“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”
“You know exactly what it means. Now stop stalling and tell me something I can use.”
Clive frowned, staring up at the other man, who continued to look down at him like he wouldn’t mind dismantling him piece by piece and hanging parts of him from the ceiling fans in the different rooms.
“There’s always been something spooky about you, Black,” he muttered.
Those leonine eyes shone indifference. “So don’t piss me off.”
Still muttering, Clive stomped out of the kitchen and back into the living room. Walking over to a roll-top desk he’d picked up at one garage sale or another, a big hulking thing that he’d only held onto because the damned thing was too heavy to move out to the curb, especially with his bad knee, he jerked open drawers until he found what he was looking for. Yanking out the address book with a water-warped fake-leather cover, he tossed it down on the desk still wrapped in dried up rubber bands. Bits of different-colored paper stuck out all over the sides, covered in his handwriting along with the handwriting of other people.
Black walked over to him, silent, just standing there with those massive arms still folded in front of his chest. He was sweating though, and when Clive glanced up next, the other man was wiping perspiration off his forehead with a hand again. His beer had disappeared, Clive noticed, probably still out on the porch by that swing.
“Why the fuck are you living like this, Clive?” Black muttered, glancing around the room. Dust floated in the streams of sunlight coming through holes in the paper shades. “You got a few trunks of gold buried in holes in the backyard, or what? Those fuckers must have paid you a small fortune, all the years you put in...”
Clive scowled, not wanting to think about the money either.
He especially didn’t want to think about where it had gone. Three ex-wives, five children who hated his guts. Boarding schools. Surgery for his knee. Three times.
Hookers. Blow. Too much time at the track.
Now he had the house his mother left him... and the Rolling Rock. He had the dandelions and the crappy roll-top desk and the antique refrigerator and an air conditioner that only worked when it was too cold outside for him to need it.
If it was good enough for his parents, it was damned well good enough for him.
Black let out a low snort, almost like he heard him, shaking his head incredulously. When Clive glanced up, the taller man frowned, refolding his arms across that broad, boxer’s chest.
Clive scowled back, but didn’t ask.
Yanking on the rubber bands wrapped around the address book, he cursed when the dried rubber split and powdered in his fingers. He pulled them off except where they’d been welded to the cover by the heat, then cracked the address book itself, ignoring the small shower of papers that came out when he first opened it. Rifling through the smudged lines of his own handwriting, he finally stopped when he got to the right page.
Squinting to read it without his glasses, he ripped the lined page out with his fingers in a single tear once he realized he’d gotten it right.
“Here,” he said, handing it to Black. “Now get the fuck out.”
Black squinted down at the handwriting in the dim light of the room.
Seeming to think about what was written there, he looked at Clive, and for the barest instant, Black’s eyes seemed to slide out of focus. He looked almost like he was reading that smudged page still, but his eyes focused sightlessly on Clive’s face instead.
“You hear me?” Clive snapped, unnerved by that stare. “Get the fuck out. I gave you what you came for. If the name’s no good anymore, then you’re on your own.”
Black nodded, that unfocused stare still on Clive’s face.
Then, all at once, his eyes clicked back into focus.
He glanced back down at the paper in his hands, then gave Clive another of those precise, machine-like nods.
Without another word, he turned with equal precision and walked to the front door and outside to the porch, letting the screen door bang shut behind him.
He didn’t look back, or even lift a hand in goodbye.
Clive just stood there in his sweltering dark cave of a living room, breathing too hard as he listened to the boots of the heavy-gaited man descending his creaky wooden stairs. A few minutes later, he heard the bike’s motor start up again as Black must have kicked the rice-burner’s starter.
Clive didn’t really relax until he heard it pull away from the curb, though.
He didn’t venture back to the door leading out to his porch until he could no longer hear the bike at all, and the neighborhood had slowly returned to quiet apart from its usual ambient sounds. Even then, Clive stood in the shadow of his own doorway for a few seconds more, drinking his beer and glancing both ways up and down his residential street.
“Cocksucker,” he muttered under his breath.
Feeling his fear turn into a hotter anger, he stepped outside finally and back into the faint breeze that was his only relief from the heat. Once he had, he collapsed back into the folding lawn chair where he’d been sitting before Black darkened his door.
“I hope you find them, you piece of shit,” he muttered louder. “I hope you walk right in the fucking door of Archangel Unlimited and they get a good long look at your vampire face. I bet I’d never see your sorry ass on my property again...”
After he said it, Clive wished he hadn’t.
Not aloud anyway. Not even under his breath... and not because he didn’t mean it.
For minutes afterwards, he had the creepiest feeling that Black might have heard him.
BEATRICE LORRAINE FRANKLIN couldn’t quite believe her luck.
When she opened her door after someone jammed their finger in her buzzer, she’d expected to be annoyed with whoever stood there. She’d half-expected that somebody to be Billy, since it was Saturday and he wouldn’t have to work.
Instead, she found herself staring up at something off the cover of a romance novel.
