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For a gold coin, I'm in.
Double post, but it's a collab so you can't stop me.
Ty.
Ty.
Teresa walked along Lake Mead Boulevard. Night hid the ugliness of the city. The filthiness of the streets no longer as obvious beneath the dimming street lights. The strip malls that she passed bathed the sidewalks in warm rays. Neon signs beckoned. Offering all kinds of services, and always, always, satisfaction. Pawn shops adorned with gold. Bail Offices promising freedom at ever falling prices. Strip Clubs dealing in flesh. And late-night burger joints dripping with grease. Teresa felt a sense of revulsion. It was wrong. All of it. The buildings crammed too close together. The people pushed against each other. The writhing mass of humanity that surrounded her. Touching her, no matter what she did to avoid it, leaving a sickly sweet smell on her skin that she couldn’t remove. No matter how hard she scrubbed. The throbbing, oozing heart of the city that she fed on. That she needed.
The adrenaline had faded. Not that it had ever been there. Not really. It was a memory. A hollow husk she knew only by the emptiness it left inside of her. The slowly simmering anger she felt was real though. Connie was gonna fuck it all up. He was gonna get himself ashed by some week old fledglings. And she’d be the one stuck explaining to Brace how it was all his own damn fault.
Teresa stopped, letting out a weary sigh. She had walked off enough of her frustration. Her hands found a pack of cigarettes in her pocket. A fleck of orange glowed between her fingers as she blew puffs of smoke into the air. She watched the cars zipping by, wondering if it was too late to buy a flight to Paris. The burner phone in her pocket began to vibrate, ringing silently.bFishing it out of her coat pocket, she stared at it warily, letting it ring several times before she flipped it open, mashing the Call key, “Crusoe’s Casino & Hotel, hiring—uhhh…— department. How can I help you?”
A nasally male voice crackled over the cheap quartz speakers, “Yes, we were looking for some help regarding a temp assignment, Mister Karnes recommended we speak.”
“One moment, please,” Teresa said, burying her frown in the collar of her coat, holding the phone away from her as if it was some rotten thing. Strangers didn’t call her. Not ever. Not unless Brace handed them the number to her latest burner phone. Malas noticias. Bad news. Simepre bad news, for someone, and she hoped it wasn’t her. She knew she should be wary. But she was curious. The scraps of meat were there. Right where she could see them, where she could smell them. Brace wasn’t in the habit of doing anything for free. To help the stranger was to help Brace and to help Brace was to earn her keep. They were dogs. Connie and her. But even dogs grew hungry…and they couldn’t hide forever.
She tossed the halfsmoked cigarette to the pavement, stamping out the fire as she put the phone back against her ear, “You’re in luck, we’ve got some openings. Let’s meet for a quick chat. Taormina Restaurant, 347 North Nellis Boulevard, in two hours. The cannolis are good. And tell them Sofía sent you.”
The caller said nothing at first, although Teresa thought she could hear a pen scratching on paper, the person on the other end of the line scribbling down the address. There was a muted muttering that she couldn’t quite make out, before the voice replied, “Thank you, Sofia. Be sure to bring anything you have on file for Johnny Shea—you might know him as Dandy.”
She tried to remember the name, but nothing came to mind. There were enough kindred lurking in the shadows, feeding on the kine that flocked to Las Vegas. Enough faces to remember. And more than enough names to recall. She wasn’t a big shot like Brace. Connie sure as fuck wasn’t either. They were the problem solvers. The ones who put in the work. They only knew the big wigs in passing. When they needed them to do something. Teresa tapped her leg with her fingers of free hand, as if it might jostle some forgotten memory, “No problem. I’ll see if we have a resume from Mr. Shea. Thank you for your call.”
The adrenaline had faded. Not that it had ever been there. Not really. It was a memory. A hollow husk she knew only by the emptiness it left inside of her. The slowly simmering anger she felt was real though. Connie was gonna fuck it all up. He was gonna get himself ashed by some week old fledglings. And she’d be the one stuck explaining to Brace how it was all his own damn fault.
Teresa stopped, letting out a weary sigh. She had walked off enough of her frustration. Her hands found a pack of cigarettes in her pocket. A fleck of orange glowed between her fingers as she blew puffs of smoke into the air. She watched the cars zipping by, wondering if it was too late to buy a flight to Paris. The burner phone in her pocket began to vibrate, ringing silently.bFishing it out of her coat pocket, she stared at it warily, letting it ring several times before she flipped it open, mashing the Call key, “Crusoe’s Casino & Hotel, hiring—uhhh…— department. How can I help you?”
A nasally male voice crackled over the cheap quartz speakers, “Yes, we were looking for some help regarding a temp assignment, Mister Karnes recommended we speak.”
“One moment, please,” Teresa said, burying her frown in the collar of her coat, holding the phone away from her as if it was some rotten thing. Strangers didn’t call her. Not ever. Not unless Brace handed them the number to her latest burner phone. Malas noticias. Bad news. Simepre bad news, for someone, and she hoped it wasn’t her. She knew she should be wary. But she was curious. The scraps of meat were there. Right where she could see them, where she could smell them. Brace wasn’t in the habit of doing anything for free. To help the stranger was to help Brace and to help Brace was to earn her keep. They were dogs. Connie and her. But even dogs grew hungry…and they couldn’t hide forever.
She tossed the halfsmoked cigarette to the pavement, stamping out the fire as she put the phone back against her ear, “You’re in luck, we’ve got some openings. Let’s meet for a quick chat. Taormina Restaurant, 347 North Nellis Boulevard, in two hours. The cannolis are good. And tell them Sofía sent you.”
The caller said nothing at first, although Teresa thought she could hear a pen scratching on paper, the person on the other end of the line scribbling down the address. There was a muted muttering that she couldn’t quite make out, before the voice replied, “Thank you, Sofia. Be sure to bring anything you have on file for Johnny Shea—you might know him as Dandy.”
She tried to remember the name, but nothing came to mind. There were enough kindred lurking in the shadows, feeding on the kine that flocked to Las Vegas. Enough faces to remember. And more than enough names to recall. She wasn’t a big shot like Brace. Connie sure as fuck wasn’t either. They were the problem solvers. The ones who put in the work. They only knew the big wigs in passing. When they needed them to do something. Teresa tapped her leg with her fingers of free hand, as if it might jostle some forgotten memory, “No problem. I’ll see if we have a resume from Mr. Shea. Thank you for your call.”
Leaving the body behind, Teresa stripped the nitrate gloves from her hands, stuffing the wads in her pockets corpse-dew and all. The less they left behind, the better. Disciplines and ghouls only went so far when it came to obscuring the nature of an event. Her thoughts moved quickly. Pleasure lurked at the edges of her cognition. Dulled by unlife, but there, still there all those years later. Humming faintly into her ear, reminding her of living. She had sensed nothing. She had heard nothing. But oh, the wonders she had seen. The hidden truths that clumsy hands had tried to scratch away.
Unhurried, she walked back towards the car, her eyes lingering on the two cops. They weren’t relaxed. They weren’t distracted by their smartphones. A poor omen, she considered, knowing what she knew about the local cops. Attention was always the first sign of trouble. Music blared from Connie’s car, bad music. The same terrible shit he blasted everywhere. Teresa frowned. He annoyed her. His car annoyed her. Always had. Hardly better than a beater, it looked like the sort of thing her father would have driven. If he’d had the money. If he hadn’t lost it gambling. If he hadn’t spent it all on booze. If he hadn’t been…
The traffic post nearby was all kinds of fucked up. The hand-shaped crater and scattered paint chips inspired nothing in the way of confidence. Knocking softly on the car roof, she opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. A metallic smell greeted her, a familiar scent that sent a pang of desire coursing down her neck to the pit of her stomach. Fresh vitae, rising above the chemical-ey, waxy smell of leather polish. The lingering odor created by decomposing morsels, moldy crumbs, melted scraps of cheese that languished between the seat cushions. She adjusted the rear view mirror, all casual-like, as if she wasn’t keeping an eye on the two knockos. Drawing the sawn-off from her leg holster, she stuck it between the center console and the seat.
