Black Dog (20 page)

 

CHAPTER
21

L
eo and I traded off driving through the day and beyond sunset, following the red streaks in the sky. We were on the downswing of the mountains that led us through Sparks and into the city center of Reno. In another few minutes we'd see the neon of the casinos spiking off the desert floor like enormous plants that only flowered at night.

Clint had mostly stayed quiet, as had I. If I'd wanted to be chatty I could roll out the anecdotes about remember when Reno was just a faded boom town, barely a bump in the horizon. It was flat and brown and the Truckee River put off a distinctive aroma in whichever direction the wind was blowing.

I could talk about going to places like the Bank Club and Harrah's, sitting at one of the bars and watching ­people come and go. I could put on a dress and pumps and tease my hair higher than any of them, but there was still a wall of glass between myself and humanity. Only the bad ones seemed able to see through to me, while most ­people's eyes glided right past.

I could tell Leo about Sal Peretti, the man who'd taught me most everything I knew about dealing with men like him. Sal was probably as bad as they came, Leo with better manners and a nicer suit. He was handsome according to the criteria back then, which ran more to a thick head of hair and a fancy watch than symmetrical features or quality dentistry.

Sal wasn't ugly or missing teeth, though. He was an ex-­boxer with a nose that broke well, making his face crooked but not ruined. The slightly jarred bones of his face made you want to keep looking, not avoid it. He had warm, honest brown eyes and a radiant, perfect smile that could melt the panties right off most any woman who crossed his path.

It was total bullshit. Sal had gone from boxer to fight promoter to crooked fight promoter who bullied black and Mexican fighters into taking a dive against whatever mediocre prospect his friends were betting on, with sidelines in loan-sharking and whoring. His management style ran to torched buildings and broken bones, and he'd never met a friend he wouldn't put a bullet in to make another dollar. A lot of ­people would have liked to see Sal cold on a slab, but he was too mean to die.

He drank and he screamed, but he didn't hit me. He would talk to me when he was feeling small and maudlin, and explain in excruciating detail how he did his business.

I asked him how he knew I wouldn't roll on him the minute I got pinched by the local cops, most of whom were either so old they remembered when gambling was illegal or guys who'd just gotten back from the war in Europe and were looking to crack skulls or make a few bucks turning the other cheek.

Sal told me he knew when to trust ­people by their eyes. ­People who looked at you straight on didn't have any fear. If they weren't afraid of him, Sal reasoned, they sure as hell weren't going to be afraid of the cops.

Sal's mom got sick, and suddenly his small-­time grifts weren't enough to pay her bills and keep him in twenty-­dollar shirts, a Cadillac, and steak dinners every night of the week. The money he was supposed to kick back up the chain stopped getting kicked anywhere except his habits. Two cars caught him on the road outside Sparks and punched enough holes in the Caddy that you could have turned it on its end and called it a cheese grater. Sal's friend's bosses, the men from the outfit in Detroit or Chicago—­I never did find out which—­knew what to do with desert-­rat thieves.

In the end Sal's most valuable lesson was the one I got when I saw him lying quietly on the white table in the morgue, a sheet covering him to his neck. One of the bullets had gone in under his cheekbone and exited behind his ear. The hole was puckered and blackened from the heat of the bullet. No matter how smart you were and how little fear you had, there was always somebody out there waiting to put you down if you stepped out of line.

The next time Gary called on me, I didn't try to avoid him. I pawned all the stuff Sal had given me, bought a bus ticket to Omaha, and went back to work.

I didn't stop seeing Sal's face for a long time when I shut my eyes.

“I think I should be the one to talk to your father,” I told Leo. He gripped the wheel until his knuckles were white.

“I think you're absolutely fucking nuts to suggest that.”

I fell back on something Sal had told me. “You and he have a past. We don't have guys, so we need him off balance. If he sees just me, he won't know what's going on.”

“Sergei tends to shoot at things he doesn't understand,” Leo said. “Fair warning.”

