Hammer of Darkness (Veil Knights Book 8) Read online

  “Just doing what I’m told,” I said.

  It had the desired effect. Davis followed the direction of his finger, and saw the sigil. He visibly blanched, then took an unconscious step back. I didn’t blame him.

  “What the hell is— “Hennessy demanded.

  Davis cut him off. “Nothing. Don’t worry about it.” He spat on the ground then glared at me. “I guess I was wrong about you being a reasonable denizen, huh?”

  I shrugged and the cop turned away and began walking. Hennessy stood in place for a moment, still glaring at me. Davis didn’t wait, or slow, and finally the younger bull was forced to break off.

  “This isn’t over,” he warned.

  “Is it ever?” I asked.

  Hennessy ignored me and caught up to Davis in a few long strides. I knew I’d made an enemy. It wasn’t exactly a new experience for me. As I noted earlier, sometimes all it takes is seeing my face.

  Resigned to the fact I wasn’t hidden in plain sight anymore, I walked over and slipped under the roof of a public transit kiosk just to give myself something to do. The quicker I did something expected and mundane, the quicker the herd animals could go back to grazing.

  Not rushing, I thumbed through my iPhone. The kiosk smelled of just about everything that stank in the city, though most heavily of body odor and gasoline fumes. The floor was sticky with old vomit, the plasti-glass stained nicotine yellow. The rotted pulp of old street flyers and missing person posters formed a soggy carpet on the ground.

  Casually, as I turned I put my cell up to my ear. Looking down the street I saw Davis reach into the open back window of the BMW and take an envelope from inside. He stood and eyed the black kid standing back under the awning of a store, before casually pushing the envelope inside his duty coat.

  Hennessy was standing toe-to-toe and eye-to-eye with the pimp’s driver. I chuckled as I cradled the phone against my shoulder. “At least the dumbass is consistent,” I told myself.

  After a moment, when the sun was truly down, a car pulled out of the slow moving traffic and pulled up in front of the diner across the street. It was a forest green Toyota Highlander. The backdoor opened and a teenage girl got out. I narrowed my eyes in recognition and slowly put my phone away.

  Here she was. The one Erica told me knew what Kay had found.

  She wore the same late autumn uniform as the other girls; too tall heels, sheer stockings with runs in them, thin dress under a fake fur coat. She had the same hairdo as the waitress, but on her younger, slightly sallow, and much thinner face, it made her look like a little girl playing dress up. Which of course, she was. Only she wasn’t playing, and what went on in the back of those cars wasn’t a game.

  I let out a heavy sigh. But when I walked out of the kiosk and crossed the street I wore a blank expression. Work is work.

  Chapter 8

  “Hey,” I said.

  She looked up at me. She wasn’t very tall. Even in those ridiculous “I’m-really-a-big-girl” heels she only came up to my nose and I’m just average height. I was however, about broad enough that three of her standing shoulder to shoulder would match me. Realizing how intimidating I looked, I held up a hand. Now wasn’t time for intimidation.

  “You looking for a date?” she asked. She seemed dubious.

  I couldn’t question her out in the open, it would cause problems with the pimp in the beamer. The girls were there to earn, not provide information. Also, I didn’t know which way the other girls standing nearby swayed. Maybe this girl was their friend, and they’d keep a secret, but maybe they were more scared of what the man in the back of the BMW would let the driver do to them if they did.

  “Sure,” I said. “I’m looking for a date.” The path of least resistance.

  I heard someone shout in protest and turned to look over my shoulder. Down the street Davis had the black kid up against the door of a bistro. I was too far away to make out what they were saying, all I heard was their shouts, but it was all of the kid’s misfortune and none of my own.

  In fact, with the driver staring at the scene and Hennessy now actually the one trying to tone things down, to no avail, it was a perfect distraction. I turned back to the girl.

  She was pretty. Hollow eyed and shivering, too thin and showing bruises on her legs, but pretty. The irises of her eyes were a gentle, rich brown, so luminescent I flashed on Euryale’s eyes for a moment and had to shake the memory away.

