Under the Bones

by Kory M. Shrum

  “You’re standing there sniffing the air. It’s freaking weird. You high?”

  “Maybe I’m happy to be alive.”

  “You almost get hit by a car? Someone clipped me on my bike the other day. Monsters.”

  “What are you doing up there?” He gestured toward the cobweb and lights in her hands.

  “Mel wants this Halloween shit up today.”

  “It’s September.”

  Piper rolled her eyes. “I’m thinking she’s hoping to draw the Halloween crowd early.”

  The central streets of the French quarter were enough like a perpetual Halloween party as it was. It didn’t have to be Mardi Gras or any other holiday to see masked revelers crawling the streets.

  “Have you ever planned a wedding?” King asked her.

  Piper wobbled on the ladder. “Do I look like I’ve planned a wedding?”

  “Maybe you have a sister—”

  “Only child—”

  “Or your mother—”

  “My mother has been married four times, but she’s more the weekend-in-Vegas kind of bride. Why? Who’s getting married?” Genuine concerned scrunched her features. Her eyes were painted to resemble an Egyptian cat’s. Strangely, he thought it suited her, her features striking him as kittenish, even on makeup-free days.

  “I think I am,” he said. He placed one hand on the metal post, cane height and topped with a horse’s head. This was his ritual, of checking his feet before stepping into Melandra’s shop. If the city decided to remove these historical markers of old tie-up posts, used for horses in the last century, he wasn’t sure his old body would know how to proceed. The pointed ears pressed into his palm as he struggled to balance himself, scrapping the bottom of his shoes against the curb.

  “You think you are? You going to propose to Lucy?” Piper teased, the tension leaving her face as she wrapped a fresh coil of eerie purple lights along the sign’s post before pivoting toward the black iron railings of his balcony.

  “Hey, hang those from inside. You’ll fall leaning over like that.” His heart ratcheted at her precarious position. “Who did you think I meant?”

  Piper hesitated, pretending to fiddle with a knot. “I don’t know. Maybe Lou was engaged or something.”

  King grinned and Piper saw it. She burst out laughing. “Right. Okay. Glad to know I have a chance.”

  He didn’t think she had a chance with Lou at all—and wondered if he was cruel for thinking so. Was he fool enough to think he knew anything about Louie Thorne’s interests? Apart from slaughtering drug lords, of course.

  King watched Piper work against the backdrop of the building, fire engine red with hunter green shutters. The oversized windows overlooked both Royal and St. Peter streets. Ferns lined the balcony. Something about the ladder made him uneasy. A goose on my grave, he thought.

  “You know if you had a case for me to work on, I wouldn’t be up here fooling with these damn lights,” Piper grumbled.

  “I’m waiting on my license to arrive.” It was a lie. King had already completed the forty-hour training course and sat for the licensing exam. He’d paid the agency fees and submitted all the paperwork with his fingerprint cards. He’d been certified weeks ago, updated his concealed carry permit, and even informed many of his old colleagues across America that he was in the business again.

  Most congratulated him on finding something worth his skill and time in his retirement and promised to send work his way soon. A few affectionately teased him, calling him Uncle Robbie, a jab against cops who didn’t know how to exit the force.

  What had stopped his burgeoning new career in its track had been Lucy. When Lucy turned the corner and her move to the cancer center became permanent, King had stopped answering emails. He respectfully turned down offers from the local precinct and pulled his ad from the Times-Picayune. He even turned down his side gig of adjuncting for LSU—teaching Intro to Criminology courses as needed. He told them this fall semester was impossible and likely the spring too.

  Lucy was his concern now. And Lou.

  “It’s fine,” Piper said with a huff. “I’m making great progress in my apprenticeship. I’ve only got ten hours left before I’m a certified tarot reader.”

  “That’s great.” Though King had no idea who certified fortune tellers.

  “But hunting criminals is more fun and tarot is more of a side gig. So…you know.” Piper wagged her eyebrows at him.