We parked in one of the garages at Circus Circus and left Clint with the car in case we needed to bolt quickly. Leo and I cut through the casinos, his eyes sweeping every face we passed. I kept a watch behind us, but nobody seemed to be taking any notice of me, which was normal. About every third woman and a few men gave Leo a smile or a wink, which also seemed pretty normal. Even after close to seventy years, the tang of stale smoke and the clank of the machines in the main casino were exactly the same as I remembered from my nights with Sal. All of those old casinos were gone, of course. The monoliths you could see from the highway were built on their corpses.

Leo stopped me with a hand on my arm and pointed toward a bathroom when we reached the lobby. “Come with me a second,” he said. I raised one eyebrow.

“Is this some cheap line, Karpov?”

“My lines are never cheap, and I never need them,” he said. “I just want to ask you something, in case I don't get the chance again.”

The bathroom was quiet, dimly lit, almost like they wanted ­people getting up to no good in there. Leo and I stepped into the handicapped stall and he turned the lock. “I'm trusting you not to fuck this up,” he said. He took his pocketknife from his jeans and flipped the blade open. “You trust me?”

Of course I shouldn't trust him. Not to put a blade against my skin. I'd learned a long time ago that trusting anyone with your life just made you that much more likely to lose it.

I nodded, and Leo took my arm and laid the blade against it. “Don't get freaked out.”

I held still, against every instinct and bit of experience I'd collected in my time as a hound. Much like when I'd seen Veronica smile down at Leo in her bed, it was like everything I relied on to keep me going, help me survive, just switched off and something I didn't recognize took control.

Leo turned the blade so the point rested against my skin. “I don't know if this will work on you. I've never tried it on Hellspawn before.”

I barely felt it when the blade parted my skin and a thick line of dark blood welled. Leo let it dribble into his cupped palm. “Take your shirt off.”

I raised an eyebrow. “This is not how I imagined this going.”

Leo's mouth lifted on one side. “So you have imagined it.”

I pulled off my jacket and overshirt and stood there in just my bra, feeling like I really was naked in the dim light. All of my scars and bruises showed up in sharp relief, and I tried not to cross my arms over my torso. I must look like Frankenstein's monster to a guy who was probably used to high-­end Soviet Bloc hookers. Or at the very least, women who didn't look like they'd been cage fighting.

Leo didn't say anything or even look at my body. He dipped his fingers in my blood, then traced a quick mark on my breastbone over my heart. Warmth radiated from it, like the last vestiges of a sunburn, and I watched it fade until my skin was plain and pale once again.

“It's not foolproof, but it should keep your ass out of the line of fire if Sergei tries anything with blood conjuring. Bullets and blades, you're on your own.”

“I've never had a warlock try to help me,” I muttered. “Usually they just sling conjuring when they're running for their lives.”

“As I no doubt will if I piss you off,” Leo said. “You sure you want to do this? You look wrecked.”

I tried not to take it personally. I wasn't pretty, because I wasn't human, and it didn't matter if I looked like a movie actress or a street corner bag lady. Leo didn't think of me in those terms. “I'm fine,” I said. “Let's get this over with so we can both hopefully get to the next sunrise.”

“I'll be watching,” Leo said.

I stepped out into the night by myself. It was chilly—­Reno in October wasn't exactly a desert paradise—­but that didn't stop a parade of scantily clad women from stumbling along the sidewalk, or a trio of guys with ugly shirts open to their navels from checking them out.

I turned right and walked up the promenade, under the neon arch, the one all the tourists ran into the street to take pictures of, proclaiming that Reno was
the biggest little city in the world.
The light changed at the intersection, and as I stopped in a crowd of early drunks stumbling back to their hotels and late partiers just heading out, someone gripped my elbow.

“Don't turn your head,” a young voice instructed. “Walk forward.” He pushed me into the street as the stoplight went from green to yellow. A cab swerved and laid on its horn. I slid my eyes up to the guy's profile. He was stocky and lumpy, head shaved close like a professional fighter. Once he was satisfied I wasn't being tailed, he let go of my arm and pointed up the block. “Mr. Karpov is waiting.”

