A Plain-Dealing Villain

by Craig Schaefer

  I wasn’t offended. I held the envelope on my lap and rapped it with my knuckles. “This buys you all the discretion in the world. I won’t tell any tales if you won’t.”

  Cameron’s Gulfstream sat fueled up and ready to fly. Fleiss walked me to the boarding stairs, then paused.

  “I won’t be accompanying you, but the crew has orders to take you directly to Henderson Executive Airport. Do not return to Eastern Pines. Do not attempt to communicate with Cameron Drake. We will not meet again.”

  “Pleasure working with you, too,” I said, tipping an imaginary hat as I strolled up the stairs and onto the jet.

  No painter’s tarp or death traps this time, just plush white leather seats and a couple of wall screens with satellite TV. I could get used to traveling like this, I thought as I buckled in. The crew didn’t waste any time; they closed the hatch behind me and fired up the engines.

  As we taxied down the runway, I finally had a moment of privacy. I unfolded the tiny square of torn notebook paper that Cameron had slipped me in our parting handshake. It bore a single line of text in a shaky ballpoint scrawl.

  please help i am being held prisoner

  The Gulfstream lifted off, roaring into a blue Texas sky.

  * * *

  I turned on the satellite television, tuning it to a sitcom I could ignore while I planned my next move.

  On the surface, this whole thing played like a home-invasion writ large. Cameron hits it big in the lottery; Fleiss and Pachenko show up on his doorstep with a gun. As long as they kept him isolated and afraid, they could live large on his winnings and nobody would be the wiser.

  That was the surface level. Scratch a little deeper, and the weirdness set in. Like the raw malevolence in the underbelly of Cameron’s house, setting my teeth on edge. Or how my psychic tendrils slid off Fleiss like she was made of glass. I didn’t have the whole picture, and if I was going to get Cameron out of there, I needed one.

  Was I going to, though? Was it even my problem?

  No, I thought, not my problem. My payday. Cameron Drake was worth millions. Pulling off a hostage rescue—well, it wasn’t my usual line of work, but it had to be good for more than a thank-you.

  I figured I’d get the crew together and we could talk it out. This wasn’t going to be a one-man job. It could wait until I’d settled the beef between Jennifer and Nicky, though. With the Outfit on our doorstep, keeping our home turf safe had to be my top priority.

  The Gulfstream touched down at Henderson Executive an hour before sunset. I’d never been so happy to feel the arid Nevada heat, wrapping me in its desert embrace as I strolled down the boarding stairs.

  I felt like I’d been gone forever, but here I was in Vegas. Home at last. I thought I’d walk the Strip tonight, get lost in the crowds and the neon and the money. My dirty little paradise.

  With Caitlin? Yeah. With Caitlin. Nadine’s envelope still sat sealed in my pocket, but I didn’t have to deal with it tonight. Tonight, I just needed to look in my lover’s eyes. Then I’d know everything was all right. Trouble could wait.

  Except it wouldn’t.

  I took a cab to the parking garage at McCarran Airport to pick up my car. We were two minutes away when my phone started to buzz. Jennifer.

  “Hey,” I said, “I was just about to call you. I’m back in town, heading to—”

  “We got a problem, sugar. I need you, right now.”

  I sat forward on the cracked vinyl seat. Jennifer might get furious at the drop of a hat, but she hardly ever got worried. This was worry.

  “What’s going on?”

  “Just got a call from one of my guys. Nicky thinks he’s talking to the feds, and he sent the twins after him. One of my guys, Danny. He’s hiding, but—”

  “But the twins are like bloodhounds, I know. Where is he now?”

  “At his house, barricaded inside. I’m on my way—will you meet me there?”

  The cab pulled up curbside at McCarran. I tossed the driver a twenty and didn’t wait for change.

  “On my way,” I said.

  Jennifer gave me an address, and I ran for the parking garage. For one dizzying moment I thought the Barracuda was gone, that Agent Black had used some pretense to have it impounded, but I’d just forgotten what aisle I’d parked in. There it was, sleek and cold, witch-eye still fixed to the back bumper. I tore Black’s tracking spell free with a burst of crude magic, tossing the spectral eye to the pavement. I didn’t have time for subtlety.