  “I’ll let you know if anything changes,” he assured her, before stepping around the ladder and into the shop.

  The skeleton by the door shrieked, vibrating the hairs inside his ears. He took a breath, slowly unclenched his fist and stared around the shop.

  The store was smoky with incense. Patchouli and jasmine today. Despite the open door and late breeze, a visible cloud hung in the air, haloing the bookshelves and trinket displays full of sugar skulls, candles, statues of saints, and porcelain figurines. Beside the wall of talismans hung the purple curtain. He could hear Mel’s soft voice muffled by the thick curtain, the tone dramatic and grave. Whoever was having their fortune read in that candlelit nook wasn’t receiving good news.

  No one else was in the shop.

  He took the stairs up to the landing above, veering left to his apartment. If he kept walking around to the other side, he’d be met with an identical door leading into Mel’s own apartment, a mirror image of his own.

  But he worked his key into the deadbolt first, then the lower knob.

  His red leather sofa against the left wall and his beast of a coffee table that looked like a floating door salvaged from a shipwreck, bolted onto wooden feet. His collection of mismatched cardboard rounds were stacked nicely in one corner of the table, each he had stolen from local bars.

  He remembered how worried he’d been about Lucy seeing those. That she’d think him a drunk. Or a pothead for the 8th of weed he kept inside his Bob Dylan vinyl with a pack of rolling papers. He hadn’t smoked in months. Or drank more than a beer or two for that matter. Part of it was the drug test required for the P.I. license. The other part was simply time. He couldn’t show up at Lucy’s bedside smelling like weed or a distillery and there wasn’t a day he didn’t visit her.

  He supposed that even without the illness, he would’ve cleaned up for her, if for anyone. He only wished the twilight of her life hadn’t been the reason.

  King plopped onto the sofa and opened the briefcase.

  Document after printed document lay sandwiched on top of each other. He pulled them out, examined each one. Beneath the stack, he fished out the yellow legal pad and began a new list. It was the sixth or seventh such list on this page. But each that had come before it had been crossed out, with little side notes marked.

  All the print-outs had a single thing in common. Lou Thorne. They either bore an image of her face or description of her person. He’d been scouring every public and private database he could for news of her. Files or suspicious reports. He was doing this for Lucy, he told himself. Or sometimes he told himself that he was doing it for Jack. Rarely was he able to convince himself that all the hunting, the searching, was for Lou herself.

  Because while she may be the direct beneficiary of his efforts, he couldn’t seem to believe that she really needed him. They could send a hundred men, maybe a thousand. And King suspected that she might very well kill them all.

  Scouring reports for her name, silently deleting files and photos, all of it was for someone’s benefit. He just wasn’t sure whose.

  He canvassed the disappearances until an incident caught his eye.

  A man was reported missing in New York three days ago. His girlfriend, who looked like a clown with magenta eyeshadow and fuchsia Lycra pants in the photo, said that a woman fitting Lou’s description had come around looking for him the day before.

  Two known drug mules, brothers in Dallas were reported missing by their mother. She said they’d gone to the park across the street to meet up with their friends, but never came home. T
he last thing she saw was her boys talking to a young woman in a leather jacket and sunglasses—despite the late hour. In the report, the mother openly admitted to wondering if the woman was a prostitute, saying quote knowing my boys, I wouldn’t have been surprised.

  Senator Thompson of New York never reached his benefit gala in the city. The last person to see him alive was the limo driver. Russel Postma swore that Senator Thompson had gotten into the limo alone. He’d asked Postma for silence while he reviewed his notes for the speech he was to give somewhere between dessert and coffee. Postma obliged, rolling up the partition and turning off the radio. They were two miles from the banquet hall when he heard Thompson shout. By the time he pulled the limo over and rolled down the partition, he found the senator gone. The notecards strewn across the leather seat. He was certain that the senator hadn’t exited the vehicle. He simply disappeared.

  After reading the new reports and interviews, King had a list of five new sources to investigate. Nothing that mentioned Lou by name, no. But each disappearance had an unmistakable Lou-ness about it.

