The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust Book 5)

by Craig Schaefer

  The room fell into a pensive silence.

  “It’s a two-hour drive to the park, guys,” I said. “Clock’s ticking.”

  “I hate to say it,” Pixie sighed, “believe me, I really hate to say it, but he’s right.”

  “We’ll be directly behind you,” Bentley said, “parked just off the highway, in case anything goes wrong.”

  It was a nice gesture, and I knew he meant well, but I also knew “just off the highway” was going to be too damn far to do anything if this job went sideways. Two lives were lives resting on my shoulders tonight—Jennifer’s and mine—and if I made a single mistake, they were both forfeit.

  “Let’s call Gabriel,” I said. “We’re burning daylight.”

  47.

  We slapped the Illinois plates onto Bentley’s Cadillac. He curled his hand around mine as he pressed the keys into my palm.

  “Be careful.”

  I pulled him into a quick hug, squeezing his frail shoulders. There wasn’t anything left to talk about, and we were running out of time.

  I cruised out of the city on I-15, bound southwest and chasing a neon-orange sunset. I knew my family was behind me, dots in the rearview, but I couldn’t have felt more alone. The Caddy jolted over a rough patch of road and sent my stomach lurching. A quick flood of nausea passed over me like an ocean wave, there and gone again in the space of a breath.

  Just don’t get hit in the head again, I thought, smiling grimly at the road ahead. Easy.

  The last rays of sunlight guided me to the outskirts of Rock-a-Hoola. The corpse of the water park had gone to rot a decade ago, and now nothing remained but its rusting bones. Stripped girders and crumbling graffiti-plastered walls gathered dust, abandoned to the desert. The spiral of a broken-down water slide still stood; atop it, a man with a pair of binoculars and a rifle slung over one shoulder stood watch.

  Two bangers wearing Calles colors, yellow and brown, waved me down the open front drive. I cruised in slow, an easy five miles an hour, as the Caddy’s wheels thumped over broken pavement.

  I kept both hands on the wheel.

  The water park’s builders—or rebuilders, one of the times it closed and reopened—had a thing for ’50s kitsch. The buildings that still stood were all angled art deco huts painted in neon oranges, blues, and greens. Even faded by weather and time, their colors shone against the gathering dark.

  The road ended at Cesar. He stood in front of a ticket booth, flanked by five of his men. His shoulders went back as my headlights washed over him, his chin raised, putting up a front for his buddies. Every one of them was packing, either carrying their steel in shoulder holsters or openly in their hands.

  I killed the engine and got out of the car. I didn’t have a gun. Instead, I carried a simple black plastic box. I’d borrowed Pixie’s femtocell case, but I’d swapped out her gadget for one of my own.

  “We were expecting more men,” Cesar called out. I stood beside the Cadillac. He stood by the ticket hut. Neither of us closed the distance.

  “You only need one,” I told him. “They call me the Doctor.”

  He nodded at my case. “What’s in there?”

  I gave him the creepiest smile I could muster.

  “Tools. For my…examination.”

  “They told you the deal, right? No blood. Do whatever you gotta do to make her talk, but you can’t cut on her. Not one drop.”

  “That won’t be a problem,” I said. “Is my patient ready?”

  I walked along with Cesar, and his entourage followed. Not good. I was prepared to take out one target. Six, not so much.

  I counted heads as we strolled through the desolate park. Flashlights glimmered on the other side of sagging palm trees. A cluster of men crouched in the remnants of a cafeteria, faces lit by the glow of a battery-powered lamp, throwing dice across the broken ceramic tiles and waving fistfuls of cash at each other. All in all, I figured Cesar had convinced about thirty of the Calles to turn traitor, not counting the wolf pack that surrounded us as we walked.

  Cesar led the way along a broken path framed by beds of yellow scraggly weeds and dirt. Fat brown roaches swarmed around our feet, and a bloated insect hummed as it winged past my ear. Up ahead stood the park’s old video arcade, painted in Day-Glo purple. Three rolling aluminum doors, like loading bays for trucks, barred the way inside, but the one on the left stood open. Faint electric light glowed from within.

