Rachel Caine - Devil's Bargain

Not that Jazz was in the market.

Manny was watching Lucia. “What about her?” he asked, and pointed. Jazz wasn’t exactly a makeover fan, but even she winced from the state of his cuticles. “She armed?”

“She,” Lucia said with absolute precision as she took off her sunglasses, “is always armed. So you can just assume that and move on.”

Manny was already shaking his head, violently. “No, no, no, Jazz, you know I don’t do—I don’t let—no, no, no—”

“Hold on.” She shot Lucia a look. Lucia tilted her head and gave her one right back, and this one clearly said I’m not giving it up for your paranoid weirdo friend. Jazz lowered her voice and walked around to talk to her. “Manny’s a little freaky, but he’s a good guy. Plus, this building has the best security in the city. He built it himself. He’s really good at it. But he’s got quirks, okay? You need to cut him a little slack.”

“Why do we need him?”

“Because I say we do,” Jazz said. Simple. “You can either trust me about this, or we can get in the car, drive out, and go our separate ways. Your choice.”

Lucia’s dark eyes studied her for several long seconds, and then those elegantly outlined lips curved into a smile. “All right,” she said, and reached to her back with one hand.

Gun. Damn, Lucia had a gun. It was a small one, a .22 automatic, combat black. “How the hell did you get that through airport security?”

“I didn’t,” she replied, and put the weight of it into Jazz’s hand. “I sent it ahead to a courier and had him bring it. I palmed it on the way out of baggage claim from the man with the briefcase.”

Jazz hadn’t even noticed a man with a briefcase, except as part of the general wallpaper. There must have been a hundred fitting that description. She blinked, the weight of the gun heavy and warm in her palm, and then nodded as if she’d known that all along. Not that Lucia appeared fooled, considering her smile. “Uh-huh. Anything else?”

“Search me,” Lucia invited, and spread her arms.

“Oh, this isn’t going to be that kind of relationship, believe me.” Jazz bent over and put the gun on the ground, then held up both hands in the air and raised her voice for Manny. “Yo! Gun on the ground! We’re cool now, right?”

Manny was dithering, half in shadow, half in the whitewash of the car headlights. Clearly spooked. “I don’t know, Jazz…you know I don’t like it when you bring strangers…”

“She’s not a stranger,” she lied. “Look, Manny, you do this for me and you get a free lunch. Plus the usual fee.”

He stared at her for a long, long moment. “I don’t do criminal. You know that.”

“It’s not a criminal case, Manny.”

“No murders. No rapes. No violent crimes.”

“It’s maybe fraud, and that’s a maybe.” She was seriously stretching the truth, and saw Lucia watching her with slightly raised eyebrows. “You won’t need to do anything but give me results. No depositions. No trials.”

He swallowed, wiped his sweaty face with his grimy sleeve and nodded. “Yeah, okay,” he agreed. “But only because it’s you, all right? Follow me, ladies.”

Lucia started to pick up the gun. Jazz kicked it under the car with a skitter of metal on concrete, then reached through the window to shut off the headlights. Darkness closed in around them.

“You don’t want to do that,” she said. “Really. You don’t. Manny may look like some squirrelly little pushover. He isn’t.”

They followed Manny to the stairs.

Upstairs was a different world. This didn’t come as a shock to Jazz, but she saw it register on Lucia as Manny keyed a code into a lock and opened the door at the top of the stairs.

Because beyond was a state-of-the-art science lab, segmented by movable clear glass partitions. Beyond that was a thick leather couch and widescreen HDTV that doubled as Manny’s living area. Green hospital curtains hung on suspended rods hid the open-forum bathroom—which, Jazz had cause to know, was an interior designer’s wet dream of gleaming marble, Jacuzzi tub and spa shower—and the bedroom, which she’d only glimpsed but looked good enough that if she lived here, she’d never get out of bed. Manny shooed them away from the lab part of the room and toward the living room. He combed fingers through his disordered hair and avoided their eyes.

“Um, yeah, sorry, I don’t get a lot of—visitors—sit. Sit down.” He moved newspapers and piled them on a glass side table, then picked up the remote control and clicked the TV to some high-definition channel doing a travelogue of China. No sound. “So. Um, tell me what you want. Oh, and hi, by the way. I’m Manny.”

That last went to Lucia, who was standing, staring in bemusement. Jazz patted the couch. Lucia sank down gracefully, hands in her lap. Studying Manny like a new and alien life-form.

“This is Lucia,” Jazz said. “I’ve got two documents for you, plus envelopes. I want the full ride. Everything you can give me.”

Manny couldn’t seem to tear his attention away from Lucia. Apparently, his hormones weren’t dead. “Takes time,” Manny said.

“I know it does.”

“Also, the full ride doesn’t come cheap. And hey, I’m only saying that because, you know, I’ve got to pay for upkeep around here, supplies, stuff…”

Jazz winced inside, but smiled and nodded. “How much?”

“Two documents? Three grand. That includes my time and materials, by the way. Plus, you get to, um, stay here if you want. Wait on the results.”

Hotel Manny. He did have a nice place—scrupulously clean—but she could see Lucia was starting to wish she’d crawled under the car to retrieve the gun. “That’s a nice gesture, but how about if we come back later? You call me when you’re ready with the results?”

“Um…sure.” Manny stared at her with his slightly off-kilter eyes. “Jazz?”

“Yeah?”

“Is this about Mac?”

“No. It’s not about Mac.”

“’Cause you know I’d do it for free if—”

“It’s not about Mac. But I’ll tell him.” Ben McCarthy, she knew, would shake his head and roll his eyes, but he’d appreciate it somewhere deep down. Manny was a twitch, but he was an honest one. In some ways, he was also the bravest guy she’d ever met.

She took the plastic bag out of her jacket and handed over her letter; Lucia did the same. Manny raised the evidence bags, thick eyebrows going up, and stared at Jazz through the plastic. “You’re sure it isn’t murder or something? ’Cause I’m getting a weird vibe.”

“I’m not a cop anymore, you know that.”

“Yeah, well…still. It looks hinky, Jazz. There’s blood.”

“That falls under the heading of bar mayhem, not murder. Two guys tried to start something with me. They’ll live.”

“But you want DNA profile on the blood, right?”

“I want every scrap of information you can pull off of either one of those, right? Everything.”

Manny nodded. “Okay. Everything.”

“Got any idea how long…?”

“Twenty-four hours.”

“You’re not outsourcing, right?”

“Everything gets done here,” he said, and gave her an almost charming grin. “Jeez, grow up. Who would I trust?”

It was a really good point. “Call me.”

Lucia kept silent all the way back down the steps. Without being asked, Jazz got on her hands and knees and fished the gun out from under the car.

“Thanks,” Lucia said, and returned it to the pancake holster behind her back.

“Yeah, well, you’re wearing a nice suit.” Jazz shrugged. “I don’t figure my jeans will suffer from a little contact with the concrete.”