  Then I opened the steel lockbox in my trunk and grabbed my Taurus Judge Magnum.

  The last thing I wanted was to get into a gunfight with Juliette and Justine. As far as I was concerned, the only way tonight ended with a win was if everybody went home in one piece. That said, twenty-nine ounces of steel in your hand had a way of stopping a fight before it started, if you used it right. At the very least, it commanded attention.

  I hit the road with one hand on the wheel and one eye on the speedometer, cruising at a steady nine miles over the speed limit and no higher. Catching police attention right now would steal time I didn’t have. The twins weren’t just bloodhounds—they were a two-woman wrecking crew when it came to dealing with anyone Nicky perceived as a threat.

  Whatever kind of barricade this guy had put up, it wouldn’t be enough to save him.

  As I swung into the driveway of his seedy tract house, with a rusted-out Nova in the driveway and a yard full of scraggly weeds, I knew I was too late. The front door hung wide open, the lock blown out like someone had shotgunned it. I grabbed my piece and ran for the door, keeping low, watching the curtained windows for movement.

  The smell of cannabis almost knocked me flat. The house was a grow op. The living room to my left and the dining room through a big open arch on my right were filled with hydroponic beds and grow lights, shining harsh yellow down on a field of marijuana plants as tall as desert cacti.

  I froze in the doorway, ears perked, listening hard. Nothing but the hum of the lights and the soft gurgle of flowing water. Keeping my pistol level, padding across the scuffed-up floorboards and wincing at every stray creak, I eased my way up a stub of a hall and around an open doorway.

  The man hadn’t been dead long. He sat slumped in a chair, his face a blasted-in ruin.

  I touched his neck. Still warm.

  That was it then. Up until now, Nicky and Jennifer had just blustered, daring each other to cross the line. Should have known Nicky would pull the trigger first. Taking out one of Jennifer’s people was going too far. Even if this guy had really turned rat, he was Jennifer’s problem to deal with.

  There’d be no sitting them down to talk it out, not now.

  Still, the scene didn’t sit right with me. This was a blitz hit, in and out with lightning precision. Since when did the twins kill like that? They liked to play with their food, and Nicky had a couple of kill houses set up just for that flavor of fun. They could have grabbed this guy, tossed him in a trunk, driven him to the edge of nowhere, and taken their time doing him in. He hadn’t even been handcuffed. It was one shot, one kill, probably taking him by surprise.

  Okay, I thought, call Jennifer and tell her to stand down, then get hold of Nicky, find out exactly what—

  The squawk of a siren made every muscle in my body go tense. Not an approaching siren. One from a car parked right outside.

  “We have the building surrounded,” shouted a voice through an electronic bullhorn. “Come out through the front door, slowly, with your hands in clear view.”

  44.

  I crouched low, scurrying like a trapped rat to the back of the house. Red and blue lights strobed through the shades of the kitchen window, and silhouettes stood sentry at the backyard fence. Front, same deal. They weren’t bluffing.

  “Leave the house now,” the voice on the bullhorn bellowed. “Or we will be forced to take action.”

  No last-minute escape. Not this time.

  There were only two ways I could play this: their way, or suicide
by cop. I looked down at the gun in my hand and tossed it to the floor.

  A couple of uniforms blitzed me before I’d taken two steps out the front door, wrestling me to the pavement and wrenching my hands behind my back. They asked if I was alone in the house. They asked if I had any accomplices. They asked why I did it.

  I maintained my right to remain silent.

  I ended up in an interrogation room, with my pockets empty and my wrists shackled to a stainless-steel table. I didn’t know how long I sat there, waiting in silence. No clocks on the walls. Eventually a couple of plainclothes detectives decided to test my will.

  Around the seventy-eighth time in a row I answered their questions with, “I want my lawyer,” they gave up and left me alone to stew a little longer.

  When they came back, wheeling in a cart with a cheap television set and a DVD player, they had a guest. Harmony Black.

