by Nancy Holder
“I got mugged,” she said breathlessly. “By two little kids and an old lady. She got mad at me because I wouldn’t give her any change and then she and the little kids, who had already tried to steal my purse once, just took off with it.”
She huffed. “Only, I guess it wasn’t a mugging, because I didn’t get hit.”
“This is a terrible area,” Doyle muttered.
“Then there was all this screaming.” Cordelia sipped her coffee, even though it was still warm outside. The stiff Santa Ana winds were picking up, and the panes in the large windows overlooking the street rattled and shook.
“So my police officer friend, Jason, walked me over here and then went to check on it,” she continued. “But by then it had stopped, and I don’t know if he’s coming back or what.”
She sniffed. “Does that smell like steak to you? Because my friend, Mr. Sticky Floor Doughnut Guy, told me they’re having macaroni and cheese for dinner.”
She caught the look that passed between Doyle and Angel.
“We’ll take a look around,” Angel said. He turned to go back outside. Doyle trailed behind him.
“Oh, no,” she protested, “don’t leave me here.”
Cordelia took a couple of steps. But minus her panty hose, her cheap shoes were rubbing on newly formed blisters. “Ouch!”
“Sit down. Drink your coffee,” Angel ordered her.
She watched them go.
“I don’t eat meat. I’m a Libertarian,” the stinky man informed her. His mouth was snowy with powdered sugar. “We’re having macaroni and cheese.”
“That’s . . . whatever,” she said. She limped back to her chair and sat down. Anxiously she looked over her shoulder, hoping Angel and Doyle would soon reappear.
The little girl who had helped steal her purse was staring at her through the window.
“Hey!” Cordelia cried. “Stop, thief!”
She hobbled toward the front door. The girl hesitated a moment, then dashed away. Cordelia’s purse strap was slung over her shoulder, and she was so small that the purse itself was dragging on the ground behind her.
“Give that to me!” Cordelia shouted. “At least give me Jusef’s business card!”
The girl threw her a terrified look and kept going.
It occurred to Cordelia that this could be a trap. But her stuff was involved, and she wasn’t giving up her material possessions without a fight. She had so few of them these days. Plus, Jusef’s phone numbers are in there.
“Angel! Doyle!” she yelled. “You guys!”
She limped down a different alley, distinguished only by the even more disgusting garbage on the ground, but no glass, thank goodness, and the smell of steak was even stronger. Burnt steak, in fact. But there was no way she was going to catch the little girl. All she heard was the clatter-clatter-clatter of her footfalls as she receded once more into the distance.
Cordelia ground her teeth in frustration as she lurched to a stop.
At that moment Doyle came flying around the corner to her left and said, “What’s happening?”
“The little creep who took my purse just came back to taunt me,” she said angrily. “Where were you guys? You don’t have on cheap high heels. You could have caught her.” She looked around the corner.
The alley was cordoned off with crime-scene tape. Two or three police officers stood guard in front of it while another one was quietly vomiting into a garbage can.
“What’s going on?”
Doyle’s face was pasty. “They found something, Cordy.”
She stared at him in horror. “Not the little girl.”
“No. A body. An adult.” He held her arms as she moved to look around him. “You don’t want to see this. Trust me.”
Man, is Kate going to be pissed, Angel thought. There’s not going to be one square inch of ground those cops haven’t walked over. Didn’t they see The Bone Collector?
While the police officers busied themselves with contaminating the crime scene, Angel had managed to go around the large factory building on the corner and make his way up a rickety fire escape. From there he had jumped quietly and gracefully from one roof to the other. Now he watched from the roof of another building that stank of human waste. He hunkered down and listened carefully.
They had found a body. It had been a man. He was horribly burned. His name had been Ernesto Torres. In his pocket was a ring of keys, each numbered. Also, amazingly, a wad of parking tickets in a jacket he had been carrying in the warm evening. The police were guessing that he had dropped the jacket as soon as the burning had started, which was why the jacket had been spared.
