33.
The proof of intent came from all the crimes Harry Grimes didn’t go down for. He’d been seen at the scene of a Smaldone family hit, two members of the “Mountain Mafia” gunned down in the middle of dinner, but the feds couldn’t make a concrete connection. He was linked to the death of an heiress who committed “suicide” by diving into her soaking tub with a plugged-in toaster, but his hands were cleaner than the water. Then he’d been questioned in the disappearance of a Teamster boss. His alibi was airtight for that one, just like the construction drum that the boss’s tortured corpse turned up in two years later.
“He’s an assassin,” Caitlin said after I read some choice excerpts to her.
“Pay for play,” I said, “and considering these are just the killings they think he had a hand in but can’t prove, I can’t guess how many he’s gotten away with. Forget all the BS he spouted at the party, it was a smoke screen. Harry Grimes is being paid to kill me, pure and simple.”
She frowned. Her hands flexed on the steering wheel.
“And you believe you know who sent him?”
“He’s a cambion, so even if he doesn’t have formal ties to the courts of hell, he’s aware of them. He moves in both underworlds—infernal and criminal.”
“With you so far,” she said.
“He’s legally a transient with no fixed address, but check the pattern for the last five years. Every time he’s been hauled in for questioning, it’s been in Colorado. Aurora, Fort Collins, Pueblo…”
“Denver,” Caitlin said. She’d already put it together.
“And who do we know in Denver? Same person who just happened to show up at the party, and threw me off-balance just in time for ‘Hunter Grimm’ to make his grand entrance.”
“Naavarasi.” Now her knuckles were turning white. She swerved onto an off-ramp, too sharp, leaning into the wheel.
“Which might…well, not explain all this other weirdness, but it’s Naavarasi. We can figure ninety percent of it was just there to confuse us or throw us off the scent.”
“Or there are more layers to this,” Caitlin said. “As is likely the case—we know that from hard experience. I suppose your attempt at mercy, in your teens, won’t be enough to stay this man’s hand.”
I shook my head. “Nah. Murder for hire is a sociopath’s game. I can’t expect him to sit down with me and laugh about old times.”
Then the idea hit me.
“Cait…if we can prove Naavarasi hired him, what does that do for us?”
“It makes her fair game.” Her lips pursed in a grim, determined smile. “Dispatching an unlicensed assassin to kill a member of another court—if we can prove she did it, which is always the challenge—is just as bad as using her own hands. Prince Malphas will have no choice but to cast her to the wolves. What did you have in mind, pet?”
“Forget what I just said. I want to sit down with him and laugh about old times,” I said. “And then I want to flip him. I was thinking about something Royce said to me, back at the party: ‘defection is always an option.’”
* * *
Grimes was out there, somewhere, hunting me down in the urban wilds. I couldn’t sit around waiting, so I decided to make it easier for him. He didn’t know where I lived, or he already would have hit my place, and he couldn’t track my ride now that it was a smoking piece of wreckage. The one place I knew he could watch for me—would watch for me—was where we’d first met. Winter.
Caitlin called ahead. A pair of bouncers met us near the nightclub’s unmarked double doors, pushing the line back so we could get right up to the bare brick wall. One handed me a can of cherry-red spray paint. I shook it up, aimed, and wrote my missive in big, curling letters.
CALL ME – DJF
One of the partygoers in line shook his head. “She ain’t gonna call you, bro! Give it up.”
“Aw,” his date said. “I think it’s romantic. For an old guy.”
A streamer of paint drooled down the bumpy brick off the bottom of the F, darkening as it dried, like a rivulet of blood. We left. I wanted him to see my message, not to actually take a shot at me on-site. Caitlin and I were driving around, thinking about grabbing a bite to eat, when my phone rang twenty minutes later.
“I can read the writing on the wall,” Harry Grimes told me. “Can you?”
“Sure. It says, ‘you picked the wrong target this time.’”
“I never pick wrong. And I never miss.”
“What if I could convince you otherwise?” I asked.
“I’m listening.”
“Listen to me over a drink instead. There’s a bar on the casino floor at the Monaco. Nice and public and well-lit, and nobody shoots anybody there.”
“First time for everything,” he said.
“The Monaco is CMC Entertainment property,” I said, “and you aren’t going to start shit on CMC Entertainment property.”
“How do you know?”
“Because your name isn’t Hunter MacGregor Grimm. It’s Harry Michael Grimes, and you’re only pretending to be crazy.”
He went silent for so long I thought he might have hung up. Then he said: “The Monaco. Twenty minutes.”
* * *
I always came back to the Monaco. That innate masochism again, I guess. Back in the day, I’d exorcised a stubborn ghost from the penthouse floor. Well, not exorcised so much as relocated. Then, when I was scrapping with the Redemption Choir, I’d brought a supposedly innocent priest here to keep him safe while I tried to line up an escape plan. That night had ended in a betrayal and a vicious beating. Basically, I didn’t have a lot of good memories to keep me coming back. Maybe just the ramen dishes at Umami—and as I passed through the smoked-glass doors into the casino, moving from the desert night chill to the perfectly regulated air-conditioning, I realized that entire side of the casino floor was covered in heavy sheets of plywood. Everything was shut down, the resort under heavy renovation from its hairline down to its toes, wiping away the old to bring in the new.
