California Bones

by Greg Van Eekhout

  “I don’t think they have any.” Daniel got back to his feet.

  “I know, but I at least need to check,” Moth said, somber.

  “I could have told you it would play out like this.”

  “D, I’m shot. Like, a whole bunch of times. So let’s not do I-told-you-so.”

  “Okay, I’m sorry. But can we go? In case of cops?”

  The Sawtelle Boys, those who could still move, rolled in the dirt, groaning or weeping. Moth gave up on his cash and picked up his cooler with a bleeding hand.

  “Total waste of a kidney,” he said.

  “You’ll grow an even better one,” Daniel soothed.

  They turned and walked away and left the leeches behind.

  “How’re you feeling?”

  “Enh,” Moth said. “Hurts like a meanie, but I’m healing pretty good. New one should be ripe in a few hours.”

  “I meant the bullets.”

  Moth grinned like a maniac. “Little bullets,” he said.

  When they reached Daniel’s boat, Daniel tossed Moth a towel from the trunk. “Still up for Original Tommy’s?”

  “Let’s make it Tom’s Number 5, and I’ll hear you out about this job.”

  Daniel opened the passenger door and let Moth squeeze gingerly onto the seat.

  “I’ve missed you, buddy,” Daniel said.

  “You, too,” Moth said. He set the cooler containing his kidney on his lap and buckled in.

  EIGHT

  Daniel could tell Otis was serious about security by the number of guys standing watch around his warehouse, and by the armed guys outside the door to his office, and by the wraiths milling around, prepared to throw themselves in the line of fire in the unlikely event the Hierarch’s cops showed up and Otis needed time to bail.

  His office was outfitted with a folding picnic table, chairs, a chalkboard on a rolling stand, and a big bucket of fried livers from Pioneer Chicken. Moth and Jo were bonding over some bootlegged Broadway musical Jo had acquired, while Emma sat a few chairs away, observing them. Cassandra leaned against piled sacks of birdseed. She observed Emma.

  Daniel took a seat.

  “You’ve all met,” Otis began, taking a position in front of the chalkboard. “But let’s do formal introductions. Moth is our utility muscle. Josephine is our shifter. Cassandra is our yegg—”

  Emma raised her hand. “Excuse me, I’m somewhat new to this. Yegg?”

  “Can-opener, peterman, boxman, safecracker,” Jo cheerily provided, “and all-around thief.”

  “How delightfully colorful,” said Emma. “My apologies.”

  “Daniel is our osteomancer and field leader,” Otis went on. “And Emma will be our guide.”

  Otis handed Emma a piece of chalk as if passing a baton and yielded his position at the chalkboard.

  With a courtly little bow, Emma began. “You’ve all worked together, whereas I am new to your enterprise. An unknown quantity, and one about whom you are rightfully suspicious. I have no magic words that will make you suddenly trust me. What I have, instead, is invaluable knowledge that will make you all fabulously wealthy.”

  Moth popped a chicken liver in his mouth. “It’s a weekday. Did you call in sick? Nobody at the Ossuary is missing you right now?”

  “I’m not the kind of person who has to punch a clock,” Emma said. “I won’t be missed.”

  Moth chewed, unconvinced.

  Emma flipped over the board to reveal a chalk-drawn map of Westside Los Angeles and drew a circle where the Santa Monica and Wilshire canals split off, and from there, a line to Rodeo Canal.

  “This will be our breach point: Cross and Carsson’s.”

  Daniel already had an obvious objection, but Cassandra saved him the trouble of voicing it. Cross and Carsson’s used to be an osteomancy boutique, right in the heart of Beverly Hills’ most famous shopping district.

  “There is no Cross and Carsson’s,” Cassandra said. “Not anymore.”

  “Yes, the earthquake. Well, the shop is naught but swept rubble, but the vault below remains intact. Of course it is well guarded, above by human security, and below by Hyakume eyes. Also, the vault door … Well, we’ll get to that later. Moving on, things get more difficult.”

  Jo snorted. “More difficult than Hyakume eyes? Have you ever tried to walk past Hyakume eyes, Emma?”

