Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (16 page)

“I need to ask you some things, Clive,” he said. “About the old days. About what happened outside of Hanoi. You want to do that out here?”

“As opposed to where?” Clive glanced around them, his voice wary.

“As opposed to inside your sweltering, shit-smelling excuse for a house,” Black said, leaning back on the porch swing and throwing a muscular arm over the back of it, making the leather jacket creak as it opened more to expose his chest. “Where the fuck did you think I meant, Clive? I came up on a motorcycle. You think I was going to take you to a hotel and beat the shit out of you?”

“Out here is good,” Clive said, still squinting at those gold eyes. He motioned up and down Black’s long body. “Are you going to explain to me how it is you still look like that?”

“Clean living.”

Clive scowled. “Seriously. What the fuck––”

Black cut him off, his voice an open warning. “I don’t have time for this bullshit, Clive. Are you going to talk to me? Or not?”

“About what?”

“You know about what,” Black growled. “Why the fuck else would I come all the way out here, asking about Hanoi? I want to know about Archangel.”

Clive stiffened.

His gaze narrowed more at the man in front of him––a man who still looked like he couldn’t be older than thirty-five. He had to have been in his late twenties like the rest of them back in those days, but other than filling out some, he didn’t look any different than he had then. His face was as unlined as it had ever been.

Back then, he’d looked older than the rest of them.

Now he looked thirty years younger. Maybe forty.

Thinking about the other man’s question, but more than that, the implications behind it, he shook his head, staring down at the scattered dandelion seeds dotting his yard. He watched a kid pedal a dirt bike down the street, yelling something incoherent at another kid over his shoulder as the kid pedaled after him.

The idea of having that kind of energy in weather like this made Clive tired.

Black’s question made him tired too.

“You know I can’t talk about that,” he muttered finally, drinking the last swallow off the bottom of the green bottle. “You know better, Black.”

“I know you owe me, you drunk piece of shit. And you’d better talk to me, or I might call in the favor some other way you’d like a lot less.”

Clive turned, staring at those gold eyes, feeling his muscles clench in spite of the differences between them. Even back when Clive had been in his prime, Black had been a dangerous fucker. The guy didn’t look any less dangerous now, but Clive glared at him anyway.

“What’s it to you?” Clive said.

Thinking about his own question, he snorted, raising the bottle back to his lips before he remembered that he’d already drained it. He jerked himself out of the lawn chair, pausing while he held onto the door jamb and shook out his knee to get it to work properly.

“Don’t tell me they’re knocking on your door again?” he grunted, glancing at Black.

“In a manner of speaking,” Black said, looking up at him.

“Meaning what?”

“They might have a rogue. Going after civilians. Off the leash.”

Clive thought about that, nodding. “That thing in L.A.?”

Black didn’t answer, but Clive found himself nodding again anyway.

“Yeah,” he said, exhaling. “I wondered.”

“Why?” Black said, sharper.

Clive sighed, then made the bird symbol with his hand, flapping the wings.

Shrugging, Black took a long drink from his own beer. “Could be a coincidence,” he said, his voice subdued.

Clive nodded. “Sure. Could be.”

“But you don’t think it is.”

Clive stared at him. “Obviously, neither do you.”

Frowning, Black only took another drink.

Without another word, Clive retreated into the house, where it felt about ten degrees hotter than it did outside, even with his shitty air conditioner running its heart out. He really needed to get that thing replaced. Limping his way into the kitchen, he yanked on the antique chrome door handle of his refrigerator, hanging onto the thing once it was open and leaning his weight into the cold air as he peered inside. Grabbing another beer off a metal shelf that didn’t hold anything else, he started to straighten when he felt the presence and turned, frowning when he saw Black standing behind him, his arms folded.

“Get out of my fucking house.”

“I think we’d better talk in here, Clive,” he said.

Clive felt his anger worsening. “Ain’t nothing to talk about, you prick. You want to beat the fuck out of me for that shit in ’72, you go right ahead. But don’t talk about ‘favors’ with me... not with this. There ain’t nothing to say about Archangel that I can say.”

“You’re going to talk to me, Clive. I’m not asking.”

Clive shook his head, incredulously that time. “You’re twenty-five years too late. What the fuck would I know now? Do I look like I’ve been holding a gun lately?”

Black looked him over, giving an indifferent shrug. “Give me a name. Someone who’d still be in the game.”

“I don’t
know
any names. Not any more. Jesus, Black. Look at me!”

“What about Frank?” Black countered. “Would he know?”

“What’s this interest of yours about anyway? You a cop now?”

“P.I.”

“So? What’s a P.I. got to do with a murder case? You working for one of the families?”

Black didn’t answer, just stared at him with those weird, cat-like eyes.

Clive felt his chest tighten. Taking a swig of the beer, he leaned against the still-open fridge door and shook his head. “What the fuck you want to go messing with Archangel for? You said no to them back then. You really think they’re going to be friendly?”

“I just want to talk to them.”

Clive shook his head again. “People like that don’t ‘talk.’ Not without a price. You want to talk to them about some rogue, you go through the channels... like anyone else.”

Black frowned, folding his thick arms across his chest. The muscles there stretched the leather tight, even with the front of the jacket hanging open.

