The Night Dahlia

by R. S. Belcher

  “I’m working on that,” I replied. “Anything on his family, his kid?” I asked as I lit a cigarette.

  “Wife died in a car crash in 2000,” Grinner said. I thought I heard a baby coo over the line. “Never remarried, never saw anyone else, as far as I can determine.”

  “Touching,” I said. “Are you playing with Turing or something, ’cause I can hear the little future Anonymous member in my ear.”

  “I’m changing a shitty diaper,” Grinner said. “I don’t fucking get how a kid that eats such a tiny amount of food can produce so much poo, so often.”

  “Maybe he’s a prodigy,” I offered, “and did you just say ‘poo’?”

  “Hey, go fuck yourself, Ballard,” Grinner rumbled. “Christine don’t want me fucking swearing so much around the kid, okay, so don’t go busting my balls.”

  “I cannot wait until he starts saying ‘shit,’” I said. “Christine is going to fucking murder you.”

  “Yeah, keep it up, and I won’t give you the good stuff,” he said. The baby giggled, and I heard a grunt from Grinner that I knew passed for a happy chuckle from him. “Caern Ankou drops off the face of the Earth in 2009; however, since you have employed a fucking data god—”

  “Fuck is a swear word,” I interjected.

  “So it is. Fuck you,” Grinner said. I heard the baby make a “ffffff” sound. “Shit,” Grinner muttered.

  “Shit is a swear word.”

  “Shut the fuck up before you corrupt my kid more!” Grinner bellowed. The baby laughed, and so did I. “What I was trying to tell you, dickhead, is that she has dual citizenship, British and American. I back-traced her passports and nothing, but I got a few hits on some credit card and bank activity with her Social Security number in several different Central American and Mediterranean countries. It was from back in 2010, and it looked like I wasn’t the first guy to find it.”

  “Yeah,” I said, sliding on a clean pair of jeans. “Ankou had a ton of investigators and hackers looking for her for years.”

  “Ah, but he didn’t have the best-endowed hacker in the universe and his rummy wizard sidekick on the case back then,” Grinner said. “Turns out it was all identity theft issues. That got me thinking…”

  “Yeah?” I said. I picked a black T-shirt with the Black Keys logo on it from the crumpled pile in my bag. It passed the sniff test, and I slid it on, juggling my smoke and the cell as I did. “Go on. I’m literally on the edge of my seat.”

  “Those other bozos probably tried to track the guys who used her info,” Grinner said. I heard the “tack-tack” of a keyboard, faintly. “I focused on where they got the data from, who put her shit out on the web, and who made bank off it from the jump. That’s an information channel most snoopers can’t dip too deep into…”

  “… But the best-endowed hacker in the universe could,” I finished for him.

  “Damn straight,” Grinner said. “It took cracking some secured files on about a half-dozen servers in about that many countries, but I got you a name. And this trail looks cherry, man.”

  “Name?”

  “Luis Demir,” Grinner said. I imagined him reading from a computer screen, his son held to his chest. “Born in Turkey, citizenship in Mexico, the States, U.K., all over. He’s the fucking Bill Gates of carders; he sets up huge, multimillion-dollar alliances to bring coders, phishers, and the Mobs, the guys with the money, together. They make bank, and then everybody goes their separate ways until the next caper. Given the places her information ended up on fake debit and credit cards, Demir is your guy. He’s the link to all those places.”

  “Where do I find him?”

  “He’s in the refugee and human-trafficking business these days,” Grinner said. “Splits his time between Greece, Mexico, El Salvador, Honduras, and L.A. He’s doing a lot of work for the maras, MS-13, you know, those gang assholes, these days.” I heard more clicks. “He’s in the city of angels right now.” Grinner gave me an address. “Do not start a fucking war with fucking MS-13, Ballard.”

  Mara Salvatrucha, better known as MS-13, was an organized crime gang with roots here in L.A. The mara, Spanish for gang, was a monster; they had juice all over America, Mexico, and Central America. A quasi-military, tattoo-faced brotherhood with the numbers and the firepower to rival an army, they owned a lot of L.A.

  “Yeah,” I said, crushing out my stub of a cigarette and lighting a new one, “I might need a little muscle, here, someone I can trust. You think you can get ahold of Ichi for me?”

