Dirty Magic (11 page)

“But you don’t think it’s him?” Morales asked.

“Not likely,” I admitted. “Volos is an alchemist, sure—a talented one. But I can’t wrap my mind around a motive for him. He’s already got money and power. Why screw up his sweet position as Babylon’s golden boy with a dirty potion?”

“Just because we can’t think of a motive doesn’t mean one doesn’t exist,” Morales countered.

I nodded. “Sure.”

“We shouldn’t rule anyone out at this point,” Gardner said. “But I’m inclined to agree that it’s too soon to focus our lens too tightly on Volos.”

Morales nodded, but I could see his detective instincts filing away that conversation for later use. He turned to Shadi. “What about the blueprints of the Arteries?”

I raised my brows to Gardner—a silent request to be brought up to speed.

“Since Harkins was trying so hard to get there, we thought he’d probably already been in the tunnels. Maybe someone saw something.”

I snorted. “No offense, sir, but even if someone saw him questioning the tunnel rats it wouldn’t help much. Between them all, they don’t have ten brain cells left to rub together.”

“Still,” she said, “it’s an angle I intend to pursue.”

I nodded and shrugged. “Of course.”

Shadi sucked at her teeth. “Gettin’ the runaround down at the department of records.”

“Who you talking to down there?” I asked.

She pulled out her notepad and flipped through a few pages. “Guy by the name of Stewart.”

“Ah,” I said. “You need to go through his assistant instead. Her name’s Nancy and she’s a sweetheart if you use your polite words.”

“Thanks,” she grunted. She turned to Gardner. “On that note, I’m heading back to the hall of records before I go back for more interviews.” She snatched a few ampoules off Mez’s workbench. “You mind if I take a few of these protection shots?”

Mez shot her a look. “What happened to the doses I gave you last week?”

“It’s a dangerous world out there.”

“Hmm.”

With that Shadi pocketed the vials. As she walked away, she said, “Thanks for the tip, Prospero.”

Once she was gone, Gardner turned toward Morales. “All right, that leaves you two,” she said to us. “Any idea where to start tracking down Bane’s involvement?”

I did an inner high five with myself for having the forethought to talk to Little Man. “A bar called the Green Faerie on Exposition. I have intel that indicates a dealer might be dispensing Gray Wolf from there.”

Morales crossed his arms and shot me a dubious look. “Where’d you get this intel?”

I shrugged. “I got a source.” I was willing to share intel, but I was too protective of my CIs to hand LM’s name over. If they wanted to use my sources, they needed to keep me around.

“How reliable is this source?” Gardner asked.

“Reliable enough to bring it up to you.”

“Morales, you have any leads?” she asked.

His jaw clenched. “No, sir.” A chill filled the space between him and me. Guess he didn’t like the new girl showing him up.

Gardner’s eyes narrowed as she considered her options. “All right. You two check it out. Let me know what you come up with.”

“Probably nothing,” Morales said under his breath. To me, he turned and snapped, “Well?”

I smiled sweetly. “After you.”

O
n the dark side of Exposition Boulevard, a discreet green door sat in a red brick wall. Over that, a small, faded sign depicted a faerie with green wings. The Green Faerie—a whimsical name for an establishment that catered to some of the most dangerous magical criminals in all of Babylon.

The club used to be an old speakeasy dating back to the dark decade in the twenties when the US government tried to outlaw alcohol during Prohibition. Little had Uncle Sam known that magic would pose a far greater threat to the moral fabric of America than alcohol ever could. Unfortunately it took another four decades for that lesson to hit home and by then it was too late to close Pandora’s box.

You didn’t need a password or secret handshake to enter the club these days, but it was probably a good idea to have a gun or other weapon easily accessible.

As it stood, Morales and I weren’t planning on entering the club, since they’d smell the bacon on us the minute we crossed the threshold. Instead, our goal was to watch the perimeter for any of the usual suspects or signs of deals.

