John Levitt - Unleashed

“That was unfortunate. Just after you walked down the driveway I got a call on my cell. From Eli. He said to wait, he was almost at the front gate and it was crucial to meet him there.”

“And you just left me to fend for myself?”

“He said you’d be in no danger. He had Ruby in sight.”

“That’s insane. What was he doing here? And how the hell did he know where we were? And why-” I broke off. Victor turned his head and favored me with a quick glance, and didn’t answer. “Oh,” I said, after a few seconds.

“She was a perfect mimic. A voice is even easier.”

“How did she get your number?” This time I didn’t have to wait for Victor’s look. “Oh, right. She had it from when she was Ruby. She had all the info she needed, including your cell number.”

“I should have realized,” said Victor. “The number came up on the display as blocked, which should have been the tip-off it wasn’t really Eli calling. But it wasn’t until Lou came tearing up the road that I knew I’d been had.”

That’s about as close to an apology as Victor’s capable of.

“What are we going to do with the body?” I asked.

“I’ll take care of it,” he said. We drove in silence the rest of the way until we finally reached my house. I turned to him before I got out.

“One thing still bothers me. When Ruby was at your house, the shape-shifter was at Morgan’s house at the same time. How did she pull that off? Did she leave for a while? Was she around where you could see her the entire time? Did she split herself in two somehow?” The minute I said that, I got it.

“Oh, shit,” I said. Victor looked at my face and knew I had something.

“What?” he said.

“Think back. Think of what we saw in Ruby’s apartment. The mattress.”

I flashed back to the scene there, the mattress in the living room with two piles of torn sheets and two piles of wadded-up blankets and sheets and two indentations. Victor looked off into the distance as he did the same. His visual recall was as good as mine, possibly better.

“Two of them,” he said. “Goddamn it. There are two of them.”

I CALLED MORGAN TO LET HER KNOW IT STILL wasn’t safe to come back, but her phone went straight to voice mail, and her message box was full. She hadn’t called me, either, which was a bit worrisome. Ruby had been taken care of, but what about the other? Still, as long as Morgan stayed away, she should be safe.

Meanwhile, I had a message of my own-an unexpected gig. The booker at Rainy Tuesdays had called to ask if I was available tomorrow night. I was. I needed the money; even with shape-shifters roaming the streets, rent still comes due every month.

The club’s scheduled draw, the Scott Harkins quintet, had unexpectedly cut short their tour and abruptly canceled. Thus the call. I haven’t worked hard enough at self-promotion to be a headliner and I probably never will, but I did have enough of a local reputation to be on the short list as a fill-in. I was even getting enough of a name that occasionally people came out to specifically hear me play. Who’d have imagined?

I called the booker back and assured her we were ready to go. Then I started making calls, and it took until the next afternoon to get hold of everyone. Dave’s always the easiest-he’s a family man and he returns calls, especially if there’s a paying gig in the offing. But Roger is liable to be off skateboarding and he keeps temporarily losing his cell phone. And Bobby Clemens, whom I wanted to add, is drunk half the time and can’t be bothered to check his messages. But I finally got them all on board.

It was nice to be setting up at Rainy Tuesdays again. There are other clubs that are more fun to play, but few classier and few that pay as well. Of course, there’s Yo shi’s. They’d opened up a sister club in San Francisco, not yet quite with the cachet of the Oakland original, but it was getting there. But I’d been temporarily banned from playing there after an unfortunate situation that was none of my making. Nothing official, but effective. It would blow over. Things always do in the jazz world.

Rainy Tuesdays sits in the middle of the Mission District. Ten years ago the Mission was still a sketchy enough neighborhood to discourage nighttime business, but these days the main danger a patron faced was getting scalded by an errant latte. It’s a nice space-medium-sized, very trendy and hip, lots of small tables, and a great sound system to pipe the band’s music into the front room.

The long curved bar with its black leather rail at one end has taken on an iconic status in only a couple of years, and other places are starting to copy the look. They’d recently softened the original industrial retro look, adding some color and giving the place a warmer feel. They’d kept their trademark logo-an umbrella with three rain-drops, done in blue neon tubing. The stage is still a bit too small, because they want to squeeze in as many tables as possible. But it’s raised only about half a foot, and the nearest tables are close enough to almost touch the players, giving it that intimate touch. Jazz was never meant for the stage or the concert hall; originally jazz was club music, meant for people who dance and drink and party. And the best jazz hasn’t abandoned those roots.

Dave, the bass player, and Roger Chu, the wunderkind on drums, had become my go-to guys, and this time I’d added Bobby Clemens. Bobby was the finest organ player in town, one of the best anywhere, actually. He didn’t work as often as he should, because frankly, he was a total asshole. Unless he was drunk, and then he couldn’t play. The only reason he ever got a gig at all was that he was just that goddamned good. But he did manage to suck most of the joy out of playing music, simply by his very presence and attitude.

But I thought he’d work out for us. Dave is so laid-back he can get along with anyone, and Roger lives in a world all his own. The only thing that matters to Roger is the music-except for his skateboard. And it’s hard to insult someone who doesn’t even realize they’ve been insulted. When Roger’s not playing drums he’s mostly in an impervious teenage fog that nothing penetrates.

Bobby and I get along fairly well, considering. He never hassles me, not because I’m so easy to get along with, but because he’s slightly afraid of me. He’d once seen something he wasn’t supposed to, when a couple of street thugs tried to rip off my guitar one night. He’d managed to convince himself he’d been high that night, but there was just enough doubt remaining in his mind to treat me with a certain amount of caution and respect. Whenever he started getting out of line, I’d throw something minor his way, like quietly turning the ice cubes in his drink blue, then red, then back to normal. He never could be sure if it was real or not, and that certainly put a damper on his aggressiveness.

The draw that evening was light, since the original show had been canceled, but we were all on our game. For the first time in a long while I put everything out of my mind, refusing to worry about such mundane issues as carnivorous shape-shifters. My playing was assured; my lines inventive and flowing. Roger was a monster on drums, as usual, and the sound of Bobby’s B3 Hammond was so sweet that it makes every tune seem to groove even if it really doesn’t. So temporarily life was good-right up until the moment I noticed who had taken a seat behind the first row of tables. Our curly-headed friend, the Wendigo.

I immediately went on autopilot, comping behind Bobby’s solo without even paying attention to what he was doing. No one in the audience noticed, but Bobby did. He started to throw me a dirty look, but quickly changed it to neutral and puzzled when he saw the look on my own face.