Parlor tricks. Probably, she had it in her head I'd be impressed. I wasn't. I dropped the butt of my third Camel to the floor and ground it out with the toe of my sneaker.
"Okay, so . . . where exactly do you suggest I start?"
Berenice didn't answer me right away. She was staring at the spot where the book had winked out of existence, like maybe she expected it to come back. Then she blinked a few times, tugged absentmindedly at her braid, and said, "There's a bordello in the-"
"Old Drusneth's whorehouse?"
Berenice scowled. "I'm not personally on a first name basis with the proprietress. Not my scene."
"But it's your sister's?"
Berenice made an annoyed expression and started to answer, but I cut her off.
"Never mind. I know the place, a dump down on Cranston Street."
I'd made Drusneth's acquaintance not long after going to work for B, but before Mercy and Grumet had put the bite on me (ha-fucking-ha). For a succubus, Dru isn't such a bad sort. As demon whorehouses go, she runs a clean joint. She makes sure her customers don't get in over their heads, that they understand the cost of a lay (their souls, a memory, a firstborn, etc.) before a transaction takes place. I'd made friends with one of her girls, a tall violet-skinned creature with a flare for the ironic; she'd called herself Clemency Hate-evil, a good old-fashioned Puritan name. During the week or so I'd spent trying to save my skin and figure out just what the Bride of Quiet was playing at, vamping me and all, Clemency had done me a small favor. And it had gotten her . . . well, probably not killed. Probably, it had gotten her something considerably less enjoyable than killed. You won't catch me trying to hide the fact that I am what I am, but I'm still capable of feeling an ounce or two of guilt now and then. And I didn't exactly savor the idea of visiting Drusneth, who, by the way, likes to call herself Madam Calamity. Demons, as is more or less widely known, aren't so big on using real names in their dealings on this material plane.
"Are you thinking she might have made a bad bargain?" I asked. "Started thinking with her clit?"
Berenice deflected my question by making the paperback reappear a foot or so above the table. It hovered there a few seconds; then gravity did its gravity thing and the thick book landed with a thud.
"You think you're in danger, too," I said.
"I didn't say that."
"No, but you're hiding out here with zombie bodyguards. You sent that ridiculous, annoying child to meet me today so you wouldn't have to leave your bunker. B didn't say so, but I'm betting she's also the one approached him last night about working this case."
"And this is your business why?"
My phone hummed loudly from my jeans pocket, and Berenice frowned.
"You mind?" I asked her. "I ought to take this. Sometimes they're actually important."
"No," she said, and began flipping through the pages of the paperback. "Go ahead. There's nothing much left I can tell you, anyway."
I pulled out the phone, and when she saw the Hello Kitty case, all those rhinestones sparkling in the dim lamplight, she snickered.
"It was a goddamn gift, okay?"
"Well, I think it's terribly sweet," she said, then laughed again. I gave her the finger, which only made her laugh that much harder.
The call was Mean Mr. B, which really came as no surprise whatsoever. The bastard had probably been sitting at Babe's for hours, nursing Cape Cods and waiting for me to check in.
"How's it going, kitten?"
"It's going," I replied.
"Are you playing nice?"
"Natch, Bosco. You know me."
"I do, kitten. That's why I worry so."
There was a pause, then the sound of him taking a drag on a cigarette, the soft whoosh as he exhaled.
"Our client here isn't exactly shitting useful information," I told him. "Oh, and did I neglect to mention I'm not a detective?"
"Make the most of the least," he said, and I wasn't sure if he was referring to what I'd learned from Berenice Maidstone or his need to rely on my obvious lack of acumen as a junior shamus. Whether he was speaking to me or to himself . . . or both.
"Regardless," B continued, "if you're asking after the whereabouts of Mr. Lashly, you needn't bother yourself with him any further."
"How's that? You find him?"
"No, no. I didn't. But the police did. They fished his body out of the river this afternoon, just below the Point Street Bridge. Someone decided to put a couple of bullets in the poor sod's brain. An interesting turn of events, wouldn't you say?"
"Fuck me."
Berenice, who'd just made Nora Roberts vanish for the second time, looked up at me.