  I knew she was in there before I even set eyes on her. I didn’t have to see her. I could feel her and the seething cloud of occult energy that hovered over the arcade like a toxic storm cloud. She’d been weaving a spell, maybe for days, feeding her power and her rage into it one drop at a time. It hovered on the edge of climax, a heartbeat from eruption, like the pressure in your sinuses one split second before a sneeze.

  I knew exactly what she was waiting for, and what I needed to do.

  That’s my girl, I thought when I saw her. They’d bound her by the wrists, a rope looped over a girder pulling her hands taut above her head, leaving her to stand on wobbly tiptoes. There wasn’t one glimmer of fear in Jennifer’s eyes, though. No, I knew that look. It was pure, unadulterated fury.

  For a moment, when she saw me step into the room, I thought she might give the game away. I should have known better. The glimmer of relief on her face vanished in a heartbeat, and she turned her scowl on Cesar.

  “What’s wrong?” she drawled. “You finally realize you’re not man enough to kill me yourself? Had to bring in some outside help?”

  “Oh, we ain’t gonna kill you, chica.” Cesar waved me forward. “Not yet. This guy’s gonna ask you a whole lot of questions first. And you are gonna answer him.”

  I scoped the room fast. All the old arcade games, except for a busted and lonely Space Invaders console going to seed in the back corner, had been hauled off or sold for scrap ages ago. The arcade was more or less a concrete box with only one way in or out. They’d set up a card table near Jennifer’s side and a single folding chair.

  “Sorry, what was that?” Jennifer asked. “Couldn’t understand you. I don’t speak pencil-dick.”

  “You oughta take this seriously.” Cesar’s nostrils flared. “You’re about to be in a whole world of pain, bitch.”

  Jennifer rolled her eyes at him. “Jumpin’ Jesus on a pogo stick. I’m in a world of pain every time I gotta look at your ugly-ass face.”

  I walked to the table and set down my plastic box. Nestled in my pocket, my phone buzzed twice, then fell silent. Two rings and a hang-up was the signal that Gabriel and the loyal Calles were ready to roll.

  Now it was all on me.

  “You,” I said to Cesar, “obviously need to stay. As for your friends, I don’t work in front of an audience.”

  Cesar locked eyes with me. Trying to read me. He hesitated a moment, then pointed at two of his men.

  “You two, guard the door. Everybody else clear out.”

  They moved to guard the door, all right. On the inside, flanking the open bay door and standing where they could get a good view of the show. So much for getting Cesar alone.

  At least now it was one against three, instead of one against six. Those were almost survivable odds.

  “All right.” My fingertips rested lightly on the rough, corrugated face of the plastic box. “What would you like to know first?”

  “Her bank account in the Caymans,” Cesar said. “Number and passcode.”

  “As you wish.” I unclipped the hasps on the box and looked to Jennifer. “Are you ready to begin?”

  She bared her teeth in a feral grin.

  “Do your worst.”

  My hand reached into the box and closed over a curve of bright orange plastic. As I lifted it, Cesar—standing about five feet away and trying to look over my shoulder—leaned in.

  “Hey, what is that?” he asked.

  “Flare gun,” I said and swung it toward the thugs by the door. Not at them, between them, toward the open door and angled high. The gun
ignited with a crackling whoosh as I pulled the trigger, and the arcade erupted with a flash of blinding light. The flare screamed from the muzzle, firing out into the darkness.

  The surprise bought me two seconds. One to toss the empty gun. One for a pair of aces to drop from my sleeves. I caught the cards in my fingertips, whipped my arms up, and sent them flying. One thug took it dead on: he dropped, gurgling, the ace of diamonds buried halfway into his throat. The other card went wide, slicing alongside his buddy’s neck and ripping open his jugular. Blood guttered through his fingers as he slumped against the wall, hands clamped over his torn flesh as if he thought he could press himself back together.

  A third ace jumped from my jacket pocket as I dropped low and spun on my heel toward Cesar. The card flew like a hornet, but it barely touched him; instead it winged along his bicep and hit the back wall, leaving a thread-thin trickle of blood no deeper than a paper cut.

  Cesar grinned and raised his pistol.

  “You missed.”

