The White Gold Score (A Daniel Faust Novella)

by Craig Schaefer

  I stripped the Rolex from his wrist and slipped it onto mine, admiring the way the white gold glinted in the sunlight.

  “W-why,” he managed to stammer.

  I shrugged.

  “I could tell you there’s a situation in Vegas—a situation you caused—and I’m being paid to discreetly resolve it. I could tell you that my girlfriend is a big Tanesha fan, and you pretty much signed your own death warrant when you went after her. I could tell you that you’re a loose end, and you needed to get snipped.”

  I crouched down beside him, looking him in the eye.

  “I could tell you all those things, Dino, and they’d all be varying degrees of the truth. But at the end of the day, it comes down to this: you were greedy, you were stupid, and you got in my way. Those were the only three reasons I needed.”

  I patted him on the shoulder.

  “This is what I do.”

  His last breath wheezed from his ruptured lungs, and his trembling hand fell still. I strolled back to the car.

  * * *

  I fought my way through sluggish city streets, one hand on the wheel and one eye on the dashboard clock. By some miracle I made it: right on time for Monty’s funeral.

  The parking lot was not full. Neither was the church. Sunlight streamed through stained-glass windows, casting warm and dusty light across empty pews of lacquered oak. Mourners gathered in clumps here and there, talking softly. I spotted Tanesha across the room, somber in a black lace veil. I didn’t let her spot me. Tonight or tomorrow she’d hear about Dino’s murder. Maybe she’d connect it to the massacre at the concert hall, maybe she wouldn’t. Maybe she’d connect it to me, maybe she wouldn’t. Not my problem. I was about to disappear from her life forever.

  First, though, I had to make one last thing right. I waited until the coast was clear and sidled up to the open casket. Monty lay on a bed of soft white satin, eyes closed and hands folded at his heart.

  “Here you go,” I murmured, slipping the Rolex onto his cold, heavy wrist. “You got your watch back, Dino’s dead, all scores are settled. No reason to hang around. Just…let go. Wherever you’re headed, there’s a chance it’s better than here.”

  I didn’t have anything else to say to a dead man. I turned and walked away. Job done.

  I caught the next flight home, a one-hour glide with a California sunset at my back. As soon as the plane landed, wheels bumping down hard on the tarmac and the momentum pressing me back against the stiff seat, I felt the last residual tension of the job fade away. This was my home turf. My sweet city of lights. A cab ferried me over to the Monaco, where Greenbriar was waiting.

  “Your penthouse is open for business,” I told him.

  “You’re sure?” He bounced on the balls of his feet. “I mean, you’re absolutely sure?”

  “Everything keeping Monty from moving on has been taken care of. He’s got no reason to stick around.”

  He pumped my hand. “Aw, Dan, you’ve got a friend for life. I can’t tell you how much we appreciate this—”

  “Show your appreciation,” I said, “by paying me.”

  I got paid twice that night. Once in a slim little envelope from Greenbriar and once—after a five-star French dinner at Robuchon, as promised—in a cheap aluminum briefcase from Jennifer.

  “Done deal,” she told me. “Couple of distributors I know went fifty-fifty on the product. Took all ten keys off our hands, and paid cash. Nice used bills, nonsequential. Your cut comes to right around twenty-three grand.”

  “We got away with it,” I said.

  “You almost sound surprised, sugar. Yeah, we got away with it all right. I already gave Caitlin her cut. Whatcha gonna do with yours?”

  “For now,” I said, “just savor the feeling of not being dead broke.”

  Back at my apartment, safe behind a double-locked door and three layers of magical wards, I opened the case. The rows of bills sat snug in rubber-banded stacks, whispering as I riffled through them. I pulled aside my bedspread and tugged up the fitted sheet, then unzipped my mattress. The bills went inside, stack by stack, into a hollowed-out compartment at the foot of the bed.

  I’d worked hard to make my home invisible, with a mix of fake names, cash payments, and carefully laid spellwork. It wasn’t much to look at, but it was mine—and for me, it was a sanctuary. Keeping my cash in the mattress didn’t worry me one bit.

  Unless somebody managed to penetrate all my defenses, track me down, and pitch a Molotov cocktail through the window—none of which would ever happen—my apartment was the safest place in the world.

  I was sound asleep when my phone rang, sometime around two in the morning. I fumbled for it and muttered, “’Lo?”

  “God dammit, Faust,” Greenbriar snapped, “what the hell are you doing?”

  “Sleeping. What are you doing?”

  “Paying a couple of wealthy European tourists to shut up about the ghost that just attacked them, that’s what.”

  I shot up in bed, wide-awake now.

  “What?”

  “You heard me,” Greenbriar said. “It’s still here.”

  24.