  King’s hand paused in scribbling a name when the sudden urge to look up overtook him.

  There she was.

  “Fuck!” King threw the notebook and sheets of computer paper briskly into the case, slamming down the lid once, twice, before managing to get the gold clips settled into place.

  “Am I interrupting something?” she asked. He couldn’t see her eyes behind the mirrored sunglasses, but her voice was flat, uninterested. Only the arched eyebrow gave away her amusement.

  “I have two doors.” He wiped his hands down his face. “You could knock. On either one of them.”

  “I’ll come back.” She slid her hands into her leather jacket and turned away.

  “No,” he barked, perhaps too earnestly because she shifted her weight. He sucked in a breath and tried to relax. “No, I need to talk to you.”

  A deep crease settled between her eyes.

  “How’s Lucy?” she asked.

  King was about to launch into his lecture. The prepared speech that began with you would know if you’d visit her your damn self!

  “She looked like shit when I saw her,” Lou added.

  King’s prepared defense fell out of his head. Everything he’d meant to say, about her hunting, about Lucy’s dying wish for a wedding, even a half-hearted plea to say hello to Piper or Mel—all of it vanished.

  “You saw Lucy?” he said, staring at her. He wished she’d take off the sunglasses. “When?”

  As if reading his mind, she pushed them up onto her head. “Last night.”

  A million responses danced on the tip of his tongue.

  Would it kill you to spend more time with her? She raised you! And as hard as you might be trying to kill yourself, she’s actually dying.

  This is your last chance, kid. Don’t fuck up like I did.

  He exhaled all his unspoken grievances and fell back against the couch. He put his large hands on his knees because he didn’t know what else to do with them.

  This wasn’t really about what Lou did or didn’t do.

  This was about figuring out where the two of them stood—Louie and him. And where they’d go from here, once Lucy was gone.

  Once Lucy was gone.

  His heart clenched. “How’ve you been?”

  He was surprised by the gentleness in his tone. And he wasn’t the only one. First her eyebrow arched higher, then she said, “No complaints.”

  No complaints? Your last remaining family member has one foot in the grave and you have no complaints?

  He opened and closed his fist compulsively. Looking for something else benign to say. Something. Anything. He wanted to keep her here, keep her talking.

  This had to work. For Lucy’s sake, he had to make this work.

  But god, did he want a reaction out of her. He wanted Lou to scream. To cry. Hell, he’d settle for having her pull a gun on him.

  But she gave him nothing. Every muscle in her body was the calm patina of a lake in the early evening. Not a ripple in sight. And no matter how many rocks he threw into it, he couldn’t change her any more than the stars in the sky.

  God, Lucy, how did you do it?

  King was suddenly grateful he’d never had kids of his own.

  Lou said, “How was Lucy when you saw her?”

  He said finally, squeezing his knees. “In a lot of pain. There was a bit of an emergency this morning and they sent me away. She was stable when I left, but…”

  Lou wasn’t stupid. With her life, absolutely. But in her head—not at all. There was nothing King could tell her that she likely didn’t already understand herself. Not about Lucy’s health or her time left in this world.

  He wanted to ask why did you finally visit? He considered how to frame this. “It’s good to see you, kid.”

  There. Concern. He’d nailed it.

  “Did you drop in to say hi?” he asked. “You could’ve called.”

  “I needed to get out of my apartment.”

  Irritation bit at the back of his neck. Was that really all? She finally gracing them with her presence because she was a little stir crazy. No, wait. That didn’t compute. King knew for a fact that she left her apartment all the time.

  “What are you saying?” he asked.

  “My apartment is crowded.”

  “Why? Who’s in it?”

  “Paolo Konstantine.” She gave him one of her measuring sideways glances. “Martinelli’s bastard son. He runs the Ravengers. Or he did.”

  The name spun King’s mind in a different direction. “Martinelli? The man who had your old man killed?”