  “Nah, sugar,” Jennifer told him. “Danny just knew I’d wanna kill you myself.”

  Then she spat a single word. A long, guttural, twisting word that evoked frozen Germanic winters. The trigger to the spell she’d been weaving for days. The toxic miasma above our heads exploded with a peal of thunder and her spite-fueled power crashed down on Cesar, one man alone in a torrent of death.

  The paper cut on his bicep ripped open, as if someone had taken pliers to his skin and given it one brutal, wrenching tug. Blood gushed from the wound as he screamed, flowing faster than it should have, and even faster by the second. He collapsed to his knees, shrieking, and a scarlet torrent blasted from the wound like the spray from a fire hose and splashed across the arcade wall.

  His skin turned ashen and taut, his fingers and toes curling, crumpling. Bones cracked as his limbs folded in on themselves and the flesh on his skull stretched taut like a mummified corpse. Jennifer’s death curse slowly crushed his body like a juice box, squeezing every drop of blood from every last ragged vein.

  What collapsed to the floor when the spell was done, gray and bloodless and small as a child, didn’t look human anymore.

  “That’s what you get for fuckin’ with a witch,” Jennifer said. “My momma taught me that trick.”

  I worked at the ropes binding her wrists, getting her down as the night erupted with the crackle of gunfire. Engines revved in the distance, roaring over the staccato pops and thudding shotgun booms.

  “What’s going on out there?” Jennifer asked me, wincing as she rubbed her wrists.

  “Your buddy Gabriel and the cavalry are here. That flare wasn’t just a distraction; it was the signal that I had you and they were safe to move in.”

  “You telling me they started the party without us?”

  Jennifer scooped up Cesar’s fallen pistol. Then, after a moment’s deliberation, she grabbed one of his thugs’ guns too. She checked the loads fast and sighted down each barrel.

  “Seriously?” I said. “You don’t want to maybe take a breather or something? You’ve just been through a lot.”

  “Hon, this moment is all I’ve been thinking about for days. Not a chance I’m missing the fun.” She leaned in and kissed me on the cheek. “And thanks for the rescue. Now grab a piece and let’s go already! There’s a whole lot of backstabbers who need lead tombstones out there, and you’re slowin’ me down.”

  I sighed, prying a pistol from the other fallen thug’s cold fingers, trying to ignore a sudden twinge in my back.

  “I think I’m getting too old for this,” I told her.

  Jennifer stood silhouetted in the open bay door, a pistol cocked and ready in each hand.

  “Less whinin’, more shootin’,” she said. Then she was gone, charging into the dark.

  I followed her into the fight. Of course I did. That’s what friends do.

  48.

  The Flamenco was one of the older hotels on the Strip, a relic of Old Vegas. They’d remodeled the place a few times over the decades, but you could still imagine Frankie and the Rat Pack strutting through the halls on their way to play the grand showroom.

  I walked under the flaming marquee of light, flared and cherry red, shaped to resemble a showgirl’s headdress. The packed bar drew my eye, but the best I could do was grit my teeth as I walked on by. It had been almost a week since the showdown in the desert, which meant five more days before I could finally have a stiff drink. The headaches and nausea were coming less frequently now, but they hadn’t gone away.

  Up an escalator, down an access hallway, a meeting room waited behind ivory double doors. It would have fit into a corporate tower anywhere in the world, sporting a long oval table surrounded by high-backed chairs and a crisp hotel notepad and pen placed neatly at each seat. Pixie was already there, wearing bulky headphones and sweeping the room with a gadget that looked like a stage magician’s wand.

  “They drafted you too, huh?” she said.

  I held up a hand. “Security.”

  “Ditto. You think this is gonna work?”

  “Maybe. I don’t see an alternative to trying, anyway.”

  When Jennifer arrived, I almost didn’t recognize her. She’d traded in her usual T-shirt and jeans for a pressed olive pantsuit, her hair coiffed. She always clipped her nails short, but they didn’t usually show the gleam of a fresh manicure.

  “This room is certified bug-free,” Pixie announced, giving Jennifer a wave. “I’m gonna get to work on the hallway.”

  Jennifer took my hand and gave it a nervous squeeze.