  “Congratulations,” she said, pulling back a chair and dropping a tan folder onto the table. “You’ve been upgraded. Now you’re a federal prisoner.”

  “Which doesn’t change my right to legal representation. Oh, hey fellas, I see you joined the AV Club. That’s good, extracurriculars are really important. Maybe you’ll get a decent job someday.”

  Harmony sent the detectives away. It was just me, her, and the evidence.

  “Konstantin Floros,” she said. “Greek expat, here on an expired work visa. Known associate of your friend Jennifer Juniper. At least, I thought she was your friend. I guess you picked sides, huh?”

  “Jennifer called me. She was worried about the guy and asked me to check on him. I saw the door hanging open, went inside, and found his body. Next thing I know, I’m center stage at a police convention.”

  “You ‘found’ his body. And it’s a sheer coincidence that he was murdered with a single .45 Colt round to the face—the exact kind of ammunition in a Taurus Judge Magnum we found at the scene. A gun with your fingerprints all over it and a registration—a fake one, as it turns out—in your glove compartment.”

  I snapped my fingers. “There you go. A gun that hadn’t been fired. Hell, they gave my hands a GSR test when they ran me in here. Check it out. I’m clean. I couldn’t have killed the guy.”

  She opened the folder and spun it around so I could read the top page.

  Residue Test Results: Confirmed. 2000+ particle count w/spheroid GSR.

  “That’s bullshit,” I snapped, reading it twice. “I haven’t fired a gun in weeks.”

  “Really?” Harmony said, arching an eyebrow. “That’s funny, because according to this, you sure did. And your gun had been fired. Recently. Just one round. We both know where that round ended up, don’t we? Then we checked your trunk. Thirty thousand dollars in cash, in an envelope—”

  “I can explain that.”

  “—and we also found these.”

  She turned the page and showed me a stack of surveillance photographs. Snaps of Konstantin Floros and his house from all angles.

  “Did Nicky Agnelli give you these pictures when he hired you to kill Floros?”

  “You found it in my trunk,” I echoed flatly. “Goddamnit, Harmony, this is a setup. This whole thing is a setup.”

  She leaned back and smiled.

  “Damn, I hoped you’d say that. Because then I’d get to see the look on your face when I show you this.”

  She turned on the television.

  “Floros,” she said, fast-forwarding a grainy black-and-white camera feed, “was a little paranoid about security. Happens a lot with these narcotics types. His whole house was wired.”

  When she hit play, Floros was sitting in the chair he died in, flailing his arms as he begged for his life.

  I was the one holding him at gunpoint.

  “I didn’t say anything,” Floros whined. “I wouldn’t do that!”

  “Nicky Agnelli says otherwise,” I told him. “Know what else he says?”

  “Don’t, just don—”

  “Bye-bye,” I said and shot him in the face.

  My duplicate paused, just for a heartbeat, and looked toward the camera. Harmony froze the frame.

  “Agent Black,” I said slowly, “you need to find out if the evidence tech who did my GSR test, and whoever brought my gun in, is still in the building. But I don’t think you’ll find them, because they’re already dead. They’ve been replaced.”

  She shook her head at me. “What are you even—”

  “Listen. Very. Carefully,” I said, leaning close and whispering so the security camera wouldn’t pick up my voice. “I’m being framed. There is a rakshasa, a shape-shifting hunger spirit, working for the Chicago mob. The only way this fucking GSR test came back positive is if someone tampered with it. He tampered with it, after making it look like I shot Floros. This thing is in the precinct, right here, right now.”

  Harmony slammed her folder shut and scraped her chair back.

  “It’s always something, isn’t it, Faust? You’ve always got a story. Well, I’ve got one for you. It’s called ‘The Boy Who Cried Wolf.’ And I’m done listening.”

  As she walked to the door, taking my last shred of hope with her, there was only one thing I could do.

  Laugh.

  Just a giggle, at first, but then I doubled over in my chair, cackling on the edge of hysteria.

  “What’s so funny?” she said, looking back at me.