I saw the short figure smoking under the marquee of the Eldorado, the same intense gaze as Leo watching me over the burning end of his cigarette. I stopped next to him, putting my back to the dingy cement wall under the marquee. Above us, neon triangles of red and pink and gold flashed, the sparkling letters of the casino signs lighting and blinking, always leaving Sergei's face in shadow.

“You cost me a ­couple of good men,” he said at last. Even though the street was loud, cars and ­people and music combining into a roar of white noise, I heard him perfectly.

“I don't like being shot at,” I said, shrugging. Sergei flicked his butt into the street and glared at me.

“You should have let me take my useless son. Where is he? I don't deal with women or dogs.”

“You're gonna deal with both if you want to keep sucking air,” I said. Sal would have already bounced this guy's head off the brick, but I made myself act calm.

Sergei chuckled. “Little puppy, I live in a mansion. State-­of-­the-­art security. I have a man with me at all times with a Heckler and Koch machine gun in his hands. I sleep with a six-­inch blade in my hand. Tell me how exactly you are a threat to me.”

“You came and met me on the street, for starters,” I said. I took one step closer to him, got in his personal space to let him know I wasn't afraid. “Your boy didn't search me. I could have a blade of my own. I could cut your femoral artery and walk away. You'd be dead in thirty seconds, right here on this sidewalk.”

Sergei laughed harder. It turned into a wet cough, and he dabbed at his lips with a handkerchief. “There is a rifle trained on you right now. If you move any closer you will get a bullet between your eyes. I pay for the best—­ex-­FSB snipers and soldiers.”

I took a respectful step back. I didn't need to get a shot between the eyes before I'd even made my pitch. “That doesn't mean jack shit to Lilith.”

Sergei cocked his head. “Who is this?”

“You know who she is,” I said. “That Scythe you stole? Belonged to her reaper. She already made a promise to me to deal with you.”

Sergei spread his hands. “So where is she? Why am I not speaking to her?”

“Because if she was this close to you she'd have already ripped your jaw off,” I said. “I didn't kill Gary just to get another Hellspawn boss. You give me the Scythe and I'll get rid of her. What you do with it after that is none of my business.”

Sergei sighed. “You're funny, puppy. I should just turn the Scythe over to you? Maybe I already sold it to the highest bidder.”

“You're a small-­timer who had to leave the East Coast,” I said flatly. “I'm guessing you pissed somebody in Brighton Beach off good. You got the Scythe to put yourself on top,” I continued. “I'm guessing you have it on you, because you know the kinds of things after it aren't flustered by guards and wall safes.” I held out my hand. “Give it to me and both of our problems go away. You can dress up like Marlon Brando and act out
The Godfather
for all I care. I want Lilith dead, and if you had any brains you would too. I'm guessing you don't, though. Leo seems like he's the one who can actually think things through.”

His lip drew back and I stood very still. He'd either kill me or agree. There was nothing more to say.

“So I give you my Scythe—­and what will you do for me?” He stepped in, smiling at me. His teeth were straight but brown, stained from decades of cigarettes and strong Russian tea. “I'm not about bestiality, so you better have something to offer me beside your whore's body.”

“I can't imagine why your son has a problem with you,” I said. “I told you on the phone—­if you help me, I'll help you. Hellhounds are useful. More useful than pissing off a demon, that's for sure.”

“You have no reaper,” Sergei sneered. “No power, and neither does my useless bastard son. If he did, I would be dead, not dealing with my son's woman.”

“I'm not your son's anything,” I said. “I'm trying to avoid a fight, Sergei. I'm going to get the Scythe from you. You haven't been able to kill me yet and you're not going to. How many hellhounds have you put down?”

He grunted. My heart was thudding. Sergei scared me, of course. Violent, unpredictable humans were frightening, and if a Hellspawn like me didn't admit that, then she was lying. But that didn't mean I'd show it.

“You know how many warlocks just like you I've delivered to my reaper?” I said. “So many I've lost count, Sergei. If I put my mind to it, you'll be dead and I'll still get the Scythe. I'm doing this so Leo doesn't have to spend his life looking over his shoulder.”