“You have a run in with our friend the parking bollard?”
Connie’s gaze avoided hers, his knee bouncing like a piston at a putter, the fingers on one hand (the one not stowed in jacket pocket to hide the avulsions) rapping the steering wheel. "Better than Oz's jaw," he murmured. Not one of his usual shitty jokes, despite its trappings. More deflective than that. Avoidant.
They were running out of time. They needed answers. Before more bodies brought more attention to the Strip, the real strip. Brace wasn’t going to let them play detective forever. She could see the sword in the sky above them, dangling by its horsehair thread. The doom promised to those who failed the princeling. She’d drag Connie with her, kicking and screaming if she had to. His talents were as important as hers. The fledglings were unlikely to come easy, and less likely still to accept their Final Death. They’d left a giant fucking mess to clean up. And Connie was busy worrying about a fucking cop. Teresa tsked into the inside of her mouth, resisting the urge to scowl. She waited, but her partner didn’t respond. He didn’t take the bait. Shocking. He didn’t want to pick a fight? Not over a scornful look? Not over the apathy that laced her voice?
“What’d Mr. DeWayne have to say?” he said, curtly cutting in before she could say anything more about the subject. Not that she wanted to. She could see the look in the corner of his eyes. The thing grasping for control behind his slouched form. Violence looming. Not the usual sort of petty violence that Connie peddled in. Something worse. Something more immediate, more urgent.
“The short version, then,” Teresa said, waving a hand in the direction of the body. “There’s asphalt pebbles stuck in his knees, and superficial abrasions, and a normal body response—swelling, clotting. He was pushed. Maybe tripped. No more struggle after that; just the bites. The usual exsanguination on the thigh, two channels with a lot of bruising. It’s the neck that killed him. Strange teeth, though. More of a gnawing mechanism than a piercing one. Less—...proboscular. Nagaraja? Nosferatu, maybe.“
“Gangrel.”
Teresa snapped from her soliloquy, distracted from the circular trough she’d been walking like a donkey lashed to a millstone. “Yeah?”
Connie pressed a button, rewinding the footage until just before the two fledglings entered the parking lot. He zoomed in on the woman, and there she was all ringleted hair and prim, practiced bearing. A surgical mask for the teeth. Those hideous, furry, legwarmer things for whatever was going on with her legs. Sure enough. He teased the footage back and forth—playing and rewinding—and the girl had a prominent limp. Worse than a limp.
Teresa couldn’t help but marvel. “Digitigrade legs,” she guffawed, but she began to lose her steam as Connie glowered, the contempt legible in his face as he sensed another diatribe. “That’s…what they’re called…”
He chose not to interrogate; not to tease or incite. Like he was the exhausted one. “Whatever,” he said. “Point is that’s one sire down. There’s a Feral in town making strays.”
“And the other one? Mr. Skin-and-Bones?”
“How calmly the victim went along with them he could be using Dominate. But his hands don’t leave his pockets either. So he might be packing too.”
“Ugh. Goddammit, Connie, this isn’t the best you can do.”
“Not in the fucking mood, T.”
“Neither am I but here you are, still offering nothing but baseless speculation. Where’s your lead? Your M.O.? Isn’t this supposed to be what you’re good at?”
“I mean it. Are we fucking married now? Do you see a ring?” He finally showed his hand—literally—pulled it from the pocket, the skin avulsed at the fingertips, most of the nails broken clean off in spots, but brutalized in others. Bones and ligature glistening, gaping, and stuck through with concrete pebbles like a Thanksgiving onion studded with cloves, or the asphalt crumbs stuck in Curtis DeWayne’s knees. On a living creature with a beating heart the nerves would have been screaming. “No? Then go nag someone else for once.”
Teresa laughed. A practiced and purposeful reaction. “Just saying, ‘partner’: I’m upholding my end just fine. It’s you who isn’t making yourself very useful right now.”
“Oh, man, what am I gonna do?” he snarled. “What am I gonna do if I can’t meet Teresa Martinez-Hernandez-Ramirez-Lopez’s fucking deadlines? I guess I’ll just roll over and die! It’s the end of the fucking world, after all!”
“Fuck you.”
“No. ‘Oh, Connie, you didn’t walk down to the Evidence Store and load up a cart like me? What are you, dumb?’ No, fuck you, T.“
“It’s not my fault you can’t track down two fledgling as they thrill-kill along the Strip.”
“You think my job is easy? Let’s switch places then if it’s so easy. I’ll poke dead people with a stick for an hour while you do all the—”
A blur streaked past the passenger side window. Reacting to the movement, Teresa reached for the shotgun she had stashed within easy reach. A loud thump echoed as something, small and light, landed on the hood of Connie’s car. Standing uneasily, a cat looked at them through the windshield glass. Body shaking as it drew heavy breaths that began with a rasping, wheezing noise. She could see it was in pain. Its tongue curled and lolling as it panted, gulped at tepid air. Purpose burned in maddened eyes, gold orbs scorched with desperation. Exhausted, the cat lowered itself shakily to the simmering metal, wary of the two monsters. It could sense their purpose, their unholy lusts; and its fear of them coiled between its shoulders. Studying the pitiful creature, Teresa noticed no collar around its neck, no spay scars or tattoos, no clipped ears, but the matted fur, and its healthy body weight, obviously well-fed by someone... Martha. It was one of Martha’s strays. A message then. Or a warning. Maybe both.
She caught Connie’s stare. He had to be really desperate if he was eyeing up animal blood like a fine-dining hors d'oeuvre. Martha wasn’t likely to approve of the Brujah snacking on one of her pets. And whatever Martha had to tell them was probably important. Always was. The old crone didn’t reach out to dither and blather about just anything. She knew better than to waste their time.
“We’ll find you something near the camp,” Teresa said. “Right now she needs our help.” Didn’t have to speculate. No need to mention who or how or why. They were on the same page already.
So Connie frowned, but didn’t argue. The car lurched forward as he shifted gears, wheels squealing, rubber burning into the concrete as they sped out of the parking lot. The cat, in its panic, sprung down from the hood and disappeared into the side-view mirrors, abandoned to its fate on the warm midnight street. As they turned the corner Teresa saw the first predator step out from the shadows. Then another. One by one they appeared, Julian Prince’s cronies, dropping Obfuscate and converging on Austin McGlinn and his partner. Teresa exhaled; everyone had gotten lucky. Connie for managing to hold it together. The cops for the same reason. And her, for not having another mess to clean up.
Merging into traffic, the Brujah ripped down Sahara Road, rivuleting from lane to lane, between traffic and sidewalk, anywhere there was a gap. His frenetic and impatient driving—the least of law enforcement’s problems when it came to Conrad Olivier Beauclerc—but with the Hunger strumming his nerves, pinpricking his vision, all his veers and twists were even more jittery than usual. Leaning against the window, Teresa kept an eye on the rearviews all the same, trying to make sense of the streaks and blurs and kicked-up dust. Street signs and stop lights passed behind them, but no one followed. Teresa had a joke on the tip of her tongue, something to smooth over the night, just the sort that Connie liked to hear. But then the police scanner, stuffed into the dashboard in front of them, crackled to life with a woman’s cool, clinical voice.