She really couldn’t believe what she was looking at when she finally opened her front door, yelling at whoever was on the other side to just shut the fuck up and cool their jets and she would get there. That same, romance-novel-looking motherfucker stood just outside her door now, but only because Beatrice hadn’t yet successfully figured out a way to get him to come inside. She’d offered him a beer, a glass of water... the bathroom.
He’d given her a polite “no” with every offer.
He had quite a smile though, Mr. Romance Novel did.
The tall man with the black hair wearing a motorcycle jacket and designer jeans looked more like a movie star, or maybe someone who modeled underwear for a living, than he did like most of the jokers who hung around this complex.
She really, really wanted to see his eyes.
So far, he hadn’t taken off his sunglasses, but she was just positive those eyes would be a gorgeous blue. Or maybe a really sexy green.
“She don’t live here no more,” she said, hearing the disappointment in her own voice. She would have liked a reason to keep this guy around, even just for a few minutes. She tried to think of another excuse to invite him inside, if only to get a look at his eyes behind those mirrored shades. She wondered if it would be rude to ask him to take them off. Tell him she had a bet going with herself on what color they would be.
“...She left with the kids about five years ago now,” Beatrice said, still hearing the stall in her own voice. “I heard Oklahoma, to be with her parents. Or maybe it was New Mexico? I could ask the neighbors if you want. Some of them knew her.” She leaned against the doorjamb, deliberately jutting out her hip.
“She a friend of yours?” she asked coyly. “‘Cause she got fat, you know. She didn’t stay skinny and hot after having kids, like me.”
If the man was looking at her jutting hip, Beatrice couldn’t tell through the shades.
She also couldn’t hear any hint of interest in his voice.
&n
bsp; “It’s not actually her I’m looking for, ma’am,” the man said politely.
He had a strange accent.
Definitely foreign. She wondered if he was one of those Muslims, but he didn’t look like any Muslim she’d ever seen on T.V. He didn’t look like no Mexican either. He looked like he had money, and not only from the brand new motorcycle he’d parked in the Adams’ parking slot for the apartment complex. She wondered if he had a girlfriend.
She definitely didn’t see no ring, ‘cause she’d looked.
“You can’t leave your bike there,” she told him, smiling as she motioned with her chin towards the parking lot below her second-story apartment. “That’s the Adamses’ spot. Mike gets really pissy when people park in his spot... and it’s Saturday, so he’s liable to be around.”
“I won’t be here long enough for it to matter,” the black-haired man assured her.
Beatrice frowned, unable to hide her disappointment. “You sure? You sure you don’t want to come in for something to drink? I got lemonade. Stronger stuff, too. And there’s a pool out back. You could relax here for awhile before you go back out in that heat...?”
If he heard the come-hither in her voice, he ignored that too.
He shook his head, once, like anything more than that would have been a waste of energy he needed for other things.
“No, thank you,” he said politely. “Do you know anything about her husband? Where he might be?”
“Her ex-? Sure. He still lives around here. Milly ditched him when she took the kids. They were on the outs by then anyway.” She frowned, looking him up and down again. “You a friend of his? Cause you don’t look like no friend of his I’ve ever seen.”
“Work associate,” the man said.
Beatrice laughed. “Work associate? That shit-bird don’t work. Not for but a few months out of the year. Unless you call passing gas and scratching his balls work...”
“He’s gone a lot, right?”
Beatrice nodded, still squinting up at him. “Yeah. He’s a trucker half the year. But you don’t look like a trucker, mister.”
The man didn’t smile. She didn’t see a single muscle move in that long face.
“You ever see him in a friendly way, Beatrice?” he said. “Travis?”
She shrugged. “Sometimes.”
“He has family here, right?” the man said. “Other kids? Not Milly’s?”
She frowned. “How’d you know about that?”
The man smiled. “I told you. We’re work associates.”
Beatrice watched him nervously, wondering now if he worked for Milly after all. Maybe he was a cop. Not many cops looked like that, or dressed like that, in Beatrice’s experience, but he might not want her to know he was cop.
That, or maybe he was a lawyer. That might make a lot more sense.
“Who are you... really?” she said warily.
“Someone who wants to talk to Travis,” the man said, still giving her that weird smile. His voice was strangely calming, soothing, and she found her wariness dissipating again as she looked at him, a dark slash of shadow in the bright sun. “...One of these kids his, Beatrice?” the man asked in that soothing voice, almost sounding far away now, dream-like.
Did Travis like that you stayed skinny after having kids, Beatrice?
She didn’t see his lips move that time, but the voice seemed to echo in her mind, lulling, pulling on her, reassuring her it was okay to confide in him. That she could trust him.
“Uh-huh,” she said. “He likes it just fine. Likes a lot of other things about me better than Milly, too...”
Does he still come by with presents sometimes? Presents for you? Money? Things for the kids? Things he doesn’t give Milly?
Beatrice found herself nodding again. “Uh-hunh.”
She found herself refocusing on that handsome face. He stood over her, expressionless, his features as still as a windless lake.
Nervous suddenly, she stepped outside, shutting the door behind her so the kids wouldn’t hear them from where they were watching television.