“Gardner seems like a real ballbuster.” My tone was conversational instead of accusatory. We’d been sitting in the car for more than an hour without much conversation and I was getting antsy.

Morales lowered his sunglasses, performed a leisurely once-over of my person, and smiled. “Takes one to know one, right, Prospero?”

“Suppose so.” I shrugged. “It’s a common enough act for most female cops.”

He pushed his glasses back up on his nose before answering. “Gardner’s not acting. I haven’t verified this, mind you, but I’d bet money she’s hiding an impressive pair of stones in those panty hose.”

I grimaced at the mental image this conjured. “What’s her story?”

“All you need to know about Gardner is she’s good, real good. Fair unless you cross her and she has a long memory. So don’t fuck up.” With that he seemed to dismiss me entirely in favor of reading the magazine in his lap.

“What are you reading?”

He sighed and held up the magazine.
Trigger Happy
was a rag that catered to men who enjoyed looking at pictures of well-endowed women holding guns.

“Nice,” I said, my tone arid.

He shrugged. “Read it for the articles.”

I rolled my eyes, but I wasn’t offended. The magazine was a regular fixture in the coed locker room at the station. If you overlooked the centerfolds of silicon-inflated bimbos licking AK-47s, they had some decent features on the latest trends in Mundane weaponry. However, I noticed Morales kept skipping the pages covered in text in favor of the ones filled with boobs and ballistics.

As I watched, I noticed for the first time that his left hand was badly scarred. The scars webbed across his wrist and knuckles like melted wax. I cringed inwardly as I imagined the pain he must have gone through. The urge to ask where they came from was strong, but I figured I’d save myself the time. Guys like Morales weren’t big on discussing anything that made them seem vulnerable. Plus, he didn’t seem real eager to bond with me anyway.

I dragged my gaze from the hand to look outside. The corner was quiet, but I had a feeling it wouldn’t stay that way long. “You done many of these?”

“Hmm?” He didn’t look up.

“Stakeouts.”

He sighed as if I were a five-year-old who asked too many questions.

“Hey,” I said. He ignored me.

I grabbed the magazine. His head jerked up and a fierce scowl was suddenly aimed at me. “What the fuck?” he snapped.

“I was talking to you.”

“So?”

I jerked my chin up. “You got a problem with me, Morales?”

He chuckled bitterly. “Yeah, I got a problem, Cupcake.”

“Well?”

He sat up straighter. “Look, I can tell you’re ambitious, and that’s great. But don’t be getting your hopes up that we’re going to be real partners or anything.”

I blinked once, twice. Finally, I said, “Let me get this straight: You’re being a dick because you don’t want me to get too attached to you?”

The corner of his mouth lifted. “Something like that.”

“Get over yourself. This isn’t a fucking date. I’m here to do my job. For the record, I’ve worked for five years without a partner and that suited me just fine. But if Gardner wants us to work together to get the job done, then we’ll have to make the best of it. Starting with you never calling me ‘Cupcake’ again.” I tossed the magazine back to him. “Asshole.”

He stared at me with a poker face for a good five seconds. Then he lifted the magazine and started “reading” again without another word. But he was smiling like he was amused, so that was something.

I sighed and resumed my surveillance of the corner. Luckily, a bum limped on the far side of the building and distracted me from being irritated with the knucklehead next to me. The bum’s skin had the jaundiced cast of a man addicted to a greed potion. Poor bastards took the stuff hoping the potion would help them win the lottery or get a raise at work. First time, the potion usually worked. They’d find a twenty on the sidewalk or win ten bucks on a scratch-off ticket. Barely enough to cover the cost of the potion, but enough to make them go back for more on the chance they’d get even more money next time.

Wasn’t long before the potion started working on them from the inside. Large, yellow warts would sprout all over their skin. Even as the outward symbols of their greed appeared, their money—what was left of it—disappeared down the black hole of the Cauldron. Eventually, their addictions would take away everything: their houses, their families, their jobs. Most ended up digging in trash for aluminum cans to sell so they could buy their next hit, hoping this next time they’d finally get lucky.

