The Neon Boneyard

by Craig Schaefer

  “Which might…well, not explain all this other weirdness, but it’s Naavarasi. We can figure ninety percent of it was just there to confuse us or throw us off the scent.”

  “Or there are more layers to this,” Caitlin said. “As is likely the case—we know that from hard experience. I suppose your attempt at mercy, in your teens, won’t be enough to stay this man’s hand.”

  I shook my head. “Nah. Murder for hire is a sociopath’s game. I can’t expect him to sit down with me and laugh about old times.”

  Then the idea hit me.

  “Cait…if we can prove Naavarasi hired him, what does that do for us?”

  “It makes her fair game.” Her lips pursed in a grim, determined smile. “Dispatching an unlicensed assassin to kill a member of another court—if we can prove she did it, which is always the challenge—is just as bad as using her own hands. Prince Malphas will have no choice but to cast her to the wolves. What did you have in mind, pet?”

  “Forget what I just said. I want to sit down with him and laugh about old times,” I said. “And then I want to flip him. I was thinking about something Royce said to me, back at the party: ‘defection is always an option.’”

  * * *

  Grimes was out there, somewhere, hunting me down in the urban wilds. I couldn’t sit around waiting, so I decided to make it easier for him. He didn’t know where I lived, or he already would have hit my place, and he couldn’t track my ride now that it was a smoking piece of wreckage. The one place I knew he could watch for me—would watch for me—was where we’d first met. Winter.

  Caitlin called ahead. A pair of bouncers met us near the nightclub’s unmarked double doors, pushing the line back so we could get right up to the bare brick wall. One handed me a can of cherry-red spray paint. I shook it up, aimed, and wrote my missive in big, curling letters.

  CALL ME – DJF

  One of the partygoers in line shook his head. “She ain’t gonna call you, bro! Give it up.”

  “Aw,” his date said. “I think it’s romantic. For an old guy.”

  A streamer of paint drooled down the bumpy brick off the bottom of the F, darkening as it dried, like a rivulet of blood. We left. I wanted him to see my message, not to actually take a shot at me on-site. Caitlin and I were driving around, thinking about grabbing a bite to eat, when my phone rang twenty minutes later.

  “I can read the writing on the wall,” Harry Grimes told me. “Can you?”

  “Sure. It says, ‘you picked the wrong target this time.’”

  “I never pick wrong. And I never miss.”

  “What if I could convince you otherwise?” I asked.

  “I’m listening.”

  “Listen to me over a drink instead. There’s a bar on the casino floor at the Monaco. Nice and public and well-lit, and nobody shoots anybody there.”

  “First time for everything,” he said.

  “The Monaco is CMC Entertainment property,” I said, “and you aren’t going to start shit on CMC Entertainment property.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because your name isn’t Hunter MacGregor Grimm. It’s Harry Michael Grimes, and you’re only pretending to be crazy.”

  He went silent for so long I thought he might have hung up. Then he said: “The Monaco. Twenty minutes.”

  * * *

  I always came back to the Monaco. That innate masochism again, I guess. Back in the day, I’d exorcised a stubborn ghost from the penthouse floor. Well, not exorcised so much as relocated. Then, when I was scrapping with the Redemption Choir, I’d brought a supposedly innocent priest here to keep him safe while I tried to line up an escape plan. That night had ended in a betrayal and a vicious beating. Basically, I didn’t have a lot of good memories to keep me coming back. Maybe just the ramen dishes at Umami—and as I passed through the smoked-glass doors into the casino, moving from the desert night chill to the perfectly regulated air-conditioning, I realized that entire side of the casino floor was covered in heavy sheets of plywood. Everything was shut down, the resort under heavy renovation from its hairline down to its toes, wiping away the old to bring in the new.

  And I had worked up an appetite for ramen on the way over. Some nights, I just couldn’t win.

