Maybe it's time to make our exit, I thought as loudly as I could. She heard me.
Likely, said my mouth, you're correct.
We walked through an inferno, out through a sizable hole in the wall facing Wendell Street, and not so much as a hair on my head was singed. The firemen were shouting and unrolling their hoses. If they saw the waxy-skinned girl emerge from the blaze, well, they were way too busy to say anything.
Part of me just kept thinking, Cool, over and over again. And some other part, all it could see was the damage done and the damage yet to come. That part of me, monster or not, felt something very near regret, and it was scared to death.
• • •
Stage Two: Find Mean Mister B.
Now, I'd assumed this was going to be anything but simple. The craven son of a butt fuck would have gotten word of the big-badda-boom holocaust at Drusneth's place and gone straight to ground. And the man's a virtuoso when it comes to tucking his tail between his legs and slinking off into secret crevices from which he doesn't emerge until the coast is clear.
They say there are exceptions to every rule.
Sometimes "they" actually do know what "they're" talking about. Not often, but occasionally.
To wit: I'd walked away from Szabó's BBQ spectacle and wandered over to the park in the shadow of the turrets and yellow-glazed bricks of the Armory. If you know Providence, you know all about that great, ridiculous castle wannabe. And if you don't know Providence, use Google. Anyway, the old snow was still ankle deep in the park, and new snow was swirling down from low bayberry clouds. The only weapons I still had on me were a couple of knives in the duster. Oh, and the last of the M67 grenades that had somehow ended up in one of the jacket's deep pockets. Maybe there would be retaliation, and maybe there wouldn't. Szabó had flown the coop, leaving my head reeling, my ears ringing, my stomach rolling like a long ride on the Block Island Ferry. I was on my second cigarette when my phone buzzed.
"A little early, precious, for the Fourth of July," said B, all French-vanilla-ice-cream smooth. I flicked the stub of my cigarette at a snowbank. Werepires can be terrible litterbugs.
"Well, never let it be said you don't have some big brass balls," I replied. "Figured you'd be halfway to China by now."
There was a short pause, and then he said, "We need to talk. We need to talk right now."
"Isn't that what we're doing?"
There was a dull whump back towards Drusneth's as this or that mystical thingamajig blew a little more of the shithole to kingdom come. I didn't even bother to look. I kept my eyes on the snowflakes.
"I need you face-to-face, kitten."
"It wasn't me," I said.
"That's not the word on the street."
"The street ain't always the most reliable source for current events and breaking news."
Another pause, longer than the first, and when next he spoke there was an edge in his voice, the jaggedy sort comes right before anger. I could hear him straining to keep his cool. Oh, it felt good to hear that, a crazy satisfying combination of speedball and hemoglobin and the best of orgasms. Like that song by Recoil says, . . . some soft, soft drugs, all red delicious in my ear.
"This isn't a bloody joke, Quinn."
"Which is why you don't hear me laughing."
"Drusneth might have taken a hard hit, but-"
"Yo, B," I cut in, "you really think it's the best idea since sliced halva to be talkin' this shit on the phone? Never know who or what's eavesdropping. Also, did I mention how I didn't do it?"
"Where are you?" he asked.
"I got a better one, B. Where are you? How about we start from there? If you're camped out in that fucking booth at Babe's, you're an even bigger idiot than me. Which is saying something, brother."
"You know the place."
"Let's say I do," I said, and fished out my last Camel and crumbled the pack before tossing it towards the aforementioned snowbank.
"Get your ass over here."
"I swear, B, I didn't do it."
He hung up, and I sat there and finished my smoke. So, wow. Everything going more or less according to plan. You could have knocked me over with a feather. Still, a million or so ways this thing could blow up in my face, and I wasn't about to pretend that wasn't the case.
• • •
True to his word, the bastard was hiding out in The Basement. Never thought of it as a safe house or a panic room. Once upon a time, it had been a gay bar, and then some sort of goth/BDSM club, and then B had bought it and hired two or three thaumaturgy types to wrap it in every protective ward he could afford. Of course, Dru's place had been two or three times that armored, and I'd strolled in there, pretty as you please. But where the hell else did he have left to hide?
