“Where’s Joe Friday?” Fleur asked, propping her arm on the table so the mermaid inked there flashed its emerald tail.
Grif had called to say he’d gone to a strip club to question Ray DiMartino, the owner, about Mary Margaret and his old case. But Kit didn’t say that. She was just starting to feel good and didn’t even want to think about it. Placing a cigarette in a vintage holder, she said, “Out gumshoeing the streets alone. He told me to stay home with my hens.”
“Sexist pig,” Fleur scoffed, giggling as she used the tip of her parasol to poke at a passerby in a zoot suit.
“Lovable sexist pig,” Lil added, because they all knew, and approved, of the way he doted on Kit. She just hoped that letting him question DiMartino alone in the bowels of Masquerade would give him the answers he sought. She knew why he’d gone alone. Grif hated taking Kit into that environment, yet as the music swelled throughout the Bunkhouse, and the curtains rose to reveal a platinum blonde covered in little more than glitter and feather fans, she couldn’t help wondering what he’d make of this one.
Doesn’t matter, she decided, as her Old Fashioned arrived and the woman onstage began to flutter her plumes. Let Grif have his haunted past and pedestrian strip club for the evening. This was hers.
Besides, Kit thought, sipping as the fans fell away and the audience began to whistle and hoot. It wasn’t where Grif was that bothered her, or what he was doing. It was what he was thinking. About another woman. About that Evie.
Something of her thoughts must have been revealed on her face, because Fleur turned to her as soon as the act was over. “Spill” was all she said.
Kit looked away. The stage kitten, dressed in fishnets and a bustier, sporting victory rolls, was sweeping glitter from the stage so the next performer wouldn’t fall. Lil was flirting with the whole table of swing boys next to them. She could confide in Fleur without interruption. Yet Kit didn’t feel like voicing her worries just yet. Voicing them, she thought superstitiously, might make them real.
“I’m just all junked up with this story I’m working on,” she said instead, tapping her cigarette holder against a crystal ashtray. “It’s the most disturbing, disgusting, vile thing I’ve ever seen.”
Lil caught the end of the statement, and leaned close, propped her elbows on the table. So Kit told them both about young Jeap Yang, his addiction to a drug that stripped the flesh from his body, untethering health from the inside out, and about Tim and Jeannie as well. She ended with the new information Marin had shared about him after Kit had submitted her story. “His real name is Juan Pedro Perez. You guys got feelers out in the Hispanic community?”
“Where’s he stay?” Lil asked, all of her playfulness gone.
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Because we’re not like you Anglos, mamita,” Lil replied, falling into the accent that made her trill. “We stick together.”
“Whether we want to or not,” Fleur agreed, equally serious. “We pile our immediate family atop each other, and pile extended family atop that. And extended includes pretty much anyone we’ve known since childhood—neighbors, children of neighbors . . . their dogs.”
“I still remember my first pet fish, may he rest flushed in peace.” And Lil lowered her head, closed her eyes, and made the sign of the cross.
Kit smiled at her dramatics, thinking the whole cultural dynamic sounded claustrophobic . . . and nice. “He’s from Naked City. That’s where the two tweekers died today.”
“Shit, girl, he probably ain’t Mexicano.” Screwing up her beautifully painted mouth, Lil drew back to regard Kit with disdain. “You think us Latinas all look alike.”
“No, I don’t,” Kit said defensively, but the two women gave her matching stares, arms folded across their chests, perfectly plucked eyebrows raised in identical doubt. “You two, for example, look better than anyone I’ve ever seen in my entire life.”
“Good recovery,” Lil said immediately, turning back to her drink, cultural slight forgotten as a woman in red took the stage, twirling long ombre sashes as if each were a cape and the audience were her captivated bull. They were certainly transfixed when her tassels began swinging in opposite directions, and Kit added her own applause to that of the crowd.
Evie Shaw had probably been just like that, Kit thought, watching the woman present herself to the crowd like a gift. But without the tassels.