  At least Ignition, the lounge on the edge of the casino, was open for business. A bar circled a central pylon, and plush chairs and two-seater tables radiated out all around it like the ripples of an explosion. Slow lights shifted across the cherry-red carpet, painting the tourists in simulated fire, while chimes and shrill melodies burst from the gaming floor.

  Caitlin came in two minutes after me and disappeared into the crowd. She’d be there, watching. Close enough to move if Harry pulled his gun? Probably not, so I’d just have to make sure he didn’t. Or if he didn’t leave me any other choice, take him down before he got the chance. I found an open couple of chairs, staked my territory, and got as comfortable as I could. I looked around, taking it all in. The construction made me think of the American, my own little piece of Vegas. The principal construction was done and now it was all down to the detail work before our grand opening. Details, and the liquor license I still didn’t have. I almost got lost in minutiae, making mental lists of the calls I needed to make, the cash I had to shuffle around to make this opening happen, when I spotted my guest pushing through the smoked-glass doors.

  Harry Grimes had shed some of his rock-star flamboyance from the party. He’d traded the skintight leather pants for battered jeans and thrown a tank top on. One arm was still sheathed in blue Viking runes from his shoulder to his wrist; apparently the tattoos were real. He swaggered to the two-seater and dropped down across from me. Before I could get a word out, he held up two fingers to a passing waitress.

  “Jack,” he said, “neat.”

  “Jack and Coke, please,” I added.

  He snorted at me as she headed to the bar.

  “A real man doesn’t have to cut his liquor.”

  “A real man drinks what tastes good,” I told him, “and doesn’t worry about what other people think.”

  “Oh, you care. You care plenty. Client told me that little crazy act at your party would rattle you good. You were all twisted up, not sure how to come at me. And in the end you buckled, just like they said you would.”

  “Let’s talk about your client,” I said.

  “Let’s not,” he shot back. “I’m a professional.”

  “A professional would have taken me out. I showed you my back and you stood down.”

  “As if I was going to make a move in the middle of that crowd?” He laughed at me. “They would have torn me to shreds. I needed you to swing first. That’d leave my hands clean. Us lowly cambion have to abide by the letter of the Cold Peace, after all. Even when it means the higher-ups can do whatever they want, up to and including hunting us for sport.”

  “Is that what this is about?”

  “Not your problem to worry about. Oh, no, Daniel Faust, a pure human, not one drop of demonic blood, and you get a knighthood.”

  “That’s what this is about.” I sat back in my chair. “You’re jealous.”

  “Wrong. I don’t want a damn thing you’ve got.”

  The waitress came around. We stared in silent détente while she drew the battle lines on the laminated table between us, laying down napkins and drinks. Harry didn’t move a muscle. Apparently, I was buying. I paid cash, added a ten on top, and told her to keep the change.

  “Do you even know who I am?” I asked him.

  “Sure. You’re the hound’s pet human. Oh, and you think you’re a tough guy because you’ve got half the gangs in this city ready to fight for you. And that’s your problem. You’re insulated. You’re fake.”

  “Okay.” I sipped my drink. Tiny icebergs clinked against the glass, floating on a caramel sea. “First of all, I’ve never described myself as a tough guy. If people want to put that label on me, that’s their problem.”

  He looked down his nose at me. “Got that rig
ht.”

  “Second of all, is that all you know? Do you even remember me? From the Wellness House.”

  “You kidding me, man? That’s why I took this contract, once I saw who the target was. Once I saw how soft you’d gone…biggest disappointment of my life, right there.”

  I shook my head at him, feeling like I’d lost the plot.

  “How do you mean?”

  “You stood up for me in that shithole,” he said. “More than once.”

  Memory tricks again. I only remembered the one time, but I’d take his word for it. Felt like something I would have done, at that age.

  “Sure,” I said.

  “You remember what you told me? I was this sniveling, pudgy little nothing, and you took me aside and said that unless I started standing up for myself, unless I started punching back, those guys would keep jumping me.”

  “It’s good advice.”