  “No, and nor could I. Because I am not a brilliant thief, unless you count the chocolate bar I nicked from Sainsbury’s when I was six. But you are all brilliant and I assume you have the skill to get past Hyakume eyes. From here,” Emma continued, unperturbed, “we will have to travel three-point-six miles by way of a decommissioned subterranean utility canal. The canal is sealed by a two-foot-thick concrete wall. We’ll have to find a way through it. From there, through the catacombs, and finally to here.” She tapped a spot near the La Brea Tar Pits, site of the Ministry of Osteomancy’s headquarters. “More precisely, eight levels below, which is where we will find the Hierarch’s Ossuary.”

  She flashed a happy smile, her eyes crinkling.

  “The Ossuary is guarded by enhanced sentries,” Emma continued. “Their senses are heightened with cerberus wolf. Their fighting skills are lethal. Included among them are the most aggressive Garm hounds bred in the Hierarch’s kennels. And there are passive wards as well. Sphinx riddles. Confusion spells. That’s in addition to conventional surveillance and alarm systems.”

  Daniel still said nothing. He allowed his friends go through their own thought processes.

  Cassandra walked up to the chalkboard. She studied it silently for a solid minute. Then, “What’s the out?” she said.

  That was always the question. Getting inside a secure facility was one thing. Getting out was another.

  “I don’t have an answer for you,” Emma said, amiably enough. “I’m sure you’ll generate some ideas.”

  “Basically, this is an unbreachable fortress,” Moth said.

  Otis stood. “No, it can’t be. The Hierarch still acquires new materials and uses the Ossuary to store them. You can’t have an unbreachable fortress if it also takes deliveries. You can’t have an unbreachable fortress if personnel go in and out. Every building has an entrance and an exit. Every building has to breathe. Every building is a system. And there are essentially two ways to enter, move through, and exit a system. One requires force. It is loud, action-packed, violent, and, in this case, suicidal. The other method requires traveling through the system like an undetected illness. The victim only knows he’s sick when he discovers he’s been robbed. We will pursue this method.”

  “And how are we going to do that?” Cassandra asked.

  The chalk-drawing began to fade, ghosting out to a faint trace of dust, then vanishing completely. Emma sniffed her stick of chalk and smiled. “Why, by magic, of course.”

  NINE

  The mammoth was always dying. Mired to her shoulders in the lake of tar, she reached out with her trunk to the dry-grass shore where her mate and calf remained frozen in horror. The La Brea Tar Pits were a place where the skin of the world broke open to reveal the magic underneath, and the life-sized plaster mammoth sculptures emphasized a very important message: Do not fuck with the tar.

  Not that there was much incentive to fuck with the tar these days. The Ministry had long ago excavated every visible fragment of mammoth, mastodon, wyvern, hippogriff, saber-toothed sphinx, and three-headed wolf. These days, the Hierarch’s paleomancers had to sort through tons of tar with tweezers, looking for bone bits the size of sesame seeds.

  Tar bubbles expanded and deflated like the throats of bullfrogs as Gabriel crossed the bridge over the lake to the Byzantine sprawl of the Ministry of Osteomancy headquarters. He glanced only briefly at the mammoths. Displays of power and terror annoyed him. He believed in competence, thoroughness, conscientiousness. People would do good work if you motivated them with reasonable reward. Read your reports, and not just the executive summaries. Do your damned job. Great civilizations might be born from gun
s, germs, and magic, but it was bureaucracy that kept them going.

  The route to Gabriel’s office took him through a gauntlet of security guards, clerks, assistant clerks, accountants, gossips, goldbrickers, backstabbers, flirts, and brown-nosers. Gabriel acknowledged each according to his estimation of them, favoring the competent with a by-name greeting, and offering the rest at least a courteous nod. He didn’t feel like stopping to talk. Last night’s party at Griffith Observatory had bugged him, the forced chatting, the threat of the Six, the rare appearance of the Hierarch. And then there was Disney’s talk of rebellion. These were not safe thoughts. And once a thought took root, it was only a matter of time before it found its way to your tongue, and then your tongue found its way to being nailed to a wall. Today’s schedule included Gabriel’s weekly briefing with the senior minister and deputies, and it was a very inconvenient time to be thinking tongue-nailing thoughts.

