The Neon Boneyard

by Craig Schaefer

  Jennifer cut me off, holding up a slender iPad.

  “Gotta stop you there, hon. My boys are still combing through the loot we jacked from Donaghy’s place, with Pixie’s help on the computer end, and so far it’s a lot of nothing. These Network critters raise paranoia to a high art. Pixie tried telling me about the security they use—some kinda double-triple self-destruct fourteen-jillion-bit encryption—and it made my eyes glaze over.”

  “They’re cautious,” I said. “On the plus side, caution slows them down. I’d hate to think what kind of damage they could do if they dropped the cloak-and-dagger act and went all-out.”

  She tapped the tablet and spun it around, scooting aside a plate of half-gnawed chicken bones to make room.

  “When he made his exit, Elmer didn’t have time to be discreet. This purchase went through on his company AmEx, right about two minutes after the gunfire started.”

  I read the blurry scan, black type on stark white. Elmer had bought a first-class ticket on a Delta flight to Paris. His takeoff time was two in the morning. I looked up from the screen.

  “We missed him.”

  She nodded and took the tablet back. “He fled in style, on the first flight out of the country that would have him. I did some checkin’, and Donaghy Waste Management has municipal contracts in some far-flung places. Vegas, Cheyenne, Miami…”

  I finished the thought. “And Paris.”

  “Paris, France, registered home of his corporate HQ. Sorry, sugar, he’s gone. And while you could hop on a plane and chase him down, there are probably more important things needing your attention here on the homestead.”

  She was right. Besides, I saw the lure, glimmering bright in the water.

  “Fool me once,” I murmured.

  “Meaning?” Corman asked.

  “He’s not gone for good. He can’t be. We know the King of Worms is dangling a nice fat promotion over Donaghy’s head, and he’s got to kill me—with his own hands—to get it. The guy’s a fanatic, and true believers never quit until they get what they’re after. No.” I pointed at the tablet. “He wasn’t in a hurry. We were supposed to find this. And he took a flight straight to his corporate headquarters, which of course we can easily find a registered address for.”

  “He’s hoping you chase after him,” Corman said.

  “Straight into the belly of the beast, on his turf, where he can lay another trap for me.” I sipped my cocktail. “Nope. Denied. He’ll come back for round two eventually, and in the meantime, I can get ready for him. Like Jen said, I’ve got better things to do. And things I don’t want to do but apparently don’t have a choice about.”

  “Your, uh, party,” Corman said. “That tonight?”

  “Yep.” I tapped the side of my champagne flute. “Another six or seven of these, I’ll be almost ready.”

  “You sure you don’t want us to come?” Jennifer asked.

  “Nah. I mean, I do, but number one, I wouldn’t do that to you, and number two, it’s apparently a private function. Courts of hell and aristocracy only.”

  “Ooh, aristocracy.” Jennifer put her finger under her nose, forming a mustache. “Yes, yes, do pass the caviar, my good man. And did you see what Lady Wembley Shuffleboard-Smythe is wearing? Simply preposterous.”

  I slouched in my chair. “Yeah. I’m thinking it’s going to be a lot like that, plus everybody but me is a demon. Caitlin says I have to be on my best behavior.”

  “She’s gonna settle for that? Has she seen your best behavior?”

  “I know, right?” I shrugged, resigned to my fate.

  “Almost forgot.” Jennifer wriggled in her chair, tugging a slim tape recorder from her jeans pocket. “I pulled that surveillance-feed audio, from when Naavarasi ganked Chicago’s shape-shifter for us.”

  “Get anything good?” I asked.

  “Not sure, seeing as I don’t understand a word of it.”

  She hit Play, and the micro-cassette’s wheels spun. I leaned close to try to make out the grainy audio. We heard sounds of a scuffle and strained, raspy breath.

  “To think,” Naavarasi’s voice said, “you actually believed this pathetic creature was one of my kin.”

  Kirmira said something soft, desperate, in a language that sounded like Hindi. Then came the sudden, sharp snap of bone as Naavarasi broke his neck with one hand. The recording stopped.