  “You told me that I had to stop being afraid—afraid of losing, afraid of getting hurt—that I should take all that fear and get angry. Get so angry that I didn’t feel anything but angry, and then hurt those fuckers. Fists, teeth, fight with anything I had, any way I could. Cripple them if I could. Kill them if I could get away with it.”

  “Yeah, well,” I said, “I wasn’t exactly healthy back then. We were kids in a bad place.”

  He waved an incredulous hand at me. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. Why are you apologizing? You were right.”

  “I wasn’t right. Yes, you should have defended yourself, and I’m glad you did, but that was some messed-up stuff to say to a twelve-year-old. I didn’t know any better back then. I do now. You can’t let anger rule you; it’s a tool, not your master.”

  “I got out, and I hit the road.” He tossed back a swig of Jack. The five-o’clock shadow glistened above his lip. “Found out that philosophy worked everywhere. Stoke the anger in me, put the fear in everybody else. If somebody got in my way, bang. If somebody stepped to me, bang. Turns out, when you’re a genuine, no-nonsense tough guy, the world’s your oyster. You can take anything you want. Do anything you want.”

  He raised his glass to me and pounded back the rest of his liquor.

  “And I owe it all to you,” Harry told me. “You made me the man I am today.”

  34.

  The waitress came around and Harry ordered a second glass of Jack, neat. I was still nursing my first drink. Not that I didn’t want it—and two or three more chasing right behind the first—but I needed to keep my head on straight.

  “See,” he told me, “when I realized how pathetically neutered you are, I said to myself, ‘he’s gotta go.’ It’s like putting down your pet dog when he gets too sick to walk. Has to be done, and after what you did for me back in the day, I wouldn’t want anyone else to do the job.”

  “You’ve got a weird definition of ‘neutered.’”

  “Do I? You didn’t get that knighthood because you’re tougher than anyone in Sitri’s court. You got it by sleeping your way to the top. And this ‘New Commission’ garbage? So, what, you sit behind a desk and send other people to commit crimes? What kind of bullshit is that? That’s no way for an outlaw to live. And don’t get me started about how your little friends come running every time the heat is on, all ready to bail you out.”

  The casino vents gusted cool air across the backs of my hands. My fingers tightened, ever so slightly, on the leather arms of my chair. I felt like I was wearing a jacket of ice. Buried deep underneath, a serpentine vein of angry heat started to pulse. And grow. I took a slow, deep breath, keeping it under control.

  “The party,” he said, “that was all the proof I needed. After I talked shit about you, your girl, and your entire court? A real man would have thrown hands right there on the spot. You’re weak.”

  “Have you ever heard the phrase ‘when all you have is a hammer, everything looks like a nail?’”

  Harry squinted at me. “What about it?”

  “You said you hit the road when you got out of the Wellness House. I’m guessing you didn’t have a family to go back to.”

  “Not one I wanted to go back to. I stopped back a few months later, just for one night. Just long enough to thank my dad for all that ‘strong parental discipline’ he showed me for so many years, and my mom for letting it happen.”

  The waitress swung around again with a fresh drink for my guest. I paid her. He waited, silent, until she retreated out of earshot.

  “I made him watch while I cut her throat. Figured it’d hurt the old man more that way, watching her die before I took my time with him. Anger. Fear. I did it just the way you taught me.” He reached for his drink. “We are what the world made us. Fighting that’s a waste of time. Look at us. I embraced everything we endured, and I became an apex predator. And you? You’re a sad, washed-up pile of nothing.”

  I wanted to get through to him. I needed to get through to him. I didn’t know how much of this was my responsibility, how much of this monster I’d created in the nightmare laboratory of the Wellness House—how much was me, how much was the other inmates, the abusive orderlies, his own father long before I even crossed Harry’s path—but some of it…some of it was on me. I had to make things right if I could.

  “Look,” I said, “sure, we are what the world made us. We’re gladiators, predators, whatever messed-up metaphor you want to go with, it’s all the same. But we can change. My brother Teddy, he went through worse than we did. I went to the Wellness House, but he had to go back to our house, with our violently insane father, for years, all alone. Know what he does now? Private security. He makes his money by protecting people. He’s a good guy.”

