The Kill Society (Sandman Slim)(42)

Daja reaches out for him.

“I’m always here. You know that,” she says.

“I do,” says the Magistrate.

He turns to me.

“And you, Mr. Pitts. I’ll admit it now to your face: I have had grave doubts about you, despite what Mimir says. I see that my suspicions were wrong.”

I raise my glass to him.

“Don’t feel bad. It was grave doubts all around.”

He folds his arms and leans on the table.

Smiling, he says, “You have had your doubts about me.”

“Remember the other night in the desert when we played your secrets game?”

“Of course.”

“Let’s play it again.”

“If you wish. Who should go first?”

I look at Daja. She doesn’t like my tone or the direction of the conversation.

“What secrets is he talking about?” she says.

“I believe we are about to find out,” the Magistrate says.

I take a shot of Aqua Regia and point the glass at him.

“I’ll go first. Letting yourself get dragged off like that and trussed up like Thanksgiving dinner. I’m not sure I buy it.”

He leans forward a bit more.

“Watch your mouth,” says Daja.

I’ll admit it. Between the laudanum and the Aqua Regia, my head is swimming just enough that even if she is the dog-pack alpha, I don’t care.

“No. It is all right,” says the Magistrate. “Go on, Mr. Pitts.”

“Mimir told you something out there and you ignored it. What did she say? ‘Don’t mess with these guys? Drive on?’”

“You think I engineered this catastrophe?”

“No. But I think getting caught makes you look weak and you’re not the kind of guy who does that without a reason.”

Daja starts to get up. The Aqua Regia already has her swaying.

“Get out,” she says.

“No, Daja. Please. Sit down. We are just playing a game,” says the Magistrate.

He looks at me.

“Are you finished? May I tell you my secret?”

“Sure. Tell me I’m wrong,” I say.

“I cannot,” he says. “That is my secret.”

Daja’s eye narrow.

“Magistrate . . . ?”

He turns to her.

“I am not saying that I allowed myself to be captured. What I am saying is that I ignored Mimir for a reason. Would you like to know what she told me?”

I pour more Aqua Regia.

“It’s your party.”

“Then here is my secret. Before our encounter, Mimir said to me ‘When it happens, you cannot trust him.’ I did not know what the it was that she referred to. However, what is more important is that I did not have to ask who she was talking about.”

For a second I think about killing both of them and running for the hills, but the Magistrate would have thought of that. A guy like him probably has this moment figured a hundred different ways. So, I sit there and enjoy my drink.

“I don’t understand,” says Daja. “Pitts helped. I was there. I don’t how we would have gotten you out any other way.”

“No. You do not. Because Mr. Pitts intervened. But what if there was a separate agenda beyond saving me? It was his idea to burn the cars and charge the armored vehicles, yes?”

“Yes.”

Now I lean forward. “Yeah. It was and I seem to remember Daja and me hauling your ass out of a burning building.”

He leans back.

“But would the building have burned if it were not for your suggestion to burn the cars?”

Daja looks at me.

“You’re saying he tried to kill you?”

“I am saying that perhaps his real goal was to damage the havoc so that it could not continue.”

He looks at me hard.

“Was that your real motivation, Mr. Pitts? To destroy us and our holy mission?”

Daja gets up and pulls her knife.

She says, “Answer him, Pitts.”

I take out a Malediction and light it.

“No. First, you go fuck yourself. Second, if Charlie Manson here is as crazy as I think he is, nothing I say is going to matter, so you two better make your move because we’re not all walking out of here.”

Daja goes for me, but she’s more wasted than she knows. I can take her down before her knife gets close to nicking my pretty face. It’s the Magistrate that worries me. He’s not counting on her to do his dirty work. She’s just a distraction. With the wound in my side, I’m not as fast or as strong as I need to be right now. There’s nothing to do but play this out.

I throw myself out of the way as Daja’s blade comes down. It hits hard, but all she kills is my chair. I kick her legs, knocking her over backward. By the time she scrambles up, I’m behind her with the Colt in my hand. The Magistrate hasn’t moved.

I wrench Daja’s arm up behind her and put the pistol to her head. Whatever stitches were holding me together are ripped to shit. Blood flows down my side and onto my boots. The Magistrate glances down at where I’m messing up his carpet.

“Father?” says Daja.

He holds up a hand.

“It is all right, my dear. Mr. Pitts will be killing no one,” he says.