  “Come on,” I said. “I’ll buy you something to eat.” I jerked my chin toward the diner.

  The girl stuck a stick of gum in her mouth and started chewing. She narrowed her eyes. “You do realize that when I said ‘date’ I meant— “

  “I know what in the hell you meant, smartass,” I said.

  Behind us the kid started screaming, full on for real screaming. I looked. The kid was crumpled in on himself, only the wall holding him up. I saw blood glisten under streetlights switching on as twilight deepened. Davis struck him in the head again with his nightstick and the kid went down. Immediately the big cop began putting the boots to him. The blows sounded blunt and slightly muffled, like someone hitting a sandbag.

  Hennessy turned his back and watched the street. He didn’t look well. Welcome to the Narrows, I thought. The Veil was paper thin in this place, had been since maybe the days of the gold rush, maybe before. Down the street the BMW’s 90 horsepower engine roared to life and pulled out into the almost nonexistent traffic. It was all the kid’s trouble and none of their own.

  As the big automobile cruised past us, I met the driver’s eyes. Hispanic, he had a broad, pockmarked face, and small, close set eyes so dark brown they were black. I recognized him as a stander-by from Euryale’s club. He lifted a hand big as a laptop and made a gun out of his finger and thumb. He pointed at me, marking me, then he dropped his thumb like a hammer falling on a firing pin.

  I see you

  “Yeah, I see you, too,” I muttered as the car swept pass.

  “Yeah, okay,” the girl said. “Let’s go inside.”

  Something in her tone made me look. She was staring, wide eyed, at Davis kicking the limp kid. She looked up at me, seemingly mesmerized by the blood.

  “Why is he doing that?” she asked.

  I took her by the arm and led her toward the door of the diner. “Maybe he’s getting paid.”

  “Or not getting paid,” she countered.

  She has a point, I admitted to myself.

  For no reason I understood yet, my mind flashed again on the image of the sigil scratched into the wall, but I shook it off as we entered the diner and the smell of frying meat and sizzling grease hit me.

  The waitress eyed the girl’s hairdo and frowned as she recognized it. Then she looked at me standing with the girl, and a look of distaste flashed on her face.

  No dates with her anytime soon, I thought.

  “We’ll take a booth, in the back,” I said.

  “Whatever you say, buddy,” she answered. Her accent was pure hometown. “Or should I say, John?” She let the question hang there.

  “Ha, ha,” I said.

  I scowled. Just a little, just enough to show I could go down Thug Road if I had to.

  She got the message and busied herself getting menus. We walked down the narrow aisle running between the booths on the window side of the converted streetcar and the stools seated at the counter. The dinner crowd had thinned and the clientele was metastasizing into the Night Tribe.

  At the last booth I sat on the far side where I could observe the street outside and the door of the diner. The girl sat across from me and stared. I sighed, already tired. The waitress approached with menus and I shook my head no.

  “Two cheeseburgers and fries. Coke for me and a milkshake for her,” I looked at her. “Flavor?”

  “Chocolate,” she said in an unimpressed ‘of course’ voice.

  “Chocolate,” I told the waitress.

  She popped her gum. “Coming up.”

  As she left I turned
back to the girl. She looked at me, skeptical. “What’s with the parental bullshit?” she asked. “You going to make me call you ‘daddy’?” She looked out the window. “That costs more,” she paused and when she spoke again her voice was softer and more tired than it should have been at her age. “I’ll do it,” she clarified, “but it costs more.”

  I felt an ugly, heavy snake coil in my stomach. “Jesus,” I muttered, aghast despite myself.

  The girl snapped her eyes back toward me. “Oh, shit, you aren’t one of those God people are you? Cause if you are— “

  “I’m not a goddamn missionary,” I snapped, exasperated. “And watch your mouth.”

  “You just cursed.”

  “I was a Marine. Plus, I’m a lawyer.”

  “What does that even mean?” she demanded.

  I paused. “We’re getting off track, here.”

  “Remind me which track we’re on again? Because, I’m clueless.”

