Lilith Saintcrow - Redemption Alley

I wondered if she smoked—I didn’t think she’d need to, breathing that fug all day. So this could have been going on for longer. Or it could be the tail-end of the Sorrows’ operation. Too many variables. “So if it wasn’t suicide, why did Kutchner die?”

“Jacinta Kutchner was an accountant. Her office was tossed as well as her bedroom. We think she had a set of cooked and uncooked books, either in the office or in the safe in her closet. Yesterday a blue bit it—”

“Officer Winchell,” I supplied helpfully. “Was he implicated too?”

A vintage Carper shrug, his shoulder holster peeping out. He didn’t look surprised at my supplying the name. “Only up to his eyeballs. Would it surprise you to know Winchell and Kutchner’s grieving widow were having an affair?”

Huh. That puts a new shine on things. I picked up a slice of charcoaled bacon. “You do such fine police work, Carp. What do you need me for?”

“The trail dead-ends with Marv’s retirement fund disappearing. All half-a-million of it. I think the widow was about to blow the whistle on the whole dirty deal, or she double-crossed someone and hid the money. Maybe she even loved her husband, I don’t know. But without her and without the books—and without Marv and Winchell—we have exactly what we started out with. Dead wetbacks and a whole lot of nothing.”

And here I was getting all bent out of shape over victims. The thought was too bitter to let out of my mouth. “That doesn’t tell me what you want.”

“I want to know how far up this goes.” He blinked at his food as if he couldn’t believe he’d ordered it, took a long draft of coffee. “I have to tell you, Kiss, I’m willing to break a few laws to do it. And you’re one of us, but you don’t have a lot of the same… limits… that I do.”

“Someone tried to kill me the other day.” Jesus. Was that only yesterday? “They didn’t use silver-coated ammo. Which leads me to believe someone knows Monty’s called me in and feels just a wee bit threatened.”

“You think?” Carp went pale. He was sweating. If it was concern for me it was awful cute. “Marv and Winchell weren’t the only ones to end up dead over this. Six months ago Pedro Ayala over in Vice stumbled across something, gave me a call, and turned up dead less than four hours later before I could meet him. It’s filed as a random gang-related shooting, since Ay did the gang beat. He was tight with a few of the old-school 51s, their territory’s a chunk in the barrio near the Plaza. He used to run with the oldsters before he turned all law-abiding. I can’t get any of them to talk to me about him.”

I vaguely remembered Ayala from rookie orientation—slim, dark, and intense. They blur together inside my head sometimes. All those cops, each and every one of them passing through my hands before they’re allowed out on the streets.

You’d think I’d feel better about that. “Jesus.”

“Yeah. They won’t talk to me or to Bernie—his partner—but it doesn’t seem possible that one of them pulled the trigger on him. He was out of la vida since he was sixteen, but he once or twice brought in some of the 51s as material witnesses during a turf war.”

I let out a low whistle. That was a not-inconsiderable achievement. “Did they walk afterward?”

“When the killing stopped. Ay was a good cop. He didn’t deserve lungs full of lead. The coroner said it probably took him ten minutes to suffocate on his own blood.”

I could relate. Jesus. I poked at the bacon some more, nibbled at a bit of it, set it down. “You want me to go into the barrio and poke around the 51s.”

Theron made another restless movement. But he held his peace, which was more than I would have expected.

Carp held my gaze, did not look away. “I’m asking for a hot chunk of lead if I go down there. Monty’s already called you in, Jill.”

He was serious. The trouble was, I was asking for more than one hot chunk of lead if I went into the barrio. The Weres run herd out there and keep everything under control. I know the streets and alleys—there’s not a slice of my city I don’t know by now—but going into the depths of Santa Luz’s other dark half isn’t something to be done lightly if your skin is my color.

I can’t spend more time on this. There’s scurf, goddammit. And the widow and Winchell weren’t victims in the usual sense.

But still. The rope made a small sound inside my head, a human being reduced to a clock pendulum, and I knew I couldn’t let this rest. Something else was bothering me about the whole goddamn deal, but damned if I could lay a finger on it.

I hate that feeling. It usually means something is about to take a big bite out of my ass in a very unpleasant way. “All right. Hand over the paper.”

His hand slid under the table and came up with a manila file, rubber-banded closed. It was dauntingly thick. “This is what I’ve got so far. A collection of fucking dead ends. If you can make something of it…”

“Dead ends don’t mean the same thing to me that they do to you.” I pushed the bacon across the table, took the file, and laid a ten down to cover a bit of breakfast. “Keep your head down, Carp. I would hate to lose you just when I’ve gotten you toilet trained.”

His reply was unrepeatable. I slid out of the booth, following Theron’s graceful motion. I tipped Carp a salute, he shot me the finger, and we parted, friends as usual.

As soon as we got up the stairs and stepped outside, the Were took in a deep breath, rolling it around his mouth like champagne. “No news,” he announced, needlessly. “Maybe that was the main nest, maybe we got them all.”

I’m not so sure. They were too old. “I’d feel better if we knew instead of guessing.” I slid my shades on; the sun was a hammerblow even this early in the morning. “And I’d feel a lot better if we could have ID’d some of the scurf as our missing people.” Good fucking luck doing that, scurf all look the same. “Or if I could have asked that skunk-haired ’breed some questions.”

“ I’d feel a lot better if you hadn’t just volunteered to go down in the barrio.” He fixed me with a sidelong stare. “I suppose this is something else I’m not supposed to tell Saul about?”

“I never told you not to tell him anything.” I set off for my Impala, parked in a convenient alley some two blocks away. It was going to be another desert scorcher of a day. “I go where I have to, Theron.”

“This sounds like a human affair.” His tone was carefully neutral.

“So are scurf, if you look at it the right way.” Sarcasm dripped from each word. “Don’t ride me, Were. I know what I’m doing.”

“Easy, hunter. I’m just pointing it out.” He didn’t crowd me like Saul would have. He didn’t smell like Saul, not really. He was just similar enough, his bulk just familiar enough, to remind me of what I was missing.

“Thanks.” You don’t have to come along. But that would be a direct insult, since Theron had appointed himself my backup. It would imply I didn’t have any faith in his capacity to defend himself.

Weres are funny about things like that.

He apparently decided he’d pushed me far enough. “When are you going in?”

Well, if I wait for nightfall it will only get more dangerous. But sunlight’s best for hunting scurf. “If they find anything while doing sweeps you’ll know, right?”

“Of course.” He didn’t sound offended that I’d asked. “Do you think they’re connected?”

A hot breeze came off the river, ruffled my hair. Carp hadn’t said anything about me looking torn-up and exhausted. Dim light and some breakfast must have done me some good, though I’d never win any prizes in the looks department. “What?”