The Little Death (3 page)

That probably should have been the motto of this city: People are always up to shit somewhere. It was the only reason I still had a job.

I gave him twenty bucks for his “research” (which would most likely go into his arm through a needle), but only because I knew he’d deliver. He had yet to fail me in that regard.

After Red left, I drank until oblivion folded me in its big black wings and carried me away. Sometimes, I wish they’d never let me go.

3

I
WOKE
up as the sun was stabbing me in the face, trying to cut through my eyeballs and get into the back of my brain.

With a groan I stumbled to the bathroom, had my morning vomit, and rinsed out my mouth with some mouthwash before taking a couple of aspirin with a shot of whiskey. That seemed to calm my head enough that I could get a shower and wash the stink off me.

Across the street from my place was a café called Mia’s. Not a greasy spoon, as I’m pretty sure they were an endangered species, but not one of those fancy coffee shops that littered the landscape like so many overpriced paper cups. So as soon as I was dressed (in clothes that looked an awful lot like the ones crumpled in a heap on my floor), I went there for breakfast. I was such a fixture there that I didn’t even need to order. As soon as I slipped into a window booth, Ami, a Japanese waitress who looked twenty but was forty, walked past and asked, “The usual, Jake?”

“Please.” Within fifteen minutes, I had a plate of scrambled eggs, bacon, and hash browns in front of me, a cup of coffee steaming on one side, and a saucer of golden brown toast on the other side. Heaven.

As soon as the taste of buttered bread hit my tongue, my stomach stopped roiling. Toast seemed to have amazing magical properties that soothed me unlike anything else.

The rest of the breakfast was also good. The eggs were hot and fluffy, the bacon crisp, the hash browns fried in bacon grease. The coffee was shit, but who cared?

I had wolfed down most of my food before I bothered to crack the folded-up newspaper sitting beside the napkin container. It was thin, because the newspaper biz was dying even faster in this town than most, mainly because our journalists had always been shit anyway.

Giardi’s death was, of course, front page news. You’d think they’d have gone with the typical “homicidal violence,” which was a way of saying “murdered” without identifying the cause before the coroner could, but oh no, this reporter was a rebel. He went ahead and said stabbed.

I thought about the amount of blood I saw on the carpet, and wondered if bleeding out was a possibility. The human body contained much more blood than you’d ever guess, and a bleed-out was a tidal wave of blood. Unless he did most of his bleeding elsewhere, it wasn’t blood loss that killed him. He bled a bit—gravity probably caused some of the loss—but wherever he was stabbed killed him quick enough that there was no arterial spray. The heart has to be pumping for blood to spurt.

I put down the paper in time to see someone slide into the orange vinyl bench seat across from me. It was Kyle, now in civilian clothes. It was probably his day off. His raven hair was a bit scruffier than usual, but still neat, just cuter than your average cop cut. It softened his face, made him look younger and more innocent than he actually was. Although he did have the soul of a Boy Scout, which made everyone wonder how he ever ended up with me. It was one of those inexplicable things that just happened sometimes, like meteor strikes or gay Republicans. “Please tell me you’re sober,” he said.

I just glared at him. My drinking was ostensibly why we broke up, but really I think Kyle just got embarrassed by me. A private detective seemed to be just one step below mime among cops, and he had a hard enough time being gay and looking like a barely legal teenager. “Whatever I say is irrelevant, because you’ve already made up your mind. So just say what you’re gonna say so I can finish my breakfast in peace.”

“You are aware it’s noon, right?”

“It’s still breakfast time for me.”

He shook his head and gave me a look he’d given me throughout our relationship, which is to say he glared at me in disgust. “Maybe you don’t care about yourself anymore, but I thought I’d give you fair warning anyways. They found your phone number in Giardi’s cell, and it looked like he called your office about fifteen minutes before he was killed. His call to you was the last call he made.”

Was he making this up? It wasn’t like him. Yeah, he could be an asshole sometimes, but this seemed weirdly petty of him. “Bullshit. I didn’t know Giardi from any chump on the street until Sloane hired me. He never called me.”

“Where were you at eleven thirty-five last night?”