  “Can I borrow this?” I asked her. “I’ve got some free time this afternoon before the party. Figure I’ll run it over to one of the local colleges and track down a language instructor.”

  “May I assist?” Amar asked. I hadn’t seen him come back, but there he was—at my shoulder, swapping my drained glass for a fresh mimosa.

  “Sure, if you don’t mind.”

  “Play it again?” He leaned in. His brow furrowed as he listened to the muffled words. “Once more?”

  Jennifer rewound the tape and gave it a third play. This time Amar stood straight and nodded.

  “The man said,” Amar told us, “‘Why, Mother? I did everything you told me to.’”

  The table fell quiet.

  “Was that helpful?” Amar asked.

  “Yeah,” I said, my appetite gone. “Thanks, Amar. Appreciate it.”

  Nobody said a word after that, as we weighed the implications. Amar vanished with his tray. Eventually Jennifer broke the silence.

  “That heinous bitch.”

  “Sounds like Kirmira was a rakshasa after all,” Corman said. “Which means her whole spiel about being ‘the last of her kind’ after Prince Malphas sieged her jungle was a load of crap all along. What do we actually know about Naavarasi?”

  “We know she’s a heinous bitch,” Jennifer snapped, glaring down at the tape recorder. “Her own kid. She set up her own kid and killed him, just to make us think she was on our side.”

  “And so I’d owe her a favor,” I said, “which she then used to bait her trap for Caitlin later down the line. Kirmira didn’t just start working for the Chicago Outfit last month; he’d been serving the boss’s kid for years. How long ago did she start setting this up?”

  “Well, did her a fat lot of good in the end,” Jennifer said.

  I wished I could believe that. I wanted to think we’d blown Naavarasi’s plans apart and left her bleeding, bleeding bad enough that it’d be a dog’s age before she tried anything like that again, but I didn’t buy it. Mainly because I suspected enslaving Caitlin wasn’t her endgame. It was just another layer of her plan.

  “Sit on the tape for now.” I pushed my chair back. That second drink beckoned to me, but I needed a clear head. “I’m going to try to be productive tonight and learn as much as I can about the rules of my new ‘honored position’ in Sitri’s court.”

  “Like where the loopholes are?” Corman asked.

  “Just like you taught me. And in the meantime, I’m looking for Santiago. Something tells me Elmer Donaghy didn’t spirit him and his partner away on a first-class jet to Paris, which means there’s a good chance they’re still in town. And if they’re here, I want them.”

  21.

  I had one solid source in Metro, though he had a strangely lopsided view of our relationship. Just because Gary Kemper had blackmail on me and could end my life with a single phone call to the FBI, he seemed to believe he was the one in charge. People get strange ideas sometimes.

  We met in the parking lot of a Five Guys a few blocks from the Strip. No particular reason for the choice of rendezvous spot, except I was in the mood for a cheeseburger. I wasn’t sure if the party tonight was going to have catering, or if the food would be anything I’d want to eat, so stocking up ahead of time felt like my best move. He pulled his unmarked car up facing opposite to my rented Elantra, so we could talk between our driver-side windows.

  My first thought, as his window rolled down, was that seeing that kid break his own neck in holding had rattled Gary deep and hard. Usually he’d greet me with annoyance and a reminder that I wasn’t calling the shots anymore. Today al
l he had was a terse “What’ve you got?” and a furtive glance at the passing cars.

  “The ink from the house party was tainted on purpose,” I told him. “It was a long-range hit, courtesy of the Network.”

  I didn’t tell him that I was the one they were trying to lure out. Gary already thought he might be right to make that call to the FBI, and I didn’t need to give him any more reasons to burn me.

  “Who was the target?”

  “Still working on that. I can tell you that the man in charge of the Vegas Network cell left the country last night.”

  “‘Left the country’? That a euphemism?” he asked.

