“No, I might’ve heard something,” the vampire said, the words rushing out in a torrent. “I mean, I did hear something! I don’t know if it’ll help, but I’ll tell you.”
“Talk fast,” Gunn warned.
The vamp looked uneasily at the stake jabbing into his chest. “Like I said, it’s just loose talk, you know. I don’t know how true any of it is.”
“We don’t need your editorializing,” Wesley said, his voice icy. “Just give us the facts.”
“Okay, okay.” The vampire’s head was nodding like a bobblehead doll on a dashboard. “What I hear is, there’s some kind of plot against Angel. I don’t know any more than that, just that something’s going on, some kind of action being taken. Lot of folks in this town got no use for a vampire with a soul, you know what I’m saying? Me, I got no opinion, one way or the other, about that. But some people I guess finally got fed up enough to make their move.”
“Who are these ‘people’?” Wesley asked, pushing the stake’s point harder into the vamp’s chest. “We need names, where we can find them.”
“I don’t know any of that,” the vamp said, desperate now. “I’d tell you if I could—you know that, right? I just know what I hear, you know, from a guy who knows a guy who knows a guy.”
“So in other words, you’re useless to us,” Wesley said.
“Yeah…I guess,” the vamp agreed, somewhat hesitantly.
“All right, then.” Wesley drew back and then drove the stake forward with all his strength. The move took Gunn by surprise—by the time he realized what Wes was doing, the vamp was nothing but a cloud of black dust scattering in the evening’s breeze.
When the vampire was gone, Wesley turned to Gunn, glaring at him as if expecting him to maintain his good-cop role.
“You heard him,” Wesley insisted. He sounded as if he would brook no argument. “He had nothing for us.”
Gunn shrugged. “If he knew a guy who knew a guy, we might’ve been able to backtrack.”
“We don’t have time to follow the vampire rumor mill,” Wesley said. His voice was still so cold that it scared Gunn a little. “Fred’s out there, in trouble, and she needs us. We’re wasting our time with these insignificant sources. We need to find someone who matters.”
Gunn couldn’t argue with that theory. He wasn’t exactly sure how they’d go about it, because “someone who matters” could be just about anyone, depending on the situation. And since they were no closer to knowing who had it in for Angel, they were still looking at a big blank wall.
But he knew one thing for sure: I never want to get on the wrong side of this guy.
Chapter Seven
“The thing is, I’m pretty sure Angel killed my brother.”
Virg was a Kailiff demon, as muscular as a pro weight lifter, and with four rows of pointed spikes erupting from the battleship gray skin of his head—two rows extending back from his forehead, on either side, and two following the line of his jaw—he looked, to Lorne, like an extremely menacing sort of individual.
Which, Lorne knew, is actually a very accurate description of him. Kailiffs tended to be enforcers, leg breakers, hired muscle. From the stories he’d heard, they were very selective about who they hired themselves to, most commonly working for Kedigris demons. But as dangerous as Virg might be outside, Caritas was sanctuary, and Lorne knew the demon wouldn’t hurt anyone in here.
Even so, he almost hesitated to ask the next question, but he figured there was no graceful way out of it. He steepled his long, elegant fingers and went for it. “What makes you think that?”
The big demon shifted in his chair and downed a swallow of ale before answering. “Griff was trying to collect on a debt. Guy named Doyle made some bad choices—horses, college ball, I’m not too sure of the details. But it put him in the position where he owed money to the wrong people, and all Griff wanted to do was give him the chance to make it right.”
“Sounds like a reasonable fellow, that Griff,” Lorne suggested. He’d heard of Doyle, of course. The half Irishman, half demon had been Angel’s first ally in Los Angeles, and had been the one who’d gotten visions from the Powers That Be until he’d sacrificed himself and passed the power on to Cordelia. “Salt of the earth, right? Trying to help a guy out that way, I mean.”