  He changed direction and headed outside to see the kennels. He liked the dogs. The dogs were his favorite colleagues. They just did their jobs.

  Crouching before one of the chain-link enclosures, he reached his fingers through a gap to scratch the ears of a young, floppy-eared Garm. The dog sniffed his fingers and its tail got happy. It was probably smelling Disney on him.

  “Good girl. They should give you a promotion.”

  He rose and continued through the kennels. Turning a corner, he nearly collided with a leashed Garm, leading its handler at a pace too quick for the narrow aisle. The Garm went straight for Gabriel’s fingers, sniffing and barking and twisting in its harness to get its handler’s attention. This was not the reaction of a well-trained hound, at least not here at Ministry headquarters, where you didn’t want the dogs going after everyone who’d handled osteomantic materials.

  “Stella! Ut!”

  The dog withdrew at its handler’s command and sat at his knee.

  The handler looked mortified. Partially due to his dog’s behavior, but also because he no doubt recognized Gabriel. Relatives of the Hierarch made people nervous.

  “I’m sorry, inspector. I don’t know what’s gotten into her these past few days.”

  Gabriel smiled reassuringly. “That’s okay. I was in contact with some strong stuff last night.” He watched the dog fidget with little telltale ear twitches and shudders. “You say she’s not acting like herself?”

  The handler’s stiff posture relaxed a little, like someone relieved to unburden himself. “She’s been antsy ever since we did a sweep of Farmers Market.”

  The public markets weren’t among Gabriel’s responsibilities. They fell under Minister Watanabe, a man with more ambition than diligence, and also kind of a jerk.

  “You found something there?”

  “No,” the handler said. Then, reluctantly, “Well … it seemed for a few seconds like maybe she’d caught a whiff of something, but then it was like she wasn’t sure. Or like she couldn’t trace it, or…” Gabriel saw something in the handler’s eyes. A glazed look. Confusion. “It was weird,” he finished weakly.

  Gabriel watched the dog twitch. Maybe she was picking up her handler’s unease. Or maybe it was the other way around. Something about that Farmers Market sweep had affected both of them.

  “She’s a good hound,” the handler added, as if he feared Gabriel would take his dog away, or worse. Some people in the Ministry were like that. Watanabe was like that.

  “It takes young dogs a while to get used to working crowded places like Farmers Market,” Gabriel said. “Lots of smells and distractions to confuse them. Give her some extra time in the yards and I’m sure she’ll work it out of her system.”

  The handler broke out a grateful nod. “I’ll do that, inspector. Thank you, sir.”

  Gabriel stepped aside and let him and his Garm squeeze by.

  He found the kennel master inside one of the cages, brushing the hair of a gray-muzzled Garm. Gabriel waited until she gave the old dog a rough petting, creaked to her feet, and turned to see him standing there. She was an ancient woman with a neck like juniper bark.

  “What?” she said, holding the wire brush like she’d strike him with it if he wasted a second of her time.

  “I’d like to requisition a hound.”

  She scowled at him. “They’re not pets, Inspector Argent.”

  “Matilda, I’m serious.”

  The woman’s face softened, but she didn’t lower her brush. “What for, Gabriel?”

  “I think there’s some stray sint holo out there.”

  “Sint holo…? There hasn’t been any of that on the street for fifteen years. We don’t even train the dogs to detect it anymore, because we can’t.”

  “I know. I don’t need a dog. I want the other kind of hound.”

  “Oh,” said the kennel master. And then, fully understanding, “Oh.”

  She let a thick moment go by as she considered Gabriel’s request. Then she withdrew jingling keys from her coveralls pocket.

  She took him around the back of the dog cages, down a covered walkway, and through a locked green steel door set in a concrete wall. They left behind the bark and bustle of the kennels and stepped into cool shadow, where the only sounds were the occasional soft snuffle, a mewling, the soft clink of a chain. The air stung with the scent of cleaning fluid.

