Midnight Taxi Tango (10 page)

I look up at him. “Good.” And then I turn and head off toward Cypress Hills Cemetery.

Carlos

W
hatsamatta, bro?” Riley asks when I walk back into my apartment.

“Nothing. Got something in my eye up on the roof. I think a bug flew in there.”

“You want me to take a look?”

“No, man. Last time I let you anywhere near my eye, you popped your own out and stuck it in mine.”

“Suit yourself, C. Kia leave?”

I stand there rubbing my eye for a few seconds, very like an asshole.

“Carlos?”

“Yeah. She left.”

“She alright?”

“She will be. Wouldn't let me put a bodyguard on her though. Gave her my dagger.”

“Can't blame her. There's coffee if you want it.”

Bless him. Ghosts can move physical stuff around, but even for a badass like Riley, all that intricateness and precision gets exhausting. I take his effort as a peace offering and walk over to the counter. “You alright, Riley. Sylvia still here?”

“She headed out to make her report.”

“Fuck.” I pour out two cups, throw some sugar in Riley's and stir it. “I should probably do that.”

“I guess.”

I pass Riley his and we enjoy the first sips in silence.

Thud.

Well, mostly silence.

“What's the move?” I say.

Scratch-scratch-scratch.

“I dunno, but we should probably get his ornery little ass outta there, cuz at some point your living half is gonna have to pee.”

I shrug. “Ah, I peed when I was on the roof.”

“Out ya eyes?”

“What?”

“Nothin'. Shall we have a look?”

I throw back the rest of the coffee. “Can't hardly wait.”

• • •

The thump and scratch stops when we step up to the door.

“This is what I think,” I say. “The ghostling had a mission: wait in the park and then get at Kia. He did that, causing hell and havoc all the while, and then she showed and he failed.”

Riley nods. “True.”

“What's the next move?”

“He tries again.”

“Maybe, but maybe not. What's our protocol for when a mission goes south?”

Riley smirks. “Wouldn't know.”

“You go back to the base, man.”

We stare at the door for a few seconds.

“It's risky,” Riley says.

“I know. The fuck else we gonna do though? Doubt he's gonna be open to chatting.”

As if on cue, the ghostling thumps against the door again.
Riley draws his blade. I take a deep breath and turn the knob. The little shimmering creature collapses across the doorway, gasping.

“Well, damn,” Riley says. “Now I kinda feel bad.”

“
Psh
. You didn't have his hands on you.”

The ghostling drags himself onto his knees, crumples forward again, and crawls a few agonizing steps.

Riley shakes his head. “If he does go home, it's gonna take a week or two to get there.”

The ghostling snarls up at us and swipes a little hand at Riley's pant leg.

“Hey!” He steps back.

“You don't think he'll do something to throw us off the trail now that we've been talking like he doesn't exist right in front of him, do you?”

The ghostling scowls at Riley and finds his footing.

“Nah, this guy's been programmed. It's a horrible, horrible thing to do to a spirit. They break them and then give them a singular mission, and that's it. The most they'll get is a backup plan if it fails, like you're hoping, but these guys aren't functioning on any kinda high-strategy levels, trust.”

The ghostling lurches forward faster now that he's up, angling toward the front door in a lopsided canter.

“You don't think he's gonna try to pull some slick and murderous move on us?” I ask.

Riley draws his blade. “I think his slick and murderous days are over, but I got my eye on him. Something about getting caught and locked in the bathroom seems to have taken the wind out of his creepy little sails.”

“That and Kia's dropkick,” I say. “Let's see where this goes.”

• • •

We amble along beneath the tracks, an odd parade or just one weirdo staring at the ground a few feet in front of him,
depending on who's looking, and then cut east along a quiet residential block, past an elementary school, across Bushwick Ave. toward Queens.

“You think he's going to the cemetery?” Riley asks.

The ghostling's been moving faster and faster as we go, and now I'm getting winded, keeping pace behind that still-raggedy shuffle.

“Might make sense, I guess,” I huff.