Apparently Mr. Torres was fond of parking at a loading dock about five blocks south of his present location. Angel memorized the address.
It would be his next stop.
The coroner showed. And then Kate. As Angel had anticipated, Kate lost it when she saw how the cops had trampled the evidence. No need to listen carefully to what she had to say; he was sure people a block away could hear every syllable.
By the time he got back to the shelter, Doyle and Cordy were looking through her purse.
Good. Doyle found it, Angel thought approvingly.
When they both saw him, Cordy said, “What’s going on?”
Angel shook his head at Doyle.
Doyle grimaced. “Let me look through your credit cards for you,” he said to Cordy.
“What’s happened?” Cordelia asked Angel. Then to Doyle, “I don’t have any credit cards. I don’t have any credit. Okay. I have one. I couldn’t stand to cut it up. But it’s expired.”
With the precision of a gunslinger at high noon, she flipped open her wallet and pulled out a platinum American Express card.
“My glory days,” she murmured.
She slipped it back in her wallet. Then she opened the coin purse. “My bus fare’s still here. Oh, good! Here’s Jusef’s business card.”
“The dead guy?” Angel asked.
“Trust me,” Doyle said quickly. “You don’t want to go out with a dead man. Despite all you might have heard, they’re not good at small talk, and —”
She looked down at the card. “Angel, look.”
Angel took the card. On the back, in an almost illegible scrawl in purple ink, were the words HELP US LADIEY. WE ARE KINDNAP. CELIA SUCHARITKUL.
The same name as Kate’s second-to-most-recent burn victim.
“They were kidnapped?” Cordelia said. “Did you guys see them? We’ll have to tell the police.”
Angel turned the card back over. The name Jusef Rais was circled with the same purple ink.
“He’s not dead?” Cordelia asked anxiously. “Because it was his father’s funeral I got invited to —”
“Oh,” Doyle said. “So you’re not dating a dead guy.”
“Well, I hope not,” Cordelia said waspishly. “I mean, I work for one, no offense, and I think that’s enough dead guys in my life, don’t you? Plus I think my manager must be dead, because he never gets me any acting jobs.”
“Maybe that was him back there,” Doyle suggested to Angel.
“No!” Cordelia wailed. “No! My dates only die in Sunnydale, okay? Not here, too!”
“Unless he was going under the alias of Ernesto Torres, your date’s probably still alive,” Angel assured her.
There was a sober moment. Cordelia looked a little pale. “So, there’s a dead guy back there?”
“Yeah.” Doyle looked a bit abashed.
Cordelia sighed. “I was hoping it was just something gross that you didn’t want me to see,” she said to Doyle. She gave him a weak smile. “Which I thought was kind of nice of you. But you know, back in Sunnydale, I saw all kinds of gross stuff and still managed to be pleasant and attractive.”
“And the trend continues,” Doyle offered.
She took the compliment, but Angel could see she was shaken. She gestured to the card again.
“So, do you think my date kidnapped those kids?”
“Maybe the little girl was trying to ask you to contact him,” Doyle suggested. “Maybe he’s related to her.”
“We should check it out,” Angel said. “You up for a funeral, Doyle?”
“Been to a few really good ones in my day,” Doyle said.
Cordelia looked uncomfortable. “Um, you guys, I don’t know if they have a list of guests or anything . . .”
“I was thinking we’d make our own way,” Angel said.
“A little recon.” Doyle nodded.
“We’ll get you home. Then Doyle and I will get ready. Were you going to take a cab?”
“Jusef will send a limo,” she said, lifting her chin. “I’m supposed to call.”
“Okay.” Angel looked down at his clothes. “We’d better change. See if we can blend in a little.” He glanced at Cordelia. “Rich crowd?”
“They own a film studio in Indonesia.”
Doyle looked crestfallen.
“When are you supposed to call?”
