Hostile Takeover (Vale Investigation Book 1)

by Cristelle Comby

  I did what I could not to look annoyed when I saw her leaning against the side of my apartment building, smoking a cigarette in a very long holder. Tonight she was dressed in a short leather top that stopped well above her rib cage, matching leather skirt, and fishnets with heels. Her hair was cropped into a bob, with black eyeliner, red lipstick, and a pale complexion completing the package. She looked like a 1920s flapper who had got back from a fashion expedition through Hot Topic.

  “I’m working on it,” was all I said as I killed the Stingray’s engine.

  “I am not here for that,” she replied as she walked up to the driver’s side door. “You went somewhere the other night where you were not supposed to be.”

  “Yeah, I kind of got that impression,” I said, shuddering at the memory. “He got anything to do with what I’m looking into?”

  She ignored the question. “It is because you are mine that you managed to walk away from that. Never be so foolish as to attempt what you did again.”

  “Don’t call us, we’ll call you—got it,” I snapped, my irritation getting the better of my good sense. “Now if you’re done with the lectures, I’d like to go back to the job you wanted me to get done.”

  “You’re going to see De Soto,” she remarked as I got out. It wasn’t a question.

  “Yeah. Tommy wouldn’t play ball on something so—”

  My head was against the hood of my car before I even knew what was going on. No black eyeballs tonight, but there was a fire that surged through them as she pinned me by the throat.

  “How truly stupid are you?” she asked in amazement. “De Soto is an amoral monster who knows far too much and gets away with even more.”

  I tried answering but it’s hard to talk when your trachea is being squeezed. I pointed to my throat as I made choking noises. With a look of utter disgust, she released me and I slid down the hood to the ground.

  After a couple of seconds of coughing, I managed to find my voice. “Yeah … huhh … I know it’s dangerous. But for some reason, the guy has taken a liking to me. Not enough to put his neck out for me, sure, but he’s the only guy I know who can make something I need done happen.”

  “It will not be free,” she observed, unimpressed. “Sacrifice runs in his blood.”

  “Yeah, but never anything you can’t pay and walk away from after,” I said, getting up. “He’s better than his ancestors were.”

  “He is as his ancestors were,” she contradicted me. “The only true difference is that he lets most of his victims live.”

  I rounded on her to deliver a stinging retort, but once again found myself staring at empty air.

  “Good talk,” I muttered as I went inside.

  There was no food in the house but I did have a quart of milk in the fridge. I treated myself to a swig of that and then went digging through my books. Today had been easier than yesterday and especially the day before yesterday, but it had still been a long way from easy. And the fact that I was going to visit De Soto while he was holding court at his club in a few hours looked likely to ratchet the ugly factor up a few notches.

  Chapter twelve

  Smoke & Mirrors

  Smoke & Mirrors had been open for a couple of hours but the line outside it already stretched around the block. Cold City has its share of nightclubs but nothing like this place. While the exterior is your run-of-the-mill club façade, the interior is a mixture of ancient Central American architecture, most prominently Aztec. The bar is stocked with every form of liquor known to man, along with a few specials that you have to know the right people to ask for. There have been whispers about in-house designer drugs that you can score nowhere else, pit fights with heavy gambling action, and a connection to a brothel where the customer’s sexual tastes are always right, whatever they happen to be.

  Not that I’ve ever tried to verify any of those rumors. Sticking your nose in Ramon De Soto’s business can shorten your life span down to seconds … and that’s if he’s in a good mood. A few years ago, his business and my business crossed paths and I managed to be one of the few people he ever let live to tell the tale. I’d done an accidental service for him that was so big that he had left a standing offer for me to come to him with any problem I might have. This would be the first time I’d be taking him up on that.

  I ignored the line and went right up to the front door. A doorman with a bald head and mirror shades held up a hand as big as my chest to stop me.

  “Back of the line, sir,” he rumbled, making it clear it wasn’t a request.