As the set ended and the applause soared, Fleur turned back to Kit, renewing the conversation exactly where they’d left off. “Naked City is the old Cuban barrio,” Fleur explained, cradling her parasol on her lap. “They pretty much took over the neighborhood in the early eighties, because the rent was cheap and they could all stay together.”
“But that was a long thirty years ago,” Kit pointed out as the MC gave a mid-show shout-out to the legendary burlesque star Tart Ta-Tan. An older woman in polka dots and pearls stood to give a Miss America wave. “Surely there are Mexicans there now.”
“Yes, but the Cubanos had an added defense. A way to keep newcomers, at least the smart Latinos, out of the neighborhood,” Fleur said, and Lil—who’d rejoined them—gave a concurring nod.
“What?”
Fleur pointed the handle of her parasol at Kit. “The Marielitos.”
Kit tilted her head. “Mariel-what?”
“Remember the ‘freedom flotilla’? The Cuban boatlifts from Mariel to Miami? The way America welcomed the refugees only to have the crime rate skyrocket?”
“No.” Kit put out her cigarette, then leaned on her elbows.
Lil sighed. “Think Scarface. Think drug runners using white powder to control their new world.” Fiddling with her swizzle stick, she shook her head. “The Marielitos have a reputation even among the Cubans, and they make the PIRU look like children playing in a schoolyard,” she said, naming one of Vegas’s most violent gangs.
“So, then, I need to talk to a Cuban,” Kit muttered, scouring her mind for sources.
“Ay,” Lil said, rolling her eyes. “Get a Cubana talking and you might never shut her up again.”
Kit drew back as Fleur scoffed her agreement. “How come you can both be prejudiced, but I get chewed out if I even say the word chola?”
“Because we’re Latinas,” Lil said, as if that explained everything.
“Sí,” added Fleur. “But even I would be very careful about questioning a Cuban in Naked City about one of their own. From what I hear, it’s still a different world.”
“What do you mean?”
“She means they still kill chickens in their backyards.” The voice, low and resonant, popped up directly behind Kit. She turned to find Dennis close, palming a cold Pabst, smelling faintly of spice, probably his pomade. Probably Suavecito.
Kit narrowed her eyes as he pulled up a wooden chair. “How long have you been standing there?”
“Just arrived,” he said, straddling the chair, beer can dangling from his fingertips.
“Really?” Fleur said. “Then you’ll react in total surprise to find Kitty-Cat here is playing investigative reporter again.”
“Yeah, but you were the one who mentioned the Marielitos,” he pointed out.
“So you were eavesdropping.”
“Most of the Mariel descendants are good people,” Dennis said, expression gone serious as he turned to Kit. “Besides, you’re not going to get someone in that neighborhood to talk to you, Kit.”
“He’s right. Forget that you look like a Vargas girl,” Fleur said. “To them you represent establishment, and a world where they don’t even want to belong.”
Sipping at his can, Dennis nodded. “When you’re marked as an outsider, even in your homeland, and then you move somewhere else where you’re both outsider and outlaw, you tend to live by your own rules. Obviously not all of the Marielitos were criminals, but they’re still very insular. They trust no one.”
Kit thought of Marco Baptista’s grandmother, of her broken teeth and orishas and candles. “Okay, but the b
oatlifts were decades ago. Fortunes change. Families change.”
Lil draped an arm over the back of her chair. “You really are so white.”
Dennis sipped his beer and smiled. “Memories are as long as lineage.”
Kit was certainly learning that. “Well, I wouldn’t ask them anything they find threatening. And this new drug makes cocaine look like cane sugar, you saw it. Besides, the two junkies who died today weren’t even Latinos, yet they resided in Naked City. So I think someone’s bringing ‘crocodile’ into the poorest sections of the city and setting it loose on the kids there.”
Lil whistled. “Then it’ll be a crocodile against a sleeping dragon . . . and you’ll be poking that dragon.”
“It’s a good analogy,” Kit said, and a part of her thought it might even be a just reward. “Maybe a drug that creates an inferno inside the body can only be fought by a monster capable of breathing flame. Fire against fire.”