“Three hours from when we met. . . .” She glanced at Doyle’s watch. “Oh, no, in an hour and a half! I have to change! My hair!” She grabbed her head. “I’m a mess!”
Doyle and Angel exchanged another look.
“What?” Cordelia demanded.
“Saving the world,” Doyle drawled. “It’s not just a job. It’s an adventure.”
Then footsteps sounded behind them, and Angel said, “How much you want to bet Kate wants to know what we’re doing here?”
He would not have lost.
CHAPTER SIX
“Well, well, if it isn’t the Caped Crusader,” Kate said dryly as she walked up to Angel, Doyle, and Cordy. “And you just happened to be in the neighborhood of my brand-new homicide.”
“It’s not because of that,” Cordelia cut in. “These little kids stole my purse. Who, apparently, have been kidnapped. Or maybe they’re just playing a trick. And I got change from a crazed man with an extreme body odor problem to call Angel to come get me.”
Cordelia looked around. “There’s a nice police officer named Jason who’ll back me up. Who is single,” she added, in case Kate was, too.
“Kidnapped?” Kate echoed.
Silently Angel handed her Jusef’s card.
“Hey,” Cordelia protested.
Kate looked at her sharply.
“May I copy down the number?” Cordy asked in a small voice.
Kate studied the card. She flipped it over a couple times. “Do you know Jusef Rais?” she asked Cordelia.
“I’m going to his father’s funeral. I hope,” she added, glancing at the card.
“Let’s start at the top.” Kate waited expectantly.
“Okay. These two kids scoped me out,” she said.
She began to tell her story. Without realizing it, Angel started tuning her out. The wound in his head was stinging. He felt as if his brains were turning to ice, if such a thing were possible.
Doyle scrutinized him. “What’s wrong?” he asked quietly.
Angel said, “Something bit me. We’d better do a little research when we get back to my place.”
Doyle cocked his head. “Something . . . that was not a dog or a cat?”
Angel nodded. “Definitely not a cat.”
“And so, then she must have written this on the card,” Cordelia was finishing up.
Kate looked askance at Angel. “Looks like the mountain came to Muhammad.”
When he didn’t say anything, she pressed, “You were supposed to come down to the station to make a statement on the apartment guy. And now you’re here for this guy. And meanwhile, we’ve got a possible kidnapping involving someone your secretary’s going on a date with.”
“To a funeral,” Cordelia amended. “Not exactly a date.”
Kate ignored her. “By the time you actually get down to my place of business, it’s not going to be a statement, it’s going to be a book.”
“Wouldn’t fly in a novel,” he replied. “Too many coincidences.”
“Ma’am.” A police officer approached Kate cautiously. “We need to deal with the evidential chain of custody.”
Kate made a comment Angel figured was unprintable.
“Don’t go anywhere,” she said to the three. She looked at Cordelia and Doyle. “Any of you.”
Cordelia frowned and raised her hand slightly. “But I have to wash my —”
“Yes?” Kate snapped.
Cordelia’s shoulders drooped. “Nothing,” she said weakly. “This has so not been my day.”
Looking sympathetic, Doyle stepped toward Cordelia. Kate glared at him. He froze in his tracks.
“Not moving,” he assured her, half-raising his hands. “Didn’t get the part?” he asked Cordy.
“Doubtful.” She added plaintively, “I didn’t ask to be robbed near a crime scene, okay?”
Kate stomped off.
“Whew,” Doyle drawled. “That one is tightly wound.”
Angel watched her go. “She’s got a lot on her plate.”
“Those homeless guys are having macaroni and cheese tonight,” Cordelia announced. “And for the record? I swear she was in an episode of Charmed.”
When you’re rich, you can do a lot of really cool things, Jusef thought.
For instance, you can get other people to do a lot of really evil things.
The short-haired elderly lady had been brought to the compound, there to beg for her life and turn over her partner in crime. One of Jusef’s Brethren, attempting to move Ernesto Torres’s body before it was discovered, had discovered the children running in panic down an alley. He had caught the boy, though the girl had gone free.