And I had worked up an appetite for ramen on the way over. Some nights, I just couldn’t win.
At least Ignition, the lounge on the edge of the casino, was open for business. A bar circled a central pylon, and plush chairs and two-seater tables radiated out all around it like the ripples of an explosion. Slow lights shifted across the cherry-red carpet, painting the tourists in simulated fire, while chimes and shrill melodies burst from the gaming floor.
Caitlin came in two minutes after me and disappeared into the crowd. She’d be there, watching. Close enough to move if Harry pulled his gun? Probably not, so I’d just have to make sure he didn’t. Or if he didn’t leave me any other choice, take him down before he got the chance. I found an open couple of chairs, staked my territory, and got as comfortable as I could. I looked around, taking it all in. The construction made me think of the American, my own little piece of Vegas. The principal construction was done and now it was all down to the detail work before our grand opening. Details, and the liquor license I still didn’t have. I almost got lost in minutiae, making mental lists of the calls I needed to make, the cash I had to shuffle around to make this opening happen, when I spotted my guest pushing through the smoked-glass doors.
Harry Grimes had shed some of his rock-star flamboyance from the party. He’d traded the skintight leather pants for battered jeans and thrown a tank top on. One arm was still sheathed in blue Viking runes from his shoulder to his wrist; apparently the tattoos were real. He swaggered to the two-seater and dropped down across from me. Before I could get a word out, he held up two fingers to a passing waitress.
“Jack,” he said, “neat.”
“Jack and Coke, please,” I added.
He snorted at me as she headed to the bar.
“A real man doesn’t have to cut his liquor.”
“A real man drinks what tastes good,” I told him, “and doesn’t worry about what other people think.”
“Oh, you care. You care plenty. Client told me that little crazy act at your party would rattle you good. You were all twisted up, not sure how to come at me. And in the end you buckled, just like they said you would.”
“Let’s talk about your client,” I said.
“Let’s not,” he shot back. “I’m a professional.”
“A professional would have taken me out. I showed you my back and you stood down.”
“As if I was going to make a move in the middle of that crowd?” He laughed at me. “They would have torn me to shreds. I needed you to swing first. That’d leave my hands clean. Us lowly cambion have to abide by the letter of the Cold Peace, after all. Even when it means the higher-ups can do whatever they want, up to and including hunting us for sport.”
“Is that what this is about?”
“Not your problem to worry about. Oh, no, Daniel Faust, a pure human, not one drop of demonic blood, and you get a knighthood.”
“That’s what this is about.” I sat back in my chair. “You’re jealous.”
“Wrong. I don’t want a damn thing you’ve got.”
The waitress came around. We stared in silent détente while she drew the battle lines on the laminated table between us, laying down napkins and drinks. Harry didn’t move a muscle. Apparently, I was buying. I paid cash, added a ten on top, and told her to keep the change.
“Do you even know who I am?” I asked him.
“Sure. You’re the hound’s pet human. Oh, and you think you’re a tough guy because you’ve got half the gangs in this city ready to fight for you. And that’s your problem. You’re insulated. You’re fake.”
“Okay.” I sipped my drink. Tiny icebergs clinked against the glass, floating on a caramel sea. “First of all, I’ve never described myself as a tough guy. If people want to put that label on me, that’s their problem.”
He looked down his nose at me. “Got that right.”
“Second of all, is that all you know? Do you even remember me? From the Wellness House.”
“You kidding me, man? That’s why I took this contract, once I saw who the target was. Once I saw how soft you’d gone…biggest disappointment of my life, right there.”
I shook my head at him, feeling like I’d lost the plot.
“How do you mean?”
“You stood up for me in that shithole,” he said. “More than once.”
Memory tricks again. I only remembered the one time, but I’d take his word for it. Felt like something I would have done, at that age.
“Sure,” I said.
“You remember what you told me? I was this sniveling, pudgy little nothing, and you took me aside and said that unless I started standing up for myself, unless I started punching back, those guys would keep jumping me.”
“It’s good advice.”
“You told me that I had to stop being afraid—afraid of losing, afraid of getting hurt—that I should take all that fear and get angry. Get so angry that I didn’t feel anything but angry, and then hurt those fuckers. Fists, teeth, fight with anything I had, any way I could. Cripple them if I could. Kill them if I could get away with it.”
“Yeah, well,” I said, “I wasn’t exactly healthy back then. We were kids in a bad place.”
He waved an incredulous hand at me. “See? That’s what I’m talking about. Why are you apologizing? You were right.”
“I wasn’t right. Yes, you should have defended yourself, and I’m glad you did, but that was some messed-up stuff to say to a twelve-year-old. I didn’t know any better back then. I do now. You can’t let anger rule you; it’s a tool, not your master.”
“I got out, and I hit the road.” He tossed back a swig of Jack. The five-o’clock shadow glistened above his lip. “Found out that philosophy worked everywhere. Stoke the anger in me, put the fear in everybody else. If somebody got in my way, bang. If somebody stepped to me, bang. Turns out, when you’re a genuine, no-nonsense tough guy, the world’s your oyster. You can take anything you want. Do anything you want.”
He raised his glass to me and pounded back the rest of his liquor.
“And I owe it all to you,” Harry told me. “You made me the man I am today.”