Chapter Ten
Kit couldn’t sleep. She’d burned up the bulk of her anger doing exactly what she told Grif she would do, going home and pounding the computer keys so hard that she broke a nail. Even amid her moral outrage, she managed to construct a story about a drug that stripped flesh from the bone, and a dealer—faceless, nameless, remorseless—who preyed upon the poor. She’d submitted it electronically, and then had a tense fifteen-minute phone call with Marin before her aunt agreed to approve the story and run it by morning. The only thing Kit left out—in print and in words—was the heartlessness of angels who stood by and watched as man—and woman—fell.
That, the confounding senselessness of it, was what had her tossing and turning alone in the bed she and Grif normally shared. Or maybe her sleeplessness was precisely because she was alone. Sorry she’d run him off, she had called Grif just after nine, but he said he was following “a lead” and would be a while.
A private lead, she added silently.
So, even though it was already late, Kit decided to go out, too, and knew as soon as she was showered, warm, and in motion that it was the right decision. The mere act of stepping into her closet cleared the worry from her brow. She inhaled deeply, immediately feeling more certain, more herself, when surrounded by all her things. She touched a strand of estate pearls, and felt a smile reach the corners of her mouth. She let her fingers roam: Bakelite bracelets, antique brooches, vintage furs, and peacock feathers.
The black-and-white skulls and cherry prints—yards and yards of cherry prints—kept it from looking too much like her grandmother’s closet, as did the silk stockings and frilled panties, the colored eyelashes reserved for special occasions.
It wasn’t that she was a clotheshorse, Kit thought, sliding on a pair of seamed fishnets. Though that was true, to a degree. But she had specifically chosen every item in this closet. Every single piece had its place. Her entrée into the rockabilly lifestyle had not only come at a time when her life had lacked style . . . it’d lacked life. After her father followed her mother into what she now knew was the Everlast, Kit had suddenly, brutally, found herself in a family of one. It took some time before she came around to the idea that she, alone, was enough to build a new family around her.
She’d had Marin, of course. Her prickly and pragmatic aunt had coaxed her from her depression with more tough love than compassion, yet it’d worked, and in her own way, she’d shown just as much love as Kit’s mother would have. That was why their relationship was so very complicated. She was not the woman Kit had wanted, yet she was the one Kit had needed.
Still, Shirley Wilson lived on in her daughter, and after reemerging into the world an orphan, Kit vowed to let nothing into her life that didn’t make at least one of her senses explode. Every bit of furniture adorning her home was carefully considered—from the vintage record player to her meticulously curated collection of Depression glass. Same went for the clothes she donned, from the corsets to the Mary Janes.
Even the food she put in her body had to be wanted more than needed. Kit didn’t want merely to be sustained. She didn’t want only to exist. If a physical item didn’t speak to her in a voice as enticing as a lover’s whisper, then it had no place in her periphery.
So what if the majority of people considered the rockabilly lifestyle eccentric or weird? Those who didn’t know her thought only that she wanted to live in the past. What they couldn’t know was that the rockabilly lifestyle actually simplified things for her in a way that someone driven by the latest fashions and fads couldn’t enjoy. Having set lifestyle parameters took the angst out of deciding what car to drive or how to dress. Wouldn’t the masses be amazed to learn that, in living an extreme lifestyle, Kit was actually playing it safe?
Which brought her to Griffin Shaw.
Kit sighed, letting her hands fall still and her eyes close. How ironic that even though the man was from the era she most adored, the one that she honestly believed kept her safe, he was the first thing she’d allowed in her life that was decidedly unsafe. With his straight-razored pomp and wingtip shoes, he certainly looked like her kind of extreme. Even strangers commented on what a great-looking couple they were when walking hand in hand. Kit wouldn’t argue that, though those same strangers would call him crazy if they heard his claims of being an angelic messenger.
Yet this unsafe man had saved her, the crazy one had actually shown her his wings, and if anything about him was extreme, it was that he brought all of Kit’s senses to life at once. In short—in fifties’ terms—Kit was completely gone over him . . . and she hoped never to return.
That’s why the thought of Grif crying without her there to console him made her want to cry. She’d wanted to ask if the tears he’d bottled to banish Scratch had been tears of joy or sorrow, but had been too afraid of the answer. And now she couldn’t even think of it. She had to keep her emotions in check—the jealousy she barely acknowledged, the envy she tried to ignore.
The stupidity she felt over playing second fiddle to a dead woman.
Closing her eyes, Kit tried to clear her mind. Then she remembered the way Scratch had looked at her through both Jeap’s and Brunk’s starry black gazes. A chill broke out along her spine.