  “I need to see El Jefe,” I replied. “That’s the reason I’m here.”

  “Back of the line, sir,” the doorman repeated.

  Shrugging my hands in my pockets I complied and prepared myself for a long wait.

  I was just about to gain entrance when I heard a female yelp right behind the walk-in vault door. Everyone’s eyes turned to the source of the noise as the door opened. After all, it’s not every night that you see a six-foot-plus Amazon carrying a pretty girl over her head.

  The Amazon in question was of Latino stock, somewhere in her forties, with a pretty enough face to pass for younger. She was wearing a sheer crimson dress with spaghetti straps that matched her lipstick. Her bronzed skin seemed to match the color of her permed, curly hair in the dim light. But you noticed those details afterwards. The first thing you saw and couldn’t quite believe was her muscles. They bulged out from her arms like a mass of coiled cables, as mesmerizing to watch as a cobra preparing to strike. She looked like a cross between the She-Hulk and Sofia Vergara.

  “I caught this little mouse trying to sneak in,” she told the doorman with a hint of reproach, her mid-alto voice carrying no trace of an accent.

  Having said that, she dumped the girl she was carrying in my general direction. The former human cargo landed on top of me hard. I shook my head a couple of times before I realized whose face I was staring at: Ms. Kennedy. How she thought she could sneak into a club like this with her face plastered all over television on a regular basis would take a better detective than me to figure out.

  The Amazon grabbed Kennedy by the hair and pulled back her head. Bending down to whisper in her ear, the Amazon told her in a low voice, “The next time I catch you in here, mouse, prepare to be eaten.”

  Then she lifted Kennedy back onto her feet. The crowd howled with laughter as the humiliated reporter ran off into the night.

  The Amazon then turned her attention to me and offered me a more conventional hand up. My impression of her strength hadn’t been wrong—she lifted me off the ground like I was a bag of groceries.

  “I must apologize for using you as an airbag, Señor,” she said in a much kinder tone.

  “This man wanted to speak with your husband, Mrs. De Soto,” the doorman said.

  “Si?” she asked, raising an eyebrow at the bodyguard then at me. “And what business have you with my husband?”

  “I’m … Bellamy Vale, Mrs. De Soto,” I explained, my mind still reeling at the extraordinary figure in front of me. “Your husband and I—”

  “Ah, of course—Señor Vale,” she said, laying a hand softly on my shoulder. “Ramon speaks highly of you. Won’t you come in?”

  With a last death stare of disapproval to the doorman, she herded me into the club proper.

  That architecture I mentioned before was hard to make out in the dim lighting of the club. As well as the colored lights and strobes playing on the usual party crowd, wall mirrors and smoke machines were doing their bit to add to the atmosphere. The easiest place to spot any Aztec touches was the DJ’s booth, which was made up like a mini-Mayan pyramid. Right then, the DJ was blasting out a techno track via wall speakers in Too-Loud-Around-Sound. The sheer volume near deafened me; I could hear nothing else. I saw hearing aids in a lot of these kids’ futures.

  Even with all the activity and noise, everybody gav
e Mrs. De Soto a lot of room. Her size and poise were enough to intimidate even the most strung-out raver. I walked in her shadow, knowing that nobody’d even know I was there with her around.

  We got to the back right booth of the club, where the noise was muted enough to have a regular conversation without having to shout at the top of your lungs. Bodyguards flanked it on either side, looking like Secret Service men on steroids. They moved aside for Mrs. De Soto just like the clubbers had. Somebody rose from the shadows of the booth to give her a deep kiss.

  Stepping into the light was a ruggedly handsome guy somewhere in his late forties. His black hair was styled and gelled in a 1950s pompadour, while his clothes were the cutting edge of fashion and looked more suitable for a senior vice-president than the most feared criminal overlord in the city. His dark eyes caught sight of me as he broke off kissing his wife. The bright, even smile that creased his lips didn’t thaw out the cold in those eyes one iota.