“Fuck,” Teresa said.
The car began to slow.
“Really? Really. Hey, come on. I didn’t mean all that about how useless you are,” Teresa pleaded. “C’mon Connie, I was kidding. You don’t have to take it so…”
But the car coasted to a stop. Nowhere, just some random sidewalk, suspension jostling as he threw the transmission into park. Heedless, it seemed, to the urgency that had overtaken them mere moments before.
“Out.”
“I can’t believe it. You’re serious about this.“
“You said it yourself. Martha still needs you.“
“Oh, a fine excuse indeed! And what about you? Suppose you even get there before LV’s Finest—which you won’t—you wanna get ambushed two-on-one? Ashed by a newborn baby Gangrel and her Ventrue-or-whatever friend?“
“Won’t happen.”
“You’re hungry, Connie, not to mention injured. You need the help.”
“If you really believe that, tell it to Brace. Get reassigned. Find that ‘useful’ partner of your dreams.”
“You’re just doing this for the glory.”
Finally. Finally he cracked a smirk. “Like how you’re only with me to bum rides and smokes?“
At least he was feeling a bit better but still, it was times like this his Brujah bullheadedness really pissed her off. Also pissing her off was her lack of a retort. “Unbelievable,” she muttered, slamming the passenger-side door behind her, standing there then on the sidewalk her shoulders hunched and the rest of her huddled in her coat like she’d been stood up on a first date. “Fine. You want to be the first notch in these kids’ belts, see if I care.”
“Write me a funny obit,” Connie said, pressing down on the clutch and the brake levers, throwing the stick back into first. He lingered a moment. “See you soon, T.”
“Better be with good news,” she shot back. For a moment she was content to watch him pull away but soon a recollection disturbed that peace. “Wait. Connie!” But he was already halfway down the block, exhaust roaring behind him, well out of earshot. She ran behind him for a few paces, knowing it was fruitless but deciding to hope anyway. Some traffic, a red light he actually cared to respect, anything, but no, he was gone. “Shit!” Teresa groaned, throwing her hands in aggravation. “My fucking shotgun!”
Unhurried, she walked back towards the car, her eyes lingering on the two cops. They weren’t relaxed. They weren’t distracted by their smartphones. A poor omen, she considered, knowing what she knew about the local cops. Attention was always the first sign of trouble. Music blared from Connie’s car, bad music. The same terrible shit he blasted everywhere. Teresa frowned. He annoyed her. His car annoyed her. Always had. Hardly better than a beater, it looked like the sort of thing her father would have driven. If he’d had the money. If he hadn’t lost it gambling. If he hadn’t spent it all on booze. If he hadn’t been…
The traffic post nearby was all kinds of fucked up. The hand-shaped crater and scattered paint chips inspired nothing in the way of confidence. Knocking softly on the car roof, she opened the door and slid into the passenger seat. A metallic smell greeted her, a familiar scent that sent a pang of desire coursing down her neck to the pit of her stomach. Fresh vitae, rising above the chemical-ey, waxy smell of leather polish. The lingering odor created by decomposing morsels, moldy crumbs, melted scraps of cheese that languished between the seat cushions. She adjusted the rear view mirror, all casual-like, as if she wasn’t keeping an eye on the two knockos. Drawing the sawn-off from her leg holster, she stuck it between the center console and the seat.
“You have a run in with our friend the parking bollard?”
Connie’s gaze avoided hers, his knee bouncing like a piston at a putter, the fingers on one hand (the one not stowed in jacket pocket to hide the avulsions) rapping the steering wheel. "Better than Oz's jaw," he murmured. Not one of his usual shitty jokes, despite its trappings. More deflective than that. Avoidant.
They were running out of time. They needed answers. Before more bodies brought more attention to the Strip, the real strip. Brace wasn’t going to let them play detective forever. She could see the sword in the sky above them, dangling by its horsehair thread. The doom promised to those who failed the princeling. She’d drag Connie with her, kicking and screaming if she had to. His talents were as important as hers. The fledglings were unlikely to come easy, and less likely still to accept their Final Death. They’d left a giant fucking mess to clean up. And Connie was busy worrying about a fucking cop. Teresa tsked into the inside of her mouth, resisting the urge to scowl. She waited, but her partner didn’t respond. He didn’t take the bait. Shocking. He didn’t want to pick a fight? Not over a scornful look? Not over the apathy that laced her voice?
“What’d Mr. DeWayne have to say?” he said, curtly cutting in before she could say anything more about the subject. Not that she wanted to. She could see the look in the corner of his eyes. The thing grasping for control behind his slouched form. Violence looming. Not the usual sort of petty violence that Connie peddled in. Something worse. Something more immediate, more urgent.
“The short version, then,” Teresa said, waving a hand in the direction of the body. “There’s asphalt pebbles stuck in his knees, and superficial abrasions, and a normal body response—swelling, clotting. He was pushed. Maybe tripped. No more struggle after that; just the bites. The usual exsanguination on the thigh, two channels with a lot of bruising. It’s the neck that killed him. Strange teeth, though. More of a gnawing mechanism than a piercing one. Less—...proboscular. Nagaraja? Nosferatu, maybe.“
“Gangrel.”
Teresa snapped from her soliloquy, distracted from the circular trough she’d been walking like a donkey lashed to a millstone. “Yeah?”
Connie pressed a button, rewinding the footage until just before the two fledglings entered the parking lot. He zoomed in on the woman, and there she was all ringleted hair and prim, practiced bearing. A surgical mask for the teeth. Those hideous, furry, legwarmer things for whatever was going on with her legs. Sure enough. He teased the footage back and forth—playing and rewinding—and the girl had a prominent limp. Worse than a limp.
Teresa couldn’t help but marvel. “Digitigrade legs,” she guffawed, but she began to lose her steam as Connie glowered, the contempt legible in his face as he sensed another diatribe. “That’s…what they’re called…”
He chose not to interrogate; not to tease or incite. Like he was the exhausted one. “Whatever,” he said. “Point is that’s one sire down. There’s a Feral in town making strays.”
“And the other one? Mr. Skin-and-Bones?”
“How calmly the victim went along with them he could be using Dominate. But his hands don’t leave his pockets either. So he might be packing too.”
“Ugh. Goddammit, Connie, this isn’t the best you can do.”
“Not in the fucking mood, T.”
“Neither am I but here you are, still offering nothing but baseless speculation. Where’s your lead? Your M.O.? Isn’t this supposed to be what you’re good at?”
“I mean it. Are we fucking married now? Do you see a ring?” He finally showed his hand—literally—pulled it from the pocket, the skin avulsed at the fingertips, most of the nails broken clean off in spots, but brutalized in others. Bones and ligature glistening, gaping, and stuck through with concrete pebbles like a Thanksgiving onion studded with cloves, or the asphalt crumbs stuck in Curtis DeWayne’s knees. On a living creature with a beating heart the nerves would have been screaming. “No? Then go nag someone else for once.”
Teresa laughed. A practiced and purposeful reaction. “Just saying, ‘partner’: I’m upholding my end just fine. It’s you who isn’t making yourself very useful right now.”
“Oh, man, what am I gonna do?” he snarled. “What am I gonna do if I can’t meet Teresa Martinez-Hernandez-Ramirez-Lopez’s fucking deadlines? I guess I’ll just roll over and die! It’s the end of the fucking world, after all!”
“Fuck you.”
