“Just go. Damn it, I need to take care of this, make this shit disappear. Just go.”
So we left. Jennifer and I held our silence until we were out in the parking lot. She clicked her key fob and an alarm system squawked. Headlights flicked to life and painted the stucco walls in gauzy white. After her Prius had gone out in a blaze of dubious glory, she’d upgraded; her new ride was a sleek Tesla Model S in metallic blue, with a jet-black leather interior and ash wood trim. Business was good.
“Plan of attack?” Jennifer asked me.
“We track that bad batch of ink to the source. Somebody sold it to those kids. And there’s a good chance the rest of his supply is just as tainted. We need to get that shit off the streets before more people end up dead.”
“Or worse.”
I opened the passenger-side door. “Or worse.”
“What about all that other stuff he said, this ‘game’ he wants to play?” She slid behind the wheel and I got in alongside her. The seat molded itself around my shoulders. “If he’s sending another killer like Damien Ecko your way, you need to get ready to scrap.”
“I can’t worry about that right now. Can’t let myself get distracted. Finding whatever’s left of that bad ink has to be our top priority. And if we play our cards right, we’ll take the dealer alive.”
“He’ll probably be like the last one we caught. With the, uh—” She gestured at her belly and winced. So did I. The last dealer had been bound by a geas—a magically enforced taboo to seal his lips—and we’d gotten a nasty surprise when I tried to set him free.
“We’ll be ready for it this time. These people aren’t untouchable, Jennifer. Every clue we dig up, every scrap of intel we gather, puts us one step closer to taking them down. There’s a gap in their armor. Every organization has a gap in its armor. We’ve just got to find it.”
She pushed a button on the dash. The panel lit up, glowing in the dark, the engine running silent.
“Agreed. So. Seabrook’s office?”
“Seabrook’s office.” I sagged against the seat. “Let’s get this over with.”
3.
A lone security guard waited for us at the doors to city hall. He locked up behind us and pointed the way down a half-lit corridor without a word. A janitor buffed the gleaming marble with a floor polisher, his eyes down and his ears buried under orange plastic headphones. He bobbed his head to a song I couldn’t make out, just the thrumming traces of a steady bass beat, as we skirted around him. At the end of the hall, white light shone against the pebbled glass of the mayor’s office door.
The glass rattled under my knuckles. “It’s open,” called out a tired voice from the other side.
Mayor Seabrook was at the tail end of a very long day or the beginning of a new one. This far past midnight, it was hard to tell the difference. Either way, she’d been hitting the hard stuff; her fresh-roasted coffee was strong enough to perk me up with the smell alone, no cream or sugar to get in the way of her caffeine fix. Steam curled from an electric kettle on the credenza behind her desk, one foil bag of whole beans crumpled and empty, a second one freshly torn open and ready to serve.
She didn’t offer us any. I didn’t expect her to. She waved us toward the pair of low lemon-colored chairs opposite her desk, then turned her back on us while she poured herself a fresh cup.
“Children,” she said.
“We don’t like it any more than you do,” I told her.
“And yet, you’ve done nothing.”
“There was an ink lab in Albuquerque. Was. Past tense.”
The mayor turned around and stared daggers at me over the rim of her mug. She took a long, slow sip and pointed to the darkness outside her office window.
“Is this Albuquerque?”
“What my associate means is,” Jennifer said, “we’re takin’ steps to address the situation.”
Seabrook took her seat. Shoulders hunched forward, nose wrinkled like a bulldog’s.
“Let me give you a history lesson,” she said. “In the eighties, my office, the FBI, and various civic and corporate interests came together, and we broke the Mafia’s back. It took an enormous expenditure of time and resources, but it was done. And if it was done once, it can be done again.”
“Let’s keep this friendly,” Jennifer said.
“Give me a reason to. I don’t mind playing ball with you people, so long as you toe the line. It’s a simple arrangement: you don’t hurt the tourist trade, no public displays of violence, and you toss us the occasional bust so Commissioner Harding can keep his numbers up. I only had one other request. One simple, tiny request: that you keep this ‘ink’ shit out of my city. Now I have to give a press conference to explain why a dozen teenagers just died from a tainted batch of drugs on my administration’s watch.”
Thirteen, but apparently Gary hadn’t called her yet. I didn’t correct her. I looked her square in the eye and laid my cards down.
“You’ve heard of the Network,” I said.
“I’ve heard of the bogeyman too,” she said, drinking her coffee. “Doesn’t make him real.”
“This particular bogeyman is. The organization exists, it’s nationwide—if not global—and it’s behind the ink pipeline.”
She chewed on that for a minute, face scrunched up like she didn’t enjoy the taste. She washed it down with a swig of black coffee.
“Then bring me proof,” she said. “I’m getting ready to leave for Boulder City in a couple of days. The United Conference of Mayors is holding a special session to address the ink epidemic. We’ll shine a spotlight on them, drag them out of hiding—”
I held up a hand. “No. Bad idea. When people poke around the Network’s business, they end up dead, and they don’t draw lines like we do. Cops, district attorneys, mayors—they’ll bury anyone who looks at them sideways. You shouldn’t even go to this thing. Stay home, and don’t make waves.”
That got her hackles up. “I haven’t held my office this long by not making waves. My constituents expect action. And once people wake up to the morning headlines, you’d better believe they’ll be demanding results.”
“Which is why you need us,” I said. “I’ve seen some of the Network’s playbook. Trust me when I say that the cops and the feds combined can’t handle this fight.”
“But you can.” Her tone made it clear just how much confidence she had in me. A little less than the coffee left in her mug. She pushed her chair back and got up to pour another cup.
Jennifer had her phone out, flipping through her photo gallery like she’d checked out of the discussion entirely. Odd, but I left her to it.
“We have resources the law doesn’t,” I said, “and needless to say, we don’t have the same limitations—”
Seabrook cut me off with an irritated flick of her fingers. “Words. I’m hearing words. Meanwhile I’ve got twelve dead kids on my hands, a designer-drug epidemic, and a contaminated batch out on the streets about to kill more users. Harding warned me that I shouldn’t get into bed with gangsters. I’m not sure you people even qualify for the title.”
“Few months back,” Jennifer drawled, still staring at her phone, “had a dealer on my payroll who decided to cut his supply with baby powder. Stretch it out, make more money with less product, and pocket the surplus behind my back, you know? Only he didn’t know how to do it right. Killed three of his best customers. And instead of coming clean about it, telling me what he did so we could fix the situation, the wet-brained son of a biscuit panicked and sold the rest of the batch to get rid of it. Maybe six people died before we figured out what was what.”
She found the photo she was looking for. Then she stood up, leaned over the mayor’s desk, and turned her phone to give her a good look. Seabrook’s lips slowly parted. The color ran from her face.
“That’s what I did to him,” Jennifer said.
“Why…” the mayor said, her voice a strained whisper. “Why did you take a picture of that?”