  “Mi amigo!” he exclaimed, giving me a hug and a kiss on the cheek. “How are you?”

  “I’m good, Mr. De Soto,” I replied. “Better than I’ve been in a couple of days anyhow.”

  He patted my shoulder twice. “Ramon, mi amigo, Ramon … how many times must I tell you that there need be no formalities between us?”

  “It speaks well of him that his first instinct is politeness, Ramon,” his wife said as she took her seat. “Too many Norteamericanos forget that critical survival skill.”

  The way she said it made me glad that all that had happened to Kennedy was that she was thrown out.

  “Ah, you have never met my wife Estella, have you?” De Soto asked as he draped an arm around my shoulder.

  “Never even knew you were married,” I admitted, as the wall of bodyguards closed behind me.

  “In our hearts since we were eight,” Mrs. De Soto said, shaking my hand with a firm but friendly grip. “Legally for slightly less long.”

  Her husband gave a hearty laugh and steered me to a seat. Then he sat beside his wife, who gave him an affectionate sideways hug and a nibble at his ear.

  “One unusual thing about Mr. Vale,” she said as she looked at me again. “Despite his profession, he has made no effort to inquire as to how a mere woman acquired my quite impressive musculature.”

  “Chalk up my lack of curiosity to that critical survival skill you mentioned before, Mrs. De Soto,” I told her.

  This provoked a huge laugh from both the De Sotos, like I’d told the best joke of the night. It made me wonder if an audience with Lucifer would make me as uneasy as I was beginning to feel.

  “I’m afraid this ain’t a social visit, Ramon,” I said with a sigh.

  “So I would assume,” he acknowledged. “Please speak freely.”

  “You heard about what went down with Vito a couple of days ago?”

  Mrs. De Soto broke in before her husband could answer. “I remember going over to that puta’s place and reminding him why he wound up having to give up all his profits for the last month.” She all but spat the reply.

  I did a double-take.

  “A true marriage shares everything, Bellamy,” Ramon explained. “In our case, part of that sharing is in power. I oversee the overall picture while mi corazón Estella handles the day to day.”

  “So his losing all his profits was why he kidnapped that girl in the first place?” I asked.

  “No, he took that poor niña from her home to make himself feel strong,” Mrs. De Soto said, the hate coming off her in palpable waves. “The money was a bonus. It is only by my husband’s continuing grace that the bastardo continues to walk this earth.”

  “Estella, please,” De Soto said, rubbing his wife’s left forearm. “You are frightening our guest.”

  “No, it’s all right,” I assured them, glad that he’d picked up on that. “It’s just … Vitorini may know something I need to know myself.”

  “For a case?”

  I nodded. “It might … cross into some private areas. I’d ask him directly but after what I’ve done—”

  “Say no more,” De Soto said, holding up a hand. “A conference will be arranged where you two may speak privately.”

  “However,” his wife put in, “we cannot guarantee your safety at this conference.”

  I glanced at De Soto.

  “Sadly, she is right, mi amigo,” he said with a shrug. “However much we despise Vito’s practices of late, he is a member of our organization. To favor an outsider over one of our own sends … the wrong type of message.”

  His wife looked thoughtful. “Nevertheless, Ramon, as Vitorini is an utter and complete piece of shit and Señor Vale an old friend, I believe that we may be able to come to … an arrangement.”

  Her husband opened his mouth to speak and then closed it. Another easy smile climbed back onto his face. “The changeling?”

  At his wife’s nod, De Soto looked at me. “How would you feel about doing a small but vital job for me, Bellamy?”

  “Depends on the job,” I said with uncertainty.

  “It will be well within your skill set to accomplish,” he assured me. “After all, one does not expect a plumber to know how to build a complete house.”

  “Perhaps part of a house,” Mrs. De Soto joked. “But we jest when we should be explaining what we wish of our dear friend.”