The boy had told him about the old lady, and they’d picked her up on the way back.
It seemed that she had been teaching some of her little charges at the sweatshop how to pick pockets. Petty crime like that was expressly forbidden by the Rais family. There was no need to call attention to themselves in such a tawdry and unnecessary way.
But the woman had been desperate to pay off her passage to America. It seemed that her daughter back in Bangkok was very ill, and not expected to live much longer. All she wanted from life was to see her one last time. She herself had been a street child, stealing wallets and jewelry so she could survive.
When Chairman Mao had risen to power in China, this misguided being had become a social activist in Thailand. For that, she had been hounded and sent to prison. There, she had developed a fascination for the land of America, a brutal country that nevertheless offered freedom of thought and independence.
Years later one of her fellow inmates in the prison had run into her on the street. He had offered to help her get to America.
If only she’d realized it was a ploy to put her to work as a slave. She became a despicable collaborator, forcing young children to work until they dropped. She couldn’t stand to see them suffer so.
So she had put some of the children to work in minor thievery, extracting a portion of their takings in return for excusing them from their work in the sweatshop. She forged records, penciling in their hours and lying about how many garments were sewn in the shop.
All this she had confessed to, in hopes of mercy. She even offered to turn over all her profits from her illegal venture.
She had no knowledge of any demons fighting on the wrong side, however.
Her death had been slow and very miserable.
Now the torches in the Temple of Latura cast shadows on the face of the little boy who trembled before Jusef. Haggard and exhausted, he looked like a little old man . . . but he would never live long enough to be old or a man.
The great wheel of karma is definitely turning in my favor, Jusef thought.
The little boy’s name was Kliwon Sucharitkul, the younger brother of that fool, Decha. Decha, originally a follower, had turned traitor. He’d lost his nerve and tried to abandon the work. He’d been a fool. Latura was not a god who allowed betrayal.
Kliwon’s pencil-thin wrists were chained to th
e wall. Tears flooded his yellow-brown face and dampened his blue batik shirt. Jusef had never seen anyone cry so hard. It was eerie how the child could weep so, yet never make a sound. Also, quite fascinating.
Hooded and robed, Jusef stood before the boy and said, in Bahasa Indonesia, “You do understand why I’m angry, don’t you?”
Kliwon lowered his head. Jusef sighed. Beneath his hood, he clicked his teeth thoughtfully. Had he himself ever been that humble? Doubtful. His father used to laugh and tell him he was born proud and ambitious.
From a tyrant like his father, that was high praise indeed. But no praise had ever come from those lips after Jusef told Bang he wanted to be a musician.
That is, until Jusef began his search into the mysteries of the occult. Then his father was his friend again.
Oh, yes. For a little while, anyway.
He remembered it now: the last day he had cared what his father thought. The day he had become his own man.
Latura’s man.
And one of the strangest nights of his life.
Paris, 1996
There was a man, or a creature. Jusef wasn’t certain which.
But this man could not be killed.
Jusef had discovered all this quite by accident. Jamming with a group one night down in Montmartre, he had staggered down the street toward the nearest Metro stop.
He’d turned right onto Rue Mariotte, strolling along, even though it was three in the morning. He had no bodyguards with him. They cramped his style.
And then he heard the fighting. And the growling.
Dim lights overhead obscured his vision, but what he saw mesmerized him: a tall creature shaped like a man, but wearing a demonic face. His hair was dark, his skin pale. He wore a long black coat.
He was fighting something very like himself, something with grotesque features and long, sharp teeth. Their strength was incredible; as they slammed into each other, they went flying and crashing against the brick walls of the alley.
The other creature kept snarling and attacking, but it was obvious to Jusef that the tall one was going to win. The amount of abuse both were taking was staggering. Normal men would have been killed by now.
And then, suddenly, the tall one did something to the other one. Thrust a stick into him, or a magic wand. And the other one exploded into dust.