“No. ‘Oh, Connie, you didn’t walk down to the Evidence Store and load up a cart like me? What are you, dumb?’ No, fuck you, T.“
“It’s not my fault you can’t track down two fledgling as they thrill-kill along the Strip.”
“You think my job is easy? Let’s switch places then if it’s so easy. I’ll poke dead people with a stick for an hour while you do all the—”
A blur streaked past the passenger side window. Reacting to the movement, Teresa reached for the shotgun she had stashed within easy reach. A loud thump echoed as something, small and light, landed on the hood of Connie’s car. Standing uneasily, a cat looked at them through the windshield glass. Body shaking as it drew heavy breaths that began with a rasping, wheezing noise. She could see it was in pain. Its tongue curled and lolling as it panted, gulped at tepid air. Purpose burned in maddened eyes, gold orbs scorched with desperation. Exhausted, the cat lowered itself shakily to the simmering metal, wary of the two monsters. It could sense their purpose, their unholy lusts; and its fear of them coiled between its shoulders. Studying the pitiful creature, Teresa noticed no collar around its neck, no spay scars or tattoos, no clipped ears, but the matted fur, and its healthy body weight, obviously well-fed by someone... Martha. It was one of Martha’s strays. A message then. Or a warning. Maybe both.
She caught Connie’s stare. He had to be really desperate if he was eyeing up animal blood like a fine-dining hors d'oeuvre. Martha wasn’t likely to approve of the Brujah snacking on one of her pets. And whatever Martha had to tell them was probably important. Always was. The old crone didn’t reach out to dither and blather about just anything. She knew better than to waste their time.
“We’ll find you something near the camp,” Teresa said. “Right now she needs our help.” Didn’t have to speculate. No need to mention who or how or why. They were on the same page already.
So Connie frowned, but didn’t argue. The car lurched forward as he shifted gears, wheels squealing, rubber burning into the concrete as they sped out of the parking lot. The cat, in its panic, sprung down from the hood and disappeared into the side-view mirrors, abandoned to its fate on the warm midnight street. As they turned the corner Teresa saw the first predator step out from the shadows. Then another. One by one they appeared, Julian Prince’s cronies, dropping Obfuscate and converging on Austin McGlinn and his partner. Teresa exhaled; everyone had gotten lucky. Connie for managing to hold it together. The cops for the same reason. And her, for not having another mess to clean up.
Merging into traffic, the Brujah ripped down Sahara Road, rivuleting from lane to lane, between traffic and sidewalk, anywhere there was a gap. His frenetic and impatient driving—the least of law enforcement’s problems when it came to Conrad Olivier Beauclerc—but with the Hunger strumming his nerves, pinpricking his vision, all his veers and twists were even more jittery than usual. Leaning against the window, Teresa kept an eye on the rearviews all the same, trying to make sense of the streaks and blurs and kicked-up dust. Street signs and stop lights passed behind them, but no one followed. Teresa had a joke on the tip of her tongue, something to smooth over the night, just the sort that Connie liked to hear. But then the police scanner, stuffed into the dashboard in front of them, crackled to life with a woman’s cool, clinical voice.
“All units be advised we've got a four-nineteen on the corner of East Flamingo and Escondido. Suspect is at large and presumed still on foot. BOLO young Caucasian woman, slender build with long brown hair. Requesting all available units for an area check, Clark County Library.”“Adam-1-4 to dispatch.” Male. Gruff. ”I don’t get it. Did you call in the wrong code? Is this a dead body or a homicide? Over.”“Uh—information unclear, unit. Possible miscoded. Eyewitness at scene reports one suspect fleeing the scene, presumed dangerous.”
“But nobody heard the killing?”
“Affirmative, Adam-1-4. No weapons reported. Probable foul play.”“Fuck,” Teresa said.
The car began to slow.
“Really? Really. Hey, come on. I didn’t mean all that about how useless you are,” Teresa pleaded. “C’mon Connie, I was kidding. You don’t have to take it so…”
But the car coasted to a stop. Nowhere, just some random sidewalk, suspension jostling as he threw the transmission into park. Heedless, it seemed, to the urgency that had overtaken them mere moments before.
“Out.”
“I can’t believe it. You’re serious about this.“
“You said it yourself. Martha still needs you.“
“Oh, a fine excuse indeed! And what about you? Suppose you even get there before LV’s Finest—which you won’t—you wanna get ambushed two-on-one? Ashed by a newborn baby Gangrel and her Ventrue-or-whatever friend?“
“Won’t happen.”
“You’re hungry, Connie, not to mention injured. You need the help.”
“If you really believe that, tell it to Brace. Get reassigned. Find that ‘useful’ partner of your dreams.”
“You’re just doing this for the glory.”
Finally. Finally he cracked a smirk. “Like how you’re only with me to bum rides and smokes?“
At least he was feeling a bit better but still, it was times like this his Brujah bullheadedness really pissed her off. Also pissing her off was her lack of a retort. “Unbelievable,” she muttered, slamming the passenger-side door behind her, standing there then on the sidewalk her shoulders hunched and the rest of her huddled in her coat like she’d been stood up on a first date. “Fine. You want to be the first notch in these kids’ belts, see if I care.”
“Write me a funny obit,” Connie said, pressing down on the clutch and the brake levers, throwing the stick back into first. He lingered a moment. “See you soon, T.”
“Better be with good news,” she shot back. For a moment she was content to watch him pull away but soon a recollection disturbed that peace. “Wait. Connie!” But he was already halfway down the block, exhaust roaring behind him, well out of earshot. She ran behind him for a few paces, knowing it was fruitless but deciding to hope anyway. Some traffic, a red light he actually cared to respect, anything, but no, he was gone. “Shit!” Teresa groaned, throwing her hands in aggravation. “My fucking shotgun!”
Here for some space bucks.
Thanks!
Thanks!
They walked in sudden silence. Stepping across small ponds of light that emerged from the concrete floor beneath them. Darkness veiled the edges of the parking garage, masking the decay that she tasted in the air. Flickering canopy lights shrouded the paltry tomb that drew her closer. The empty spots stacked like crumbled tombstones. Connie was quiet. His usual sauntering, swaggering bravado had faded, replaced by a stiffness she might have once attributed to shame in the big man.
“Sheesh. For a second there I thought he might actually do it this time,” he said, breaking the silence, voice laced with a humor she knew was supposed to disarm her.
Teresa shot him a sideways glance, letting the words shatter, her eyes narrowing into slits.
“What?”
“Isn’t this the part where you apologize?” she said—”pretend like you don’t do this every god damn time?”
He hesitated like he knew he was kicking a beehive. “... Gets us past the tape, don’t it?”
“God, you’re such a fucking prick,” she snarled, gesturing at him, the creases tightening around her eyes. She kicked a discarded can in his direction, willing him to flinch. “Why am I even surprised anymore?”
Connie threw up his hands; hiss-whispering so the cops didn’t overhear. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I have a hammer and every problem named McGlinn around here is a damn nail.”
“Look,” she said, leaning, leering, matching his contemptible tone, ”see if I care when you go and get yourself ashed. Whatever bakes your cake, right? Just do it far away from me.”
“Yeah, sure, because you’re Ms. Strictly Business, right? Bitching at me is getting this case solved faster, right, T? Jesus.” Connie reached into his jacket; buried whatever insult he’d lined up next; must’ve decided better of it, but Teresa saw it there, primed upon his tongue, loaded like a shell into a torpedo tube. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Placing one in his mouth and lighting it with what resembled a miniature gold bar, the butane flame hissing sharp and see-through-blue. He stopped some three feet away from the body, letting out a puff of acrid smoke. He only smoked the cheap shit. Lucky Strikes, on a good day. “So. Another one already.”