But instead of turning right on Cypress, the ghostling lopes left, takes us along another quiet little street, and then halfway down, he pauses in front of a very ordinary-looking two-story house. Ordinary, I realize when we get closer, except for the tall, gangly phantom floating outside the front door.

“Garrick! Tartus!” the ghost announces.

“That a fact?” Riley says, shooting him the stink-eye.

The ghost doesn't respond, doesn't acknowledge us, just stares off, his lower lip hanging slightly open, shoulders slumped.

“I hate it when the dead do this shit,” I grumble.

“Garrick! Tartus!”

We all stand there for a few seconds panting, and then the ghostling stumbles up the front steps.

“Whoa there, little guy,” Riley says, yoinking him back. The ghostling sputters and hisses but doesn't have much fight in him.

“What you think, Carlos?”

“Garrick! Tartus!”

Besides the repetitive-ass ghoul, the place looks like every other house on the block. It's shingled, painted a dull gray-green. Wooden stairs lead up to the front door. The shades are down on all the windows, but that's not unusual.

I shrug. “Got nothing. Maybe somebody's home.”

“Maybe Garrick Tartus's home,” Riley says.

“Garrick! Tartus!”

I walk up the front steps. I'm reaching toward the brass doorbell when Riley says: “Carlos,” and I hear a click behind my head.

“Turn slow,” a woman's gravelly voice says. “Hands in plain sight.”

She's standing perfectly still in a perfectly tailored gray suit. Her stance is just wide enough to brace for the recoil from the hand cannon she's aiming at my face. It's clear from the bulges between her vest and bloodred dress shirt that she'll never be outgunned. Even her goddamn footwear is perfect: elegant alligator-skin dress shoes, perfectly shined. For the first time in my weird little life, I am outdappered.

Also: Riley is standing beside her, his blade poised to slice through her skull. The ghostling squirms under his other arm.

“Have you heard the good word about Jesus Christ today, ma'am?” I say, flashing the cheesiest grin I can muster.

She smiles for a half second. “Try again.” Not a cop—way too smooth and she would've ID'd herself by now.

“Vote yes on question six,” I say, but it doesn't really matter. She had her chance to catch me off guard and passed on it. Riley relaxes his blade some.

“I'd like to know,” the woman says, “why of all the doors on all the blocks in Bushwick, you walked up to this one right here.” She says it evenly, with no trace of threat. Of course, she doesn't have to threaten when she's pointing that gat at my face. Still, I believe she really wants to know.

“It's a long story,” I say.

She shrugs. “I'm in no hurry.”

“And I'd like to ask the same thing of you.”

There's a pause, and then the woman holsters her weapon so smoothly it's like it just evaporated in the midmorning sun. She's not just a professional; she's a fucking panther.

“Excellent,” she says. “Coffee?”

• • •

There are still a few diners in Bushwick where the hipsters that come to gawk at locals leave with bruises. Tucked amid some abandoned factories and a tattoo parlor, the Rosebud is just such a place. The woman drives us there in a spotless black Crown Vic with
MEDIANOCHE CAR SERVICE
stenciled in a circular logo on the door. Riley hovers in the backseat, the ghostling tucked under his arm like a naughty child.

She says her name is Reza, reaching a hand over to me. I take it, watch her register the coolness of my skin. She doesn't flinch, just notes it with a solemn nod.

“Carlos. And I'll meet you inside; just give me one sec.”

“Alright,” Reza says, closing the doors and bleeping the alarm. “But don't run off. I'll find you and kill you.” She turns around and walks into the diner.

“Welp,” Riley says. “That happened.”

“Yeah, she wasn't kidding either.”

“Nope.” The ghostling squirms in his arms. “I'ma take this guy back to the Council, see what they can do with him. You arright?”

I scoff. “Sure. She seems nice enough.”

Riley snickers as he vanishes into the Brooklyn backstreets, the wee killer ghostling whining softly.