  This was starting to be an eerie déjà vu of the conversion with Erica. I felt stuck in a rut. Or maybe an endless playback loop.

  I pulled out my wallet and removed four brand new fifty dollar bills and slid them across the Formica. She made the bills disappear.

  “That’s two hundred dollars,” I said. “I gave it to you in fifties so you can keep one or two for yourself when that douche-canoe of a driver comes around again to collect.”

  “Sysco,” she told me.

  “Sysco?”

  “His name is Sysco.”

  “As in, ‘I left my heart in San Fran’?”

  She shrugged. “Don’t know. We’re not exactly close.”

  “What do they call you?” I asked.

  “Candy.”

  “Uh, no,” I replied firmly.

  She looked at me. “No, what?”

  “No I’m not calling you Candy. It’s stupid. And gross. Give me another name.”

  She responded to the flat, matter-of-fact tone in my voice. Probably unconsciously. “Sometimes people call me Clarice,” she said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Clarice’s a good name.”

  The waitress put our plates, along with my bill on the table before handing us our drinks. “Pay out at the till,” she said to the booth and moved away.

  Clarice was famished. I watched her wolfing down her food with bemused detachment. I ate my own food, not trying to question her. I grew uneasy with how watching her eat, so obviously famished, made me feel.

  Why try and save this one? I asked myself. She’s no better or worse than the other five girls shivering their ass off outside. I can’t help them all, and nobody who’s supposed to, is. Christ, why am I even thinking about this?

  Clarice finished her burger, mopped up Ketchup with the last fry and then proceeded to drain the milkshake. She eyeballed the empty glass, decided she wasn’t through with it yet and sucked the last drops out like marrow from a bone.

  She looked at me. “That was great and everything, but when we do it, you still have to pay.”

  I cocked an eyebrow at her. “What about the two hundred I just gave you?”

  “What two hundred?” she asked.

  “The money was for information.”

  She shook her head no. “I’m not talking about our operation, no matter the price.”

  “This isn’t about that,” I frowned, suddenly pensive. “Unless it turns out it is. But for now, it’s about a girl I’m looking for.”

  “What’s the matter? I’m not your type? You like ‘em with big boobs or something?” She held her hands in front of her own chest in an exaggerated pantomime of large breasts.

  Hearing her, a guy in a long Burberry raincoat turned and looked. I stared at him. He turned around and paid attention to his coffee again. I turned back to Clarice.

  “For Christ’s sake, will you mellow down?”

  “You sure use the Lord’s name in vain a lot for a missionary,” Clarice pointed out.

  I released my breath through my nose in a slow, controlled exhalation. “Clarice?”

  “Yes?”

  “I want to show you a picture of a girl, okay? She’s a full grown woman. I shouldn’t call her a ‘girl,’ but sometimes I feel old.”

  “So show me, no one’s stopping you. Got a cigarette?”

  “I don’t smoke, and neither should you.” I pulled my phone out and opened the camera app.

  “You afraid it’s going to shorten my life?” Her tone was a little too dull for it to be a quip.

  I slid the phone onto the table. The picture was a SFPD mugshot I assumed Fallows’ had provided Erica with. “Her name is Evelyn. You know her. She’s your friend.” I swiped left and brought up Kay’s photo. Kay looked determined, capable. Young. “Evelyn was with this woman, Kay. Tell me where Evelyn is.”

  “I don’t know.”

  “That’s what two hundred dollars buys me?”

  “After I give Sysco his cut of the money he’s gonna know about, I’ll have, like, fifty bucks. Maybe.”

  “That’s all fifty bucks buys me?”

  “People love San Francisco, but it’s a bitch of a city sometimes.”

  “Clarice,” I said. I let prison house frost seep into my voice, like blood soaking a carpet. “I don’t mind paying. I’m a big fucking softie, and I don’t mind helping you, but if playing nice doesn’t work, I’m going to stop using the carrot and start using the stick.”

  “You a real tough guy?” she spat. “You hit a girl, you just like Sysco and the johns? Huh? You’d hit a girl?”