“Five bodies in five days. Not very careful. Not very smart. Almost reminds me of someone.” Teresa held out her hand expectantly.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said, obliging anyway: clicking the flame back to life, kissing it to the other end of the cigarette as she slotted the filter between her lips. “They’re icing guys almost faster than we can mop ‘em up. Addicted to the hunt?”
“Or they’re burning through vitae like hummingbirds with sugar-water.”
Connie shrugged. Taking out a battered flip-phone, he snapped a few shots of the body. Tiny and grainy but indispensable. Then he began to frisk. A wallet first, dredged from cargo short pockets; unfolding it, a driver’s license.
“Curtis Prince DeWayne. Twentyyyyyyyy—” a moment’s mental math—”nine years old. Washington Square, no endorsements, blah, blah, blah, yadda yadda. No cash, no......hmm.”
“Cards?”
“Debit. And an EBT.”
“Food Stamps,” Teresa exclaimed.
“Yeah. Hardly the Strip’s favorite whale.” Connie had restored the wallet’s contents to its folds and tossed it aside; was examining the hands then, pale and tepid. The exsanguination couldn’t hide it: there were tan lines where the man had habitually worn a large ring; maybe a class or community college football memento. The wrist, likewise, had once hosted a large, gaudy watch. “But by the looks of it, neither are they.”
“Yeah,” she huffed, the exhale visible: milky with smoke. “So, they only took cash and pawnables.”
“They couldn’t take the cards because they can’t get past the PINs.”
“Yes, none of this screams a well-thought-out plan. What else?“
“Dunno,” Connie said. “The question is whether they’re out to make this look like a robbery, or actually need the dough.”
“Strip ain’t cheap. Assuming that’s where they’ve holed up.”
“So far I’d bet on it.”
She let the silence settle, waited until it grew heavy. “Yeah?”
Connie sighed. “First they were attacking randoms, right? White, black, female, shemale. Anyone they could get their claws in. But enough incidents like that, safety alerts start going out; tourists stay in their hotel rooms after dark; it’s bad for business, and what’s bad for business gets handled, yeah? So they’re starting to figure it out: keep it on the D.L. Hunt away from the nest, especially north, toward Sunset Manor and downtown. Don’t shit where they eat. Profile the kinds of people who like to go missing anyway. Overdosers. Bums freezing to death beneath the overpass. Gangbangers.”
He looked over his shoulder, clocking where the cops were standing; where their attention lied. His voice dropped. “He’s also, you know, not a pile of tatters like the last one. There’s some of him left. They’re Frenzying less than before. I know you hate giving credit where it’s due—least of all to anyone who’s not you—but they are getting smarter.”
“Barely,” Teresa retorted. She prodded the body with the toe of a boot, permitting herself a faint smile. “At this rate they might even last the week.”
“Alright, Columbo, why haven’t you caught ‘em, then?”
“I told you already, tarado: you can’t rush these things. Maybe if you weren’t so busy rolling in the mud with the local pigs we’d have more bodies to examine.”
“I’ll rush my foot in your ass if you don’t can it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s see the map, vato. Where does this one fit into your little doodles?”
“What, you forgot already?” he replied, unfolding a map from his suit jacket’s Napoleon. Gesturing to each circle or X, penned in thick marker, as he rambled it off. “Look, every attack is further than the last. John Doe, Naked City. Breanna Webb, Maryland and Laguna. Graciela Gomez, the Walmart by the airport. Here’s Glen Bell. Oh, and just so it’s on the record, here’s—” he pointed to an unmarked spot, way out in the tan elevation lines of the Mojave Desert—”where I’m going to bury the next beaner bitch who tries to nag me to death.”
She laughed, placing a hand on her hip, and shaking her head, “Someone has to keep an idiot like you on task.”
“If you’re nice to me I’ll even bury a few more assholes on top of you. Should keep you good and cozy, you corpse-licker.”
“Always the charmer, aren’t you, Connie? How many of your ex-wives did you bury out there first?”
“Wanna find out? There’s plenty of room in that grave for the lot of you.”
“Might as well. Those girls and I all have something in common: we’ve all dealt with your bullshit.“
“Good, good. Plenty to talk about.”
“Hey, assholes,” McGlinn interjected, his outcry bouncing off the bare concrete walls of the parking garage. “Is this a crime scene or a teenaged sleepover? Cut the chitchat.”
Connie shot him a scowl. “We’re working on it.”
“Psssh. Go work the damn poles if this is the best you can manage.”
Connie didn’t budge. He wasn’t rattled. He seemed, all said, just about ready to let it go. Still knelt beside the body, returning his attention to it, he didn’t rise to the provocations, drowning them out with some other internal noise. (A cuckoo clock. A jack-in-the-box. Circus music. She had all kinds of theories.) He was so close. Teresa was almost proud.
Then Austin McGlinn, determined to tempt fate, resolved to tease the caged tiger, stuck his hand one inch too far between the bars.
“Hey,” he oozed, “Beauclerc family trade, am I right? Maybe your sister can give you some pointers.”
Teresa froze in place, willing stiff blood to her muscles. Too far. McGlinn had gone too far. He’d crossed an invisible line. A line that had always been there whether he knew it or not. Connie’s chest rumbled with the kind of groan that could only mean calamity. A cauldron boiling over and wildfire licking up between the trees. The last of his patience curling and blackening. Fists balled together. He burst to his feet, turned towards the beat cop.
Springing from her crouch, Teresa swung without waiting. Her knuckles smashed into Connie’s flank, driving upwards into his kidney. He stumbled forward from the blow, taking a single heavy step, stale air shoved from his lungs.
In the time he realized he’d been struck she’d placed the same hand—gentler then—to his shoulder. His face was contorted with fury. No more jokes. No more laughs. Just rage. She didn’t bother to look at the cops. They weren’t important. Weren’t the danger. She mouthed a single breathless word to him: don’t.
And then she let go. She didn’t wait for the reply; didn’t need it. Instead she turned her attention back to the body. Kneeling down to resume her investigation. Acting as if she hadn’t just assaulted him. Ignoring that they had almost ended up in another gunfight. Death had called for her. That was what intrigued her.
She pulled out a pair of nitrile gloves from inside her trenchcoat. Connie didn’t move. But she knew he was staring. Eyes searing into McGlinn. Hatred still pumping to fists which could hit like buckshot.
“I’m gonna go...... uh, terrorize the parking attendant or something,” he finally said.
“Shit, he even listens to the pants in the relationship? I should upgrade; put a ring on it; eh, Cole?” McGlinn quipped.
“Shut the fuck up, Oz,” his partner snarled.
“Sheesh. For a second there I thought he might actually do it this time,” he said, breaking the silence, voice laced with a humor she knew was supposed to disarm her.
Teresa shot him a sideways glance, letting the words shatter, her eyes narrowing into slits.
“What?”
“Isn’t this the part where you apologize?” she said—”pretend like you don’t do this every god damn time?”
He hesitated like he knew he was kicking a beehive. “... Gets us past the tape, don’t it?”
“God, you’re such a fucking prick,” she snarled, gesturing at him, the creases tightening around her eyes. She kicked a discarded can in his direction, willing him to flinch. “Why am I even surprised anymore?”
Connie threw up his hands; hiss-whispering so the cops didn’t overhear. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m so sorry that I have a hammer and every problem named McGlinn around here is a damn nail.”
“Look,” she said, leaning, leering, matching his contemptible tone, ”see if I care when you go and get yourself ashed. Whatever bakes your cake, right? Just do it far away from me.”
