The Living End (Daniel Faust #3)(7)
He looked down at the police reports and swallowed hard.
“Yes. Yes, I can. I’ll get a motion to dismiss underway, start questioning the police procedures, make a few phone calls to a gentleman I know in Vegas Metro’s evidence lockup. And if you could just go ahead and kill Meadow Brand, then that’ll be the frosting on the freedom cupcake. Don’t worry, your Uncle Perkins has got everything under control.”
“Now that’s what I like to hear,” Caitlin said with a feline smile.
“But seriously,” Perkins said. “Friends. Listen. This task force is not going away, not easily. The hammer of the federal government rises slowly, but it falls with a mighty clamor. You either need to get some kind of guarantee of silence out of Nicky Agnelli—the kind that’ll sew his lips shut for life—or start checking into countries that don’t have extradition treaties.”
Three
Out in the hallway, standing on cigarette-burned carpet that hadn’t been cleaned since the Carter administration, Jennifer took Caitlin aside.
“I just want you to know I’m grateful,” she said. “I mean, you coulda just gotten a lawyer for Dan. You didn’t have to help me out any.”
“You’re a friend of Daniel’s. That makes you a friend of mine. I like to do nice things for my friends. And assuming Perkins lives up to his usual standards and gets all of these charges dismissed…”
Caitlin stepped into Jennifer’s personal space. Jennifer moved backward on instinct, thumping her shoulders against the peeling plaster on the wall. Standing a few feet away, I almost didn’t hear the next part. Caitlin leaned in and put her lips close to Jennifer’s ear.
“…that means, when I ask, you’ll do something nice for me in return. Isn’t that right?”
Jennifer nodded very quickly. Caitlin smiled and patted her shoulder, then walked over to lock my arm in hers.
“What’s the rest of your day like?” she said. “More apartment hunting?”
“Have to. Bentley and Corman’s couch is murder on my back, and I think I’m putting a dent in their love life. Thin walls.”
I liked my old place, a rehabbed motel room in the shadow of the Vegas strip. Really felt like home—until a psycho half-demon pitched a Molotov cocktail through my window. Now I was hunting for a new home to hang my hat, and my list of requirements was hard to meet. Ideally, I needed quiet neighbors, a landlord who took rent payments in cash and wasn’t picky about background checks, and hardwood floors for chalking down the occasional ritual circle.
Caitlin frowned. “Not without a proper lunch, you aren’t. It’s after three, and you haven’t eaten all day. I’m thinking Korean.”
“I’ll catch up with y’all later,” Jennifer said. “I’ve got a couple of twitchy people on my payroll, thanks to this Nicky nonsense, and they need a firm talkin’-to before they go from twitchy to jumpy.”
At least my crimes—the ones I committed on Nicky’s payroll, that is—were all past tense. Jennifer was still a golden stone in his greedy little pyramid. Agent Black had done a bang-up job of spreading word of the investigation all over town, hoping to scare the roaches at the bottom into giving up the big man at the top.
We parted ways in the parking lot, and I followed Caitlin to her car. She drove a white Audi Quattro with two-tone leather seats. Her business card said she was a regional manager for the Southern Tropics Import/Export Company. That was a nice way of saying she was the troubleshooter, enforcer, and all-around ass-kicker for the Court of Jade Tears, the faction of hell that laid claim to our particular patch of sand.
When she managed something, it stayed managed.
I got in on the passenger side and closed my eyes. The city baked in its own dust under the afternoon sun. It was the kind of heat that weighed on you, drying your sweat and caking it to your skin faster than your pores could flush it out. Caitlin cranked the air-conditioning up to full blast while an Art of Noise album thumped on the sound system.
“I talked to Emma last night,” she said, shooting a glance to her left before pulling the Audi out into traffic.
“Yeah? How’s she holding up?”
“As well as can be expected. She’s burying herself in work to get through it.”
The last time I’d seen Emma was the night she snapped her husband’s neck. Ben was a traitor, selling Caitlin’s court out to a renegade demon with messianic dreams. The demon in question hadn’t fared any better. If anyone went looking for his body, they’d find it buried under twenty tons of rock and a freshly laid parking lot.
It was a pretty rough night for everyone involved.
“How’s Melanie?” I said.
Caitlin shook her head. “Coping. She’s seventeen. There’s no way to make this easier for her, and with Emma practically living out at the Silk Ranch…I’ll make a point of checking in on her more often.”
“I’ll go with you,” I said.
The monolith of the Enclave Resort and Casino rose up in the distance, a black tower looming over the tail of the Vegas Strip like a cat ready to pounce. Construction was moving faster by the day. Last time I’d been inside, it was just a steel skeleton. Tossing Lauren’s chief architect off the top floor hadn’t put a dent in her stride. We knew just enough to know the Enclave was more than it seemed. That, and it’d be a really good idea to put a bullet in Lauren’s head before she cut the red ribbon on opening night.