The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(18)
The ladders don’t go anywhere, either.
I rumbled the Barracuda up to the corner and shifted into park. Laika came over and leaned in the open passenger-side window, shifting her body to draw my gaze toward her cleavage and away from the tracks on her arm. I picked a third option and looked her in the eye.
“Moving up in the world,” she said, laying the Russian accent on thick. She dropped her cigarette to the street and snuffed it under a stiletto heel. “Where’d you get the car?”
“Favor from a friend. Speaking of, you hear anything weird on the street lately? People dropping off the radar more than usual?”
She flicked an uneasy glance back over her shoulder. “You’re asking me about weird stuff? You’re the magic man, everybody knows that. But yeah. Two of Half-Cap’s girls? They haven’t been around. I talked to Mindy, you know, the one with the teddy bear and the pigtails. She says they both split on the same night. Left their clothes behind and even a little bankroll they’d stashed that Half-Cap didn’t know about.”
Which means they didn’t leave town voluntarily, I thought. I tugged my phone out of my pocket and tapped my way to Pixie’s photos.
“How about these guys? They might be squatting around here. Any of ’em look familiar?”
While Laika took my phone and gave the screen a close look, I caught movement in the driver’s-side mirror. A sweaty slab of meat with fresh razor nicks decorating his bald scalp stormed toward the car like a bull on meth. He slapped his knuckles against my door, hard enough to make the metal jolt.
“Hey!” he snapped. “You buying, or you leaving?”
I fished a couple of tens out of my wallet and held them curled between my index and middle fingers, holding them up so he could see before I passed them over to Laika. She made the bills disappear.
“Buying,” I said. “Now piss off.”
He leaned in, squinting at me. “The f*ck you just say to me?”
I slouched back. “You pay twenty percent in rent to Nicky Agnelli to let your girls work this stroll. Two years ago, you were paying twenty-five to Carl DuQueene. That’s a five percent improvement in profits.”
His brow furrowed.
“You remember how they found Carl DuQueene’s body?” I said casually.
Now he nodded, real slow. His left eye twitched, just a little. Like he was remembering a nightmare.
“Well,” I said, “I’m the reason why. So I want you to look me in the eye and say, ‘Thank you, sir, for the five percent.’ And don’t ever touch my f*cking car again.”
He backed away, looking at me like he’d just met the devil. I smiled, nice and easy, until he’d scurried off back to his rathole.
Laika handed my phone back.
“Sorry,” she said. “I got nothing to tell you. No familiar faces.”
“Thanks for trying. Keep the twenty. Hey, how about the other way around? Any strangers hanging out, people who don’t fit in?”
“We’re all strangers out here,” she said, then held up an acrylic fingernail painted in eggshell blue. “Wait a second. There was a guy last week, going up and down the stroll. Said he was with some mission, wanted to get us off the streets, offered us shelter if we needed it. All that save-the-world stuff. I know he was talking to Half-Cap’s girls till he chased the guy off. He gave me his card, but I tossed that thing away. Sorry.”
“It’s something,” I said. “Maybe ask around, see if any of the other girls remember anything. Give me a call if they do.”
I left her on the street corner. In the rearview mirror I saw a battered old Nissan pull up to the curb in my wake, another eager customer. The wheels of commerce never stopped rolling.
? ? ?
You wouldn’t know Winter was a nightclub if it wasn’t for the line snaking down the block and the faint thudding of bass echoing behind the slate black doors. There was no advertising or big marquee, just a tiny brass plate and a small sloping arrow in blue neon fixed to the bricks outside.
Freshly scrubbed and shaved, wearing a navy blazer to cut the evening chill, I skipped the line and walked right up to the bouncers out front. One waved me over, lifted the blue velvet rope, and ushered me inside.
I was on The List. Given that Winter was owned and operated by agents of hell—specifically, Prince Sitri and his Court of Jade Tears—I wasn’t sure if that was an achievement to be proud of.
Fractal snowflakes whirled and exploded in showers of ivory and blue on LED wall screens, bouncing to the rhythm from the pulsing sound system. The packed dance floor writhed and shook in the shadow of a glass DJ booth dangling overhead from titanium cables. I stuck to the edge of the crowd and skirted around to a side passage lit in icy neon.
Past a few twists and turns, the music quickly fading to a muffled heartbeat, the hall ended in a solid metal door. A man in a black leather apron barred the way, his features shrouded in a gas mask with tinted lenses. A rusty machete hung from his belt. As I approached, he leaned over and tapped a code into a wall panel. The door clicked and swung open for me.
There were three levels to Winter, that I knew of. Anyone could get into the club up top—well, anyone who could pass muster with the doormen. The second floor, the honeycomb labyrinth with nested rooms done up in black leather and gold neon, was given to more intimate pursuits than wild dancing and fifteen-dollar cocktails. Pursuits largely involving things like handcuffs and the bite of a whip. Access to the “hive” was strictly by invitation only. Not everyone down here was working for Sitri’s court—most of them didn’t even know who really ran the place—but it was where you met the more interesting regulars.