“Yeah, sure, because you’re Ms. Strictly Business, right? Bitching at me is getting this case solved faster, right, T? Jesus.” Connie reached into his jacket; buried whatever insult he’d lined up next; must’ve decided better of it, but Teresa saw it there, primed upon his tongue, loaded like a shell into a torpedo tube. He pulled out a pack of cigarettes. Placing one in his mouth and lighting it with what resembled a miniature gold bar, the butane flame hissing sharp and see-through-blue. He stopped some three feet away from the body, letting out a puff of acrid smoke. He only smoked the cheap shit. Lucky Strikes, on a good day. “So. Another one already.”
“Five bodies in five days. Not very careful. Not very smart. Almost reminds me of someone.” Teresa held out her hand expectantly.
“Shut the fuck up,” he said, obliging anyway: clicking the flame back to life, kissing it to the other end of the cigarette as she slotted the filter between her lips. “They’re icing guys almost faster than we can mop ‘em up. Addicted to the hunt?”
“Or they’re burning through vitae like hummingbirds with sugar-water.”
Connie shrugged. Taking out a battered flip-phone, he snapped a few shots of the body. Tiny and grainy but indispensable. Then he began to frisk. A wallet first, dredged from cargo short pockets; unfolding it, a driver’s license.
“Curtis Prince DeWayne. Twentyyyyyyyy—” a moment’s mental math—”nine years old. Washington Square, no endorsements, blah, blah, blah, yadda yadda. No cash, no......hmm.”
“Cards?”
“Debit. And an EBT.”
“Food Stamps,” Teresa exclaimed.
“Yeah. Hardly the Strip’s favorite whale.” Connie had restored the wallet’s contents to its folds and tossed it aside; was examining the hands then, pale and tepid. The exsanguination couldn’t hide it: there were tan lines where the man had habitually worn a large ring; maybe a class or community college football memento. The wrist, likewise, had once hosted a large, gaudy watch. “But by the looks of it, neither are they.”
“Yeah,” she huffed, the exhale visible: milky with smoke. “So, they only took cash and pawnables.”
“They couldn’t take the cards because they can’t get past the PINs.”
“Yes, none of this screams a well-thought-out plan. What else?“
“Dunno,” Connie said. “The question is whether they’re out to make this look like a robbery, or actually need the dough.”
“Strip ain’t cheap. Assuming that’s where they’ve holed up.”
“So far I’d bet on it.”
She let the silence settle, waited until it grew heavy. “Yeah?”
Connie sighed. “First they were attacking randoms, right? White, black, female, shemale. Anyone they could get their claws in. But enough incidents like that, safety alerts start going out; tourists stay in their hotel rooms after dark; it’s bad for business, and what’s bad for business gets handled, yeah? So they’re starting to figure it out: keep it on the D.L. Hunt away from the nest, especially north, toward Sunset Manor and downtown. Don’t shit where they eat. Profile the kinds of people who like to go missing anyway. Overdosers. Bums freezing to death beneath the overpass. Gangbangers.”
He looked over his shoulder, clocking where the cops were standing; where their attention lied. His voice dropped. “He’s also, you know, not a pile of tatters like the last one. There’s some of him left. They’re Frenzying less than before. I know you hate giving credit where it’s due—least of all to anyone who’s not you—but they are getting smarter.”
“Barely,” Teresa retorted. She prodded the body with the toe of a boot, permitting herself a faint smile. “At this rate they might even last the week.”
“Alright, Columbo, why haven’t you caught ‘em, then?”
“I told you already, tarado: you can’t rush these things. Maybe if you weren’t so busy rolling in the mud with the local pigs we’d have more bodies to examine.”
“I’ll rush my foot in your ass if you don’t can it.”
“Yeah, yeah. Let’s see the map, vato. Where does this one fit into your little doodles?”
“What, you forgot already?” he replied, unfolding a map from his suit jacket’s Napoleon. Gesturing to each circle or X, penned in thick marker, as he rambled it off. “Look, every attack is further than the last. John Doe, Naked City. Breanna Webb, Maryland and Laguna. Graciela Gomez, the Walmart by the airport. Here’s Glen Bell. Oh, and just so it’s on the record, here’s—” he pointed to an unmarked spot, way out in the tan elevation lines of the Mojave Desert—”where I’m going to bury the next beaner bitch who tries to nag me to death.”
She laughed, placing a hand on her hip, and shaking her head, “Someone has to keep an idiot like you on task.”
“If you’re nice to me I’ll even bury a few more assholes on top of you. Should keep you good and cozy, you corpse-licker.”
“Always the charmer, aren’t you, Connie? How many of your ex-wives did you bury out there first?”
“Wanna find out? There’s plenty of room in that grave for the lot of you.”
“Might as well. Those girls and I all have something in common: we’ve all dealt with your bullshit.“
“Good, good. Plenty to talk about.”
“Hey, assholes,” McGlinn interjected, his outcry bouncing off the bare concrete walls of the parking garage. “Is this a crime scene or a teenaged sleepover? Cut the chitchat.”
Connie shot him a scowl. “We’re working on it.”
“Psssh. Go work the damn poles if this is the best you can manage.”
Connie didn’t budge. He wasn’t rattled. He seemed, all said, just about ready to let it go. Still knelt beside the body, returning his attention to it, he didn’t rise to the provocations, drowning them out with some other internal noise. (A cuckoo clock. A jack-in-the-box. Circus music. She had all kinds of theories.) He was so close. Teresa was almost proud.
Then Austin McGlinn, determined to tempt fate, resolved to tease the caged tiger, stuck his hand one inch too far between the bars.
“Hey,” he oozed, “Beauclerc family trade, am I right? Maybe your sister can give you some pointers.”
Teresa froze in place, willing stiff blood to her muscles. Too far. McGlinn had gone too far. He’d crossed an invisible line. A line that had always been there whether he knew it or not. Connie’s chest rumbled with the kind of groan that could only mean calamity. A cauldron boiling over and wildfire licking up between the trees. The last of his patience curling and blackening. Fists balled together. He burst to his feet, turned towards the beat cop.
Springing from her crouch, Teresa swung without waiting. Her knuckles smashed into Connie’s flank, driving upwards into his kidney. He stumbled forward from the blow, taking a single heavy step, stale air shoved from his lungs.
In the time he realized he’d been struck she’d placed the same hand—gentler then—to his shoulder. His face was contorted with fury. No more jokes. No more laughs. Just rage. She didn’t bother to look at the cops. They weren’t important. Weren’t the danger. She mouthed a single breathless word to him: don’t.
And then she let go. She didn’t wait for the reply; didn’t need it. Instead she turned her attention back to the body. Kneeling down to resume her investigation. Acting as if she hadn’t just assaulted him. Ignoring that they had almost ended up in another gunfight. Death had called for her. That was what intrigued her.
She pulled out a pair of nitrile gloves from inside her trenchcoat. Connie didn’t move. But she knew he was staring. Eyes searing into McGlinn. Hatred still pumping to fists which could hit like buckshot.
“I’m gonna go...... uh, terrorize the parking attendant or something,” he finally said.
“Shit, he even listens to the pants in the relationship? I should upgrade; put a ring on it; eh, Cole?” McGlinn quipped.
“Shut the fuck up, Oz,” his partner snarled.
Coterie updated thanks to some silly BBCode edits.
We finally get some old world old money class.
We finally get some old world old money class.
Austin McGlinn, badge number 3196, never could decide for long which of the two skiptracers he detested more.
