******
Las Vegas: Urgent Care Center
Ray made sure that he was still bleeding a little when he checked himself into the emergency clinic. Experience had taught him that nothing proclaimed emergency like spurting blood. It was a sure way to jump right to the head of the line.
After Angel had slammed her door in his face, he’d figured he had nothing better to do, so he decided to tie up some loose ends. He didn’t really feel like going down to the cop shop and lying his ass off to the locals, so, first things first, he went to his own room and changed into a set of old sweats. He left what was left of his suit in a pile on the bathroom floor, went down to the cab stand and had the taxi take him to the nearest emergency clinic.
He paid off the cabby, striped off his short-sleeved tee, and dropped it in a garbage can as he approached the clinic, then walked into the front door holding the flap of torn skin and meat up against his upper chest. The receptionist took one look at him and had an orderly escort him to an empty waiting room. Once there he twiddled his thumbs, as usual waiting for the doctor to finish his sandwich or counting his Medicaid kickbacks, or whatever it was that occupied his time when he could actually be seeing patients.
The tiny room was sterile and uninteresting. Ray looked at the poster of the little kitten dangling from a branch with the words “HANG IN THERE” emblazoned with bold yellow letters, and pursed his lips. All in all, it was better than being shot in the ass and having to sit in a cave in Afghanistan while awaiting medical treatment, but not by much.
Well, he told himself, you asked for it.
Speaking of asking for it, he reminded himself that he had some other unpleasant tasks to perform. Ignoring the sign that said “Please turn off cell phones as a courtesy to the doctors and staff,” he took his cell phone out and dialed Barnett’s number.
There was a click after the third ring and a sexy and bored voice said, “Peaceable Kingdom, President Leo Barnett’s Office.”
“Hello, Sally Lou,” Ray said. “Let me talk to the big guy.”
“You mean President Barnett?”
It was their little joke. He always called Barnett “the big guy” and she pretended that she didn’t know whom he meant. But Ray wasn’t really in the mood to drag this out for too long. “I don’t mean the Pope.”
She must have heard something in the tone of his voice, for there was a click, a buzz, and then Barnett’s smooth voice was on the line, with more than a hint of distress in it. “Billy, my boy, what in the name of Melchisidek is going on there in Vegas, boy? I’m hearing strange tales. Strange tales indeed—”
“Yeah, well, you should have actually been here.” Ray gave a concise report on the day’s activities, and then listened to a long silence on the other end of the line.
“Disturbing,” Barnett finally said.
There was no way to deny it. “Yes, sir,” Ray said. “You know that those Allumbrados have aces working for them as well as assholes with guns.”
Barnett sighed. “So I’ve heard.”
“One of them is Butcher Dagon.”
“Have those damned Papists no sense of morality?” Barnett asked, outraged.
“Well, Angel and I laid him out like a slab of cold meat. The local cops currently have him on ice, but I wouldn’t trust them to hold a lost dog let alone a bad guy the caliber of Dagon.”
“Forget Dagon,” Barnett said flatly. “We’ve got to find Je—the boy before those murderous bastards kill him. Do you know where they’ve taken him?”
“No,” Ray said, “but I’ve got a got an idea or two—”
There was a soft knock on the door, and it suddenly opened. A young female doctor looked in. She was Asian, probably Korean, with big dark eyes and long, straight glossy black hair.
“—Got to run,” Ray interrupted himself, and shut down his cell. He smiled at the doctor, who paused, frowning in the doorway. “Bet you’ve never stitched up an ace before,” he said with a bright smile.