  “Under the right circumstances,” I admitted in a quiet, lethal voice. “I’m probably capable of hitting anybody. You get past all the bullshit? It’s probably why I got this job in the first place. Now, please, tell me what you know about Evelyn.”

  “Evie,” Clarice corrected.

  “She goes by Evie?”

  “Yeah.”

  “You know where she is?”

  “We came to the City together,” Clarice said. “On the bus. We were both runaways, our dads…you know.” She shrugged, not looking at me. “We thought we were safer together.”

  I nodded, tried keeping my voice gentle. “I get it, go on.”

  “We ran into Jet, that’s who Sysco works for, and Sysco at the bus station. He seemed real nice at first. Even Sysco didn’t seem as scary. I didn’t have anywhere to go, I’d only thought about getting here, you know? Not so much about what would happen when I got here.”

  “And Evie?”

  “She pissed Jet off,” Clarice said. “He tried to play it off with his kindly uncle BS, but I could tell. It was the bus station, but day time,” she added, looking at me to see if I understood. I nodded. It made a difference. Day. Night. Sure it did. “So there was nothing he could do,” she finished.

  “What’d she do?”

  “Mostly, she didn’t come with him, that’s what set him off.”

  “Where’d she go?”

  “She didn’t say!” she shot back, her voice earnest. “Really. She said she had a friend, maybe a relative that she was going to find. She said they were ‘sisters’ but I don’t think they were, not for reals.”

  “This mysterious sister have a name?”

  “Not that she said.”

  “She have an address? Evie ever mention a street name? A place of work? Anything?”

  “No.” She eyed my last few fries. “You going to eat those?”

  I pushed the plate toward her. I gritted my teeth then forced a long, slow breath out, just the way the doctors teach you. I watched the girl eating the last of the fries. She’s right, I thought, it’s a bitch of a city. As I said, the Veil was thin in San Francisco, had been for a long, long time.

  “What about my friend?” I asked. “The woman, Kay.”

  “Last week,” she said. “They came down together last week, I don’t know how they met. They wanted to talk to us but Jet sent Sysco after them.” Clarice laughed, it was almost childlike. “That friend of yours put Sysco on his ass. One punch, pow
. Pissed him off when he woke up.”

  I smiled. Sounded like Kay. “Then what happened?”

  “Then Jet pulled a gun and hit Davis’s number on his cell. Your friend and Evie split then, too much of a scene, I guess.”

  I pulled a twenty out of my wallet and slid the bill across to her, along with a plain business card that showed only my last name and number.

  “What’s that for?”

  “If you remember anything, you call.”

  I rose to pay the check. She stopped me.

  “Wait,” she said. “There is one thing, I don’t know if it’ll help, but it’s weird.”

  “Okay.”

  “I think, maybe, maybe, Evie’s ‘sister,’ whatever her name was, was maybe a hex girl. I didn’t know what that meant when Jet first said it.” She shrugged. “I’ve been down in the Narrows long enough now to get it.”

  “A goddamn witch,” I muttered. I closed my eyes for a moment. I felt the blood drop out of my face and the big snake in my belly moved again. “Of course it was a witch.” I opened my eyes and looked at her. “What makes you say that?”

  “I don’t know, exactly. I’m not a goddamn professor or something.”

  “But…”

  “Evie liked to doodle, the city is a long fucking way from Omaha, and so she did it a lot.”

  “What kind of doodles?”

  “All kinds, usual stuff. She was really good, you know? Flowers, little house with smoke coming out of the chimney, even ponies. But more than that. She sketched people too.”

  “She draw someone you recognized?”

  “No, it wasn’t that. I didn’t recognize it, that’s what made it weird, made me remember.”

  Some instinct began working on me. I felt there was a thread here, something I could maybe, possibly, pull on. Maybe only long enough to lead me to the next thread, but still, something.

  “If it wasn’t a person what was it?”

  “Sort of like a symbol, or maybe like those things in Egypt.”

  “Hieroglyphics?” What the hell?

  I reached into my jacket pocket and got a pen. I pushed it and a clean napkin at her.

  “I’m not good at drawing like she is.”