Some days it was Conrad Olivier Beauclerc, a nose-picking, heel-wiping, titty-ogling cretin if ever he'd met one: five feet and eight inches of greasy scalp, hairy belly, and unwashed asshole. The kind of man who was in his line of work to kick doors and break thumbs, not to uphold any semblance of "law and order" in this town. The kind of man whose fistfight-swollen fingers grubbed everything they touched. And the body, the CCTV tapes, the witnesses—like a toddler sticking G.I. Joes in his mouth, Connie intended to grub them all.
As for all the other days, there was always his partner—García—a pile of shit stacked only a few inches shorter than Beauclerc. She ducked her way out of the pony car's passenger-side door and strode onto the scene with her usual aloofness, that infuriating kind of practiced indifference which said she thought herself the most mysterious, most dangerous person on the block, if not the whole of Vegas. That and the trench coat; the Clint Eastwood "intense, silent stare" thing she was always putting on; the scattergun "concealed" on her left leg (but who knew?—for how badly their pieces printed onto their coats, they must have wanted people to see them). And the sunglasses-at-night routine the two never quite let down...
Pricks.
García, circling around the rear bumper of the squad car, noticed its passenger, still curled up inside the cage, and seeming no more regretful than when McGlinn had tossed him in there just a few minutes past. García nudged Connie by the elbow, directed his attention over to the window. The loiterer smiled sheepishly and waved with both hands, shackled as they were, giving them a cheeky rattle; the bounty hunters, looking bemused, waved back. It just about figured, didn't it?—the three freaks all knew each other from somewhere. Crawled out of the same sewer, maybe.
Hands stashed in roomy outerwear pockets, collars popped, the two sidled past the boom gates, plodded down the access ramp. If they didn't notice McGlinn's soured expression, then they most assuredly noticed his stepping forward-and-aside to obstruct them at the yellow tape. Connie's smile, as false as his one gold tooth, glittered the color of twenty-year-old newspaper, spit-slick and tobacco-yellowed. "Good to see you, too, Oz," he said.
"Double-parked within thirty feet of a crosswalk and in front of a public driveway. And that shitty music is a noise complaint waiting to happen if ever I’ve heard one."
"Aw, gee, mister. Please, please don't tell my ma. She'll kill me for sure."
"And you know what, Beauclerc?—if I'm not in the mood for your jokes, then I'm sure as shit not in the damn mood for another tampering report."
"You're right. We should just skip the paperwork."
For every step Connie took to the right, McGlinn took one to the left; inverse, ditto.
"The fuck you doing here, anyway?"
The bounty hunter tilted to one side; looked past the crook of the cop's shoulder—at the body, barely cooled in the hour or two since its evisceration; straightened out, looked him dead in the eye again. "Your job, by the looks of it. Excuse us."
But every pace he took McGlinn countered. Every nudge he attempted, McGlinn shoved back. Connie's every slip, step, and sidle—foiled.
His head tilted; his lips popped open. "Can't help but notice you're still in our way."
"You can finger all the corpses you want, after the examiner's through with this one."
"I don't like sloppy seconds."
"I mean it. Maybe if it was your ass who had to explain to the chief why you ruined another crime scene, maybe if you had to fill out the reports, deal with the claims adjusters for hours—hours!—but no. No, you think you're riding out of here high and pretty like always, don't you?"
"...Yeah?"
"No. Fuck you. Not this time. This time you—"
Julian Price smiled when he peered out the squad car's passenger-side window; when he peered down at the officers on the crime scene, and observed with no small amusement that they had busied themselves bickering with the two interlopers. But he could not savor the diversion for long; not when seconds mattered.
First was the matter of his hands. Easy enough. Threading them between two bars of the cage, Julian threw himself to one side, hurled all his weight and all his leverage against the thinnest, weakest bones, their snaps and pops delighting him, off-key yet played in time, like a music of the body, a chord of the innards. That done, with only the faintest wince he squeezed the flopping, jellylike appendages; wriggled them, in their crushed, compact state, from between the ratchets of the handcuffs. With a quick rouse—a stirring, silent yet unignorable—he made short work of mending them anew, for he soon had need of them to set to work on the partition. For that, he put his purplish wrist to his mouth, and slit it open with a tooth. As the precious ichor dribbled from the wound, drop by drop, little polished rubies, he smeared them into the laminated metal, which began to steam, and smoke, and hiss.
One rivet at a time, one bar, one weld seam, the Malkavian had spewed from his noxious vein enough corrosive blood to free a section of the partition, whereupon he set it gently (almost affectionately) aside. Then, neck twisting, shoulders contorting, ribcage sprawling, he began to twist and slither himself through the squeeze of the resulting gap: over the center console and—plop—right into the driver's seat.
"—Is that clear enough for you? Let me know, knucklefuck. Just let me know that I’ve finally, finally gotten it through your thick, knucklefuck skull. You in there, Beauclerc? It finally break through to you that you’re not getting past the wire, or what?"
Though his hands sat glued to his hips, Connie's eyes rolled, they wandered; his head lolled side-aside as his attentions meandered the ceiling. Only his little chuckles and grins let McGlinn know that he was trying damn hard not to let this diatribe—these allegations—itch at him; only emboldening the cop, of course, to keep on digging. That is until something shifted. Something in the air. Seething, all the sudden, with intent. It began with the bounty hunter's weight shifting from one foot to the other; his hip cocking; one of his swollen, ruddy hands drifting toward the small of his back, where McGlinn knew him to keep his five-inch Bowie. But by the time that cauliflower-knuckled hand had found its purchase around the coffin handle, the cop had already muttered, "Nice try, smartass," and grabbed Beauclerc by the shoulder, and pressed the muzzle of his Glock 19 deep against the man's belly and pressed the man flush against the muzzle.
"Whoa!" McGlinn's partner guffawed, reaching for his own station-issued weapon, but Teresa García only shot him a glare, and clicked her tongue into a tut, and tapped her coat where it draped over her left leg.
For several long moments there was only the ambience of traffic U-turning at the blockade up on street level; of a desert wind billowing stale and tepid down the avenue; of fluorescent bulbs buzzing and wheezing their last. Let's not do anything stupid, McGlinn was beginning to say, c'mon Connie this ain't funny anymore, when the sound of steel dragged from leather rasped down his spine. Mottled and gray was the blade, the bone scales smooth and worn; but god how the whetted edge glittered like moonlight trapped in water.
McGlinn didn't know what stayed his finger; what kept it one click, just one sorry click, away from sending the hammer slamming down onto the firing pin into the primer into the powder straight into Beauclerc's guts all hot and tunneling. Beauclerc's friends-in-high-places—his inroads with the chief, the commission board, hell, maybe even the mayor himself, that assured he'd always walk out of shitstorms like this one with nary a scratch? That he had a gun to his stomach and he didn't care? Or the stories—the ones told in creepy whispers back at the precinct—the ones you had to know where to press your ear what to hear them—that he leapt from three-story windows and kept on rolling—like a rhino—that he'd take four, five slugs in a Code 36 and not go down?
The knife's point, curved like a toenail clipping and narrow as a fishbone, teased its way past McGlinn's breastbone, past his throat, past his ear. Connie wavered it menacingly. But after a second which felt like a year, the only thing he plunged the blade through was the yellow tape, which fluttered noiselessly to the grimy concrete floor.
As the two bounty hunters walked past the petrified McGlinn, as the knife's edge shhfk!—back into its scabbard, he released a breath which singed the insides of his lungs. He looked down at his hand, the one clasped white around the molded polymer grips of the Glock—shaking, he realized—and pawed the handgun clumsily back into its holster.