I couldn’t believe he was asking me this. I let my fork fall on my plate with a clang and snapped, “I was driving to Giardi’s place. Christ, you think I stabbed the guy?”

Kyle raised his eyebrows at me. “How—”

I tossed the folded paper toward him. “It’s in the goddamn paper, asshole. Do you really think I killed that guy?”

Kyle glanced at the paper and scowled as he read the offending line. Apparently the reporter never should have spilled the beans. “I know you didn’t, but that’s not the point, and you know it.”

“You’re telling me what I know now?”

“Don’t be this way. For some reason, the guys in homicide want to wrap this case up really fast, and you’d make one hell of a convenient scapegoat. Can anyone verify your whereabouts?”

“I was alone in the car.” Although I was getting angry, I took a moment to realize what he’d said. “Wait, what? Why are they anxious to wrap this case up? Was he someone important?”

“Giardi?” Kyle scoffed at my idiocy. “No. He was just some low-level dealer, as far as I could tell.”

“So why the hurry to put the case to bed?”

He shook his head, and this time the disgust on his face was not for me but for the boys in homicide. “I dunno. I asked, but I was only told there was a push to close cases, as there were too many open ones on the docket, but that doesn’t make sense either.”

This was weird. And by that I mean weirder than normal. Why were the cops pushing to close the case of a small-time dealer? Why did he have my phone number? I mean, it was possible he called my office if he did have my number, because I wasn’t at my office. Did he leave a message? I hadn’t been in today, so I didn’t know. “Kyle, I didn’t know the guy. The first time I saw him, he was dead on the floor. I don’t know how he got my number or why he would call me. You have to believe me.”

Kyle sighed heavily. “Damn me, I do. But you need an alibi.”

I had no idea how I was supposed to get one, but then I remembered that Giardi’s place wasn’t my first stop of the evening. “I went to Heat; then I went to Giardi’s place. There’s no way in hell I would have had time to go there, return to my office, and then go to Giardi’s place. The time frame doesn’t work.”

“You could have called your office voice mail box from your cell.”

I frowned at him. “With my tech savvy?”

He grimaced knowingly. “Okay, no, but in theory….”

“Okay, even if I could manage that, would I have had enough time to drive from Heat to Giardi’s place and then kill him in that time frame?”

Kyle considered it for a moment, then shook his head. “You’re right. It only works if you have a rocket car.”

I picked up my fork and scraped up the remains of my eggs and potatoes. “Damn it! You got me, copper. I give up.”

Kyle sagged back against his seat with a relieved sigh. He was genuinely worried about me? Wow. But I don’t know why I was surprised; he was always a soft touch. Cops were supposed to be hard and jaded, but Kyle was a dough boy, soft and squishy, full of marshmallow fluff. He’d been on the job for three years, but he still believed in people. I had no idea how he did that. After a moment, he asked, “Why did you go to Heat?”

“Tryin’ to trace Sander’s last steps.”

“How’d that go?”

I heard something in his voice, a sort of flat tone, and I studied him, unable to keep from smirking. “You jealous?”

“No. Why the hell would I be jealous?” he snapped.

I’d be lying if I didn’t admit his jealousy made me happy. So he still cared, even though he dumped me. “I might hafta go back. I came up goose eggs last night, but maybe I wasn’t talking to the right people.”

He crossed his arms tightly over his chest and made a noise that sounded suspiciously like a “harrumph.” I had no idea anyone in real life ever made that noise. “It’s a place full of poseurs. I wouldn’t think it was your kind of scene.”

“Have you seen the guys there? They’re fucking hot.”

Kyle was giving me a look so sour and pissed off it was hard not to laugh. “And probably higher than kites.”

I shrugged. “Suits me. They probably won’t remember I didn’t call ’em the next day.”

Kyle left not long after, boiling with jealousy. It was a hell of an ego boost.

I checked in at my office to see if I did get a call from Nick Giardi. It turned out to be a yes-and-no answer: I got a call around the time Kyle said, but it was a hang-up call. So he called, but didn’t say anything. What the hell was that about?