Dennis ran a hand over his head. “As long as that fire isn’t directed your way.”
“Oh, look! It’s Layla’s turn!” Fleur grabbed her spinning rattler off the table and stood as Layla Love—their sometime frenemy and the city’s self-appointed neo-burlesque queen—began to gyrate to a raucous bump-and-grind. “Come on—let’s go cheer her on!”
But Lil just kept looking at Kit. “Not me, mija. I’m going to stay and watch this show.”
“What show?” Kit tilted her head, then blinked when Fleur unceremoniously dragged Lil away. O-kay.
She turned back to Dennis. “Friends,” she told him with a shrug.
He leaned on the table so their elbows touched, warm, comforting, and close.
Kit leaned forward, too. “So what do you got for me?”
This close, there were sparks to Dennis’s eyes, a brilliant yellow ring around his irises that flared like warm stars when he smiled. “Gotta get right to the point, don’t you?”
“People are dying,” she said, raising her voice to be heard over the catcalls and rattlers.
“And knowing what I’ve ‘got’ isn’t going to stop it.”
Kit lifted her chin. “It could. If I think fast. Act faster.”
“You’re right.” He inclined his head. “It already did.”
Kit blinked. “What do you mean?”
“The tweekers you led us to today?” he asked, as if she could forget.
“Tim and Jeannie,” she said, because she never would.
“Tim Kovacs and Jeannie Holmes,” he confirmed, then shook his head appreciatively. “It was good work, Kit. Damned good work.”
She couldn’t see how. “Because?”
Now a full smile bloomed, causing the stars in his eyes to dim in comparison and the spotlights and music to fade. All Kit heard were his next words . . . and they truly were beautiful. “Because one of them survived.”
Chapter Eleven
One of the tweekers destined for death—one of the fates Grif had sworn they couldn’t change—had survived? Kit shot so straight in her chair she was almost standing. “Which one? Who?”
“The female. Jeannie Holmes.” Dennis held up a hand as Kit opened her mouth to ask more. “But don’t get too excited. The doctors aren’t sure she’ll make it. She already coded once and she’s being kept in a coma because of the extent of her wounds.”
“When can I—” Kit started, then caught herself. “I mean, when can you talk to her?”
“Did you hear the coma part?” Dennis shook his head and his eyes lost all their satisfaction. “This krokodil is no joke. It will take weeks to wean her from it, and that’s only if she survives that long.”
Kit recalled Dr. Ott’s words. A month to recover fully. By then there’d likely be more dead.
Dennis read her mind. “Even then we don’t know how much good it’ll do. She might have fried her brain, too. I don’t know how this drug works.”
“Does she have family?”
He nodded. “A mother. She’s at the hospital now.”
Kit bit her lip and waited.
“Kit.” Dennis sighed, exasperated.
“You wouldn’t even know about this case, or krokodil, if it weren’t for me,” Kit pointed out. “And Jeannie wouldn’t be alive.”
“And?” he said. He was going to make her ask it.
Fine. She lifted her chin. “And maybe her mother will be so thankful that she’ll be willing to talk to the woman who got her daughter help in time.”
Dennis sighed again, then looked away. “I’ll ask,” he said, after another moment. “But stay away from Naked City.”
Kit decided not to tell him about her run-in with Baptista, and would’ve lunged to hug him if his eyes weren’t currently glued to Layla’s blinding, glittering tassels.
“Want a closer look, dear?” she teased, bringing Dennis’s gaze back around.
“Nah,” he scoffed softly, glancing down as he lifted his drink. “I have the best view in the house.”
And he looked back up, directly at Kit.
Kit stared back, stunned as applause rose up all around her. What the hell was going on?
“I mean it,” Dennis said, glancing away, missing her frown. “You look amazing tonight. Our girls are all babes, of course, but you have a way of filling up a room. It’s like a giant bouquet of roses in a banquet hall. Everything else looks artificial next to something so real and alive.”