Virg blinked a couple of times, and Lorne believed, unlikely as it might seem, that the demon was trying hard not to weep. The Kailiff had reluctantly sung the first few bars of “Baby Got Back” for him, which Lorne had listened to with equal reluctance, and he had a glimpse of a future in which Virg went down hard, but not without taking many of his opponents out first. Once again, there was no connection to Fred’s disappearance that he could see, and once again he wished he had more precise control of his own powers.
“Griff was the best,” Virg said sorrowfully. “He was a couple years older than me. Used to give me rides on his shoulders, until his spikes got too sharp and he worried he’d hurt me. Our dad wasn’t always around, you know, and Griff looked out for me.” He fingered one of his own spikes, near his chin. “Folks think just cause we’re tough looking, we weren’t little kids once, we don’t got families.”
Lorne had to fight the impulse to pat the demon’s hand, or maybe give him a soothing hug. Sanctuary or not, he didn’t want a friendly gesture to be misinterpreted by such a dangerous fellow. He settled for trying to sound as sympathetic as possible. “I can tell you miss him.”
“Every day,” Virg said, swallowing hard. “Anyway, he was trying to collect this dough that Doyle owed. Doyle was dodging him, and I guess Angel was helping him do it. Griff might’ve been, you know, pushed to the point where he needed to make an example out of Doyle, and he said Angel talked him into backing off, letting the welcher pay.”
“By ‘example,’ I’m guessing you don’t mean letting him off the hook with an abject apology,” Lorne said. A Sqirtol demon was onstage, cater-wauling to a ZZ Top number, and Lorne found himself almost shouting to be heard over the din. The Sqirtol’s path was destined to be a violent one, but not in any way that intersected with Fred, as far as Lorne could see.
“More like being threaded onto a hook and hung over the street for everyone to see,” Virg clarified. From the tone of his voice, Lorne got the idea that the Kailiff didn’t find it an unpleasant image. “But even after Angel promised him that Doyle would pay up, he still didn’t. Griff got tired of waiting—there was pressure on him, you know, from his…ahh…employer. So he tracked old Doyle down to this chick’s haunted apartment, Angel’s other friend, what’s her name, Cordelia. That was the last I heard of him alive. His body turned up a couple of weeks later, in the sewers. Just dumped like one of those pet alligators you hear about.”
“I understand that’s an urban legend,” Lorne pointed out anxiously. “The alligators, I mean. Like the dog from Tijuana, or waking up in a bathtub full of ice, and…I guess I shouldn’t go there, should I?”
Virg ignored him. Probably for the best, Lorne thought.
“Doyle couldn’t have taken Griff,” Virg went on. He seemed to have forgotten his drink, maybe even where he was. His gaze was distant, as if he were back with his brother’s body. “And that chick couldn’t have. But Griff’s neck had been snapped, like it was a twig.” He touched his own neck, which looked to Lorne more like the trunk of an oak tree than a twig. “Had to be Angel.”
Lorne felt compelled to offer some defense for his friend, even if it wouldn’t mean much to the Kailiff. “I’ve known Angel for a long time,” he said. “He’s really, when you get down to it, a pretty peaceful sort. I mean, he fights when he has to, but who doesn’t? I like to think I’m a lover, not a fighter, but there’s been a time or two when I’ve had to throw down, right? Isn’t that what they call it?”
“You going somewhere with this?” Virg inquired.
“I’m just saying, if Angel really did kill Griff, maybe he had a good reason. Maybe Griff wouldn’t lay off, maybe he even decided he’d include Angel, or Cordeli
a, as part of the example. Angel wouldn’t just kill him for the fun of it. I don’t think I’ve ever seen Angel do anything just for the fun of it, for that matter.”
“Griff was doing a job,” Virg countered. “Angel didn’t like that, he should have stayed out of the way.”
“Except he’s got a real problem with friends of his getting killed,” Lorne shot back. He was getting angry now. This Kailiff demon’s attitude toward killing associates of Angel’s was cavalier, to say the least. And as a known Angel associate, the Host found that he couldn’t help taking exception to it. “I’m truly sorry for your loss, bro,” he said, dialing back to the sympathy part. “But is all this by way of saying that you won’t help me find Fred because you’re still holding a grudge against Angel?”
