Diabolical (11 page)

“If they didn't before, they sure do now.”

Hatcher stood, scanning the distance. Joggers, cyclists, a few skateboarders. No guy in gray sweats.

He glanced down at the display again. The call that just ended had lasted for over forty minutes. The prior three calls were from the same number. Given the time intervals, it seemed Bartlett had the decency not to let anyone listen, including himself, while Hatcher and Vivian had been taking the edge off their pent-up libidos.

“I don't understand,” Vivian said. “You think the phone has a . . . what, a bug? That they bugged it?”

“Didn't need to. All they had to do was program it to be on silent mode and to automatically answer. It basically turned itself on whenever they called it.”

“Why would they do that?”

“Because it's just like you said. People like Bartlett don't like leaving things to chance. He wasn't about to take anything on faith. They would want to know if I was in, was
really
in. Or if I was intending to head over their way and start popping caps. They'd want to know if you and I were planning something. If you had found out where they were holding my nephew. They want to know everything. Bartlett understands better than most—information is power.”

Hatcher kept studying the Strand as he spoke, watching for some sign of the man. “I'll bet that guy is still close.”

“Jake.”

Hatcher moved out from behind the table. “Probably just around that corner. If I—”

“Jake.”

“Relax, Viv. I just need to get some more infor—”

“Jake.”
Hatcher felt Vivian's grip on his arm. “Remember how you said you wouldn't know where to begin?”

She raised a hand and pointed into the distance. “I don't think that's going to be a problem.”

She looked past him, moving her eyes from his in the direction of her finger, peering out over the Pacific at the brilliant morning sky. Hatcher turned to look over his shoulder.

A small plane was flying above the water, maybe a thousand feet in the air. A banner trailed behind it, carrying a message:

Hatcher watched the words fly by to the south until the angle became too acute and they started to shrink in the distance. Assuming he'd read it correctly, he realized he'd been wrong about one thing.

HATCHER COASTED TO A STOP IN FRONT OF THE SMALL HOUSE and shifted the car into park. After staring at the porch for a few moments, he double-checked the number. This was it, all right. Not exactly what he expected. But when the Carnates were involved, he couldn't think of much that was.

The address was in south L.A., what used to be called south central, not far from Florence and Normandie. He didn't know southern Cal that well yet, but even the Jihadis he'd mixed it up with in Afghanistan probably could have popped off about this zip code's rep. It was known for having a lot of gangs, a lot of crack, and a lot of crime. Cheap liquor stores and colorful graffiti. Race riots and drive-bys.

But what Hatcher saw when he looked around was a neighborhood of modest tract homes, mostly Spanish-styled stucco, a smattering of squat, hardy palm trees lining the street in front of them. The landscaping was spotty, the majority of lawns a patchwork of browns and greens and footworn dirt. The assortment of purple and red and yellow paint jobs were probably a bit loud, too, and the cars parked along the curbs tended to be either really flashy or really beat up; but notwithstanding a few of the houses he'd passed with plywood over the windows, sporting spray-painted initials and monikers, the area didn't strike him as a ghetto. People owned most of these lots, lived in these homes. They cared for them and cared about them. People like that had something to lose, and people with something to lose usually left everyone else alone.

He reminded himself that unlike them, he didn't really have anything to lose. It wasn't even his car.

The sidewalks were mostly empty and there was very little traffic. Except for an elderly black man a few houses down watering a sprawl of chrysanthemums, nobody seemed to notice Hatcher as he walked up to the house and rang the doorbell.

It was one of the nicer homes, and actually had a fairly uniform lawn. The walls were a powder-puff blue and the wooden porch was painted a gunmetal shade of gray to match the roof tiles. A good half-minute had passed before a black kid glaring out from beneath a do-rag answered. Short, maybe five foot two, but thickly muscled, wearing a tight shirt with long sleeves that was ribbed like thermal underwear. He stood behind a dense screen door with a
fuck-do-you-want?
sneer on his face.

“I'm Hatcher.”

The sneer flexed. “Yeah? So?”

“I called. Was given this address.”

“Zat a fact? By who?”

It was a good question, one Hatcher wished he could answer. The Carnates hadn't exactly had a Yellow Pages ad, but he'd been able to find one entry for PI Escort Services on a web page dedicated to adult entertainment in the L.A. area.
PI.
That was how these half-human, half-demon women had referred to Pleasure Incarnate back in Manhattan, back when they were leading Hatcher around by the nose and setting him up for Valentine's big finale. Unlike the other posts he'd seen, it didn't promise GFE or PSE or erotic massages. It simply read,
We're No Angels
.

“By the person I spoke to,” Hatcher said.

“The person you's spoke to. Know what I think? I think you just another white boy come down to our hood looking to score some rock. Prob'ly knocking on random doors, thinking there's got to be some brother on this street dealing, right?”

Hatcher tried to get a read on the guy, figure out if the vibe he was giving off was for real, but the screen was too dark. The one thing he was relatively certain of was that do-rag wasn't in the business of offering anything like a Girlfriend Experience or a Porn Star Experience. Then again, sometimes it was hard to tell.

“Guess I have the wrong place.”

“Damn right you do, racist motherfucker.”

Hatcher smiled faintly and turned to leave. He'd only taken three steps when he heard the rack of a charging handle, freezing him in mid-stride.

The voice from the doorway said, “Know what this is, bitch?”

Careful not to move his head, Hatcher swept his eyes from one side to the other, scanning the street. His field of vision was relatively unimpeded, but it didn't offer much consolation. The guy who'd been watering his flowers wasn't there anymore. Nobody else seemed to be around, either. Everything was quiet.

A bird chirped.

“You hear me, punk-ass white boy?”