“Dennis,” she said, then paused, unsure how to continue.
“I know,” he said, holding up a hand to stop her. “You’re in a relationship, and your man would kick my ass just for the way I’m looking at you now.”
“Yes,” Kit said, though Grif had too much confidence and self-possession to get worked up over another man’s aspirations. He wouldn’t pummel Dennis because of that look. He’d pummel him on principle.
“So let me just say this,” Dennis said, and Kit held up a hand.
“You really shouldn’t.”
He knew that, of course, and just smiled. “Ever since the Chambers case, when you popped back onto my mental radar, bringing this world”—he motioned around—“back with you, I feel more alive than I have in years. You reminded me of how much this meant to me. Sometimes I wonder why I ever gave it up.”
Yes, she could see that. He looked fully alive in his cotton and denim, errant glitter winking off one cheek. He lived as she did, too, with nostalgic admiration for the past, but feet firmly planted in the here and now. It was something Kit could appreciate tonight, while all alone but for her girlfriends and cherry-infused Maker’s Mark zipping into her veins. Besides, when it came down to it, a charged moment between longtime friends meant little.
Kit, very simply, was in love with Grif.
Hesitating, she finally placed a hand on Dennis’s arm. “Thank you for telling me, but . . .”
“I know,” he said, rising so that her hand fell away. “I just wanted you to know, too.”
She smiled. “I’m glad you didn’t give it up. All this, I mean.”
“Me, too. Though it does make me wonder.”
“Wonder what?” she asked, head tilted up.
Lifting her hand, he dropped a kiss atop her fingertips, his own giving a light squeeze before he let it drop. “What else I gave up too easily.”
And Kit had nothing at all to say to that.
Without another word, Dennis rejoined the gearheads at his table, leaving her gaping in his wake. Fleur materialized almost instantly.
“So, that’s interesting,” her friend said, and Kit knew that despite Layla’s mesmerizing act, Fleur had seen everything.
“No, it’s not,” Kit replied quickly.
“But it could be.”
“Sure.” Kit, mobile again, lunged for her drink. “If it’d happened, I don’t know, six months ago.”
“Because of the man who’s torturing you with his absence tonight?” Fleur asked, raising an eyebrow.
“Just because he’s not here right now doesn’t mean he’s gone.” The most important peo
ple and things in life rarely needed to be present to sustain their hold. “Grif is the first thing I think of in the morning and my last lingering thought at night. He’s burrowed so deeply inside of me that he could take up permanent residence there. I couldn’t get him out even if I wanted to.”
“Okay,” Fleur said, waving away the deep declaration of love. “But you shouldn’t look like you want to call for an exorcism when you say that.”
Kit drew back. Did she?
“Wanna talk about what’s really bothering you?” Fleur said, now that the two of them were alone. Lil had disappeared backstage to congratulate Layla.
Kit held her friend’s knowing gaze. “Not really.”
“Which is why you must,” Fleur said practically. “You gotta exorcise your worries, cast them out like demons.”
The word made Kit think of Scratch, and she shuddered. But Fleur was right, and she also realized that this was really why she’d come here tonight. To commune and connect. If circle skirts and cherry tattoos were her oxygen, her friends were her lungs.
“Grif isn’t just wandering randomly,” she told Fleur, leaning forward on her elbows, wanting to get the story out before the next act began. She had time. The stage kitten was still flirting with the crowd. “He’s researching the murder of another woman. It’s a very old case, half a century, actually, but it’s something very . . . personal to him. I know I should want answers for him, for them both, but he’s . . . I don’t know. Obsessed.”
“How obsessed?” Fleur asked when Kit looked away.
Kit thought about it for a moment, then lifted her gaze. “We can be sitting, having a perfectly nice dinner,” she said, not adding that it was one she’d spent hours planning, shopping for, and prepping, “and he’ll suddenly get this faraway look. The food disappears—the textures, the taste. The candlelight no longer touches his eyes. The hand holding his fork falls still.”
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