  As Gabriel’s eyes adjusted to the dim light, he took in the enclosures, each only a little larger than the dog kennels, and each outfitted with a stainless-steel toilet and a cot bolted to the floor. The men and women inside were naked and clean. They wore only soft leather collars from which dangled rings for their leashes. Their teeth and hair and skin were cared for by the attendants with sponges and buckets and brushes and picks. The attendants were gentle eunuchs. There was no mistreatment here, no rape, for these hounds were the Hierarch’s property, and mishandling his property would result in a torturous death.

  “Gabriel, I know you’re a big boy, but this isn’t your area. You’re a paper pusher. Anything that involves taking hounds out into the field is Watanabe.”

  “If I file a NRT-3070—that’s a Necessary Resources Transfer authorized by a deputy-minister-level signature—I can requisition any—”

  “I know you know your paperwork, Gabriel. I’m not sure how much Watanabe respects your paperwork.”

  “Don’t worry, Matilda, if he has a problem with this, I’ll make it clear you were acting under protest, on my orders.”

  The kennel master waved all this away. “I’m old and I’ve survived a few purges. But I know how it is with you fellas near the top. Your kind eats its own.”

  “I’ll press down really hard when I sign the forms.”

  He followed her farther down the corridor. At the end was a single enclosure, a little smaller than the rest, and darker. Matilda flipped a switch on the wall, and the enclosure flooded with light from a yellow bulb behind wire mesh. The man inside the cage threw an arm over his eyes. He coughed a noise. It might have been a curse. Two places on the top bar of his cell were stained dark, as if with human oils. The stains were spaced the right distance if he were using the bar for pull-ups. The side of the metal cot had two similar stains. Triceps dips, thought Gabriel.

  “What’s his story?”

  “He’s scheduled to be put down on Thursday,” Matilda said, unlocking the enclosure. “That gives you two days to work with him.”

  “He’s being executed? What for?”

  “We don’t call it ‘execution’ here, Gabriel.”

  A muttering noise from the hound. Definitely a curse.

  “Why, Matilda?“

  “If they can still smell, hounds are put down for only one reason, and you know what it is.” She watched Gabriel carefully. Matilda was always willing to let her superiors make their own mistakes. “Do you still want him?”

  “Yes.”

  “On your feet, Max,” said Matilda. “It’s time to earn your keep again. This is Inspector Gabriel Argent. He’s a bright boy in some ways, and a complete idiot in others.”<
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  “You’re too kind,” Gabriel said.

  “He’s after sint holo, and you’re going to help him.” She opened the cage, and Gabriel stepped inside.

  The hound drew his arm away and squinted up with eyes that revealed nothing. One of his ears was a rough clump of red flesh. He’d taken a beating or two over the years.

  Gabriel put out his hand. “Hello, Max. I’m Gabriel. You’re my new partner.”

  * * *

  Maneuvering through Farmers Market was easy when holding a hound’s leash. People were quick to give way. They moved their shopping carts from the path and restrained their children. They hunched their shoulders and dipped their heads, trying to make themselves smaller. Gabriel’s hound moved deliberately through the crowd, probing with keen eyes, sucking air through his narrow nostrils.

  More than watching Max, Gabriel watched the crowd’s reactions to him. Gabriel couldn’t tell if the attention bothered him. He’d never worked with a human hound before. In the kennels, they were kept naked to make it easier to keep them clean and less likely to bolt. In the field, they wore gray coveralls, collars to attach leash and identity tag, and rubber slippers to protect their feet. Like Garm dogs, they were highly trained, valuable animals, but this one didn’t act like an animal. He held his head high. When he looked at Gabriel, he made eye contact.

  “Picking up anything?”

  The hound crouched to sniff the bottom of a trashcan near a doughnut stand. Then he straightened and turned to face Gabriel, his head cocked to the side. “I’ll let you know if I do.”

  The hound stood there, waiting for something, his eyes locked on Gabriel’s. There was nothing extraordinary about the color or shape of his eyes, but there was a strange combination of confidence and wariness in them that held Gabriel transfixed. Garm hounds could look fierce, but usually they were just so eager to please. Here, with this human hound, Gabriel felt less like a handler and more like he was being handled. He decided on the spot that this hound was a person. Gabriel knew how to deal with people.