But I had one option, a stopgap until the face-to-face. I sat down on the curb, reached into a pocket of my parka, and pulled out the iPhone he'd given me for Xmas. It was a bad joke. Probably, he'd given one of his mollies a credit card and sent the kid off to the mall. The backside of the phone's case was a glittering mosaic of diamond rhinestones, arranged into the six-whiskered, mouthless, macrocephalic face of Hello Kitty, with a pink diamond rhinestone flower set at each corner. Yeah, ha, ha, fucking ha. I should have thrown the case away, but you never know what's gonna piss the man off. What he's gonna interpret as a failure to appreciate his overwhelming generosity.
So there we were, me and Hello Kitty. I tapped in his number, and it rang eight times before anyone answered. Nothing unusual there. I was lucky when anyone bothered answering at all. It wasn't Mean Mr. B, of course. He never answers the phone himself. It was one of the boys; their voices were as interchangeable to me as their faces.
"Need to speak him," I said.
"Him?" the voice asked, drenched in indifference.
"Yeah, him. Put him on the line, and stop fucking around."
"I take it you mean Bosco. You're being very vague."
"Bosco? You're shitting me. Bosco?"
"Unless you mean someone else, Quinn," the boy sighed, his indifference changing over into mild exasperation. "Maybe you have the wrong number."
"Fine. Yeah, I mean Bosco."
"Well, he's not in at the moment. I can take a message, though. If you wish."
I wanted to punch the sidewalk. Sure, the cement would probably break my hand, but it'd have healed by the next day. I gritted my teeth.
"No," I said, as calmly as I could manage, 'cause B hates when anyone gets grumpy with one of his play pretties. "I don't want to leave a message. Do you know when he'll be back?"
"I haven't a clue. Call back later, or try Babe's."
Nine chances out of ten, Bosco (probably the worst name I'd heard him use yet) was sitting right next to the boy, silently chuckling to himself. I knew it wasn't beyond the realm of possibility that he'd already gotten wind of the altercation and had decided to savor my discomfort for a while.
He does shit like that, all the goddamn time.
"Tell him I called. Tell him I'll be around."
"That's very vague, Quinn."
"Yeah," I replied and hung up.
Fuck me.
So, as Willy Wonka said, strike that. Reverse it. I did have time to swing by home and clean up, after all. I stuck out my tongue and tasted the snow. The flakes take just a little longer to melt on the tongue of a dead girl. One flake, two flakes, three. Then I stood up, dusted snow off my jeans, and turned north up Hope Street. It was only four blocks to my apartment, the second floor of an old Victorian.
This isn't the dump I was living in when Mercy Brown and Jack Grumet the Werewolf made of me the pretty hate machine I am today, that shithole down at the south end of Gano that B rented for me just after he took me under his wing. By that February, I'd moved up in the world. Sure, the place was still a dump, but it was a way classier dump. There isn't even a hole in the kitchen floor. And the ugly Play-Doh blue carpet doesn't crunch when you walk on it, from all the roaches that are busy living and dying underneath. Nothing but the best for Mean Mr. B's red right hand. Can't have folks thinking he doesn't take care of his own, not a classy gent like him. Demons talk.
Walking those four blocks, I kept my head down, avoiding the casual glances of anyone else I passed. The night before, I hadn't felt like bothering with the contact lenses and dental prosthetics and the layers of makeup I usually used to hide my true face from the living, breathing world. B had given me the contacts a day or two after I died, to conceal my shark-black eyes-no distinguishing pupil from iris-behind a lie of hazel green. Before Mercy Brown, my eyes had been blue, but what the fuck? He'd sent me to a cosmetic dentist a month or so later, after that mess with the Bride and Penderghast was over and done with, this dude up in Pawtucket who practiced a smattering of half-assed Enochian magic on the side and could generally be counted on to keep a secret in order to stay in the good graces of the nasties. That, and I figured Mean Mr. B had some dirt on him, as well.
But the contacts hurt my eyes, the fake teeth made it difficult to talk, and the makeup . . . well, it was all just too much trouble, and I'd taken to forgoing all that subterfuge when I went out at nights. Especially the nights I went out to eat.
