Cameron Haley - Skeleton Crew

Adan nodded. “The only way we can stop him from gating in more demons is to deny him the juice he needs to work the ritual.”

“Right on, so it’s just another gang war. Terrence needs to take his streets, muscle him off his corners. No juice, no demons. Once we dry his ass out real good, then we can move in and take him down.”

“It’s a good strategy,” Adan said.

“Thanks.”

“But I don’t think it’s going to work.”

I frowned and did my best to keep the annoyance out of my voice. “Why’s that?”

“Look at it from Mobley’s perspective. He put a demon in King Oberon’s house. Maybe you’re right and he was just trying to sow dissension in the ranks, but even so it’s a damned aggressive move. He didn’t have to bring the fey into it. He didn’t even have to bring us into it. Yeah, he knew what it meant when Simeon Wale went over to Terrence’s outfit, but he could have let it go. That gave him an excuse to escalate but he didn’t have to seize the opportunity if he didn’t want to. He’s fully committed, Domino. He’s got to know he doesn’t see the other side of this thing unless he takes us all out-you, me, Terrence, Oberon. Everyone’s got to die. Which means…”

“…if he’s got more demons, he’ll use them,” I finished. “And we can’t just put a crew together and take him down. Even if we bring in the other outfits, it’s not clear we’d win an all-out war.”

“We need time,” Adan said, “but Mobley obviously isn’t going to give us any.”

“So we don’t give him any choice in it. All we really need to do is avoid committing our forces to a fight we can’t win. We can do that as long as Mobley has something to keep him busy.”

“Terrence. You’re willing to sacrifice him?”

“Call it what you want, Adan, Terrence is on the frontlines. If I’m going to be the wartime captain, some hard decisions are going to come with that. It’s the right move. If this is a fight we can’t win, our objective has to be not losing. The only way we do that is by not fully engaging the enemy. We need cannon fodder.”

“I agree, it’s the best play we’ve got. I’m just surprised. I know it can’t be an easy decision.” I met his gaze and saw something in his eyes. It was something I’d become used to seeing but had never really earned. It was respect. I didn’t feel like I’d earned it now, either. What’s so respectable about giving up a friend?

“Damn it!” I said, and slammed the laptop closed. I rubbed my eyes and temples and let out a long breath. “I was going to make an army out of this outfit, Adan, but I haven’t done shit. We should have been doing…army stuff. Training, organizing, gathering intelligence. Our guys are gangsters. They don’t know anything about being real soldiers. I don’t know anything about it, either. Now something happens, it’s exactly the kind of thing we were supposed to prepare for, and we’re sitting here with our thumbs in our asses. And the only move I’ve got is to sacrifice a friend just to buy a little time.”

“I’m not sure how much training or organizing you can do with this bunch. Even if you can turn the outfits into that kind of army, it’s not going to happen overnight. You’ve got them looking at the big picture. They’re willing to fight with you, and for something more than their own corners and rackets. That’s a small miracle in itself.”

“Intelligence is the big problem,” I said. “I may not be much of a soldier, but even a gangster knows you can’t win a war if you’re always reacting. You have to know who the enemy is, what he’s planning, and you have to go on the offensive. We can’t do that because we don’t know what’s coming or when. That’s why we don’t have any options with Mobley. We’re on defense and it’s getting our people killed.”

“We can talk to the other outfits,” Adan said. “Maybe some of them have more capabilities in that area than we do. I’ll put Chavez on it. I need to check in anyway, make sure nothing else is on fire.”

“Yeah, that’s good. Make sure he talks to Sonny Kim-the Koreans pride themselves on having better information than anybody else. And if they do have something, it’d be just like them to keep it to themselves unless we come asking.”

“What’s your next move?”

I sighed. “I have to tell Terrence to charge the fucking machine-gun nest. I have to figure out what to do about the zombies, and there’s another angle on the intelligence problem I want to try.”

“What’s that?”

“I’m going to the Feds. Those motherfuckers have to be good for something.”

All the bosses in L.A. have front businesses. Sometimes these businesses are juice boxes, like Rashan’s strip clubs and massage parlors. Other times, though, they’re just mundane enterprises meant to grease the wheels of the illegal commerce that keeps the juice flowing in the boss’s neighborhoods. Sometimes they’re even legitimate.

Terrence owned about a dozen Laundromats in South Central, and I met him at the store on Normandie the next morning. The business shared a battered, peach-colored concrete building with a tiny storefront Baptist church and a check-cashing joint. There were tags on the walls but they were defensive wards-Terrence wasn’t getting any juice from it when people fed quarters into his machines. Of the three businesses, the Laundromat seemed to be doing a more robust trade, but that may have been because it was a Tuesday.

Once the muscle out front passed me through, I found Terrence in the back working on a seventies-era dryer. The venerable machine was partially disassembled, and Terrence knelt on a drop cloth on the stained, concrete floor, pounding on something with a crescent wrench.

“Seems like you could find someone else to beat on your washing machines for you,” I noted.

Terrence jumped and banged his head on the edge of the access panel. He swore impressively and wiggled back a ways on his knees so he could turn around. He wasn’t exactly the right size to get inside most home appliances.

“It’s a fucking dryer, Domino. And I do it because it relaxes me. All of a sudden, I ain’t too relaxed, though.” He rubbed the back of his head and winced.

“What I need to say isn’t going to make you feel any better,” I said. I found a folding chair and turned it around, straddling it and crossing my arms on the backrest.

Terrence got up and smeared the grease into his hands with an old rag. He nodded and leaned against the dryer. “I guess I wasn’t expecting good news,” he said.

“Mobley gated the demon in. It wasn’t a summoning spell. We don’t know how he controlled it, or even if he controlled it, but he can probably do it again.”

Terrence didn’t say anything for a while and I could tell he was turning it over in his mind. Finally, he lifted his eyebrows and nodded his head once. “You got to throw me under the bus.”

“God, I’d like to shoot whoever came up with that saying. Seems like everyone’s getting thrown under a fucking bus every time they’re a little inconvenienced or get their feelings hurt.”

“I ain’t complaining, Domino. Seems like that’s the only thing you can do. You got to look at the big picture, and that means you can’t go after Mobley until you’re ready.”

“I’m not happy about it, Terrence.”

“I know that. This is a war, Domino. You made it pretty clear it wasn’t going to be much fun.” He shrugged. “We’ll do our part.”

I didn’t deserve the respect Adan had shown me for giving Terrence this raw deal. But Terrence deserved a hell of a lot for manning up and accepting it with grace. I hoped he could see it in my eyes, the way I’d seen it in Adan’s.

I nodded. “We don’t need you to be a hero, Terrence. You go to the mattresses. You have to let Mobley come after you, but you don’t have to stick your neck out. Stay alive and when we get in front of this thing, we’ll put that motherfucker down together.”