You are just some choice bit of beauty that I have not yet broken, it’d said, branches scratching in Brunk’s throat. I don’t want to touch her.
I want to possess her.
“Shut up,” Kit said aloud, like it could still hear her now. Who knew? Maybe it could.
“Shut. Up.” She said it again, just in case.
Because if she was going to live—and she and Marin had made damned sure of that a long time ago—then she was going to love whom she wanted without fear, and she was going to follow her heart. The loss of the most meaningful people in her life had struck her like a lightning bolt. So why the hell shouldn’t the addition of a great love do the same? Passion was a positive emotion, right? And the willingness to be open to another person was a strength, not a weakness.
So, as Kit combed through the carefully edited world of her closet, her mind gradually settled. Outside was a world she couldn’t understand, where desperate people injected their bodies with drugs that caused their flesh to rot from their bones. Outside, too, was the man she adored, working alone to avenge the death of a woman he’d loved fifty years earlier. If she’d fallen short in her understanding of that, it was only because that, too, was another world she could never really know.
Yet Kit was well versed in all things rockabilly, and that’s what she needed tonight. Jiving and swinging to wash away the dregs of the day. The retro-inspired beauty and liveliness of her pinup friends to remind her that this world was also good. Sailor Jerry tattoos would remind her of simpler times, and a greaser with a comb in his back pocket and a naughty gleam in his eye would work wonders on her mood with one spin around the dance floor.
What Kit needed right now, she decided, was to sip an Old Fashioned and smoke a Lucky through a gold-tipped holder.
“And I might as well do it,” she said, holding up a cocktail dress with a built-in bullet bra, “while watching someone shake. Their. Tassels.”
The dimness upon entering the Bunkhouse—all rockabilly, all the time—was similar to the dive where Kit and Grif had met with Trey Brunk, and yet the two places couldn’t be more unalike. The Bunkhouse was a dance hall, spacious and clean, and brightly lit when there was a Lindy Hop, though tonight the stage was set for cabaret. There was a cash bar just inside the door, unnecessary with the cocktail waitresses sashaying about in leopard satin, but it was ribboned in gilt, and added to the feel of a twenties speakeasy.
Outside of early to midcentury, rockabillies weren’t particular about their eras. They could mesh the roaring of the twenties with the war-inspired tiki torches of the forties, and top it all off with a cupcake dress from the sixties . . . and the girl inside was the cherry on top. The Bunkhouse did all this and more, so that it was cheery, a bit raucous, and tonight it was teeming with life.
Kit’s heart swelled as she crossed the threshold, and handed her vintage mink cape to the coat-check girl, who exclaimed admiringly as she took it. The canister footlights were dimmed at the stage, and the red curtains drawn, but they were backlit so that the next performer’s silhouette was purposely displayed, teasing hip swivels combined with a boa to keep the audience in their seats.
Scouring the room for her own seat, Kit blinked in surprise as she caught sight of Dennis from across the room. He stood to wave, but blended well with the other greasers in his bowling shirt and sideburns, and she smiled and waved back, because it was good to see him here. God knew he deserved a break after catching two krokodil cases in a row. My fault, Kit thought, with an inner wince.
Then again, Dennis had been dipping his toe back into the rockabilly scene a lot more since the case that had reunited them four months earlier. Before that, he’d believed that donning his uniform meant putting away his alternative tastes. Kit liked to think she’d brought a bit of fun and nostalgia back into his life. More than most, Kit thought, the men in blue needed a good, solid place to escape.
Just then, Kit spotted her own much-needed escape, a bird-bright, long-limbed looker with a crimson hairnet and a wooden parasol . . . one used to casually jostle and jab those who wandered too near her table. Nobody cared, though. The woman was just playing. She was also one of Kit’s closest friends, Fleur Fontaine.
“Hello, dolly,” Fleur said as Kit arrived, ruby-red lips wide and smiling. “Thought for a while that you were going to miss the show.”
“Not a chance,” Kit said, plopping down between Fleur and her tablemate, another of Kit’s nearest and dearest, Lil DeVille. In contrast to Fleur’s retro kimono and finger waves, Lil was wearing a navy-blue sailor shorts suit, probably a thrift-store find, and red pumps that had her towering over six feet. She toasted Kit’s arrival with her Schlitz, flashing red fingertips and a long-lashed wink. Kit settled in with a sigh, and signaled to the waitress for her own drink, wondering why she’d ever considered staying home.
“Where’s Joe Friday?” Fleur asked, propping her arm on the table so the mermaid inked there flashed its emerald tail.
Grif had called to say he’d gone to a strip club to question Ray DiMartino, the owner, about Mary Margaret and his old case. But Kit didn’t say that. She was just starting to feel good and didn’t even want to think about it. Placing a cigarette in a vintage holder, she said, “Out gumshoeing the streets alone. He told me to stay home with my hens.”
