Christopher Moore - You Suck

"Oh yeah, ha," Jared said. The trilling giggle again. "That's bad, huh?"

When Rivera and Cavuto arrived at the Safeway, they found that the remaining Animals had crucified Clint on a stainless-steel chip rack and were shooting him with paint-ball guns. Lash unlocked the door to let them in. The Emperor and his men followed. Clint's screaming sent Bummer into a barking fit and the Emperor snatched him up and stuffed him headfirst into the pocket of his overcoat.

"That really necessary?" Rivera asked, pointing to the paint-splattered martyr.

"We think so," Lash said. "He ratted us out." Lash turned, sighted down the pass-through of register three, and fired a quick volley of electric-blue paintballs into the center of Clint's chest. "Did he call you again?"

Rivera threw a thumb over his shoulder at the Emperor.

The Emperor bowed. "You needed help, my son."

Lash nodded, considering that the Emperor might be right, then reeled and fired three quick shots into Clint's groin. "Just the same, motherfucker!"

"Stop that!" Rivera said. He snatched the paintball gun out of Lash's hand.

"It's cool. He's wearing a cup."

"And he's saved," said Barry, who had been firing from register four.

"Well, he is now," Cavuto said. As he approached the paint-sodden Evangelical, he pulled a serrated-edge pocket knife from his back pocket and flicked it open. "And just so you know," Cavuto added when his back was to them, "if I turn and there's a single paintball gun pointed in this direction, I will be forced to mistake it for a real weapon and unleash lead Disneyland on your pathetic asses."

Barry and Troy Lee immediately dropped their weapons onto the counter.

"So, the Emperor tells us that you guys have been up to some shit. I thought we all agreed that we were going to keep it on the down-low until things calmed down."

Lash looked at his shoes. "We just had a little party in Vegas."

Rivera nodded. "And you kidnapped Tommy Flood?"

Lash glared over Rivera's shoulder at the Emperor. "That was a secret. Really we were saving him from the daylight."

"So the redhead did turn him?"

"Looked like it. He was unconscious at dawn. Just a little sunlight hit his leg when we were moving him and it started to smoke."

"So you geniuses did what?"

"Well, we tied him to a bed at my apartment and left."

"You left?"

"We had to work."

Cavuto had cut the zip ties that held Clint to the chip rack and helped him to the register, where he sat him down, careful not to get any paint on his sport coat.

"Forgive them, they know not what they do," Clint said, wincing as he touched his paint-spattered shoulder.

"Because they're fucking idiots," Cavuto said, handing him a roll of paper towels.

Rivera ignored the scene at the register. "So you just left him there. So I'll find him there now, right?"

"That was a couple of nights ago," Lash said.

"Go on." Rivera looked at his watch.

"Well, in the morning he was gone."

"And?"

"It's awkward." For variety, Lash looked at Barry's shoes.

"Yeah, tying up your friends and torturing them can be that way," Rivera said.

"We didn't torture him. That was her."

"Her?" Rivera raised an eyebrow.

"Blue. A hooker we rented in Vegas."

"Now we're talkin'," Cavuto said.

"She came back with us. She wanted us to kidnap Tommy or his girlfriend."

"Why did she want that? To get their share of the art money?"

"No, she had plenty of money. I think she wanted to be a vampire."

Rivera tried to hide his surprise. "And?"

"When we went back to the apartment in the morning, Tommy was gone and Blue was dead."

"We had nothing to do with it," Barry added.

"But we didn't think you'd believe it," Troy Lee said.

Rivera felt a tension headache starting to throb in his temples. He closed his eyes and rubbed his forehead. "So you found a dead woman in your apartment. And you didn't think that then might be a good time to call the police?"

"Well, you know, dead hooker in your house—embarrassing," Troy Lee said. "I think we've all been there. Can I get a high five—" Apparently, he couldn't, and was thus left hanging.

"That's the weird thing," Barry said. "When we went to move her body, it was gone. But the rug we wrapped her in was still there."

"Yeah, that's the weird thing," Cavuto said, nudging his partner in the arm.

"Heinous fuckery most foul," said the Emperor.

"Ya think?" said Cavuto.

Bummer growled from his pocket sanctuary.

"You guys are not helping," Rivera said. Then to Lash again: "You have a description of this hooker?"

Lash described Blue, glossing quickly over the fact that she was blue, and spending entirely too much time describing her breasts.

"They were outstanding," Barry said. "I kept them."

Rivera turned to Troy Lee, who seemed the most rational of these insane bastards.

"Explain, please."

"We found silicone implants wrapped up in the rug where we had left Blue."

"Uh-huh," Rivera said. "Intact?"

"Huh?" Troy inquired.

"Were they all cut up?"

"You think someone cut them out of her and took the body?" Troy asked.

"No," Rivera said. "So now you've lost three of your buddies?"

"Yeah. Drew, Jeff, and Gustavo didn't show up tonight."

Rivera had Lash get the addresses of the missing Animals from the office and wrote them down in his notebook.

"And you don't think that they might just be out partying?"

"We called all the phones, checked their houses," Lash said. "The door was hanging open at Drew's, and Jeff had left half a beer in the driveway, which he would never do. Besides, Jeff and Drew might flake, but Gustavo wouldn't. We even went to his cousin's house in Oakland looking for him."

"And he did not está en la biblioteca either," said Barry, who, for some reason, believed that all Spanish-speaking people spent a lot of time in the library and had therefore checked there for the intrepid night porter.

"No more bodies that you might have forgotten to mention?"

"Nuh-uh," Lash said. "Our money was gone, though. But we'd given it all to Blue anyway."

"I didn't," Clint said. "Mutual funds, less ten percent for the church."

"You gave six hundred thousand dollars to a hooker?" Rivera almost slapped the kid. Almost.

"Well" — Lash looked at Barry and Troy Lee, then, trying to suppress a grin—"yeah."

Rivera shook his head. "Keep the door locked and don't report this to anyone else."

"That's it?" Lash said. "You aren't going to arrest us or anything?"

"For what?" Rivera flipped his notebook closed and tucked it into the inside pocket of his suit coat.

"Uh, I don't know."

"Me either," said Rivera. "Emperor, you stay inside tonight with these guys. Okay?"

"As you wish, Inspector." The Emperor scratched behind Lazarus's ears.

"That okay?" Rivera said to Lash.

Lash nodded. "Are we going to be safe?" he asked.

Rivera stopped, looked around at the Animals and the Emperor and his dogs. "Nope," he said. "Let's go, Nick." He turned and walked out the door.

The foghorn was lowing across the Bay as the detectives walked back to their car. Fort Mason, just across the street, was barely visible in the rolling cloud of gray mist.

"You think the old vampire is hunting the Animals?" Cavuto asked.

"Someone is," Rivera said. "But I'm not sure it's him."

"You think it might be the redhead and the kid?"

"Could be, but I don't think so. You know, even with the vampire, we always had an identifiable MO—broken neck and massive blood loss, on a victim who turned out to be terminally ill, right?"

"Yeah."

"So if he went after these kids, why no bodies?"