Some days it was Conrad Olivier Beauclerc, a nose-picking, heel-wiping, titty-ogling cretin if ever he'd met one: five feet and eight inches of greasy scalp, hairy belly, and unwashed asshole. The kind of man who was in his line of work to kick doors and break thumbs, not to uphold any semblance of "law and order" in this town. The kind of man whose fistfight-swollen fingers grubbed everything they touched. And the body, the CCTV tapes, the witnesses—like a toddler sticking G.I. Joes in his mouth, Connie intended to grub them all.
As for all the other days, there was always his partner—García—a pile of shit stacked only a few inches shorter than Beauclerc. She ducked her way out of the pony car's passenger-side door and strode onto the scene with her usual aloofness, that infuriating kind of practiced indifference which said she thought herself the most mysterious, most dangerous person on the block, if not the whole of Vegas. That and the trench coat; the Clint Eastwood "intense, silent stare" thing she was always putting on; the scattergun "concealed" on her left leg (but who knew?—for how badly their pieces printed onto their coats, they must have wanted people to see them). And the sunglasses-at-night routine the two never quite let down...
Pricks.
García, circling around the rear bumper of the squad car, noticed its passenger, still curled up inside the cage, and seeming no more regretful than when McGlinn had tossed him in there just a few minutes past. García nudged Connie by the elbow, directed his attention over to the window. The loiterer smiled sheepishly and waved with both hands, shackled as they were, giving them a cheeky rattle; the bounty hunters, looking bemused, waved back. It just about figured, didn't it?—the three freaks all knew each other from somewhere. Crawled out of the same sewer, maybe.
Hands stashed in roomy outerwear pockets, collars popped, the two sidled past the boom gates, plodded down the access ramp. If they didn't notice McGlinn's soured expression, then they most assuredly noticed his stepping forward-and-aside to obstruct them at the yellow tape. Connie's smile, as false as his one gold tooth, glittered the color of twenty-year-old newspaper, spit-slick and tobacco-yellowed. "Good to see you, too, Oz," he said.
"Double-parked within thirty feet of a crosswalk and in front of a public driveway. And that shitty music is a noise complaint waiting to happen if ever I’ve heard one."
"Aw, gee, mister. Please, please don't tell my ma. She'll kill me for sure."
"And you know what, Beauclerc?—if I'm not in the mood for your jokes, then I'm sure as shit not in the damn mood for another tampering report."
"You're right. We should just skip the paperwork."
For every step Connie took to the right, McGlinn took one to the left; inverse, ditto.
"The fuck you doing here, anyway?"
The bounty hunter tilted to one side; looked past the crook of the cop's shoulder—at the body, barely cooled in the hour or two since its evisceration; straightened out, looked him dead in the eye again. "Your job, by the looks of it. Excuse us."
But every pace he took McGlinn countered. Every nudge he attempted, McGlinn shoved back. Connie's every slip, step, and sidle—foiled.
His head tilted; his lips popped open. "Can't help but notice you're still in our way."
"You can finger all the corpses you want, after the examiner's through with this one."
"I don't like sloppy seconds."
"I mean it. Maybe if it was your ass who had to explain to the chief why you ruined another crime scene, maybe if you had to fill out the reports, deal with the claims adjusters for hours—hours!—but no. No, you think you're riding out of here high and pretty like always, don't you?"
"...Yeah?"
"No. Fuck you. Not this time. This time you—"
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Julian Price smiled when he peered out the squad car's passenger-side window; when he peered down at the officers on the crime scene, and observed with no small amusement that they had busied themselves bickering with the two interlopers. But he could not savor the diversion for long; not when seconds mattered.
First was the matter of his hands. Easy enough. Threading them between two bars of the cage, Julian threw himself to one side, hurled all his weight and all his leverage against the thinnest, weakest bones, their snaps and pops delighting him, off-key yet played in time, like a music of the body, a chord of the innards. That done, with only the faintest wince he squeezed the flopping, jellylike appendages; wriggled them, in their crushed, compact state, from between the ratchets of the handcuffs. With a quick rouse—a stirring, silent yet unignorable—he made short work of mending them anew, for he soon had need of them to set to work on the partition. For that, he put his purplish wrist to his mouth, and slit it open with a tooth. As the precious ichor dribbled from the wound, drop by drop, little polished rubies, he smeared them into the laminated metal, which began to steam, and smoke, and hiss.
One rivet at a time, one bar, one weld seam, the Malkavian had spewed from his noxious vein enough corrosive blood to free a section of the partition, whereupon he set it gently (almost affectionately) aside. Then, neck twisting, shoulders contorting, ribcage sprawling, he began to twist and slither himself through the squeeze of the resulting gap: over the center console and—plop—right into the driver's seat.
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"—Is that clear enough for you? Let me know, knucklefuck. Just let me know that I’ve finally, finally gotten it through your thick, knucklefuck skull. You in there, Beauclerc? It finally break through to you that you’re not getting past the wire, or what?"
Though his hands sat glued to his hips, Connie's eyes rolled, they wandered; his head lolled side-aside as his attentions meandered the ceiling. Only his little chuckles and grins let McGlinn know that he was trying damn hard not to let this diatribe—these allegations—itch at him; only emboldening the cop, of course, to keep on digging. That is until something shifted. Something in the air. Seething, all the sudden, with intent. It began with the bounty hunter's weight shifting from one foot to the other; his hip cocking; one of his swollen, ruddy hands drifting toward the small of his back, where McGlinn knew him to keep his five-inch Bowie. But by the time that cauliflower-knuckled hand had found its purchase around the coffin handle, the cop had already muttered, "Nice try, smartass," and grabbed Beauclerc by the shoulder, and pressed the muzzle of his Glock 19 deep against the man's belly and pressed the man flush against the muzzle.
"Whoa!" McGlinn's partner guffawed, reaching for his own station-issued weapon, but Teresa García only shot him a glare, and clicked her tongue into a tut, and tapped her coat where it draped over her left leg.
For several long moments there was only the ambience of traffic U-turning at the blockade up on street level; of a desert wind billowing stale and tepid down the avenue; of fluorescent bulbs buzzing and wheezing their last. Let's not do anything stupid, McGlinn was beginning to say, c'mon Connie this ain't funny anymore, when the sound of steel dragged from leather rasped down his spine. Mottled and gray was the blade, the bone scales smooth and worn; but god how the whetted edge glittered like moonlight trapped in water.
McGlinn didn't know what stayed his finger; what kept it one click, just one sorry click, away from sending the hammer slamming down onto the firing pin into the primer into the powder straight into Beauclerc's guts all hot and tunneling. Beauclerc's friends-in-high-places—his inroads with the chief, the commission board, hell, maybe even the mayor himself, that assured he'd always walk out of shitstorms like this one with nary a scratch? That he had a gun to his stomach and he didn't care? Or the stories—the ones told in creepy whispers back at the precinct—the ones you had to know where to press your ear what to hear them—that he leapt from three-story windows and kept on rolling—like a rhino—that he'd take four, five slugs in a Code 36 and not go down?
The knife's point, curved like a toenail clipping and narrow as a fishbone, teased its way past McGlinn's breastbone, past his throat, past his ear. Connie wavered it menacingly. But after a second which felt like a year, the only thing he plunged the blade through was the yellow tape, which fluttered noiselessly to the grimy concrete floor.
As the two bounty hunters walked past the petrified McGlinn, as the knife's edge shhfk!—back into its scabbard, he released a breath which singed the insides of his lungs. He looked down at his hand, the one clasped white around the molded polymer grips of the Glock—shaking, he realized—and pawed the handgun clumsily back into its holster.
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