The Kailiff studied him for a moment, his brown eyes seeming to search for something in Lorne’s face. He couldn’t tell if Virg found what he was looking for or not, but the demon eventually turned away and stared into his half-finished mug of ale. “Not necessarily,” he said finally. “I got a problem with Angel. I got no problem with you, and I don’t even know this Fred chick, so I got no problem with her.”
“You couldn’t have a problem with her,” Lorne said effusively. “She’s just about the sweetest person to ever set foot on Earth. Or, for that matter, any other dimension she may have visited once upon a time.”
Virg lifted his mug and drained it. “Then I’ll do what I can.”
“Excellent,” Lorne said, flashing his pearly whites at the big guy. The Sqirtol had finished his song and was starting in on Hootie and the Blowfish, obviously intending to do as much damage there as he’d done to the trio from Texas. “What did you see that might help?”
“The demons in the car that shot at everybody,” Virg began. “They were Roshons.”
Which matches what the Skander told me, Lorne realized. “Are you sure?”
I’m positive,” Virg announced with a sneer. “I’d know those creeps anywhere.”
“Am I correct,” Lorne asked, trying to phrase it as diplomatically as he could, “in believing that there’s some bad blood between the Kailiffs and the Roshons?”
The Kailiff thumped his empty mug down on the table, hard. “I hate ’em. We all hate ’em, I guess. They’re the enemy.”
Lorne attempted a smile, but had a feeling it wasn’t coming across quite right. “You make it sound like there’s a war on.”
“Might as well be,” Virg said, without a trace of regret. “You know my kind—we’re better at muscle work than brain work. We leave the hard thinking up to the Kedigris. They tell us what to do, we do it, everybody’s happy. Except whoever we did it to, they’re usually not happy, even if they’re still alive.”
Charming, Lorne thought. Now he’s confessing hired murders to me. He kept his mouth shut and let the Kailiff continue.
“The Kedigris, you know, I don’t always like them that much, either, but they pay on time and they don’t tend to bother us much, so that’s okay. They have their own ideas about things, how things should be run. Somehow, the Roshons, they seem to object to these Kedigris ideas a lot. You follow me?”
“I think so,” Lorne said. “But to tell you the truth, I’m not really sure. You are being a bit…evasive, maybe?”
Virg leaned across the table toward him. It may have been just to be heard over the Sqirtol’s wailing, of course, but to Lorne it felt just a wee bit intimidating as well. “Anything I say in here is just between you and me, right?”
“Yes, of course,” the Host assured his guest. He wasn’t entirely sure he wanted to hear whatever Virg had to say, with that kind of a preamble, but if it might help Fred, he’d take a chance. “Think of it as saloon keeper–client privilege.”
“Good.” Virg sat back in his seat, apparently satisfied. “The Kedigris kind of control what you might call organized crime, in the demon world. We don’t think of it as crime, of course—it’s just business. But I mean, if you were on the outside looking in, and you didn’t know any better…”
“Of course.” I was right, Lorne thought. I really didn’t want to go here.
“Anyway, you know,” Virg went on, “the human world has their businesses and their businessmen, and our world has ours. Somebody like old Doyle wants to play the horses, play the point spread on a U.C.L.A. game, he’s got to have someone he can work with. Maybe someone needs a little something to get going in the morning, or to take the edge off at night. Maybe somebody needs a date, or a weapon. There’s always going to be an organization that provides these services, right?”
Onstage, the Sqirtol had finished his Hootie massacre, and was bowing to the halfhearted applause of the captive audience. Lorne didn’t want to walk away from Virg now that he’d started in a direction that might eventually prove to be helpful, but he still had a duty to his club, as well, and he knew it was important that everybody stay entertained since they were going to be here a while. “Listen, Virg, you’ll have to excuse me, all right? Just for a second. Half a second. I just need to go do the hosting gig, and then I’m all yours. Undivided attention, okay?”
Virg waved him off. “Sure, go. What do I care? It’s not like I’m going anywhere soon.”