  Ichi was a centuries-old Japanese artisan of the gun, a Gun Saint. He was one of the five Bloodhisattvas, enlightened beings who had mastered all forms of death, literal demigods of murder. Ichi had watched my back on several capers. He was the best and his word was beyond reproach.

  “Shit,” Grinner said, “you ain’t paying me enough, asshole. The Gun Saint’s in London, hanging out with his daughter and his new grandbaby. You think I’m going to disturb him, you’re high. ’Sides, I thought you had backup from Ankou, this Elf knight guy?”

  “Don’t trust him, he’s Ankou’s man,” I said. “Is Samnang still running the Freakz and Yeakz, out of the northeast part of L.A.?”

  Grinner chuckled, and I heard keys tick. “Yeah, still fighting over some of the Tiny Raskuls’ turf back in Long Beach too. Why?”

  “I need you to send him a message from me,” I said.

  * * *

  Vigil drove the CCXR Trevita off the freeway and down Eagle Rock Boulevard. The lights from the shop signs were smeared across the night like neon paint. The Trevita looked kind of like a black-and-silver fighter out of Star Wars, only cooler and faster. I had wanted to drive it, but Vigil had refused.

  “If that trip down the mountain on Spetses was any indication,” he said, “you don’t need to drive anything, ever.”

  “Hey! That’s really unfair,” I said, blowing cigarette smoke out the open window. “I lived, you lived. Unfair.”

  The car stereo was pounding “Let it Bang” by A$AP Ferg. Even in a city of mind-boggling excess, we were getting looks in this car, which I have to admit, I liked, but I also kept thinking that somewhere in this city was a highly trained occult hit man sent to kill me. It made me wish a little that we had taken the shit-brown Dodge, but only a little. I mean, who honestly wants to die in a shit-brown Dodge? Maybe Vigil was as sick of me as I was of him, and he wanted to get me whacked. I wished Ichi was available. The old bastard ate Carnifexes for their high fiber content.

  Despite my best efforts, I kind of liked Vigil, but I didn’t trust him, not to go deep into the shit with me. I had to try to find some local muscle I could count on to watch my back, no matter how this all shook out. I had an idea about that. I’d need Dwayne, but first things first.

  “You speak any Khmer?” I asked.

  “As in Cambodian?” Vigil said. “No.”

  “Okay, these guys are Cambodian gangbangers,” I said. “So let me talk to them, okay? I speak a little, and I know the boss.”

  “How did a redneck from West Virginia learn how to speak Khmer?”

  “When I was with the Nightwise, I was in L.A. most of my career. Being any kind of cop in this town is like being a fucking UN peacekeeper. You pick up what you can of whatever language that gets thrown at you, helps keep you alive.”

  “And this Cambodian gang…”

  “They call themselves the Huntington Freakz and Yeakz,” I said. Vigil shook his head.

  “Yeah, whatever. So this gang is connected to the Life?”

  I nodded.

  “You could say that. They split from a Long Beach Cambodian gang back in 1984, a crew called the Tiny Raskuls. I met their leader, a kid named Samnang Bun, my first year on the street out here. Samnang’s brother got killed by a Kru, a kind of Cambodian sorcerer. I brought the asshole down. It’s hard to do, since they’re pretty much indestructible, but I did it, of course.”

  “Of course.” Vigil nodded, the smart-ass leaking out his eye holes.

&nbs
p; “Samnang became a gang leader at thirteen, inherited the title from his brother.”

  “How old were you?” Vigil asked. I shrugged.

  “Eighteen,” I said, “maybe nineteen.”

  “Awful young to be a cop, especially a cop that deals with the things the Nightwise do.”

  “Just kinda happened,” I said, looking out the window at the neighborhood we were driving through. Once the hunting grounds of the Hillside Stranglers and the Nightstalker, today Eagle Rock was a hipster’s wet dream. We passed vintage vinyl shops, comic book stores, and all manner of upscale mom-and-pop restaurants. I told Vigil to slow as we approached a building on our left across the street from a Jack in the Box. “Here,” I said, pointing. “Pull in the parking lot.”

  “You have got to be kidding me,” the knight said. The building’s sign, which looked straight out of the seventies, said ALL-STAR LANES. Smaller signs declared DANCING, COCKTAIL LOUNGE, ARCADE, AND BILLIARDS. “You’re going to meet an occult Cambodian street gang in a bowling alley?”

  “Nope,” I said. “I’m meeting them in the bowling alley.”