“It's an Ingram MAC-10. I'm guessing a nine-by-nineteen Luger, because a sawed-off runt like you couldn't handle the kick of a forty-five.”

“Aww, idn't that just the cutest. Whiteboy's got a mouth on him.”

Hatcher heard a jumble of footsteps, then the squeal of the screen door swinging open, people piling into the yard. He could make out at least three more weapons being cocked. He was pretty sure they were all pistols. At least four guys, at least four firearms. Not great odds.

He was thinking about those odds, and the odds of going to a wrong address where the person who answers the door just happens to brandish an automatic weapon and just happens to have several armed friends with him, when one of them said, “Taze his ghost ass,” and he felt a twin set of stings in his back at almost the exact moment his entire body began to vibrate like a funny bone and he dropped face-first onto the concrete walk.

 

 

THEY LATCHED HIS WRISTS WITH A NYLON ZIP TIE, PUT A SACK over his head, and threw him in the backseat. He was pretty sure it was Vivian's rental, since it smelled the same and they'd made a point of ripping the keys out of his pockets while he was on the ground. The barbs in his back didn't seem to be going anywhere so he angled his torso, letting his arm and shoulder take the weight against the stiff upholstery. He had half a mind to pipe up and tell them keeping the Taser engaged was a waste. If the drive was going to be any sort of distance the only thing he was interested in was getting some sleep.

But he knew that wasn't going to happen.

Two guys sat in back with him, one on each side. The one to his right shoved his head down, the one on his left nudged him with something Hatcher realized was the Taser. A reminder it was still hooked to his back, he supposed. He could hear a guy bounce into the front passenger seat, felt the car rock and heard the driver's side front door shut. No one said anything as the car started up and pulled away.

They were good, Hatcher noted. All that jawing at the door aside, these guys were disciplined. Didn't risk a physical altercation, didn't discharge any firearms to draw attention, wasted no time in taking him out with an electronic control device. Quick, clean, quiet, effective. Even now they weren't giving anything up. A few snickers, an occasional whisper. Some likely fun at his expense with a gesture here and there. But they were maintaining an impressive degree of operational security. Hatcher had encountered more than a few military units that could learn a thing or two from their example.

The car drove backstreets at first, judging by the lack of noise and the sense he had they were barely reaching a top speed of thirty. They stopped for a moment and Hatcher realized they were at an intersection. Seconds later his weight pulled as they accelerated into a turn and he could tell they were on a main thoroughfare. Sounds of traffic. Lots of starting and stopping. They spent about fifteen minutes that way before he felt the car pick up speed and merge onto a freeway.

They arrived more than a half hour later. How much more, he wasn't quite sure. All Hatcher could surmise was that wherever they were, it wasn't too far from the highway. The driver pulled to an abrupt stop. The car bounced as the person behind the wheel slammed the transmission into park. Doors opened all around him.

The ground was flat, hard. A path of some kind, strewn with stones and pebbles. Definitely an upward slope to it. His only source of direction was the shoves he received to keep moving. After a while the ground began to feel more like hard-packed dirt. The feel of the sun on his arms was intermittent, and each gust of breeze rustled like a maraca. He could hear tweets and chirps.

They walked for a quarter mile or so, maybe longer. The sun on his arms disappeared, as did the glow of light through the cloth, and he sensed a sudden shift in the surrounding acoustics. They had entered an enclosure of some kind. A kick to the back of his leg and a hard press on his shoulder forced him to his knees. He clenched his jaw as they ripped the twin probes out by the wiring. Once the burning subsided, he could feel the blood seeping into his shirt and running down his back.

The crunch of footfalls echoed tightly around him. Receding sounds, pulling away until they were gone. A hollow silence settled in.

One minute stretched into two, then three.

He reached up with his bound hands and ripped the sack off. There was a sudden brightness immediately in front of him, a concentration of light, maybe more than one, surrounded by darkness. His eyes took a second to adjust. As they did, he saw he was in a cave.

“I was wondering how long you were going to sit there like that.”

A woman's voice. The source of it took its time emerging into focus, blink by blink. Platinum blonde. She had buttery skin just this side of pale, swaths of it generously visible with the exception of a few small areas covered by a white, shimmering dress that hung in folds like a satin toga. A brilliant aura of sunlight framed her figure, radiating from the largest of three cave openings maybe ten yards behind her. Every detail of her seemed constructed for stimulating the libido, from her hair to her teeth to the sheen of her toenails peeking out from a backstrapped pair of high heels.

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other, her hips trading angles back and forth. It was almost painful to watch.

He'd forgotten just how beautiful Carnates were in person. But with that memory came the reminder that perhaps
in person
wasn't quite the way to put it. They were, after all, the hybrid spawn of demons. If he were to believe what they'd told him.

She lifted a cigarette to her lips, lighted it with a silver Zippo. The flame threw its glow onto her face, igniting her eyes like a pair of candles. This wasn't the first time they'd met. He searched his memory, came up with a name.

“Hello, Soliya.”

“Hello, Hatcher.”

“I hope you didn't come all the way out here just because of me. I told you I'd only end up breaking your heart.”

She tilted her head and let out a column of smoke. “Always have something funny to say, don't you, Hatcher?”

No, he thought. Not always. “We could have just met over coffee. This really wasn't necessary. “

The woman smiled. “So you say.”

She took a step toward him and blew a stream of smoke that drifted over his head. As she did, two forms moved from her sides in opposite directions. With the lighting what it was, they had been mere shapes prior to that, hunched low, obscured by shadow. They lunged toward the cavern walls, then bounded up the rock, taking positions on outcroppings to each side of her, several feet above her head. They let out a series of screeches and hisses in his direction.

“Your pet sitter cancel at the last minute?” he asked.

“You expect me to come alone? A girl can't be too careful.”