The Killing Floor Blues (Daniel Faust #5)(13)

“What’s his story?”

Paul followed my gaze. “Oh, the Prof? Guy’s harmless. Totally nutty, lives in his own little world, but good psychiatric drugs just don’t fit in RDA’s budget.”

“The Prof?”

“Short for professor, I think. Not sure what he’s in for, but he’s been here longer than anybody can remember.” Paul paused, frowning. It was the same frown he’d made when I showed him the dates on my paperwork.

“What?”

“I’m…certain I was here when they brought him in,” Paul said slowly, brow furrowed. “Could swear I remember Brisco pulling his jacket and checking him out. But I know he was here before me…forget it. Never mind, just ignore the poor guy. He’s crazy.”

Maybe so, I thought. Then again, the way this day’s been going so far, I’m not too sure about my sanity either.

I needed to keep an eye on the Prof.

“Heads up, three o’clock.” Paul lowered his voice. “Ray-Ray’s coming.”

Ray-Ray was the bullet-headed con who had led me to Brisco when I first arrived. He nodded his head over one broad shoulder, back toward the picnic benches by the hive wall.

“The man needs to see you.”

Brisco sat flanked by his hangers-on. And Simms. There was another spot at the table, wide open just for me, but I didn’t sit down. Until I knew which way the wind was blowing, I wanted to stay mobile.

“I’ve been told,” Brisco said, his gaze swinging between me and Simms, “there was a problem on the tier earlier.”

Simms didn’t make eye contact with him. I did.

“No problem,” I said. “I think we understand each other now.”

“Is that right?” He looked at Simms. “Do you understand each other now, Simms?”

Simms shrugged and stared down at the table. Eloquent.

“Settle it up,” Brisco told him.

Simms set a plastic bag on the table and shoved it my way. A couple of Hershey bars and a bag of potato chips nestled inside.

“It’s fine,” I said. “I don’t need it.”

“Faust,” Brisco said. “When things are finished in here, they’ve gotta be finished, you understand? Lingering resentments, insults that don’t scab over—these are the things that can get a man killed.”

“I’m over it.”

“We don’t know that. And Simms is trying to make amends.” Brisco gestured at the bag. “So settle it up, and make us all feel better.”

I took the bag.

“Thanks,” I told Simms. “We’re cool.”

He muttered something that sounded like a thank-you and gave Brisco a sheepish side-eye. I noticed a fresh bruise on his chin that I couldn’t remember giving him.

“My boy Zap says the warden tried to get you to rat,” Brisco said. “He says you didn’t give an inch of ground.”

I glanced around the table. Quiet faces, hard eyes, but the blanket hostility I’d first felt was ebbing away. Now I was more of a curiosity, a new dog at the pound. Maybe friendly, maybe the kind that might bite.

“What happened was between us,” I said. “Simple as that.”

Two of the guys in Brisco’s entourage had my attention, as discreetly as I could manage. They were twitchier than junkies gone two days without a fix. I got the feeling they had something to say and didn’t want an audience when they said it. So I walked away from the table and gave them plenty of lead if they felt like following me.

Sure enough, I turned around at the edge of the fence and there they were. Hovering ten feet back, locked in a silent argument. One wore the tattoo of a skeletal eagle on his meaty bicep, its black claws extended as it swooped in for the kill.

I knew that insignia. Blood Eagles. One-percenter outlaw bikers.

And I owed their boss a whole lot of money.





7.




“You’re Daniel Faust,” one of the bikers said, like he wasn’t so sure.

“That’s what they tell me.”

“Jaysus, man,” the other said in a voice tinged with an Irish brogue, letting out a gasp of relief, “we thought you’d never get here. Did Winslow get you inside?”

Of all the greetings I’d expected from the Blood Eagles—a vicious stomping being first and last on the list—that wasn’t one of them.

“To tell you the truth, I’m still working out how I got here.”

“He told us you guys had a deal. I mean, the stories about you are true, right? You handle the…the weird stuff?”

The “weird stuff” being underworld code for, well, the weird stuff. In other words, my average Tuesday. It all came back to me as I remembered my last sit-down with Winslow. I’d been backed into a corner, going up against a fanatic half-demon cult called the Redemption Choir. I needed wheels and a gun. Winslow sold me both, at one hell of an inflated price, but at the time I wasn’t in a position to argue.

He’d asked, then, if I thought I was “going inside.” This was long before the Chicago situation, but I’d been facing a shaky firearms charge and Harmony Black’s all-star cop coalition was dogging me all over Vegas.

“I’ve got a buddy inside right now,” he’d told me. “Friend of the MC. Needs a little help. Your kind of help.”