“Sexist pig,” Fleur scoffed, giggling as she used the tip of her parasol to poke at a passerby in a zoot suit.
“Lovable sexist pig,” Lil added, because they all knew, and approved, of the way he doted on Kit. She just hoped that letting him question DiMartino alone in the bowels of Masquerade would give him the answers he sought. She knew why he’d gone alone. Grif hated taking Kit into that environment, yet as the music swelled throughout the Bunkhouse, and the curtains rose to reveal a platinum blonde covered in little more than glitter and feather fans, she couldn’t help wondering what he’d make of this one.
Doesn’t matter, she decided, as her Old Fashioned arrived and the woman onstage began to flutter her plumes. Let Grif have his haunted past and pedestrian strip club for the evening. This was hers.
Besides, Kit thought, sipping as the fans fell away and the audience began to whistle and hoot. It wasn’t where Grif was that bothered her, or what he was doing. It was what he was thinking. About another woman. About that Evie.
Something of her thoughts must have been revealed on her face, because Fleur turned to her as soon as the act was over. “Spill” was all she said.
Kit looked away. The stage kitten, dressed in fishnets and a bustier, sporting victory rolls, was sweeping glitter from the stage so the next performer wouldn’t fall. Lil was flirting with the whole table of swing boys next to them. She could confide in Fleur without interruption. Yet Kit didn’t feel like voicing her worries just yet. Voicing them, she thought superstitiously, might make them real.
“I’m just all junked up with this story I’m working on,” she said instead, tapping her cigarette holder against a crystal ashtray. “It’s the most disturbing, disgusting, vile thing I’ve ever seen.”
Lil caught the end of the statement, and leaned close, propped her elbows on the table. So Kit told them both about young Jeap Yang, his addiction to a drug that stripped the flesh from his body, untethering health from the inside out, and about Tim and Jeannie as well. She ended with the new information Marin had shared about him after Kit had submitted her story. “His real name is Juan Pedro Perez. You guys got feelers out in the Hispanic community?”
“Where’s he stay?” Lil asked, all of her playfulness gone.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Because we’re not like you Anglos, mamita,” Lil replied, falling into the accent that made her trill. “We stick together.”
“Whether we want to or not,” Fleur agreed, equally serious. “We pile our immediate family atop each other, and pile extended family atop that. And extended includes pretty much anyone we’ve known since childhood—neighbors, children of neighbors . . . their dogs.”
“I still remember my first pet fish, may he rest flushed in peace.” And Lil lowered her head, closed her eyes, and made the sign of the cross.
Kit smiled at her dramatics, thinking the whole cultural dynamic sounded claustrophobic . . . and nice. “He’s from Naked City. That’s where the two tweekers died today.”
“Shit, girl, he probably ain’t Mexicano.” Screwing up her beautifully painted mouth, Lil drew back to regard Kit with disdain. “You think us Latinas all look alike.”
“No, I don’t,” Kit said defensively, but the two women gave her matching stares, arms folded across their chests, perfectly plucked eyebrows raised in identical doubt. “You two, for example, look better than anyone I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
“Good recovery,” Lil said immediately, turning back to her drink, cultural slight forgotten as a woman in red took the stage, twirling long ombre sashes as if each were a cape and the audience were her captivated bull. They were certainly transfixed when her tassels began swinging in opposite directions, and Kit added her own applause to that of the crowd.
Evie Shaw had probably been just like that, Kit thought, watching the woman present herself to the crowd like a gift. But without the tassels.
As the set ended and the applause soared, Fleur turned back to Kit, renewing the conversation exactly where they’d left off. “Naked City is the old Cuban barrio,” Fleur explained, cradling her parasol on her lap. “They pretty much took over the neighborhood in the early eighties, because the rent was cheap and they could all stay together.”
“But that was a long thirty years ago,” Kit pointed out as the MC gave a mid-show shout-out to the legendary burlesque star Tart Ta-Tan. An older woman in polka dots and pearls stood to give a Miss America wave. “Surely there are Mexicans there now.”
“Yes, but the Cubanos had an added defense. A way to keep newcomers, at least the smart Latinos, out of the neighborhood,” Fleur said, and Lil—who’d rejoined them—gave a concurring nod.
“What?”
Fleur pointed the handle of her parasol at Kit. “The Marielitos.”
Kit tilted her head. “Mariel-what?”
“Remember the ‘freedom flotilla’? The Cuban boatlifts from Mariel to Miami? The way America welcomed the refugees only to have the crime rate skyrocket?”
