by DAVID B. COE
“Killing Etienne de Cahors was no small thing,” he said.
I looked his way, raising an eyebrow. Cahors’s name had been in the papers as Stephen D. Cahors, and I’d only spoken of him by his true name to a handful of people.
My obvious surprise seemed to please him. “My resources within the magical world are as extensive as those outside of it.”
“Did you know who he was before he died?” I asked.
“No,” he said, without any hesitation or hint of pretense.
“What would you have done if you had?”
The smile sharpened. “An interesting question. I’m not in the habit of giving aid to the PPD. On the other hand, he was killing Latina women, and he was using dark magic to do it.” He fell silent, perhaps still weighing my question. “But you have me getting ahead of myself.”
“I didn’t know that you were a weremyste,” I said, placing my glass on the small side table next to me and meeting his gaze. “That would have been handy knowledge back when I was on the force.”
He laughed again, showing perfect teeth. “Yes, I’m sure it would have been. That’s not something we tend to share with the general public, though, is it?”
“No, it’s not. Why am I here, Mister Amaya?”
His eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Why do you think you’re here?”
It hit me like an open-handed slap to the face, and I kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner. The plane, and the attempt on the life of Mando Rafael Vargas. In that instant I would have given a whole lot of money to see the color of Jacinto Amaya’s magic.
But I wasn’t sure how much I ought to say. Kona had brought me in on an ongoing investigation involving not only the PPD, but also several agencies of the federal government. She had faith in me, and in my discretion. I had a pretty good idea of what she’d think of me sharing what I knew with the leading drug kingpin in Arizona.
“I’m not sure,” I made myself say, realizing that his question still hung between us.
Amaya’s eyebrows bunched. “You disappoint me. Of course you know, or at least you know some of it.”
“Well, let’s assume for a moment that I do. You must realize that I can’t tell you anything about an ongoing investigation. The person who brought me in is trusting me . . .” I trailed off, because he was laughing. At me, most likely, which tended to piss me off. “Is something funny?”
“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” he asked, some of the polite veneer peeling away from the words. “Do you honestly think I need a PI to tell me what’s going on inside the Phoenix Police Department, or inside the FBI, for that matter?”
“Is that how you’ve stayed out of jail all this time?”
He went still, like a wolf on the hunt. But I heard Luis and his friends stir behind me. Amaya glanced back at them and put up a hand, probably to stop them from pulling me from the chair and beating me to a bloody pulp. When he faced me again, the pleasant veneer was back in place, though more strained than before.
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s helped, though maybe not as much as being a weremyste. And being successful, and rich, and ruthless.”
“You see? When you try, you can be quite smart. So again I ask you, why do you think you’re here?”
Thinking about it for all of two seconds, I came to the conclusion that playing games with the guy made little sense, and could very well get me killed. By this time, news of the attempted bombing was all over the media—television and Internet—as was speculation about the intended target of the bomber. And as Amaya had made clear, he had plenty of sources to fill him in on those details that wouldn’t find their way into standard news reports.
“You want to talk about the attempt on Mando Vargas’s life.”
“Better.” He glanced at my drink. “Finish that club soda and then have a beer with me.”
He stood before I could respond. I drained my soda water, and by the time I was setting it down, he was handing me a bottle of Bohemia Stout.
“Do you want a glass?” he asked.
I held up the bottle. “It’s in a glass.”
Amaya grinned, and we both drank. It was a good beer, heartier than most Mexican lagers.
“So, what can you tell me about the man who tried to blow up Mando’s plane?”
“Mister Amaya, I was called in by a friend on the PPD—”
“Kona Shaw. Your former partner.”
I masked my frown by taking another sip of beer. “Yes. She asks me to help her from time to time, because she knows that I’m discreet. I can’t help her if—”
“I’m going to stop you there and make this easy for you,” Amaya said. A note of impatience had crept into his tone. I’d pushed him about as far as I could. “I want you to assume, for the remainder of this conversation, that I have a gun pointed at your heart.” He opened his hands and flashed another of those perfect, predatory smiles. “Now as you can see, I hold no weapon in my hands. But you’re going to pretend that I do. And you’re going to keep in mind as well that if by some chance you lie to me, or hide information from me, I’ll learn of it before long. And I will be very displeased.”
I said nothing, but after a few seconds I nodded once.
“Splendid. Now, the man with the bomb?”
“I assume you know that he was a white-supremacist,” I said, with a silent apology to Kona. “As far as I could tell, he wasn’t a sorcerer, but he did have access to some high-tech toys. The bomb in his luggage was sophisticated enough to get past security and onto the plane.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t a myste?”
“Why would a weremyste need a bomb to blow up a plane? For that matter, why would he need to sacrifice himself to do it?”
“He might use a bomb because it would raise fewer questions than would magic, and because it would make a statement on behalf of his fellow skinheads. And if he was a good enough myste, he might not have sacrificed himself.”
I considered this, but after a few moments shook my head. “I used a seeing spell, and so basically saw his murder. He was harassed by a myste before he died, and he had no idea what was happening. He wasn’t a sorcerer. But whoever killed him was.”