  “No. He ran, but he’ll be back. And we’ll be waiting for him. In the meantime, you might have a couple of rats in your house. One of these rats is a part-time dealer; he’s the guy who made sure the tainted drugs would be at that party. On the other hand, he might just have a bogus uniform and a squad car to go with it. If that’s the case, I’ll have to cast a wider net, but I figure Metro is the best place to start hunting. That’s where you come in.”

  I expected an argument. Something about how he didn’t know every uniform in Metro and I was asking too much, at the very least. Instead, he locked eyes with me.

  “Tell me what you know. If the bastard’s on the job, I’ll find him.”

  “He goes by Santiago. Only name I know. He was at the Container Park shakedown last night.”

  Gary rubbed his chin. “Container Park’s under the downtown division’s command, pretty sure it’s Sector A. That narrows it down. I’m good with the watch captain over there. I’ll drop by this afternoon and do some digging.”

  “Watch yourself,” I told him. “You’ve seen how the Network plugs leaks, especially when it comes to law enforcement. They don’t take chances. You’d better not, either.”

  “I’m touched by your show of concern. Don’t worry, this isn’t my first rodeo.”

  “I know. All the same.” I hesitated, but I couldn’t send him off without making sure we were on the same page. “If you find him, you do realize this can’t be handled through legal channels, correct?”

  “Clarify for me.” He wore an open challenge in his eyes.

  “The people pulling his strings won’t—can’t—let him be questioned by the police. If you arrest him, he’ll be dead in an hour. And you’ll be dead right alongside him. They’ll probably bury you in the same ditch.”

  He sank in his seat and watched the road, sullen now.

  “I have a job, Faust. When the city gave me a badge, I promised to treat it right.”

  “You didn’t promise to die for it. Nobody could ask that of you. Hey, Gary. Look at me. Look at me. You’ve got a responsibility here.”

  “That’s what I’m telling you.”

  “You’ve got a responsibility to stay alive. That shiny badge of yours isn’t worth shit if it’s pinned to your corpse. If you find Santiago, I want you to call me. Let us handle it.”

  “You want me to hand him over to you,” he said. “Which basically makes me an accomplice to murder.”

  “It makes you a person who did the right thing, got a guy who killed a dozen kids off the streets for good, struck a blow against the Network, and lived to fight another day. Now, I’m nobody to lecture on morality, but that sounds like pretty decent behavior. If I were you, I’d make that call and I wouldn’t lose a minute of sleep over it.”

  He turned the key and fired up his engine.

  “That’s the thing,” he said. “You aren’t me.”

  His window hummed up and he rolled out onto the boulevard. I watched him go. Nothing I could do now, for him or about him, except hope he made the right choice.

  * * *

  After that, I had nothing to do until sunset. I’m lousy at doing nothing. I ended up back at my place, setting the groundwork for a science experiment. I had borrowed a couple of oversized mail sacks from Bentley, the stiff fabric bags that were a staple of any escape artist’s kit. One went in my living room nook beside the television set. The other I positioned fifteen feet away in the open kitchen, right next to the granite-topped cooking island.

  I studied Howard Canton’s wand, turning it in my hand. It was mahogany, inlaid with caps of polished bone at each tip, a tool of a more elegant age. And a more macabre one: the bone, I had learned, was human. One cap of the wand, enchanted to weave illusions, came from the skull of an ancient Egyptian sorcerer. The other, designed to tear them down and reveal the truth, was from Harry Houdini himself.

  I toted the wand into the living room and fiddled with the remote, launching Netflix and fast-forwarding through a movie until I got to the part I’d been looking for. I was about to begin the experiment when a knock sounded at the door.

  “Just so you know,” Melanie told me, “I’m grounded for a month.”

  “You want to come in?” I asked her.

  She puffed air up at her neon-blue bangs, making them flutter, and breezed past me. I shut the door.

  “I can’t help but notice it’s two in the afternoon on a Thursday,” I said.

  Melanie leaned against the kitchen island. “Yeah?”

  “Isn’t there someplace you’re supposed to be right now? Like…school?”

  She spread her hands. “Seriously. A month. What the hell, Dan? I told you everything you wanted to know, and you still ratted me out.”