  I didn’t get it. Ghosts were a mixed bag of weirdness, but the case was closed. I’d taken out Monty’s killer; I’d given him his watch back. What the hell else could he want? Real restless spirits were rare for a reason: unless they’d been cursed or bound somehow, it took an unbelievable amount of sheer willpower—like clinging to a skyscraper ledge by your fingernails—to stay in the land of the living. Something was so important to Monty that even after being avenged, he just couldn’t let go.

  I thought back to the night I’d spent in the penthouse suite. How I’d lived his final moments, feeling the bullet that killed him. The flood of panic and fear—

  Then I saw it. The missing piece.

  “You still there?” Greenbriar said.

  “Yeah.” I took a deep breath. “I know what I have to do. I’m going back to Los Angeles. Tonight. I’m gonna need a favor.”

  “Will it solve my damn problem? Fine, what do you need?”

  “Find me a backhoe operator who works nights and can keep his mouth shut,” I told him. “I have to dig up Monty’s grave.”

  * * *

  I drove along the winding forest road, watching the sun glitter as it rose over the trees. My back sore, my shoes dirty with caked earth from exhuming Monty’s casket. And in my mind, for the hundredth time, I lived through the memory of Monty’s death.

  At the end of the private drive, I pulled up outside Tanesha’s retreat. The front door opened a crack. I couldn’t quite read the look on her face. Somewhere between fear and relief.

  “Dino’s dead,” she told me.

  “That’s right.”

  “Did you do it?”

  I shook my head. “No. Can I come in?”

  She unhooked the chain and opened the door.

  “Thought I saw you at Monty’s funeral,” she said.

  I didn’t answer. We walked into her living room. To the hearth, where her pictures stood. Her and Monty, in the recording studio, the white gold Rolex on his wrist.

  “We had reason to believe Dino might have…robbed Monty’s body, after he killed him,” I said. “I had a friend in the coroner’s office check through Dino’s belongings.”

  I pulled the Rolex from my pocket, holding it up between us. The inscription, Forever Gold, gleaming in the light.

  “I think that Monty would have wanted you to have this.”

  Monty had died in an agony of fear. Not for himself, though. I remembered his last words, pouring from my lips: “Don’t hurt her. Promise me you won’t hurt her.” He’d died the same way he’d lived: obsessed and in love. He’d carried that torch all the way to the grave.

  And the torch still burned.

  Tanesha stared at the watch. She took a deep breath.

  Then she reached out, letting out the breath in a tired sigh, and curled her fingers around the watchband.

  “Thank you,”
she said. “It’s good…it’s good to have something to remember him by. We had some good times, me and him. I’ll always be grateful for that. I couldn’t be…what he wanted me to be. But I’ll always be grateful.”

  I turned to go.

  As she walked me to the door, I glanced into a hallway mirror. I saw my reflection—tired, worn down—and hers.

  And one other person standing in the mirror. Down the hall, in the shadow of a darkened room, the dim, shrouded shape of Monty Spears. Staring back at her.

  And there he would stay, I knew, as long as his spirit could hold on. A silent sentinel, standing an invisible watch over her. Struggling, with the last fleeting remnants of his soul, to prove his love to a woman who would never love him back. Singing his one-note love song until he finally let go and tumbled into the void.

  There’s no con more convincing than the one you play on yourself.

  I set my GPS for the airport and drove. I’d had enough of ghosts and delusions and Los Angeles hustlers. Enough of gold records and gold watches. It was all a mirage anyway, yellow rocks glittering in the California sun.

  The job was done. That was real. The cash, that was real too. And that was all that mattered.

  Time to go home.

  Afterword

  So, a little history: when I was picked up by 47North to write the Harmony Black series, my publishing schedule suddenly posed a problem. Between the first two Harmony books being released back-to-back, and the final Revanche Cycle novel in the pipeline too, I wouldn’t be able to release the next Faust novel until the end of 2016. A whole year between Faust books? I hated the idea of keeping readers waiting that long. So, I canceled an overdue vacation and carved out extra time wherever I could with the intent of weaving a little stand-alone side story, an as-yet-untold tale from Daniel’s past to tide everybody over until the next full length adventure.

  Working at novella length was an interesting experience, taught me a few things, and provided some more ideas for other side-stories set in Daniel’s universe; if folks enjoyed this one, I’ll likely do more of these. Not now, though. Now, I’m taking the weekend off. I might even sleep in. Maybe.

  Thanks as always to Kira Rubenthaler, my editor; James T. Egan, my cover designer; Adam Verner, narrator of the fantastic audio book adaptations; and Maggie Faid on administrative support. And of course, thank you for reading!

  Want to get the advance scoop on new books and projects? Head over to http://www.craigschaeferbooks.com/mailing-list/ and hop onto my mailing list. Once-a-month newsletters, zero spam. Want to reach out? You can find me on Facebook at http://www.facebook.com/CraigSchaeferBooks, on Twitter as @craig_schaefer, or just drop me an email at craig@craigschaeferbooks.com. I always love hearing from my readers.