The Grimrose Path (Trickster, #2)(30)
Next I pointed the car toward Fifth Street. It was where the homeless had congregated in Vegas once they had been kicked out of the parks. Rows and rows of them lining the sidewalks, some even with tents. There they lived and there they sometimes died. I’d seen it in the news the past few weeks. Three men, bored with all the drinking, gambling, and strippers that Vegas had to offer, decided that beating up people down on their luck would be the next-best alternative. Monopoly . . . Grand Theft Auto—that wasn’t enough for these guys. And the homeless were easy targets. Some were hiding from things they’d done, things worse than beatings, but most were only people who’d lost their jobs and homes or those who were mentally ill. Then there were those that just didn’t understand life. Or maybe more accurately, life didn’t understand them. That was a hard road to walk and these people didn’t need homicidal asses making things any worse for them.
The police made an effort. They cruised Fifth Street, but bullies in baseball hats and sweats weren’t easy to pick out from the homeless who surrounded them, and there was plenty of crime elsewhere in Vegas to keep them busy. Even when one of the lost was killed, beaten to death by three baseball bats. The police came and went more frequently then. I watched from one of the stores in a strip mall that lined the street, but that lasted only about a week, and it was business as usual . . . except to the men and women who huddled on the sidewalk in the night. Waiting—for the next time, because, as they knew, there would be a next time.
They were right. There was going to be a next time, hopefully tonight. We tricksters had a sort of knack for choosing the right moment. A physicist had once tried to explain it to me . . . about how time wasn’t linear, that it was happening all at once, from beginning to end, but there was no beginning or end. There was only now, a billion nows, and that maybe tricksters could sense those other nows. That at some level we knew even if we couldn’t see, and that was our knack for showing up at just the right moment.
It was an interesting theory, especially as he told it to me as I dangled him over the edge of a volcano. It had been intriguing enough that I let him off with a warning about staying away from na?ve virgins in the future instead of dropping him in lava like an ancient one himself.
Now though, the subject was still baseball and baseball bats. But this time, it was going to be just like real baseball. All-American fun—hot dogs, apple pie with a big scoop of vanilla ice cream, blue skies, and hitting one out of the park. The lost would only be lost for now, not lost forever.
I parked at the mortuary not far down from the strip mall where I’d done my surveillance. I filled in my boys on what we were there for and why. “You said you trick the unwary. You make people smarter,” Zeke said. “How’s this make them smarter?”
“No, I said I trick the unwary to make them wiser and I punish the ones who are beyond learning. Killing the helpless and the lost for entertainment is beyond education.” It was dark, almost eight, and the mortuary’s parking lot deserted; the living who took care of the dead were gone for the night. “School was over for these particular *s before it ever began. No pizza days. No skipping class. No homecoming. No games. Well . . .” I opened the trunk and ran one finger along the polished wood inside. “A game, but one they won’t walk away from.”
“How long has it been since you just tricked, didn’t punish?” Griffin asked at my side. Always the ex-demon with the Boy Scout questions, he was good as gold and better by far than any angel. I’d never figure out where I’d gone wrong with him.
“Every day, sweetie. Every time I serve a watered-down drink or sell a tourist a map to an undiscovered gold mine.” I tugged at his earlobe and started loading him up with baseball bats. Which was true, but tricksters were also at times judge, jury, and executioner. Or in this particular case . . . a facilitator. Sometimes justice doesn’t feel right unless you snatch it with your own hand. Vigilante was only a bad word in my dictionary if you didn’t have your information straight. Then it might be your turn to be served up on the bloody platter of the wicked or the failed fact-checker. And there were no unemployment benefits on that platter, so it paid to make sure you were right in the first place.
When I finished with Griffin, I turned Zeke into my second pack mule. He’d given up on the grumbling . . . for the moment. He knew I took my job as seriously as he did his and sharing it with him to take his mind off his current unwilling vacation was me doing what I could for him. I was giving him his daily dose of violence . . . all in the name of what was just and true, of course, but like kiddies needed cartoon-shaped vitamins, Zeke needed some ass to kick.
Kick it. Shoot it. Blow it up. He wasn’t that particular. It was easy to please Zeke.
With the guys carrying the baseball bats, we walked down the sidewalk, cars on the street passing us. Not a one was a cop car and not a one slowed down at the sight of what was being carried. Someone had once said that all that was necessary for evil to triumph is for wise men to do nothing. These days wise men did nothing a hundred times faster than they had a few hundred years ago, but they were still as blind and useless as they’d ever been. That was why a trickster, an ex-angel, and an ex-demon were going to step up to the plate.
As we moved among the homeless, skirting carts, piles of clothes, and cardboard beds, I saw the sheen of cautious and confused eyes gleaming under the street-lights. I took a baseball bat from Griffin’s pile and parked it on my shoulder. “So? Any ex-baseball players here? Anyone want to grab a bat and show three murdering sons of bitches how to really hit one out of the park?”