I watched Amaya as I said this last, hoping that he might give something away. He didn’t.
But he did ask, “Did you see the myste who killed him?”
“No. He must have had him or herself camouflaged, or concealed in some other way. Howell—the bomber—he didn’t see a thing before he died.”
“And the magical residue?”
“Green, vivid, fading fast. Whoever killed him is pretty powerful.”
“Was it on anything other than the body?”
I laughed. “You already know everything I’m telling you. Why would you waste your own time like this?”
“I’m wasting nothing,” he said, with quiet intensity. “I have an idea of what might have happened; that’s all. I need for you to confirm my guesses. Now, was the magic only on the body?”
I shook my head. “No. It was on the plane as well—on the instrumentation in the cockpit.”
He nodded at this, weighing it. Then, “Anything else about the magic?” It was his turn to watch me. But on this point, I could conceal what I knew with little chance of being found out. As far as I could tell, I was the lone person who had seen that transparent residue, so I assumed he wasn’t going to learn anything different from one of his many sources.
“Not that I can think of. Why?”
“No reason. I’m merely being thorough. So what do you think happened?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve given me the basic facts, sparing no detail, I’m sure. And now I’m asking you to formulate a theory. What happened to James Robert Howell? Why is he dead, and why is Mando Vargas still alive and, by now, on his way to Washington, D.C.?”
“I have no idea.”
“But what do you think?”
I drank more of my beer, pondering the
question. “Is Mando Vargas a weremyste?” I asked after some time.
“He is not,” Amaya said. “But you’re thinking the right way.”
“Does he rely on your magic?”
He shook his head and took a drink as well. “Mando and I have been friends for a long time. He relies on me for counsel, for support, and, on occasion, for financial contributions in support of his non-profit activities. But not for magic.” A smile thinned his lips. “He does not approve.”
“And he does approve of the rest of what you do?”
“Have a care, Mister Fearsson,” Amaya said, his expression hardening. “The rest of what I do or don’t do is beyond the purview of this conversation.”
When I didn’t respond or shy from his gaze, he sat forward. “You believe me to be the worst kind of villain, don’t you? You think that because of how I make some of my money, I must be a monster. Mando knows better. He sees nuance where you and your police department friends do not.”
“He doesn’t worry that his association with you might hurt the causes he fights for?”
Amaya laughed again, and once more I sensed that he was mocking me. “How many Anglo politicians associate with men like me, with men worse than me? Surely you’re not so naïve as to think that Mando is the only public figure with friends who have gotten rich by less than legitimate means.” He didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Mando knows that I have put far more money into the Latino community than I’ve taken out of it. He has watched me fund community centers, drug rehabilitation centers, playgrounds, housing initiatives, and take no credit at all for the work, because of the harm that would come from my name being associated with the projects.” He stood, walked to the window, and stared out over the city once more, his hands buried in his pants pockets, his broad shoulders hunched. The western sky still glowed like embers in a fire, and the lights of the city seemed to be scattered at his feet, glittering like jewels in a dragon’s lair. “The history of this country is littered with presidents and governors and senators who had ties to men far worse than me.”
“You told me a moment ago that I was thinking the right way,” I said. “So you must have a theory of your own about today’s events. Would you care to share it with me?”
He remained at the window, and for several moments he didn’t answer. At last he faced me. “You haven’t said yet what you think happened.”
Amaya had led me to an obvious conclusion, though I wasn’t sure I believed it, at least not yet. “If what you’ve said is true, then I would guess the murder of James Howell had nothing at all to do with saving Mando Vargas’s life.”
His smile this time was genuine. “Very good. And here I’d grown worried that you might let me down.”
“But whoever killed Howell and disabled the plane had to have been trying to save lives. Otherwise—”
“Otherwise why bother?”
“That’s right,” I said. “So the question is, who else was on that plane? Who was so worth saving that James Howell had to die?”
“My question exactly,” Amaya said, walking back to his chair. “A question I would like to hire you to answer.”
CHAPTER 8
I wasn’t sure I had heard him correctly. “You want to hire me?”
“That’s right.”
I craned my neck to see Luis and his friends over the high back of my chair. “Luis works for you already, and he’s every bit the runecrafter I am.”
“More,” Luis said, and grinned.
I faced Amaya again. “You don’t need me.”
The crime lord’s expression had darkened in a way that made my blood turn cold. “Are you refusing to work for me?”
“No. But I don’t understand why you want me.”
“Luis is not an investigator. No one who works for me is. And you bring certain . . . unique attributes to the job: your connections within both the local magical community and the police department, not to mention your enhanced reputation.”
“You’d pay me?”
“Of course. We’re both businessmen. I believe you charge two hundred and fifty dollars a day, plus expenses.”
“That’s right, though I was thinking of charging you more.”
His eyebrows went up. “And why is that?”
“Because fairly or not, you have a reputation, too, and I’m not sure I want to associate myself with it.”
Anger flickered in his dark eyes, but after a moment he inclined his head, conceding the point. “Three hundred per day.”