  Paolo Konstantine. He remembered hearing the name for the first time from Lou herself. What had she called him? He’s the new Martinelli.

  That’s right. She’d been bleeding to death on Ryanson’s boat deck.

  He remembered Konstantine now. Remembered his hands going up in surrender when Lou turned her gun on him. A handsome man. Dark hair. Green eyes. He looked as tough as Lou, with that crow and crossbones tattoo on his bicep, the hungry look in his eye.

  What the hell are you going to kill him for? King had asked.

  He’s the new Martinelli.

  That was when King had told her the truth. That Ryanson had ordered the hit on her father. But surely that wasn’t enough to change her opinion of the crime lord’s son. This bit of truth was enough to befriend him rather than put a bullet in his brain? No way. She hunted those bastards. She didn’t play sleepover with them.

  There was quite the distance between revenge and taking a man home…wasn’t there?

  He gave Lou a good hard look.

  She had new wounds. The first two knuckles on her left hand were faded purple. Repeated blunt trauma. She had a cut on her chin. Hard to tell if it had been a bullet or a blade. And her upper arm had been grazed. But none of this told him why Paolo Konstantine was in her apartment.

  “Are you bringing the strays home now?” he asked, trying to find his footing again in the conversation.

  “He was bleeding to death. I thought about dumping him on the ER floor,” she said with a shrug. “But I didn’t know if he had a record and if that would’ve been like throwing him to the sharks. And he’d blacked out, so I couldn’t ask.”

  “What happened?”

  She smiled. “Someone kicked his ass.”

  “Who?”

  “From what he’s said, it sounds like there’s been a hostile takeover of his little gang. Nico Agostino is in charge of the Ravengers now.”

  “Who the hell is that?”

  “Nico is Padre Leo’s biological son. Leo built the Ravengers, then left it to Konstantine when he died.”

  King felt like he was watching an Italian soap opera. A drama surrounding infamous crime families. Only he’d missed six or seven episodes and now couldn’t remember who was who and all the Italian stallions looked alike.

  “So Padre chose Konstantine over the son, Nick—”

&nbs
p; “Nico.”

  “—Nico. And he’s butthurt about it.”

  “It doesn’t sound like Nico was ever an option. He killed someone’s daughter and was banished to a labor camp in Russia. He broke out as soon as he heard his father died and came back to reclaim the Ravengers.”

  “Konstantine told you all this?”

  “Parts of it. I did some digging. Asked around.”

  Asking around meant breaking fingers and slitting throats.

  “Why are you telling me all of this?” King asked, draping one arm across the back of the sofa.

  “I want to kill him,” she said.

  “Nico or Konstantine.”

  She smiled again. “Maybe both.”

  King snorted. “I don’t think you’re asking my permission.”

  As if she needed it.

  “I’m looking for the right time. And I want you to let me know when that is.” She shifted and King saw the butt of the Beretta tucked against her ribs.

  She bent and snapped up his briefcase.

  Before he could process what was happening, she had it open, a collection of papers in one fist, the yellow legal pad with his lists on the other.

  He opened his mouth to defend himself, but she was already speaking.

  “Yeah, like this,” she said, meeting his eyes over the legal pad.

  He hesitated. “Like what?”

  “Listen to the wires,” she told him. “If Nico makes any moves, overreaches, or if you get the sense that he’s planning to strike, let me know.”

  King’s pulse leapt in this throat. “Strike against who? You?”

  “I shot him a couple of times,” she said. “I don’t think he’s dead. When you shoot people and don’t kill them, they tend to be pissy about it.”

  “Did you spare him on purpose?” he asked, unable to imagine her missing any target.

  She tossed the papers back into the briefcase’s gaping mouth. “I was distracted.”

  Distracted. What in God’s name could distract her?

  “Is Nico a superhuman mutant or something?”

  “It doesn’t matter.” She slid her shades down over her face again. “It won’t happen again.”

  He sensed the shift, her imminent departure and shot up from the sofa. His knees popped from the effort and his back groaned.