  I got it under control, but I couldn’t wipe the grin from my face.

  “All this time,” I said, “all this effort…and you finally busted me for the one crime I didn’t commit. That’s…that’s some top-notch police work, Agent Black. Kudos, really, kudos.”

  “A jury will decide what you did or didn’t do,” she told me. “My job is done here.”

  I slouched back in my chair. My manacles rattled.

  “Not by a long shot, Agent. Not by a long shot. There’s a war coming. Right here, in the streets of Las Vegas, and the blood is gonna spill. This wasn’t the opening salvo. This was just a hello and a handshake. The Outfit is letting us know they’re ready for battle. I hope you’re ready, too.”

  She opened the interrogation-room door, lingering on the threshold. She looked back at me.

  “A war, huh? Well, you won’t be around to see it. Premeditated murder, conspiracy, racketeering…you’re looking at life behind bars. And that’s my wish for you, Daniel Faust. A long, long healthy life.”

  The door clicked shut behind her, leaving me alone with my thoughts and my nightmares.

  It was funny, though, feeling your back pressed to the wall had a wonderful way of clearing up your priorities. You realized, very fast, what really mattered most in life.

  Right now, what mattered most was breathing free air. No matter what I had to do, no matter how many bodies I had to climb over, nobody was going to keep me in a cage. One way or another, I was getting out of here.

  My second priority? It came to me as I pictured Angelo Mancuso’s smirking face. Him, his pet rakshasa, his entire crew of gangsters, and Damien Ecko too. It was so simple I could sum it up in a single word.

  Payback.

  Epilogue

  Back in the late nineties, Eastern Pines Ranch had played host to a country-western star for a few years. He’d made a few renovations throughout the grounds, not the least being the addition of a small recording studio in the basement.

  The new owners had made some renovations, too.

  In what used to be the old “live room” for the band, behind a wall of glass, Cameron Drake danced barefoot on a sheet of polished metal. It was a strange, shuffling hop, and his brow scrunched in concentration as he mouthed every memorized step. Left to right to heel to—

  He screamed as a torrent of electricity flooded through the metal sheet, sending him crashing to the ground in a twitching heap. A thin trickle of blood leaked from his nose.

  Out in the mixing booth, on the other side of the glass, Fleiss watched impassively behind a bank of modified controls. She clicked on the intercom a
nd leaned toward a standing microphone. Her voice echoed through the studio.

  “No. Two steps left, not one. Begin again.”

  To her side, a fat, leather-bound book lay open on the console, thick with dense calligraphy. She glanced toward it, then again a moment later, as if she expected to see something different.

  “Why?” Cameron asked, his voice weak. “Why are you doing this to me?”

  “Because you bought the winning ticket.”

  “You keep saying that, but it’s not an answer.”

  “The answer,” Fleiss said, “will give you no comfort.”

  “Please.”

  Fleiss sighed, curling her lip. “Ordo ad chaos.”

  Cameron pushed himself up to his knees, staring through the glass.

  “What? I don’t even know what that—”

  “From order, chaos. The subjugation and corruption of old societal infrastructures in order to further our aims. A work of quantum magic—a Great Work—that has literally never been attempted and never will be again.”

  “I…I don’t understand,” he said, shoulders sagging.

  “I told you that you wouldn’t.”

  Fleiss glanced over at the book, her exasperation fading into a faint smile. She traced her fingertip over the spidery text.

  The Year King: I…I don’t understand.

  Mater Tantibus: I told you that you wouldn’t.

  “We must all play our part,” Fleiss said into the microphone. “And you must learn your part of the ritual, flawlessly. Now stand up and begin. Or I’ll activate the floor again.”

  As Drake pushed himself to his feet, Fleiss turned the page. A woodcut caught her eye: the image of a blank-faced man, dragged backward in chains by a pair of towering demons.

  Her cell phone rang.

  “Yes?”

  “Dear one,” the Smile’s syrupy voice oozed over the line. “Was the knife retrieved as I requested?”

  Fleiss sat bolt upright, clutching the phone as her eyes went wide.