• • •

Four hours, eight cups of coffee, three unfiltered cigarettes, and two Malagueñas later, Reza studies me for a second, takes a drag, and then says: “I'll be honest with you, Carlos . . .”

“You mean you haven't been all this time?”

“Shut up. I don't usually talk this much. Especially not to strangers. And even less so to strangers that are men.”

“Fair enough.”

“I can count on one hand the number of men I've had
honest conversations with and not regretted it.” She holds up one finger. “There, I counted. But you've been very honest with me this afternoon, and I appreciate that. I'm sure most people think you're fucking crazy or full of shit.”

“You don't?”

“I didn't say that.” She doesn't smile.

“But?”

“But if I did think so, I wouldn't have told you my side.”

“To be honest,” I say, “I don't usually tell people about this shit either. I don't really talk to that many people, come to think of it, unless they already know or I have to for . . . work.”

“But?”

“I'm not totally sure, to be honest. You have a trustworthy face?”

Reza almost spits out her coffee. “These words have never been said.”

I shrug and light a Malagueña. This has to be the last diner in New York that you can smoke in. The air is thick and murky with our combined pollution. The only other customer is a dusty old guy reading a paper in the far corner.

“So,” I say, “there's a house, a tunnel, a rec room with toys, a fucked-up long-armed guy, a cockroach-for-skin guy . . .”

“Pink cockroaches,” Reza says.

“Right. And then there's Shelly, Angie, and at least a few others, yeah?”

“At least.” When I say
Angie,
Reza flinches ever so slightly. It's the first involuntary thing I've seen her do all afternoon.

“And on my end, there's this child ghost that led us back there, and that's it really; that's all I got. I'll say this though: someone who knew what they were doing fucked with that kid. Takes a high-level necromancy to make a single-minded killer like that.”

Reza frowns and stubs out her cigarette. “Well, that's an
angle you're gonna have to handle, clearly. Meanwhile, this roach situation has gotta get ended. This what I'm thinking: someone has to own that house, right? We got a guy that—”

“Wait—we who?”

The waitress, a surly octogenarian wearing all the makeup ever, approaches to refill our coffees. “You alright, lovebirds?” she snarls. “Need anything else?”

Reza smiles. “We're good, Cathy, thanks.” She turns back to me. “We: my people. We got a guy that can look that shit up. I'll see what he can find tonight when I go in.”

“Can I ask you something?”

“You're not my type.”

I narrow my eyes. “You were just waiting for that moment, weren't you?”

“Eh.” She shrugs. “What you wanna know?”

“Why'd you tell me all that—everything you just told me? You seem like the type that information has to be pried out of.”

Reza studies me for so long I get uncomfortable. She must've been wondering the same thing. Finally, she takes a sip of her coffee and says, “When you do what I do for as long as I've been doing it, you learn to figure people out quickly and break down everything you need to know about them to two things.”

“What things?”

“Doesn't matter.”

“Huh?” I furrow my brow, and she smiles.

“Two essential things. They're different things for everyone. But you don't have time to sit there analyzing eighty million little quirks and who loves their father. You have however many seconds to decide if they can kill you and if they will kill you, and then you either kill them first or you don't. And if you don't, you either die or you—”

“Have a four-hour cup of coffee at the diner.”

“Basically.”

“And?”

“You're a genuine person, Carlos.”

I try not to be flattered, but I am, I am. “I'm actually a pretty good liar though, just FYI.”

“No, you're not.”

“My line of work has me—”

“You lie to people who want to be lied to. That doesn't count. You just collude with their denial. That's not lying. It's an ongoing charade we all participate in. Try lying to a liar.”

“How can I get better?”

“Shut the fuck up,” Reza says. I do, and she lets out a congested chuckle. “No, man. I mean let them do the talking. The less you say, the better. Find the part of the lie that's true and tell everything else to fuck off. But really, just shut up. They'll usually tell you what you want to know.”

“That's what you do?”

“Nah. I know how to lie. That's for you. Believe me, Carlos—you're better off wielding that sword you keep in the cane than trying to get over.”