“Done. Can you give me some idea of what you expect me to find?”
“Where’s the fun in that?”
“Right. Forget that I asked.” I drank the rest of my beer, set it on the table by my water glass, and stood. “I take it I’m free to leave?”
“Of course. Luis will see you back to your home, or wherever else you care to go.”
I nodded, but didn’t move. There was something missing, something that Amaya was holding back. We both knew it, and I think he was waiting to see if I’d let it go and leave or challenge him. If he’d known me at all, he wouldn’t have wondered: I’d always had more guts than smarts.
“There’s more to this than you’re telling me,” I said. “I’d like to know what it is.”
“With what I’m paying you, I’d have thought that you could learn what you need to on your own time.”
“Do you want to play games, Mister Amaya, or do you want me to find out what happened to Flight 595?”
Amusement flitted across his handsome face, though it never touched his eyes. “What do you know about dark magic?”
“Not a lot. I know that I killed Cahors, and that he was probably the most important and most powerful dark myste this city’s seen in some time.”
“If that’s what you believe, you know next to nothing. Only someone ignorant of the breadth and reach of Phoenix’s dark magic cabal could make such a claim.”
I blinked. “You’re saying that there are other dark sorcerers in Phoenix who are as powerful as he was, as dangerous as he was?”
Amaya stared back at me.
“And you truly believe Howell was killed by dark magic?”
It made some sense, I suppose. Perhaps it explained the odd magical residue I’d seen on the body and the plane.
“I believe it’s possible,” he said, the admission seeming to come at some cost.
“There are some who would assume that a man like you, a man of your profession who’s also a weremyste, would be a practitioner of dark magic.”
“And they’d be wrong,” he said, his voice as hard and sharp as a knife blade. “Dark magic is not . . .” He broke off, shaking his head. “Crime and dark sorcery are not the same thing. You judge my worst deeds—most people do. That’s fine; I can live with that. But dark magic is something else entirely. The mystes I’m talking about engage in ritual killings, they cast blood spells, and use magic to control the thoughts and actions of others. They . . .” He gave another shake of his head and pressed his lips thin. When he began again, it was in a softer voice. “And they do much, much worse. I promise you, I’m not one of them. I want no part of them. In fact, I’m hiring you because I want to find and destroy them.”
Puzzle pieces clicked into place: information from earlier in the day fitting all too well with Amaya’s words. For now, though, I kept this thought to myself. I’d have time to confirm my theory tomorrow. “If these dark mystes are all that you say they are, and if there are as many of them around here as you imply, I’m not sure I want any part of this investigation. I’m not looking to be a foot soldier in a runecrafters’ war.”
I thought he might threaten me again, remind me of that virtual gun he had pointed at my heart. But he was more circumspect than that. At least a little.
“Nobody wants this war,” he said. “I certainly don’t. It may seem like my war now, but it’s going to affect all of us who craft, and it’s going to do so sooner than you might think. You can’t avoid it forever, and we
can’t rely on an all-volunteer army, as it were.”
“So you’re drafting me?”
“I’m hiring you, which is a good deal more than the other side is apt to do.”
“Why am I just hearing of this war now?”
“I don’t know. Perhaps your sources within the magical world aren’t as informed as mine, or perhaps they aren’t as willing to tell you what they know.”
I was thinking of Namid, of course. I wasn’t about to reveal to Amaya that I was being trained by a runemyste. There were thirty-eight of them left in the world, and the fact that one had taken such an interest in my life and my casting marked me as a runecrafter of some importance. Admitting as much to Amaya struck me as potentially dangerous, though at that moment I couldn’t say whether I was more afraid that he might see me as a rival or as a prize to be taken.
But I didn’t believe that anyone Amaya knew could be better informed about the magical world than Namid. On the other hand, I could imagine with ease the runemyste telling me a fraction of what he knew. Abruptly, my recent conversations with the myste, including those about my dad, took on added meaning. I needed to ask Namid some pointed questions.
“Who?” I asked Amaya. “Give me a name.”
“Are you going to work for me?”
“Yes. With most jobs I take two days’ pay up front, but you can start me off with an even thousand.”
I was starting to like Amaya’s laugh. It was the most sincere thing about him. “You’re bold, Fearsson. I like that. Will you take a check?” When I hesitated, he said, “It would be drawn on the Chofi account; my name will be on the signature line, but nobody can read my scrawl anyway.”
“Sure, a check is fine. The name?” I pulled out my spiral notepad and pen.
“Regina Witcombe,” Amaya said, dropping his voice.
“Regina Witcombe,” I repeated. “I know that name.”
“I would have been surprised if you didn’t. She’s a woman of some importance in this town.”
“No, it’s not—”
“She owns Witcombe Financial, which she inherited when her husband died. And she’s on the board of directors of several institutions here in Phoenix: a hospital, one of the local universities, the business roundtable, the arts council.” His mouth twitched. “She’s everything I’m not. They’ll probably make her Phoenix’s Woman of the Year. But trust me, she’s a weremyste, like you and me, and she’s up to her neck in dark crafting.”