“No.” Kit put out her cigarette, then leaned on her elbows.
Lil sighed. “Think Scarface. Think drug runners using white powder to control their new world.” Fiddling with her swizzle stick, she shook her head. “The Marielitos have a reputation even among the Cubans, and they make the PIRU look like children playing in a schoolyard,” she said, naming one of Vegas’s most violent gangs.
“So, then, I need to talk to a Cuban,” Kit muttered, scouring her mind for sources.
“Ay,” Lil said, rolling her eyes. “Get a Cubana talking and you might never shut her up again.”
Kit drew back as Fleur scoffed her agreement. “How come you can both be prejudiced, but I get chewed out if I even say the word chola?”
“Because we’re Latinas,” Lil said, as if that explained everything.
“Sí,” added Fleur. “But even I would be very careful about questioning a Cuban in Naked City about one of their own. From what I hear, it’s still a different world.”
“What do you mean?”
“She means they still kill chickens in their backyards.” The voice, low and resonant, popped up directly behind Kit. She turned to find Dennis close, palming a cold Pabst, smelling faintly of spice, probably his pomade. Probably Suavecito.
Kit narrowed her eyes as he pulled up a wooden chair. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Just arrived,” he said, straddling the chair, beer can dangling from his fingertips.
“Really?” Fleur said. “Then you’ll react in total surprise to find Kitty-Cat here is playing investigative reporter again.”
“Yeah, but you were the one who mentioned the Marielitos,” he pointed out.
“So you were eavesdropping.”
“Most of the Mariel descendants are good people,” Dennis said, expression gone serious as he turned to Kit. “Besides, you’re not going to get someone in that neighborhood to talk to you, Kit.”
“He’s right. Forget that you look like a Vargas girl,” Fleur said. “To them you represent establishment, and a world where they don’t even want to belong.”
Sipping at his can, Dennis nodded. “When you’re marked as an outsider, even in your homeland, and then you move somewhere else where you’re both outsider and outlaw, you tend to live by your own rules. Obviously not all of the Marielitos were criminals, but they’re still very insular. They trust no one.”
Kit thought of Marco Baptista’s grandmother, of her broken teeth and orishas and candles. “Okay, but the boatlifts were decades ago. Fortunes change. Families change.”
Lil draped an arm over the back of her chair. “You really are so white.”
Dennis sipped his beer and smiled. “Memories are as long as lineage.”
Kit was certainly learning that. “Well, I wouldn’t ask them anything they find threatening. And this new drug makes cocaine look like cane sugar, you saw it. Besides, the two junkies who died today weren’t even Latinos, yet they resided in Naked City. So I think someone’s bringing ‘crocodile’ into the poorest sections of the city and setting it loose on the kids there.”
Lil whistled. “Then it’ll be a crocodile against a sleeping dragon . . . and you’ll be poking that dragon.”
“It’s a good analogy,” Kit said, and a part of her thought it might even be a just reward. “Maybe a drug that creates an inferno inside the body can only be fought by a monster capable of breathing flame. Fire against fire.”
Dennis ran a hand over his head. “As long as that fire isn’t directed your way.”
“Oh, look! It’s Layla’s turn!” Fleur grabbed her spinning rattler off the table and stood as Layla Love—their sometime frenemy and the city’s self-appointed neo-burlesque queen—began to gyrate to a raucous bump-and-grind. “Come on—let’s go cheer her on!”
But Lil just kept looking at Kit. “Not me, mija. I’m going to stay and watch this show.”
“What show?” Kit tilted her head, then blinked when Fleur unceremoniously dragged Lil away. O-kay.
She turned back to Dennis. “Friends,” she told him with a shrug.
He leaned on the table so their elbows touched, warm, comforting, and close.
Kit leaned forward, too. “So what do you got for me?”
This close, there were sparks to Dennis’s eyes, a brilliant yellow ring around his irises that flared like warm stars when he smiled. “Gotta get right to the point, don’t you?”
“People are dying,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the catcalls and rattlers.
“And knowing what I’ve ‘got’ isn’t going to stop it.”
Kit lifted her chin. “It could. If I think fast. Act faster.”
“You’re right.” He inclined his head. “It already did.”
Kit blinked. “What do you mean?”
“The tweekers you led us to today?” he asked, as if she could forget.
“Tim and Jeannie,” she said, because she never would.
“Tim Kovacs and Jeannie Holmes,” he confirmed, then shook his head appreciatively. “It was good work, Kit. Damned good work.”
She couldn’t see how. “Because?”
Now a full smile bloomed, causing the stars in his eyes to dim in comparison and the spotlights and music to fade. All Kit heard were his next words . . . and they truly were beautiful. “Because one of them survived.”