I was on my way up the front steps when a silver Buick LaCrosse pulled up in front of the house and the driver honked its horn. I turned and stared at the car a moment, pretending I didn't know it was B come around to collect his troublesome hired gun. The horn honked a second time. Fortunately, my downstairs neighbors were out of town (a situation that would soon grow increasingly fortunate). I haven't mentioned how Mercy and Grumet had left me with the ability to hear a mouse fart from three states away, but they had, and I heard clearly the whir of electronics as the backseat window on the passenger side of the Buick descended, revealing the grinning face of B, smirking out at me. He was wearing a gray-and-white seersucker suit, as if he'd dressed to blend in with the weather. I rubbed my eyes another moment before walking over to the car.
"Wanna go for a ride?" he asked, all cordial as cordial can be. He patted the seat beside him.
"Not especially," I said. "More in the mood for a long hot shower."
He cocked an eyebrow. "That's not what you indicated just a few minutes ago."
"Yeah, well, you snooze, you lose."
These sudden, unexpected spells of pushing my luck? Just another wrinkle in the bottomless charisma of me that B has always-well, usually-let slide.
"You sound rather put out, kitten," he said, making an attempt at seeming concerned. "Whatever in the whole wide world has you in such an unpleasant disposition, this fine winter morning?"
I very briefly calculated the potential expense of punching the motherfucker in the face.
"Must have been sod all, to have you so at sixes and sevens. Climb in and tell me all about it."
I ignored the second invitation. Not as satisfying as punching him in the face, but infinitely less hazardous.
"Sure some little birdie or another hasn't already told you, Bosco?"
"Now, now. Bosco is a fine and noble name-"
"For chocolate syrup."
"-of Italian origin, from the Piemonte region. Have you truly never heard of Father Giovanni Melchiorre Bosco? Don Bosco, as he's more popularly known. Canonized in 1934 and, as it happens, the patron saint of magicians."
"See? You know it was Rizzo, and you're just fucking with me for shits and giggles."
"Be that as it may, I'd like to hear of this misadventure from you, Quinn, my sweet. Now, please stop wasting my time and get in the car."
Now, B almost never says please, not even when speaking to his more infernal, perfidious, and perilous clients. I shut up and got in the Buick. The inside of the car smelled of aftershave lotion, the rainbow-colored Nat Shermans B smokes, and black coffee. At least, those three formed the uppermost stratum of smells. I could list dozens of subtler odors. Like my hearing, Mercy Brown's ministrations had cranked up my nose to eleven. I glanced at the rearview mirror and the chauffeur, who was watching me with a mix of suspicion and boredom. He was Filipino, no more than nineteen, and, I have to admit, subtler and less garish in his gender bending that Mean Mr. B's usual bill of fare.
"He started it," I said, keeping my eyes on the driver (who was still sizing me up).
"I'm very sure that he did," B replied. "It was only a matter of time before the good father expanded his ambitions. Fancy a fag?" he asked, offering me my choice of a red, blue, or green cigarette.
"I'll pass."
The driver narrowed his eyes very slightly, as if he wasn't so keen on my having refused B's offer.
"She thinks she'll pass," B sighed, and the boy finally turned away from the rearview mirror. He shrugged and laughed very softly.
"Frankly," said B, "I don't entirely understand the silly git's problem with you. After all, in a sense, you're both in the same line of work. True, you're more discriminating, and less zealous-"
"And only kill what and who I'm told. I'm hardly on a goddamn holy crusade."
"I trust you do know the meaning of the word zealous, don't you?" he asked. Then he motioned at the driver, and the silver Buick pulled away from the curb.
"Maybe he's pissed about the competition," I said, ignoring the question.
"Possibly. But surely he's aware there's plenty of victims to go around. No, I fear it's more personal."
"You give the bastard too much credit."
"I'm only reminding you of the risks in underestimating your adversaries, and in jumping to conclusions as to their motivations."
I slumped back against the seat, wishing I were just about anywhere but in the company of Mean Mr. B(osco) and the Filipino kid. Preferably taking a hot shower to wash away the night's grime. I stared at the ceiling as we headed south down Hope Street.
"Did I mention he started it?"