  “Hey, it’s not all sunshine for me, either. I’m in trouble, too.”

  “What? Is Caitlin going to spank you?” She dropped her voice and murmured out one side of her mouth. “Not like she doesn’t do that already.”

  “Hey now—”

  “What?” She shrugged and gave me an innocent look. “I’m just saying, people talk. Whatever floats your boat, you do you. I don’t judge.”

  “Did you come all the way over here just to take cheap shots at me, or are you hiding from the truant officer?”

  “I came because I want to know what gives.” She sighed. “Seriously. I thought we were cool. I thought we were friends.”

  “We are friends.”

  “Friends don’t tell other friends’ mothers that they were out at house parties without permission. Even ones where people got killed. Especially those.”

  What could I tell her? I’d already kicked her legs out from under her once this week, refusing to take her on as my apprentice. I didn’t want to do it twice. Ultimately, this was one of those rare cases where the truth was the best policy.

  “I’m your friend,” I told her. “I’m your mom’s friend, too. And I’m also allegedly a grown adult, which means I’ve got responsibilities. Yes, Emma can be a little…”

  “Abrasive? Overbearing? Insufferable?”

  “It seems that way right now, sure. But…can you see how I’ve got a different perspective? I hear how she talks about you when you’re not in the room. And she gets frustrated with you about as much as you get frustrated with her—”

  “Zero surprise there, since she never listens.”

  “—but it comes from a place of love,” I said. “If she didn’t care, she wouldn’t care. She’s trying her best to do right by you, Melanie. And I can’t promise anything, but I really think five, ten years from now, you and her are going to relate to each other a lot better and be a lot closer. It just takes some growing to get there. Maybe…a little less trying to drive each other nuts. A little less. A teensy bit.”

  “Whatever.” My tenuous grasp of teenagerese told me that was the best I’d get from her. She glanced down at the mailbag. “What’s this?”

  “Little experiment. I’m having a problem with my wand.”

  “They make medication for that now.”

  “Cute.” I showed her the mahogany stick. “There’s some serious magic locked in this thing; so far I’ve seen two of its moves, and I’m betting it’s capable of more than that. Anyway, one of the wand’s powers is a short-range translocation.”

  “Translocation?” Melanie’s eyes widened. “Wait, like a transp
orter beam, like on Star Trek?”

  “Sort of. I’ve only gotten it to work once. In theory, I jump into a confined space like a bag or a cabinet, trigger the effect, and the wand moves me elsewhere. See, Howard Canton, the guy who created the wand, he was a stage magician back in the forties. He designed a lot of his spellwork to replicate classic illusions.”

  “Holy shit,” she said. “Show me. I’ve got to see this. Can I try it?”

  “Well, therein lies the rub.”

  I walked into the living room and she trailed behind me.

  “If you start rubbing your wand, I’m leaving.”

  I chose to ignore that. “Canton’s wand has one very weird restriction. It doesn’t just work when you want it to; it only wakes up when it senses its owner is trying to save someone in danger.”

  “Not seeing a problem,” she said. “Don’t people try to kill you, like, twice a day on average? You’re in danger all the time.”

  “Ah, that’s the thing. It won’t lift a magical finger to save its owner. Damien Ecko murdered Canton sometime in the fifties, and Canton didn’t even bother bringing the wand to their showdown. He knew it wouldn’t help. He hid it away instead.”

  “What? That’s nuts. Why create this super-powerful doohickey and wire it so it wouldn’t even help the guy who made it? If I had my own transporter beam, I’d use that thing all the time.”

  “Would you use it to go back to class, where you’re supposed to be right now?” I asked.

  “You haven’t kicked me out yet.”

  “I’m a bad role model. And I don’t know why he did it, except to keep it out of the hands of somebody like me.”

  Melanie frowned at the wand. She tilted her head, contemplating. “Maybe it’s like dog training.”

  “How do you mean?”

  “You get the behavior you reward,” she said. “Maybe this Canton guy wanted to encourage himself to go out and save people.”