Redemption Song (Daniel Faust #2)(22)

“On three,” I whispered, “we run for my car, and we get out of here. You stop for nothing, understand?”

“Who are those men? Why are they calling for—”

“You stop for nothing,” I hissed.

I counted down and we ran, keeping our heads low and our feet light. I dove into my car, fumbling with my keys in the ignition, and he jumped into the passenger seat.

“Stay down!” I snapped and gunned the engine. I heard a shout as someone poked his head out, and suddenly gunmen boiled out of the church like fire ants from a kicked nest. I whipped the wheel around, tires squealing and then thudding as I jumped the curb. A single gunshot crackled, going wide, punching through a stop sign on the corner as we blew past.

Alvarez fumbled with an old flip phone, his fingers shaking too badly to dial. I slapped it out of his hands.

“No cops.”

“They shot at us!” he said. “We have to call the police!”

“No cops. They can’t help. These guys are…they’re connected.”

The priest stared at me, horrified. “The Mafia?”

“Something like that. Listen, Father, I know I’m asking a lot of you right now, but if you want to get out of this alive, you have to trust me. Believe me when I say that right now, I’m the only friend you’ve got.”

He chewed that over while I drove. We’d left them in the dust two miles back, but I threw in a few false turns and stuck to the back streets just to be safe.

“What now?” he said, his voice softer.

Good question. I needed to stash him someplace safe while I went hunting for answers. The Tiger’s Garden was the safest place I knew, but you couldn’t get in unless you were a magician. Besides, he was already having a bad day, and it was only going to get worse from here. I didn’t want to break his brain any more than I absolutely had to.

“We’re going to my place,” I said.

“They knew you! They knew your name!”

“Yeah,” I said, “but they don’t know where I live. I rent under a fake name, and I pay in cash.”

He stared at me. “You’re not really a private investigator, are you?”

“I’m a problem solver. You’re apparently a problem for a lot of people, and I aim to find out why.”

I lived in a second floor walk-up just off Bermuda Road. It was a motel in the sixties. Then somebody got the bright idea to convert it into apartment space. Most of my furniture was still vintage Holiday Inn. I pulled in and parked next to a painted concrete cactus.

“Mi casa es su casa, Padre,” I said, clicking on the cheap ceramic desk lamp next to the curtained window and waving him inside. “Make yourself comfortable. The television only gets four channels, but they’re good ones, and there’s some leftover pizza in the mini-fridge.”

“It’s, ah, charming,” he said, taking a dubious look around. “But you can’t expect me to just sit here—”

“That’s exactly what I expect. I’m going to go talk to some people who might lend us a hand. I’m not sure who we can trust right now, though, so you need to stay off the street and out of sight while I sort things out. Keep the curtains closed and don’t answer the door for anybody. No matter what, got it?”

He nodded, uncertain but willing to go along with it for now. “Why are you helping me? Not that I’m ungrateful, but why?”

“Because,” I said, turning to leave, “somebody’s playing us both like puppets. I don’t like it. I take exception to it. Besides, it’s bad for my reputation. Sit tight. I’ll be back in a couple of hours.”

? ? ?

Vegas was a mecca for high-class strip clubs. The Gentlemen’s Bet wasn’t one of them. It was a dive in a stretch of town where the tourists didn’t go, with a red carpet made of spray-painted AstroTurf and a scarlet neon sign of a naked woman perched on a pair of rolling dice. The place was jumping tonight. I found a spot in the parking lot between a couple of semi-tractors and went inside.

The smell of stale beer and the blare of nineties metal washed over me as I pushed through the swinging doors. A bouncer gave me the nod. He knew my face. A gang of twentysomethings were raising a storm around the mirrored stage and hollering their appreciation for a girl who could have been their little sister. I pegged them for a bachelor party, looking for fun on the wrong side of the tracks.

I’d barely gotten five steps through the door when a slender arm snaked around mine, clinging tight. Another arm mirrored it, leaving me pinned between a pair of blond knockouts in little black cocktail dresses. Any other man would have been thrilled by his luck. I knew better.

“Danny!” Justine cooed. “If we knew you were coming, we would have baked a cake.”

“Baking,” Juliette said, “is another thing we’re really, really good at. You can’t bake at all, can you Danny?”

Justine shook her head. “He doesn’t have a kitchen. He lives in a hovel, you know. It’s really quite sad. I bet he can cook, though…”

The twins—not coincidentally named after a pair of books by the Marquis de Sade—were Nicky Agnelli’s bodyguards and personal murder squad. The three of them were a happy twisted little family. They’d be a bundle of trouble even if they weren’t half demon-blooded.