The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(65)

“I don’t know who this Verisimilitude guy is,” he deadpanned, “but he’s gonna pay for anything he breaks. I’m planning on flipping that entire development once the housing market picks up again.”

“Even with bodies in the backyard?”

He shrugged. “It ain’t my name on the deed.”

Bentley and Corman met us in Eldorado. They pulled up behind the Wardriver in Bentley’s sleek silver Caddy while I was busy dragging wooden mannequins into the backyard of Nicky’s kill-house. They were heavier than they looked. I still hadn’t figured out how Meadow Brand’s animation trick worked, but I could have used a little of that magic.

I laid the mannequins out on the grass. We had made a couple of stops on the way over. One was to pick up my gun. I leveled the heavy barrel of the Taurus Judge, taking careful aim.

“Shooting!” I shouted over my shoulder. “Stay out of the yard for a second.”

Two gunshots crackled through the sky, scattering a flight of birds from the kill-house roof and sending them winging over the deserted development.

“Wow,” Pixie said, walking past me with a cardboard box of electronic odds and ends in her arms, heading inside with Bentley and Corman in tow. “Good shot, G.I. Joe. Those dolls won’t mess with you again.”

Now I had to worry about splinters along with my aching back. I’d shot each puppet square in the chest, and now they looked like trees that had met the business end of a lumberjack’s ax. I lugged them through the kitchen door one by one.

“We brought everything you asked for,” Bentley said. He laid out a pair of battered tackle boxes on the kitchen counter next to Pixie’s overflowing carton of odds and ends. “It’s exciting to be doing a little acting again!”

“It’s not exactly Shakespeare,” I said.

Corman waved a hand and poked his head in the refrigerator. “Eh, close enough. He means it’s exciting to be pulling a grift again.”

“He knows what I meant, Cormie,” Bentley said.

Corman shut the fridge in disgust. “Seriously, Nicky doesn’t even keep snacks in the house? And no beer? He really is half demon.”

Caitlin waved to me from the living room. She took my arm and led me up a short hallway into a guest bedroom at the end. It was unfurnished, like the rest of the house, but sunlight streamed through a big picture window and painted the beige carpet in squares of gold.

“What do you think?” she said. “Outside access, the hall’s visible from the living room, and there’s a small closet off to the side.”

I nodded, looking around, counting the paces from the door to the closet.

“I think,” I said, “you’d make one hell of a magician’s assistant.”

“Bugger that,” she said, taking my arm again. “You can wear the sequins. I want to wear the top hat.”

It pays to have a mixed bag of tricks. When they’re expecting a gun, whip out a little sorcery. When they’re expecting the supernatural, think like Harry Houdini instead. We had a few surprises in store for Alton Roth. That was, if he took the bait. Back in the kitchen, Pixie handed me the key to the van.

“Console’s all set up. A monkey could operate it,” she said. Then she looked over to Caitlin. “He might need your help.”

We idled the Wardriver’s engine to get the air-conditioning running. The computers were liquid cooled, but we weren’t, and the van’s shell didn’t take long to turn into a sauna on a hot afternoon. Caitlin and I sat side by side in front of the bank of controls, double-checked everything one last time, and put on twin headsets.

A dial tone reverberated in my ears. I lowered the volume a little, running my fingertip over a slider on one side of the headset, and made the call.

“Senator Roth’s office,” said the nasal voice on the other end of the line. “How may I direct your call?”

“I need to speak to the senator, please,” I said.

“I’m sorry, sir, but the senator is in meetings all day. I’d be happy to leave a message for him, or you could schedule an appointment—”

“He’ll want to take this call. Tell him the word ‘Calypso.’ He’ll understand.”

We waited patiently. I imagined one flunky flagging down another flunky to pass a hurried message to a third, running through the halls of government power like relay racers. After four minutes of vaguely inspirational, vaguely patriotic hold music, Roth picked up on the other end. His voice was a hushed murmur just on the edge of panic.

“Calypso? Is that you?”

“Nope,” I said, leaning back in my chair. “But I’ll give you three guesses.”

He got it in one try. “Faust. Lauren warned me about you.”

“Of course she did. She wanted to make sure you wouldn’t trust me, when the time came to take action. Truth is, we have a mutual friend. Calypso hired me to protect you.”

“I…I don’t know what that is, or who that is,” he said hurriedly. “Or who you are. This is a crank call and I’m hanging up.”

“Before you do, check your email,” I said. Caitlin rattled off a quick message on the Wardriver’s console, sending him the scan of his infernal contract. On the other end of the line, I could hear Roth’s mouse clicking.