  “Yeah? If it’s so easy…why don’t you do it?”

  I didn’t have an answer for that.

  “Because you don’t want to,” Harry told me. “Because this life, this world we live in? You love it. You love the blood and the gunsmoke and the smell of somebody else’s money. Don’t even try to deny it.”

  I thought about that. Then I sipped my drink, eyeing the ring of condensation it left behind on the napkin. He was right. I couldn’t take the high ground here, and I couldn’t show him the light when I didn’t live in it.

  “When all you have is a hammer,” I said, “everything looks like a nail.”

  “Second time you’ve said it, second time I don’t know why.”

  I fixed him in my gaze, locking eyes over my glass. My jacket of ice became a suit of armor and I spoke very gently, very firmly. It was the voice I used when I explained why someone was going to give me what I wanted, when I wanted it, and the only threat I needed was in the tone of my voice.

  “You see me as weak because you only know one way to be strong. You think it’s weak when I rely on my friends, because you don’t understand that we rely on each other. That I’d shed blood—mine or anybody else’s—for any of them without question. I’ve done it before and I’ll do it again, proudly, because they’re my family.”

  He sneered at me over his glass. “A real tough guy doesn’t need a family.”

  “And as for Caitlin? She’s my rock. My motivation to get my shit together and build a life, to build something real. When people are in love, when they’re partners—partners down to the bone—that’s not weakness. That’s a force multiplier. Together, we’re more than twice as strong as we are apart.”

  Harry rolled his eyes. “You’re embarrassing yourself.”

  “Oh, I’m embarrassed, all right. By you.”

  That got his attention. He sat up straight.

  “The fuck did you say? I’m twice the man you are.”

  “Right. Because you’re ‘tough.’ You want to know what being tough really means? It isn’t about being good in a fight. It’s about having something to fight for. You don’t stand for anything, Harry. You don’t fight for anyone but yourself, and that means you could win a hundred battles and it still wouldn’t mean a damn thing. But I can help you.”

  “You think you can help me,” he said.


  “Come work for me,” I told him. “Join the New Commission. Join my crew, and I’ll show you a different way of doing things. A better way.”

  “Not happening.”

  “I pay better than Naavarasi does.”

  I watched his face, hoping for a sign. A flicker of recognition, the momentary fear that I knew more than I was supposed to. Anything at all.

  “Never heard of him,” Harry said, his poker face unbreakable.

  I’d done my best. I’d appealed to his heart, I’d made a sales pitch, and it had all bounced right off. He wanted this one way and one way only.

  “I guess I’m going to have to teach you something else, then,” I told him.

  “I’m all ears.”

  “How to be a professional.” I contemplated my glass, barely looking at him now. “You talk, Harry. You talk, and you talk. That car bomb would have killed me if you could have stopped yapping long enough to set it off on time. It’s important to you, isn’t it? You want your victims to see you coming. You like the fear too much. You get off on it. I bet you have a little speech you like to give before you pull the trigger.”

  “Something wrong with that?”

  “It’s sloppy and it’s stupid,” I said. “A real professional doesn’t talk. Save the quips for the movies. You get in, you do your job, and you get out. And that’s what I’m going to teach you.”

  For the first time since he sat down and started drinking on my dime, I saw a flicker of uncertainty in his eyes.

  “How are you going to do that?” he asked.

  “When I kill you,” I said, “I won’t say a word. No speeches, no drama, no one-liners. You’ll be alive, then suddenly you won’t be. You won’t even see it coming.”

  His heavy-lidded gaze slid up and down my body. Patting me down with his eyes and trying to guess what I was carrying.

  “How about we get this over with?” he said.

  “My thoughts exactly. I know a place.”

  “Yeah?”

  “The parking garage on Lamb Boulevard,” I said. “Only one security guard, the upper deck is clear, and we can dance there. We can dance all night long. Meet me there. Two hours.”