Red Delicious(31)

"I have taken over my brother's organization. He spent so long building it up, seemed a shame to let such a profitable undertaking wither."

"That would have been a shame," I said. I was surprised to find the clip had been left in the pistol. I popped it out and was even more surprised to find no one had removed the bullets. "So, now you're the one with my missing digits?" I popped the clip back into the gun.

"Actually . . . " The bogle paused to scratch his left ear. "Actually, those were traded-for a handsome sum-to a Santa Muerte cult in Tucson. A bevy of transsexuals, to be precise."

"No chance of getting them back?"

"Alas, no," he said, pretending to sound apologetic. "Would that I could." He stopped scratching at his ear.

"Wrong answer," I said, pulled back the slide on the Glock, and shot the son of a bitch in the face, twice. Trapped in Drusneth's office, the gunfire was loud as a Brontosaurus falling into a truckload of cymbals. He just sort of toppled over, his corpse doing a weird sort of gory tarantella on one of Drusneth's Turkish rugs. His brains and bits of skull and fur were spattered across a nearby wall. Neither B nor Drusneth said anything for almost a full minute. And me, I was briefly rendered all but deaf, thanks to my bloodsucker supereardrums.

"Damn," I said. "Don't you hate it when that happens?"

"She goes back into the cage," Drusneth snarled at last. The succubus lifted a hand, preparing to return me to my half loup purgatory.

"No, no," said B, also holding up a hand. "Stop and think. Though her intentions were no doubt malicious, she's just done us a favor. Now . . . we get the unicorn, and you don't have to give that piker a bloody cent. More for you, perhaps a few dollars more for me."

Through the ringing in my ears, they sounded at least half a mile away. But I could make out the words. Barely.

Drusneth smiled with those pilfered lips. "Well, more for me. Your cut, that stays the same, Belmont."

"A man can hope." Mean Mr. B shrugged.

The bogle had stopped twitching. B glowered at me with his smoky gray eyes.

"Do you think you can behave yourself for the next ten minutes?" he asked.

"I can try," I replied, hardly able to hear myself. Too bad I hadn't had the good sense to just throw something at the bogle, instead of blasting him. "Also, can you guys speak up? I can't hear for shit."

Drusneth rolled her eyes, snapped her fingers, and, presto, my ears cleared. What a sweetheart, that Madam Calamity.

"Now, can I please get a goddamn cigarette?" I asked B. "Pretty fucking please?"

B offered me one of his rainbow-colored Nat Shermans, and I decided I didn't want a smoke that bad. I passed. I'd already checked my own pockets, but apparently the se'irim had seen fit to take their pick of my personal effects, including my lighter and half a pack of Camels.                       
       
           



       

There was a long moment of tense, uncomfortable silence. You know the sort. I listened to the ticktocking of the grandfather clock in Dru's office and the muffled racket through the walls, the sort of racket one hears in a demon brothel. It was Drusneth who broke spoke first.

"So, you're in bed with Amity Maidstone, literally. Please correct me if I'm wrong."

I sat back and stared at the ceiling. "Yeah, so I was overcome by her macabre charms and suffered a lapse of character, okay? A girl's got needs. Oh, and by the way, she has a dick."

Another moment of uncomfortable silence, this one longer than the last one.

"I shit you not," I said, mostly because the ticking of that clock was beginning to get on my nerves. So was the sound of some dude having an orgasm upstairs.

Then Mean Mr. B chuckled. "Thought you were a devout tuppence licker, through and through."

"Generally, that I am. But we were already in the moment before I made the discovery."

I stopped staring at the ceiling and looked at Drusneth instead. By her expression, it was clear she wasn't amused.

"Some people," I said to her, "got no sense of humor. So I fucked her. So what? That doesn't mean anything. It's not like we're engaged."

"It gives me pause," Drusneth said. "It leads us to doubt your loyalty."

"You mean ‘us,' or do you mean ‘you'?"

"Kitten-" B began, that do-be-cautious, beware-thin-ice tone in his voice, but the succubus cut him off.

"Fine, I am speaking for myself," she said.

"Fine," I replied. "How about let's pause to take stock of the situation you two have gotten yourselves and me into, why don't we?"