  “Thanks for helping out,” she said. “Means the world to me.”

  “Hey, I wouldn’t miss it. You feeling confident?”

  “Nope.” She grinned. “Public speakin’ ain’t exactly my forte. And there’s all kinds of ways this could go real, real bad.”

  “Then we’ll just have to handle it, won’t we?”

  The rest of the security team wasn’t far behind her, a handful of Gabriel’s men. They’d traded in their gang colors for rented suits.

  “You two,” I said, divvying up the jobs, “I want on the door. You, cover the hallway entrance on the lobby side. Nobody who’s not on the guest list gets past you, and that includes employees. If the hotel staff make a stink about it, send ’em to me. Now who’s got the sharpest eyes in this bunch? You? Okay, you’re on lobby detail. Just watch the hotel entrance and radio ahead when you see our guests show up, or if you spot anything hinky…”

  Somehow, with an effort akin to herding cats, I whipped up a reasonable security detail. Soon the guests started to arrive. Gabriel was first on the scene, and the big man gave me a nod in the hallway.

  “Thanks for the assist out there, ese. Anything you need, you just say it.”

  “All I ask is that you hear Jennifer out and try to keep the peace today.”

  He laughed. “Hell, I won’t blast any fools if they don’t make me blast ’em.”

  Winslow came next. He wasn’t inclined to take off his black leather vest, the one with the screaming skeletal eagle on the back, but at least he’d worn a shirt under it for a change. He took my hand in a vice grip.

  “Heard from Jake and Westie,” he said. “They’re raisin’ hell down in Tijuana, free and clear. Gotta say, I had my doubts about you, Faust. But you manned up and delivered. Far as I’m concerned, your debt’s wiped. Hey, how’s that Barracuda treating you? She still running right?”

  I gritted my teeth.

  “The, uh, cops impounded it when they arrested me. And the gun, too.”

  Winslow barked out a raspy laugh. “Hell, son, this just hasn’t been your month, has it? If you’re looking for another ride, stop by the garage sometime. I’ll set you up. But I will need cash up front this time.”

  “Hey,” I said, “did Jake and Westie mention another prisoner who escaped with them? A guy named Buddy?”

  He rubbed the gray stubble on his chin, thinking.

  “Yeah.” Winslow nodded. “Said they had a
guy with ’em, but they parted ways halfway to the border. Said he had someplace important to go.”

  So Buddy had made it. He had a shot at delivering his message, at least. And next…well, I didn’t have time to think about next at the moment, not with the guest list filling out by the minute. There was Eddie Stone from the Bishops, looking flashy in a peacock-blue three-piece suit, Little Shawn from the Playboy Killers, even a hard-eyed delegate from the Fine Upstanding Crew. Guys who had no reason to sit down at the same table—and every reason to shoot each other on sight.

  Everybody stayed cool, for now. And even though every single one of them had ignored the “no guns” request, the chrome stayed holstered and out of sight.

  Pixie sidled up next to me as I patrolled the hall, keeping tabs on five things at once. “Faust, this is getting weird fast.”

  “Long as it’s not getting murderous fast, that’s fine by me.”

  “That guy in the black silk suit and half a missing pinky finger coming up the hall,” she whispered. “Is he from the freaking yakuza?”

  “Inagawa-kai,” I murmured back. “They’re actually based out of Yokohama, but they’ve got investments in Vegas. And here comes the rep from the Fourteen-K Triad. Smile and be friendly.”

  One of the last arrivals wasn’t on the guest list. Emma Loomis came striding up the hall, dressed for business and carrying a crocodile-skin attaché case.

  “Emma?” I said. “How did you even—”

  “Protecting my prince’s interests. This is more my area of expertise than Caitlin’s.”

  “Yeah, but did Jennifer send you an invite?”

  “She must have forgotten. An understandable oversight.” Emma leaned close, tiny flashes of copper sparkling in her eyes. “But nobody is denying Prince Sitri a seat at this table.”

  She had a point. I let her pass.

  As the last guest arrived, taking his seat at the oval table, we closed the conference room doors. Jennifer beckoned me to the front of the room to stand at her shoulder. Voices murmured, gazes darting across the table, old enmities smoldering.