of rats in your house. One of these rats is a part-time dealer; he’s the guy who made sure the tainted drugs would be at that party. On the other hand, he might just have a bogus uniform and a squad car to go with it. If that’s the case, I’ll have to cast a wider net, but I figure Metro is the best place to start hunting. That’s where you come in.”
I expected an argument. Something about how he didn’t know every uniform in Metro and I was asking too much, at the very least. Instead, he locked eyes with me.
“Tell me what you know. If the bastard’s on the job, I’ll find him.”
“He goes by Santiago. Only name I know. He was at the Container Park shakedown last night.”
Gary rubbed his chin. “Container Park’s under the downtown division’s command, pretty sure it’s Sector A. That narrows it down. I’m good with the watch captain over there. I’ll drop by this afternoon and do some digging.”
“Watch yourself,” I told him. “You’ve seen how the Network plugs leaks, especially when it comes to law enforcement. They don’t take chances. You’d better not, either.”
“I’m touched by your show of concern. Don’t worry, this isn’t my first rodeo.”
“I know. All the same.” I hesitated, but I couldn’t send him off without making sure we were on the same page. “If you find him, you do realize this can’t be handled through legal channels, correct?”
“Clarify for me.” He wore an open challenge in his eyes.
“The people pulling his strings won’t—can’t—let him be questioned by the police. If you arrest him, he’ll be dead in an hour. And you’ll be dead right alongside him. They’ll probably bury you in the same ditch.”
He sank in his seat and watched the road, sullen now.
“I have a job, Faust. When the city gave me a badge, I promised to treat it right.”
“You didn’t promise to die for it. Nobody could ask that of you. Hey, Gary. Look at me. Look at me. You’ve got a responsibility here.”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
“You’ve got a responsibility to stay alive. That shiny badge of yours isn’t worth shit if it’s pinned to your corpse. If you find Santiago, I want you to call me. Let us handle it.”
“You want me to hand him over to you,” he said. “Which basically makes me an accomplice to murder.”
“It makes you a person who did the right thing, got a guy who killed a dozen kids off the streets for good, struck a blow against the Network, and lived to fight another day. Now, I’m nobody to lecture on morality, but that sounds like pretty decent behavior. If I were you, I’d make that call and I wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep over it.”
He turned the key and fired up his engine.
“That’s the thing,” he said. “You aren’t me.”
His window hummed up and he rolled out onto the boulevard. I watched him go. Nothing I could do now, for him or about him, except hope he made the right choice.
*
After that, I had nothing to do until sunset. I’m lousy at doing nothing. I ended up back at my place, setting the groundwork for a science experiment. I had borrowed a couple of oversized mail sacks from Bentley, the stiff fabric bags that were a staple of any escape artist’s kit. One went in my living room nook beside the television set. The other I positioned fifteen feet away in the open kitchen, right next to the granite-topped cooking island.
I studied Howard Canton’s wand, turning it in my hand. It was mahogany, inlaid with caps of polished bone at each tip, a tool of a more elegant age. And a more macabre one: the bone, I had learned, was human. One cap of the wand, enchanted to weave illusions, came from the skull of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer. The other, designed to tear them down and reveal the truth, was from Harry Houdini himself.
I toted the wand into the living room and fiddled with the remote, launching Netflix and fast-forwarding through a movie until I got to the part I’d been looking for. I was about to begin the experiment when a knock sounded at the door.
“Just so you know,” Melanie told me, “I’m grounded for a month.”
“You want to come in?” I asked her.
She puffed air up at her neon-blue bangs, making them flutter, and breezed past me. I shut the door.
“I can’t help but notice it’s two in the afternoon on a Thursday,” I said.
Melanie leaned against the kitchen island. “Yeah?”