"Now, dear," B said, "you know I don't swing that way. Still, it's a kindly offer."
"Okay, so what do you want me to do now?"
"I'd like to know how Shaker got himself into that dreadful fix. I rather liked the fellow. He'll be missed. And, of course, it's possible there's a party, or parties, who doesn't wish us poking about into these troubles of the sisters."
"Right," I said. "The fun never ends."
"That, love, has been my experience."
He hung up.
"Have you found her?" asked Berenice.
I just shook my head. "We'll be in touch," I said. "Meanwhile, you hiding out here might not be such a bad idea after all. And if you happen to know any wards to fortify this shithole, any abracadabras that you haven't already raised, I'd advise you do use them."
She furrowed her brow, then shouted at the zombies in French, and I got my parka and cap back.
"Just fucking sit tight," I told her. She nodded, and one of the dead guys escorted me back to the door. Outside, it had begun to snow again, and the sky was the color of a Dreamsicle. I've always hated those things.
CHAPTER THREE
QUINN'S TERRIBLE, HORRIBLE, NO-GOOD, VERY BAD DAY
You might find this strange, but I hate morgues. So, set aside the stereotypes, slam-dunk those assumptions that vamps are, by definition, morbid. Because I hate morgues. Not only are they filled with dead people-whose company I rarely enjoy-they're full of dead people in various stages of rot, mutilation, and postmortem slice and dice. Not my scene. I hate the smell, and I hate the bright fluorescent lights.
However, after I left Kinsley Avenue, I knew B expected me to swing by the city morgue and have a look at whatever was left of Shaker Lashly. No, B didn't say it in so many lines, but when talking with that cocksucker you gotta learn to read between the lines. And between the lines, he'd said, in no uncertain terms, "Oh, and do please drop by the municipal meat freezer and have a look see at the earthly remains of our dearly fucking departed." Which is what I did.
Mean Mr. B has contacts just about everywhere in Providence that there are contacts to be had, fingers in lots of pies, which should come as no sort of a surprise. Besides all the creepsome sort, I mean. The cops, hospitals, the fire department, the city council, the planning commission, judges, the mayor's office, newspapers, the goddamn DMV, etc. and etc. And the Office of State Medical Examiners. Coroners. Which is why no one protested my showing up after hours at the last gasp saloon, expecting access to the corpse of my choice. Doc Tillinghast was even waiting up for me. What the hell, though; he could write it up as overtime. Tillinghast, a short man in his late fifties, bald as a baby's ass, was both an inveterate necrophile and a groupie.
But he was the sort of groupie who had the smarts not to make a nuisance of himself and interfere in the doings of the nasties he admired. This, coupled with his cooperation and occasional usefulness, had kept him alive. The pathologist was waiting for me in the basement amid those tile-covered walls and stainless-steel operating tables, the bone saws, skull chisels, and rib cutters. When I came through the doors, he was watching Tex Avery cartoons on his laptop and eating a corned beef on rye.
He looked up at me, not the least bit startled by my entrance, a dab of mustard on his chin. The thick lenses of his spectacles always made his eyes look comically huge.
"Ms. Quinn," he said, actually sounding glad to see me. Hardly anyone's ever glad to see me, and the exceptions always throw me for a loop.
"Yeah," I replied, taking in the row of bodies tastefully hidden beneath their white sheets. I'd say I already wanted to be out of there, but, fact is, I'd wanted to be out of there before I went in. "How's it hanging."
He blinked at me with his magnified eyes, and I could tell he was disappointed I was wearing all that MAC concealer and the hazel-green contacts.
"Can't complain," he said.
"Is it bad?" I asked, and pointed towards the bodies. I didn't have any idea which one was Shaker's.
"For a floater? Nah, not really. He hadn't been in more than a few hours, and with the river mostly frozen over, helped retard the decomp."
"Small mercies."
Tillinghast shut off the cartoons and set aside what was left of his dinner. "Third down," he said, and followed me to the table. He pulled back the sheet and yep, it was Shaker Lashly, all right. There was a perfectly centered bullet hole between his eyebrows.