  We parked the car and walked into All-Star Lanes. The place smelled like most bowling alleys, greasy french fries, foot sweat, stale beer, and floor wax. The decor was every bit as eclectic and seventies as the sign outside. It was a little like stepping onto the set of The Big Lebowski. The jukebox, playing “All the Gold in California” by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, competed for attention over the thunder of balls rolling down wooden lanes, the crash of pins, dozens of televisions chattering, and the rumble of conversation. Vigil was in a charcoal-gray Brioni suit with no tie. He and I walked like we owned the fucking place, side by side. Despite the heat, I had never seen him sweat. I had to admit, Burris carried himself well. He was no hired goon.

  “No way in hell am I wearing those nasty shoes,” Vigil said as we walked down the lanes. At the last two lanes, next to the wall, were a bunch of Cambodian guys in their teens and twenties. There were about fifteen of them, total. All of them were dressed in the same kind of gear most bangers, rappers, and wannabes wore: expensive baseball caps, the bill, with a sticker still on it, turned at an angle; some wore knit beanies. They almost all wore baggy, sagging jeans. Some wore tight, ribbed tank tops, commonly referred to as “wifebeaters” back where I came from. Others wore plaid shirts, hanging out. They all had lots of gold and silver bling, tattoos, and guns. It was a shame the shitty jewelry wasn’t hidden like the weapons. All of them had worked the colors of red and blue into their attire, the colors of the Cambodian national flag.

  Samnang Bun was sitting at the scoring table. Samnang was an older man, in his thirties, dressed the same as the others, in a baseball cap, blue-and-red plaid shirt, hanging loose. He had facial tattoos that gave him the look of an Asian-style demonic mask, with tusks and horns. His right eyelid drooped due to an ugly scar that ran down to his eye and then below it. That eye was drained of color, like glass, while the uninjured eye was a deep brown. Samnang stood as he saw Vigil and me approach their lanes. Several of his guys went for their pieces under their shirts, but Samnang stopped them from drawing the weapons with a curt shake of the head.

  “Hang back a sec,” I said, “let me talk to him.” Vigil didn’t seem thrilled with this but held back while I walked down to meet Samnang.

  “You got old, Ballard,” Samnang said in Khmer.

  “Look who’s talking, punk,” I replied in kind. “You own any age-appropriate clothing, or are you going to keep dressing like Wiz Khalifa when you’re eighty?”

  “Don’t intend to live that long, baulis,” he said with a shrug. I hadn’t been called that for a long-ass time.

  “I’m not a cop anymore,” I said. “I quit.”

  “Shit, bangabros, way I heard it, they canned your ass. Something about you going widdershins, and then you fucked up that thing with that dead girl. You remember that thing with the girl?”

  A wet, tumbling nightmare unfolded behind my eyes, crouching in my skull meat, waiting to jump out and drag me back screaming to 1984. I remembered her face, perfect and unmarred, and what had been done to the rest of her. The lonely strip of beach, the gulls, screaming, the only witnesses to the atrocity. “Yeah,” I said, “I remember, and I fucking quit.” Samnang shrugged again.

  “Don’t mean nothing to me, either way,” Samnang said. “Once a baulis, always a baulis. Can’t wash that shit off you. Why you calling me up after all these years, and how the fuck did you get my fucking cell phone number to text me?”

  A thought crossed my mind. Samnang and his boys would be great mercenary muscle to back me up, as long as my check cleared. However, I knew they’d balk when they heard I was going to be squaring off against MS-13. The mara employed Aztec wizards with a penchant for cutting out hearts. Even reckless supernatural brawlers like the Freakz and Yeakz would think twice about crossing MS-13. No, it would have to be Dwayne.

  “I looked you up in the ‘Who’s Who of Cambodian Gangsters,’” I said, “small book. Don’t matter how I did it, all you need to know is I can. I need you to do me a solid, Sam. You see the guy that came in with me? I need you to keep him tied up for a bit, you and your crew. Don’t kill him. Just give me some time to get out of here, okay?”

  “Asshole looks wound way too tight,” Samnang said. “He’s strapped. What if he decides to start shooting?”

  “I don’t think he will,” I said. Vigil was crossing his arms and leaning against the back wall. He obviously saw us discussing him and didn’t like it. The jukebox was playing Coleman Hell’s “2 Heads” over the ceiling speakers. “Not unless your boys draw. He’s got a code.”

