THE old woman’s blubbering was getting on his nerves. He’d spent less than an hour with her, persuading her to tell him about the man she’d rented the attic space to, but either she was stupider than she looked and really didn’t know anything about Mitchell—something he’d thought impossible—or she was holding out on him from some sense of loyalty. He doubted the loyalty and would have been amazed if the woman actually had any idea about the concept. No, she was something cheap and disposable, much like any other dried-up whore on the far side of her life, and stuck under a billow of dingy gray hair and nicotine stains.
Even an hour was too much time to waste on her, but Parker had hopes. Slim, but still hopes she’d know something to lead him to Mitchell.
And like other women in the past, she’d disappointed him as well.
She’d also infuriated the hell out of him. Being duct-taped to a chair and beaten with a blackjack didn’t seem to do anything other than make her piss the floral housecoat she wore over her flabby, old body, and Parker hissed, stepping clear of the urine puddle soaking into the room’s cheap acrylic carpet.
“Do you have any idea how much these shoes cost?” He wasn’t expecting an answer. Not through the strip of silver tape he’d finally affixed across her sunken cheeks. “What is it with your kind and ruining my shoes? It’s like you can’t help yourself. It’s why you can’t have nice things.”
Looking around the apartment, Parker shuddered, seeing his trailer park childhood in its furnishings. Doe-eyed children gazed out at him from velvet paintings on either side of an ancient television, its weight barely held up by a damp-swollen particleboard entertainment center. A musky-smelling floral couch took up most of the living room, its puffed fabric upholstery covered by a yellowed, bubbled plastic slip. The plastic creaked as he sat down across from the woman, and Parker sighed, feeling cracks in the cover pinching at his tweed pants.
“Has everything in this place fallen to shit?” He gingerly inched closer, wincing at the tugging along the backs of his thighs. Parker hooked his hands into the rungs between the chair’s legs and yanked the woman forward, jerking her across the carpet. “Now, since you have nothing to say to me, let’s get to the interesting portion of this afternoon’s entertainment.”
It was easy enough to find the television’s remote, tucked away into a magazine rack much like the one his mother once had. Parker turned on the box and flicked through the channels until he found something he liked. The old woman quivered, her eyes rolling up to their whites as he turned up the volume until the tiny apartment bounced with the sound of a game show, its clacking, spinning wheel and scantily clad hostesses brightly smiling through pounds of makeup while they showed off household items Parker couldn’t have been paid to take.
“There we go.” A contestant began to jump up and down on the screen, her large breasts bouncing nearly out of the tiny sundress she’d worn to the studio. Studying the knives he’d found in the woman’s kitchen, he selected the first he’d sharpened, a slender, long blade made of hammered German steel.
“Now, this is probably the finest thing you own,” Parker murmured, sliding the flat of the blade across her wrinkled cheek. “And here you were using it to cut lemons for your vodka.” She gurgled again, and he cocked his head, trying to make sense of her frantic bleating.
Patting her leg, Parker smiled reassuringly and began to carve away the skin on her face.
Chapter 6
Shove me into a corner
Strip me of my pride
Lay me down on a bed of nails
Pry me open up wide
Show me the way to Hell
Keep me from Heaven’s Gate
Break my heart so I can’t love
Leave me alone in your black hate
—Nail Me In
HE DIDN’T know what to think. Hell, if Sionn were honest, he was seriously thinking about calling up anyone with a PhD in crazy and handing Dee—no—Damien over for further study. But the man made a convincing argument.
Just with his face alone. And the story he told was incredible, starting with the feel of crumpled steel around him to a fire that led to his escape. Woven into the tale was an unknown puppet master whose blond simulacrum seemed bent on ending Damien’s life despite all of the effort to keep him alive.
Someone had to have put a killer on Mitchell’s tail. Especially since the shooter now seemed to have followed Damien to San Francisco.
The Internet was a fantastical place. It resurrected the dead, flickering pixels forming pictures of a man who’d been mourned by his fans. He’d never really followed Sinner’s Gin. He knew their music but couldn’t have pointed out anyone in the band, but the man sitting next to him had pretty much irrefutable evidence he’d been who he said he was.