  De Soto pursed his lips. “We have reason to believe that some of our more … exotic mixtures are being sold outside the purview of this club, which is forbidden.”

  “Could the dealer be taking it from the club’s own supply?” I asked.

  “The very first thing we thought of, but no,” Mrs. Do Soto answered. “Therefore, the substances are being made elsewhere and the raw materials are somehow being supplied from Atzlan, impossible though that may sound.”

  “Not really,” I said, remembering that frustrating game of phone tag I’d played at the start of this case. If a Berserker could cross the boundary with Valhalla, why couldn’t somebody else be getting controlled substances from the Aztec part of Alterum Mundum?

  “The dealer has a contact he has cultivated among the earthbound Arcadian court,” De Soto confided. “All we know is that this contact is a faerie changeling. Beyond that, we have no further details, not even gender.”

  “So my job is to find them, ID them, and tell you where they are?” I asked.

  “You do catch on quite quickly, Señor Vale,” Mrs. De Soto teased as her husband slid out of the booth so that she could do the same. “We both realize what a difficult task we are asking of you, but still …”

  She ended the thought with a shrug as she rose to her feet. That’s when I noticed that she was wearing flats.

  “Nor do we expect you to take such risk without financial compensation,” De Soto added. “Would five hundred dollars be an adequate start to this task?”

  “I wouldn’t say no,” I said.

  “Are you therefore saying ‘yes’?” Mrs. De Soto asked, leaning down so close that her top exposed her breasts.

  Doing my best to ignore them, I nodded. “Yeah.”

  Mrs. De Soto clasped my head in both hands and gave me a kiss to the forehead. “Bueno.”

  The bodyguards parted one more time as she went out onto the dance floor.

  “Look, Ramon, no disrespect,” I said, choosing my words very carefully, “but your wife seems …”

  “A bit flirtatious? Si, she often is with those she takes a liking to.”

  “I’m a little surprised that she’s this much a part of your world.”

  De Soto shrugged. “Too many men in my profession have the wrong ideas about the fairer sex. To them, women are arm candy, easy lays, or wives whom they surround with enough luxury to paper over the blood and sweat of what they do. Estella has never, and would never, consent to being so used.”

  “Is that a lesson
you learned from the family founder?”

  “Not so much,” he replied. “He demanded that all of his blood seek the truth in all things that we do. These many centuries later, the wisdom of Tezcatlipoca continues to be relevant.”

  “Well, the truth I’m seeing is that your wife is an extraordinary woman,” I told him.

  “You honor us both, amigo,” De Soto said with a half-bow from his seat. “Now, I must insist you have something to eat. No sense in beginning your work on an empty stomach, is there?”

  I nodded and hoped that my meal would come from something I would have recognized.

  Chapter thirteen

  A friend in need

  I was driving the Stingray home from the club when my phone buzzed. I waited until I came to a traffic light on red before checking it. It was Mr. Townsend, letting me know that my money would be available tomorrow morning and could I please swing by his office? I would have texted him back but the light turned green.

  Once I started driving again, my mind went back to what I had been thinking about for the rest of the way: changelings. They were Arcadia’s dirty little secret, a clear violation of the compact between humans and gods that kept coming up. The Fae had been notorious border-crossers for centuries and more than a few of them found the time to have kids by us mere mortals. Like any half-and-half heritage, these children grew up being a part of two worlds without belonging in either. But they had keen enough eyes and senses to serve interests operating out of the Alterum Mundum, and not just the Conclave.

  Most of them weren’t any tougher than your average human, which was a lucky break. But ones like my target made up for it by being twice as clever as your average spy. I was going to need an angle on this if I wanted to find him, or her.

  Someone was waiting for me in the parking lot when I rolled up. At first, I thought Lady McDeath had come back for another ass-chewing. Then I recognized the disheveled blonde hair and club outfit from earlier … Kennedy.

  Getting out of the car, I asked, “Lose your cameraman on the way here?”