  “Oh shit, one of them,” Sam said, shaking his head. “Fucking honor. Nothing gets you killed faster on the street, man. Hey, remember when I met you? You used to be like that too, huh, Ballard? Only reason you’re still breathing is you wised up, bangabros.”

  “You’ll do it?” I asked. “You owe me, Sammy.”

  “Yeah, I sure do,” he said. “Okay, we’ll keep him occupied.”

  “Watch yourself,” I said. “He’s Fae, an Elf. Knight to the House of Ankou.”

  “You forget who you’re talking to?” Samnang said. “Like I said, we’ll keep him busy. You just play stupid and scared, and we’ll get you out of here quick. Take him out back behind the building. Give me five.” We bumped fists, and I headed back up to Vigil, slipping a cigarette between my lips as I did.

  “Well?” Burris asked.

  “He’s got a lead for me,” I said, lighting the smoke. “He’s meeting me in the alleyway. You stay put. He doesn’t like the look of you.”

  “Can’t do that,” Burris said, like I was pretty sure he would. “Come on, I’ll be charming.”

  We stepped out a large metal fire door with a sheet of yellowed paper taped to it that said: “Please keep door closed! Back lot is not a bathroom!!!” Behind the bowling alley, there were several large Dumpsters and rows of large plastic garbage cans, all of them overflowing. I saw a rat scuttle into hiding between them at the sound of the fire door clanging open. The night sky above was slate gray, no stars, no moon, only a diffused aura of light pollution that clung to the sky like thick, filthy cobwebs.

  By the time I had tossed my cigarette, Samnang and the boys came through the fire door. Sam pointed to Vigil and spoke in Khmer. “Your unlucky day, phng dar,” he said and gestured to two of his larger men. They moved toward Vigil with arrogant smirks on their faces. Burris looked over to me, and I did my best to look surprised and ready to throw down. I didn’t get a chance to gauge his reaction, because the bangers were on top of us by then.

  Both of Sam’s men came in on Vigil. One went high with a solid right, the other low with a kick that showed he had some Tae Kwon Do training. Vigil jumped straight up, using the guy’s incoming fist and arm the way a gymnast might use a vaulting horse. The other gang member’s low kick missed, because there was nothing there to connect with, and the first guy’s punch never
got a chance to find its way to Vigil’s face. At the apex of his jump, Vigil snapped both legs out, kicking both of his attackers in the face. Both large men staggered back, crashing into the garbage cans, noses bleeding, lips split, and eyes swelling shut. Vigil came back down, assuming a martial arts stance I didn’t recognize. His face was serene, calm. His eyes were dead.

  “This is going to end poorly for all of you,” he said. “Only warning.” Samnang barked a curt order in Khmer, and six more of his men charged at Vigil, joined by the first two injured bangers. They leapt through the air toward Vigil in defiance of gravity like something you’d see in a wire-fu movie, but this was no Hollywood trick. I saw Vigil’s stone expression shift ever so slightly in surprise, then he was too busy to do anything but fight.

  I once dabbled in aikido when I was maybe fourteen. Surprise, surprise, it didn’t take. I didn’t have the patience for it. I had studied it in a little shithole dojo in a really bad neighborhood of Washington, D.C. I was trying to learn more about Chi, trying to find my way as a fledgling wizard. Each of us comes to the power a different way, most often by the philosophy of whoever discovered us and brought us into the Life. That would have been my granny; she was a West Virginian Wisdom, a kind of witch-woman, a healer. I was angry, childish, and pigheaded and fought her gentle way of using magic to serve life and protect beauty. Then she died, and I was on my own. I’m a magical mutt; I take and use from any system that works, and at fourteen, I wanted to learn Chi. The sensei gave us a demonstration once, taking on five of his best students. They were standing and surrounded him. He was kneeling with a serene smile of welcome on his face. He tossed all of them around the room like they were rag dolls, letting them do a lot of the work of taking themselves out. I now realized that one of the forms Vigil was trained in was aikido.

  Vigil struck one of the gang as he began to land from his flight, driving the heel of his palm into the man’s temple, stunning him. He grabbed the stunned man’s forearm and swung him in a semicircle, smashing him into three of his fellow bangers as they too landed. With half of his opponents tied up in a tangle, Vigil shifted styles and went to work on the other four using tight, vicious close strikes. The knight was never where they tried to land a punch, already moving. Vigil still wasn’t sweating.