“You can’t tell nobody,” she whispered to the man in the sunglasses. “That Milly... she’ll sue his ass for child support. Alimony too. She can’t know he has money. She don’t have any money herself, but she’s got a brother who’s a lawyer... you understand?”
“I won’t tell anyone, Beatrice,” the man assured her. “I won’t tell Travis, either. I just want to talk to him. Can you help me?”
“You not gonna hurt him?” Beatrice said, thinking suddenly there was no way this guy was a cop. “You promise you won’t hurt him, mister?”
The tall man in the motorcycle jacket and the black hair shook his head, once.
“I only want to talk to him...” he repeated.
I won’t hurt him... the voice murmured in her mind, and she knew she could believe it, the certainty resonated there. I would never hurt the father of your children, Beatrice...
“...Maybe you could give him a card from me. Tell him to give me a call.”
She snapped back again, once more gazing up at that handsome face, the perfect mouth above that strong jaw. He handed her an all-black card, with a raised imprint of an eagle on it and two letters stamped at the bottom.
“Q.B.?” she said, looking up at those mirrored shades. “Who’s that?”
“It’s me,” he said, not explaining further. Tapping the card with a finger, he added, “Make sure he looks at the back, Beatrice. Travis. Have him look on both sides.”
She nodded, fumbling for words, but when she looked up, he was already walking away.
She watched his casual strides, saw him putting on backless leather biking gloves as he walked down the cement landing towards the stairs at the end of the balcony. Beatrice walked out further away from her apartment door so she could watch him.
He looked pretty damned good from the backside, too, especially in those designer jeans.
When he reached the top of the stairs and began to descend them without looking back, she let her eyes drop back to the card he’d given her. After touching the eagle and the two initials, she flipped it over to expose a white back, shockingly bright after the pitch black face of it.
On it, someone had drawn two detailed angel’s wings in dark blue ink, with a strange symbol set right in the middle of them.
The symbol looked almost like the letter “A,” but it had a whole bunch of ladders on it.
Beatrice frowned, staring at it, and wondered what it could possibly mean.
Seven
SLEEPOVERS
“OKAY,” ANGEL SAID, curling up on the couch next to me and propping her jaw on a hand. “Are you going to tell me the real reason now?”
“The real reason?” I lifted my head from where I’d been resting it on the back of her couch, yawning a little, even though I knew that was an avoidance tactic of mine––or a stalling tactic, at least. “The real reason for what?” I said.
Angel rolled her eyes, snorting. “You suck at that, you know?”
“I suck at what?”
“Playing dumb.”
It was my turn to snort, then to smile. “Maybe it’s not an act.”
Angel exhaled in overdone irritation. I could tell at least some of that irritation was real. Taking a drink from the wine glass she held in the hand not currently propping up her head, she went back to studying my eyes, her own openly appraising.
It had been her idea to pop open the merlot after Nick dropped us off from the restaurant. We’d each had a glass with dinner too, but I’d only had enough to feel sleepy at that point. Given how I’d eaten until I literally couldn’t make myself eat any more at Angel’s favorite Thai restaurant in the Marina, it was amazing I was conscious.
I’d been so hungry it shocked me a little when we finally got our meals. Even though I’d avoided Thai food for the most part since my trip to Bangkok, I still couldn’t seem to make myself stop eating once we got our food. I couldn’t finish everything, of course, sinc
e the portions at the Purple Orchid were huge and my stomach seemed to have shrunk to the size of a pea over the course of my however-many weeks staying in Black’s penthouse, but I’d still left there so full I dozed in the backseat of Nick’s car on the way back to Angel’s place.
Black still hadn’t called.
Well, he hadn’t called me.
Nick mentioned over dinner that he’d called in. He waved his chopsticks over the giant plate of Pad Thai he’d been eating, his mouth full of rice noodles.
“Your boy-toy tell you he’d be out of town for a few days?”
I’d lowered my own chopsticks to stare at Nick. “What?”
His words managed to distract from the smell of Pad Thai, which had been making me physically sick up until Nick casually dropped the information about Black’s latest disappearing act. I used to love Pad Thai, but my one and only trip to Bangkok pretty much ruined that dish for me forever. Now, just looking at the noodles and peanuts and lime and shrimp on Nick’s plate––even though we were in a high-end restaurant and it wasn’t street food like what I’d eaten in Bangkok––was enough to make me nauseous. It was also enough to bring back memories I just as soon would have forgotten.
Those memories didn’t mix so great with Nick’s news about Black.
“What do you mean, he’s out of town?” I prompted, when Nick went back to eating.
He glanced up, chewing the piece of prawn he’d just sucked out of the shell. He swallowed what remained in his mouth before he answered. His voice came out more businesslike that time, maybe because he saw the annoyance in my eyes.
“Guess he was serious about running down leads,” he said, shrugging. “Said he’d be back in a few days, that he might have some way to get us intel on Archangel. Said no promises, but he had a few ideas he was going to run down.”
I felt my face grow hot as I turned over Nick’s words.
“He didn’t tell you?” Nick prodded.
I gave him a hard look. I could tell from his voice he was a little too happy about that.
Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) Page 11