“This guy might be operating in San Francisco now,” Black said after a pause.

“So?”

“So... I live in San Francisco.”

“So fucking what? A hooker who blew me once lives there too,” Clive sneered. “Maybe you should drop by and bring her a cake.” Shaking his head incredulously, he took another pull of the beer. “Hell. I’m suppose to get worked up about that?” He gave Black a not-very-friendly smile. “You afraid for your life, Black? If so, you
have
changed. Vampire or no.”

Black’s long jaw clenched, changing the shape of his face. After a moment where he seemed to be biting back words, or maybe debating them, his voice grew deeper, and gruffer.

“...My wife lives in San Francisco, too.” Looking up, he added, “She knew the last vic.”

Clive flinched. He looked Black up and down, not bothering to hide his incredulity.

“You
have a wife?” he said. “You’re fucking with me.”

“I don’t want to talk about that,” Black growled. “I only said it so you’d know I’m fucking
serious
about this, Clive. The bastard’s too close to me and mine. I saw the last body. It looked like something we might have seen on the trail near Hanoi. It looked like Archangel... down to the wings carved in the vic’s back, and that weird alchemical bullshit with the ladders. I want to know if this guy was with them. Hell, I want to know if he’s
still
with them... if they’re giving him a pass for some reason, or if he’s off the reservation totally. Or on the job.”

“Again, how the fuck would I know any of that?” Clive said, raising his voice. “Jesus H. I’ve been out of that game for almost thirty years, Black. Even if I wasn’t, they didn’t exactly hand out rosters of actives. We didn’t have class reunions, neither...”

“Give me a name, Clive. One name.”

“I don’t have one. Not anymore.”

Black didn’t so much as blink. “Then tell me where to look for one.”

Clive cursed under his breath, twisting the cap off the new beer and taking a long drink. He used the back of his hand to wipe sweat off his own brow, then glared at Black.

“We’re square after this?” he said, his voice wary.

Black nodded. “More or less.”

“Not ‘more or less.’ Square, Black. You don’t come by here again.”

Black leveled those gold eyes on him. “No promises, Clive. And don’t fucking try to blackmail me or I’ll get the information out of you in ways you really won’t like very much. I won’t impinge on your hospitality any more than I can help it... but no fucking promises if I find out you’re involved in anything that brings me out here again.”

“What the fuck is that supposed to mean?”

“You know exactly what it means. Now stop stalling and tell me something I can use.”

Clive frowned, staring up at the other man, who continued to look down at him like he wouldn’t mind dismantling him piece by piece and hanging parts of him from the ceiling fans in the different rooms.

“There’s always been something spooky about you, Black,” he muttered.

Those leonine eyes shone indifference. “So don’t piss me off.”

Still muttering, Clive stomped out of the kitchen and back into the living room. Walking over to a roll-top desk he’d picked up at one garage sale or another, a big hulking thing that he’d only held onto because the damned thing was too heavy to move out to the curb, especially with his bad knee, he jerked open drawers until he found what he was looking for. Yanking out the address book with a water-warped fake-leather cover, he tossed it down on the desk still wrapped in dried up rubber bands. Bits of different-colored paper stuck out all over the sides, covered in his handwriting along with the handwriting of other people.

Black walked over to him, silent, just standing there with those massive arms still folded in front of his chest. He was sweating though, and when Clive glanced up next, the other man was wiping perspiration off his forehead with a hand again. His beer had disappeared, Clive noticed, probably still out on the porch by that swing.

“Why the fuck are you living like this, Clive?” Black muttered, glancing around the room. Dust floated in the streams of sunlight coming through holes in the paper shades. “You got a few trunks of gold buried in holes in the backyard, or what? Those fuckers must have paid you a small fortune, all the years you put in...”

Clive scowled, not wanting to think about the money either.

He especially didn’t want to think about where it had gone. Three ex-wives, five children who hated his guts. Boarding schools. Surgery for his knee. Three times.

Hookers. Blow. Too much time at the track.

Now he had the house his mother left him... and the Rolling Rock. He had the dandelions and the crappy roll-top desk and the antique refrigerator and an air conditioner that only worked when it was too cold outside for him to need it.

If it was good enough for his parents, it was damned well good enough for him.

Black let out a low snort, almost like he heard him, shaking his head incredulously. When Clive glanced up, the taller man frowned, refolding his arms across that broad, boxer’s chest.

Clive scowled back, but didn’t ask.

Yanking on the rubber bands wrapped around the address book, he cursed when the dried rubber split and powdered in his fingers. He pulled them off except where they’d been welded to the cover by the heat, then cracked the address book itself, ignoring the small shower of papers that came out when he first opened it. Rifling through the smudged lines of his own handwriting, he finally stopped when he got to the right page.

Squinting to read it without his glasses, he ripped the lined page out with his fingers in a single tear once he realized he’d gotten it right.

“Here,” he said, handing it to Black. “Now get the fuck out.”

Black squinted down at the handwriting in the dim light of the room.

Seeming to think about what was written there, he looked at Clive, and for the barest instant, Black’s eyes seemed to slide out of focus. He looked almost like he was reading that smudged page still, but his eyes focused sightlessly on Clive’s face instead.