He was sitting at the counter that had once been a bar, sitting on a stool drinking a bottle of Bass. You gotta understand, Mean Mr. B only lowers himself to lowly beer when he's got trouble with two capital T's.
"You know it's not secure here?" I asked him, parking myself on a stool next to him. I reached over the bar and snagged a beer from the cooler.
"And you know some place that is?" he replied, and he laughed. It struck me as the laugh of a condemned man, a death-row dude walking Spanish, a reprobate who'd accepted the inevitable and begun resigning himself to the end times and judgment.
"Not right off."
"You say it wasn't you done this deed."
"I know how it looks."
He laughed that gallows laugh again. "Do you, now? You got some clue how much shit we are currently wading in?"
I took a swallow of the cold beer, and I nodded. "More than you, I'd wager," I told him. "Yeah, it was my body holding those guns and squeezing the triggers. Tossing the grenades. Ain't gonna deny that."
"But?"
"But it was Magdalena Szabó pulling the strings. Ever known what it feels like to be a puppet?"
"This is what you say, precious."
"Listen, B. Stop and think. If it had just been me, if I actually could have pulled off that sort of throw-down, you think I'd be here telling you about it? Fuck, you think I'd have walked away without so much as a goddamn bruise or scratch?"
He stared at me and rubbed his stubbly chin. Looked like he hadn't shaved in a day or two, and Mean Mr. B is a fastidious man. "Szabó? So . . ."
"Yep. She's as real as Harpootlian, and she's come to cast her hat into the ring. And from what went down this morning, I'd say she's a bit more of a power to be reckoned with than Harpootlian. When all is said and done, as regards Szabó, I think the word you might be looking for is warpath."
The man shut his eyes, rubbed at them, then just stared at me for a while, watching me drink my Bass.
"So, we're well and righteously screwed," he said, finally. "Fucked as a hen in a roomful of roosters."
I couldn't resist a dramatic pause. I was running mostly on my own sheer terror and anger right here, and the more I saw B sweat, the clearer my head became. Those soft, soft drugs, remember?
And then I said, "I have the unicorn."
He looked at me like I'd grown a second head.
"Well, not on me. I did, but now it's hidden. Somewhere no one can get their hands on it. Frankly, I'm beginning to wonder if I can get it back. Aloysius ain't the most reliable of safekeepers."
Thunder-struck. That's the word that was on the tip of my tongue a few seconds ago, trying to describe Mean Mr. B's expression. He looked totally fucking thunderstruck.
"You gave it to a troll?"
"Seemed like a good idea at the time."
"And he-"
"Stashed it somewhere in the Hollow Hills, or at least that's my best guess."
B laughed again, but it wasn't the same laugh as before. There was a note of genuine humor.
"B, it's past time to give up on whatever get-rich-quick scheme you and Dru hatched. It's almost gotten you killed."
"Might yet," he said, then finished his beer and reached for another.
"My point exactly. Time for an exit strategy, only I'm guessing the two of you-and Boston Harry's rat fink brother-were so full of hubris it never occurred to you to come up with one."
"Is Drusneth dead?" he asked, and he almost sounded like he cared. Touching.
"Fuck if I know. She took a pineapple to the chest. Last I saw of her, she-"
"Never mind, Quinn. Just never you mind. So, assuming you can get the unicorn back from that dodgy fuck, and you being all high and goddamn mighty and the dog's bollocks of tacticians, you're gonna tell me how we extract ourselves from this prickly dilemma?"
Have I mentioned how much I suck at chess? In fact, I manage to suck and blow at chess. Suddenly, this seemed very, very relevant, despite my deal with Magdalena Szabó and the flour-skinned girl.
"For starters," I said, "we need a patsy. A fall guy."
"And you have one of those?" he asked, and glared at me skeptically with those gray eyes of his.
"Two, actually. Though, technically, they're fall gals. Well . . . I confess I'm still trying to suss out Amity's gender, but-"
"You want to hand over Edgar Maidstone's daughters?"