“The time’s flying by,” Lorne tried to assure him as he stood. “You’ll see.” He wove his way between the tables and took the stage, clapping as he did. The Sqirtol was already on his way to his own seat.
“Thank you so much, Slorvis,” Lorne said into the microphone, beaming his smile toward the audience. “Brings a tear to the eye. In the good way. And just to clear up a common misconception, a Sqirtol is not a type of Pokemon.” He waited for the audience’s laughter to die, and then looked blankly about the room. “Okay, next up we have…who’s next?”
A female Shrenli stood up at her table, where she’d been sitting alone all night. Lorne had seen her in the club earlier, but didn’t think he’d ever met her before. “I’ll go,” she said quietly. Lorne had the impression that she had to force herself to the stage, like it wasn’t something she was comfortable with. If I looked like something that mutated out of the lobster tank at Trader Vic’s, I’d be shy too, he thought. He clapped for her, hoping to encourage her, and got the audience applauding for her too. When she reached the stage he took one of her pincers and helped her up. “What’s your name, beautiful?” he asked her.
“Visssclorf,” she replied, parting her beaklike mouth in what Lorne hoped was a smile.
“Ladies and gentlemen,” Lorne announced into the mike, “I’m proud to present, gracing our stage for the first time, Visssclorf! And what song would you like to share with us tonight, darling?”
“I was thinking of ‘R-E-S-P-E-C-T,’” she told him.
“She’s taking on the queen of soul!” Lorne shouted. “Let’s give her a great big honking Caritas hand! Give it up for Visssclorf!”
He got out of her way then, and by the time he got back to the Kailiff’s table, her song had begun. She was actually pretty good, he was surprised to hear. Her voice was untrained but strong, and she put a lot of passion into the song. “She’s not bad,” Lorne said.
Virg shrugged. “Guess so,” he said.
“I’m sorry, big guy—you were in the middle of a story and I interrupted you, just like someone in a Miss Manners rant. Something about providing necessary services.”
Virg seemed to have no problem picking up where he’d left off. “Yeah, and the Kedigris, they’re good at it. They’re fair, you know? They take a reasonable profit on any transaction they do, and they’re willing to show they mean business when they need to—that’s where we come in, making sure people know they’re serious folks. But they don’t go out of their way to hurt anyone. If it comes down to keeping a customer happy so he’ll still be a customer tomorrow, they’re willing to be flexible, right? Where some types—your Roshons, for instance, they’d just as soon take the customer’s head off and pull their insides out through their neck.”
“I’m not eatin
g right now, but I’d like to again before I die,” Lorne interrupted. He understood that Virg was using the word people in its most general sense, but still…“So that kind of visualization I can do without, thanks.”
“I’m just making a point,” Virg said.
“Consider it made.”
“Okay, sorry. I didn’t realize you were a sensitive type.”
“Very sensitive,” Lorne assured him. “As sensitive as you can imagine. Maybe more so. I’m so sensitive, Oprah Winfrey took lessons from me.”
“Can I keep going?” Virg asked.
“Please.” He really hoped Virg would keep going, but without quite so much incidental detail, and with more getting to the point.
“So you have the idea about what the Roshonsare like,” he continued. “And some people are customers of one group at one time, and another group the next. Maybe there’s someone who likes to make a bet with the Roshons but comes to the Kedigris for certain other amusements. If the Roshons get carried away and peel all the skin off his body, then we’re going to have a problem with that.”
“So if I’m getting this straight,” Lorne attempted, “your employers and the Roshons have business methods that occasionally find themselves in conflict.”
“You could say it that way,” Virg agreed. “I wouldn’t, but you could.”
“I think I just did,” Lorne pointed out. “The only part I’m still not clear on is why you’re telling me. It’s, like, you tell me that the shooters were Roshons, and then you tell me that I shouldn’t take your word for it because you don’t like the Roshons and you’d probably tell me that, anyway, just to get them in trouble.”
“I got no problem getting them in trouble,” Virg said. “But this time it’s because they deserve it. I spend enough time keeping an eye on Roshons, I’d recognize them even in a car at night, with guns blasting. And that’s who was in the car. I guarantee it.”
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