Unlike Mundanes, Adepts rarely became addicted to potions. Some did, but since we could manage the magical energy better it rarely changed how we looked. Instead, Adepts who cooked dirty became slaves to the two Ps: Power and Profit.

That’s why I knew street wizards like John Volos never fully got out of the game. He had plenty of money through different sources, but he’d always be addicted to magic’s power.

My inner skeptic spoke up: You’re addicted to power, too, you just found a different source for it. A sudden awareness of the weight of the gun and badge at my hip made me shift uneasily.

“According to Harkins, the dealers are being really selective about who they’ll sell Gray Wolf to.” Morales’s casually shared information after he’d been so standoffish caught me off guard. Maybe I’d gained some ground there after all. “That’s why we sent him out alone to do a buy to begin with. We were hoping he’d have a better chance of scoring a potion than we’d had on the corners with buy walks.”

“Buy walks?”

“That’s what we call it when we send an agent in undercover to buy a potion. Corner boy got a little trigger-happy with Shadi, so we put a stop to that.”

My pulse sped up a little. Maybe it was lame to be excited about learning MEA lingo, but I was. After spending most of my time performing reactive police work—chasing perps after the crime had happened—I was excited to be involved in building a case proactively. It felt more … I don’t know, productive. Which was ridiculous since all we were doing was sitting in a car.

“Has anyone on the team actually seen Gray Wolf?”

“Harkins said he saw it once.” He nodded. “It’s a gray powder, like ash, he said.”

I nodded. Most potions were sold in powder form. Alchemical potions were usually mixed with alcohol or narcotics and smoked, while blood potions were mixed with blood and injected or snorted.

“He also said it can be smoked or injected,” he continued. Which supported Mez’s theory that it was a combo of alchemy and blood magic.

“What’s the street price?” I asked.

He finally put down the magazine and turned toward me fully. “Two hundred an ounce.”

“Fuck off! Who the hell are they selling that shit to at those prices?”

“My guess is they’re trying to scare off the curious.”

I frowned. “The demographic in the Cauldron that can afford that kind of scratch is so small it’s laughable.”

He shrugged. “Well someone’s buying. Gardner got a call from your boss at BPD this morning. There was a mugging last night. Vic said the perp bit him, but he managed to beat him back with his briefcase, which the perp promptly ran off with.”

“Why do they think it’s related to Gray Wolf?” I lifted the binoculars to watch the corner again.

“The vic said the guy looked like, and I quote, ‘One of them ugly werewolves from the movies.’”

I nudged him with my elbow. “Speaking of ugly—get a hold of that mug.”

The guy leaned against the building, smoking a cigarette. He was a six-foot-plus-tall sack of tough meat and gristle. His lanky frame was pretty much the only thing noteworthy about him. Brown hair, ashy skin, brown eyes.

Morales turned and lifted the binoculars to get a gander. “Recognize him?”

I nodded even though he couldn’t see me. “He’s a regular corner boy. One of the Votary boys.” Which wasn’t a surprise since the Green Faerie sat smack-dab in the middle of the territory Uncle Abe used to run. Now, of course, no single wizard was in charge of these corners—just low-level guys duking it out for prime real estate.

“I busted him a couple of times for vandalism. Real name’s Marvin Brown, but on the streets he’s known as ‘Picasso’ because he’s a coven Herald.” Personally, I thought the nickname fit because his face looked like one of those cubist paintings—all angles with no symmetry.

“Herald?” Morales shot me a curious eyebrow raise.

“Covens sometimes use graffiti to spread messages to the troops. The ones who paint the symbols are called Heralds.”

Morales nodded. “Some of the covens in Los Angeles do something similar. What kind of code do they use?”

“The Sangs tend to use Egyptian hieroglyphs. The Votaries use the alchemical language of birds.”