She glanced at B, then back to me. B just shrugged and turned his eyes towards the floor.

"And by that, what do you mean?" she asked.

"I mean, Drusneth, that I'm beginning to wonder if the two of you have ever actually tried to steal anything before. I'm starting to doubt either of you got slightest idea just how deep the shit you're wading into is."

"Dear," said B, "your grammar is atrocious."

I ignored him.

"Unlike either of you, I've seen this Harpootlian character, okay? Up close and personal. And, Drusneth, with all due respect, she makes you look like Strawberry fucking Shortcake."

"Truly, precious-"

"B, just shut up and listen for once. It's time for a reality break, no matter how much you two don't want it. This bitch jumps between parallel universes. Sure, our Madam Calamity here, she's got some ferocious tricks up her sleeves. I'm not saying otherwise. But Yeksabet Harpootlian is a goddamn thermonuclear bomb ready to go off at the drop of a pin, and that's with her hands partway tied by not being on her home turf. Push her far enough, I'm guessing all that's gonna be left of this city is a cloud of dust and a crater that glows in the dark. Next to her, Drusneth's really is just a whoremonger. Hell, she's not even a whoremonger. She's not even a whore. Next to Harpootlian, she's the piano player in a whorehouse, and Harpootlian's about to foreclose on the dump."

Now, yeah, I was exaggerating a smidge. After all, if the bitch was that badass, why would she have wanted or needed my help? Anyway, Drusneth looked ready to blast me into next Thursday. Or the Thursday after that. Also, as I rattled off this spiel, I was beginning to have serious flashbacks to my conversation with Amity.

"And as for the younger Maidstone whelp," I continued, "she's no lightweight her own self. Her penis wasn't the only thing caught me off my guard."

"On that subject," B said, "how did you manage to locate her?"

"B, just like you thought, she was never missing, okay? That was just some lie cooked up to get you involved."

"If she's such a force to be reckoned with, this child, why would she need Belmont's services?" asked Drusneth.

"Stop and think. The last thing the Maidstones wanted was Harpootlian going after them, so they tried to hide behind you two and me and Shaker. Make us look like her competition. She didn't fall for it, of course, but the Maidstones are even more deluded than you pair. And that blue rat son of a bitch lying there. Before I shot him, I mean."

"Not the shrewdest move," B said. "Samuel was rather well connected."

"Whatever. His connections can blow me."

"So, what exactly are you saying, Quinn?" Drusneth wanted to know. "That we should simply abandon our quest for the unicorn?"

I rolled my eyes and went back to staring at the ceiling. A rhythmic thump was coming from directly overhead, so I figured one of Dru's girls or boys had their bed parked right above me and was hard at work.

"And there's another thing. Has anyone even seen this doodad? Do either of you have even the foggiest idea where it might be? Seems to me you're just blundering about with blindfolds on, hoping the dick of doom will fall into your laps, easy as pie."

"And what would you have us do?" asked B.

"Honestly? Back the fuck off and let Harpootlian have her toy. No, better yet, back the fuck off after you toss her the Maidstone sisters as a peace offering. Make them, you know, fall guys."

Drusneth laughed. B didn't.

"Might be she has a point," he said to Drusneth.

"Might be you should consider hiring toadies with balls," she told him.

"Wait, you think he hired me? You think I get paid?"

"Merely a figure of speech," she assured me. "Regardless, I'm of the opinion that it isn't the province of a minion to advise her betters as to the proper course of their actions."

My turn to laugh.

"So we all go down together," I said.

"We hold the course," she replied. "You do as you're instructed, if and until you're instructed otherwise. Keep tabs on the sisters. We think they know the present whereabouts of the unicorn."

Wrong. But why bother telling the two of them? Not like they'd have bothered to listen.

"And Harpootlian?" I asked.

"Yes," Drusneth said, leaning towards me, "there is the matter of Harpootlian. It seems unlikely she went to the trouble of scooping you up just to let you walk. By your own account, she hardly seems the trap-and-release sort. So this leads me to believe a deal was struck, which brings us back around to questions of your loyalty. After all, if you're more afraid of her than you are of me . . ."