I took a belt from my refilled flask before doing a little more Internet searching. I kept trying to avoid looking at those shirtless pics of Sander and Sloane, but goddamn, what hot guys. Yeah, I wished they didn’t shave their chests, but you couldn’t have everything. If you did, where would you put it?

A search turned up some info on the Granger boys’ parents, which they had oddly omitted on their Facebook page. Their dad was the much-married media mogul Sullivan Granger, who divorced their model mother when the boys were five. It was a very contentious divorce, so I could see why Sloane might not mention it, but their mother died of an overdose when they were fifteen. It was considered an accident more than a suicide, but rumors persisted.

They moved in with their dad, his new wife, and some assorted half and step siblings, but Sloane and Sander moved out at seventeen, amid tabloid reports of serious partying and minor run-ins with the law. Apparently they were minor-league male celebutantes (at least within Los Angeles), but they dropped out a little over three years ago, after they were involved in a hit-and-run that left a man severely injured. Both twins, along with a dirtbag friend of theirs named Alex Rostov, were suspected as the driver of the vehicle, but cops could never determine who was responsible. They were all fined and assigned community service, which seemed like the least that could be done, and there was a minor stink about it. Shortly after that, the Granger twins dropped out for good and ended up here.

That was the thing about Echo City. Lots of detritus washed up on these shores, people running away from or running to something, almost always involving trouble in either case. This was a city of ash and regrets, its people dust and sorrow, mixing together to alleviate their burdens by forcing them on someone else. If you had good sense, you’d leave this place and never look back, but if you wound up in Echo City, clearly you had no sense, so you were stuck here.

Did this tell me anything about the case? Possibly. First, it established the twins as hard partiers from way back, and there was a slight but potential possibility that someone could want revenge. Far-fetched, but not outside the realm of possibility. You could never discount revenge as a prime motivator.

The phone rang, and since I figured it was a debt collector, I almost let it go to call messaging. Then I figured it was Red and picked up the receiver. “Jake?” a tear-soaked voice asked.

It took me a minute to place the voice. “Sloane? What’s wrong?”

“They sent me…” He paused, swallowing a sob. “Please come over. They sent me Sander’s earring… and a piece of his ear.”

Yeah, revenge was looking more and more likely. Too bad for Sander.

4

S
LOANE
lived in a condo at the edge of town, just over the dividing line between the good part of the city and the other part, where they’d rip your gold teeth out of your mouth and sell them back to you at twice the price. He was in the good part, which I expected.

His condo was relatively small but fairly neat, although he seemed to have more money than taste. There was too much velvet and brocade on the furniture, too many bullshit pseudoabstract paintings on the wall. The carpet was shaggy and an odd amber color, partially brown and partially orange. Ugly as fuck.

It was a good thing Sloane was so hot, even teary eyed, so I had something nice to look at. He and Sander had inherited quite a bit from their mother but presumably blew through most of it in their hard-partying days. This condo and its questionable furnishings were probably all that was left.

Sloane was wearing nothing but a white tank top tight enough to be a second skin, and lose gray yoga pants that still showed off how round and tight his ass was. Had to be on purpose, because no one looked that good in yoga pants unless they tried.

He showed me what had come for him. He said he found it in his mailbox downstairs, a manila envelope with a small ring box inside. Within the box was a small gold earring of a tiny bird sitting inside a hoop, and it was stained with blood. There was a small flap of skin with it, presumably torn from his earlobe. When he said part on the phone, I was actually expecting a sizable chunk, maybe enough to clone a triplet from; this was little more than a torn cuticle. The cotton beneath the jewelry was bloodstained, but that didn’t impress me.

I sat down beside him on his royal velvet sofa and took a look at the envelope the box came in. His name was printed on it, but that was it—no address, no postal marks. So it was just shoved in his mailbox. “You got locking mailboxes down in the lobby?”

“Yeah.”

“Huh.” The locks weren’t super secure, though; they were easy to jimmy open if you knew what you were doing. Even if you didn’t know, you were in with a shot. Hell, just get a crowbar from the Home Depot, and all the mail was yours.

“It’s never closed right, not since I’ve lived here.”