It was barely light outside when Wolfe’s phone went off. He reached over from his bed to the computer desk, three-fourths asleep, and knocked the phone onto the floor—as well as jiggling the mouse, turning his computer on.
6:33 in the morning. Fuck!
He leaned off the bed and grabbed the phone. Big Man Grimm again? What the hell is going on? We don’t operate in the morning!
Wolfe hit accept after the brief half-second of disbelief and answered as non-groggily as he could manage while scratching the massive scar on his chest. “What’s up, boss?”
Big Man Grimm’s heavy voice came through, and Wolfe could hear the throttled rage. “Get up, Wolfe. We have another situation. Melissa claims Heinrick’s been murdered.”
Fuck.
***
“We’re gonna need to get you some new clothes soon. You look ridiculous in yesterday’s sweat-and-whatever stained jeans and my giant T-shirt. Perhaps we should stop by your place.”
“That won’t work,” Shel said, rubbing her eyes, which were red and puffy, and then leaning against the car window. “Can we just talk about how we level and combine cards?”
Someone else has some skeletons in their closet. “No.”
“You said we’d talk about it today,” Shel said.
“Girl, I said we’d talk about it tomorrow at three a.m. today. Now, I’m not trying to play here—I admit I meant when we woke up. But I also thought that would be after more than four hours’ of sleep. So I’m gonna fall back on the real definition of ‘tomorrow.’ ’Cuz I’m too tired to talk about this shit.”
“Can we get something to eat?”
“You got money?”
Shel shook her head, her cheeks red.
Of course. “Yeah, sure, one sec.”
Wolfe pulled the car into the first fast food place he saw, a Greggs, and pulled up to order. He lowered the window, receiving an odd stench of rain and garbage. There was a bunch of stuff on the Greggs menu that appeared barely different than the shit he got at McDonald’s, only with a lot more pastry. No plain, black coffee, though. Pretty sure everywhere has plain, black coffee.
“Good morning. Can I help you?” the speaker asked.
Wolfe turned to Shel. “Whaddya want?”
“Um… a Vegan Mexican Bake and an orange juice.”
“The fuck? A vegan breakfast?”
Shel just half-shrugged and remained quiet. Wolfe was suddenly glad she had decided to put Sorenia back in the deck at some point.
Whatever. Wolfe turned back to the speaker. “One sausage breakfast roll, one… Vegan Mexican Bake… an orange juice, and a black coffee.”
“Um… an Americano?”
Wolfe scratched his chest. “I don’t have time for your Starbucks nonsense. Just give me a damned black coffee, strong as you can make it.”
“Um… I think that’s an Americano.”
Wolfe throttled his anger. “Then one of those. Strong. Your largest size.”
Shel giggled from the seat next to Wolfe, but when he looked over at her, she stared ahead and tried to assume a straight face.
“That’ll be thirteen dollars and nine cents.”
Wolfe pulled up and they got their food. The Americano good, although it didn’t taste exactly like black coffee. Stronger, somehow. He was fine with it.
Afterward, Shel was too busy eating to ask any questions, which Wolfe was also fine with. She finished whatever nasty vegetable roll she had ordered by the time they’d arrived at their destination: The Morning After Inn. It was three stories of sleazy rooms packed into a long, thin building. Wolfe had been there a couple of times, for one reason or another. He sighed, wishing he had stopped for a cigarette before getting here, or smoked in the car. He was feeling jittery.
He got out of the car, stomped his legs, and entered the front of the building. The paint was an off-white, now cracked and covered in dirt, and a beat-up sign hanging in the front window declared, “Rooms rented by the hour, available now!”
There were very few reasons to rent a room by the hour, and most involved getting your rocks off.
Wolfe walked into the front room, swinging the door open wide, and Shel followed behind him.
The woman at the front desk smiled widely upon seeing him. “Wolfe! I knew they’d send you, hon. What took you so long?”
“Melissa. How’s it going?”
Melissa was a kinda used-up-looking woman of forty with brown hair and blue eyes. She had enough makeup to look bangable without looking good. She was in a loose white chemise with food stains on the front and pink bra straps showing.
Her eyes immediately went to Shel. “Bringing in some local competition? Or did you want an expert to help you both?”
Wolfe grit his teeth. “Melissa, please. You called me. This is very serious.”
Shel glanced around, taking in more of the décor that Wolfe’s eyes had just passed over. Pictures of half-naked women on the walls. The rooms, listed by bed type—including water and vibrating. Melissa herself. “What kind of place is this?”
Melissa lifted an eyebrow. “Wow, she’s green. Who is this kid?”
Shel furrowed her brow and scrunched her nose. “I’m not a kid.” Then she held her hand out to Melissa. “I’m Shel. Pleased to meet you.”
Melissa was a bit nonplussed but took the hand. “Wow. So, now I know you aren’t local competition. What’re you here for? You can’t possibly be Wolfe’s replacement, slip of a girl like you. Even if he is getting old.”
Wolfe ground out, “Melissa…”
“How old is he?” Shel asked.
“Old enough. He’s been around forever, solving—and sometimes making—problems. Way longer than most people make it in this life, longer than the twenty years I’ve been doing this. Getting old. We both know that Big Man Grimm is gonna need a new enforcer soon.”
Normally, that would have pissed Wolfe off—because it would have been true, he admitted to himself—but now he had a deck. He just smiled a smug smile. “We’ll see.”
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Then he leaned forward on the counter, tapping his fingers on it rapidly. “Now, please, just tell me where I need to go.”
She sighed. “You used to be more fun, hon. What happened?”
“You got a bit long in the tooth to be plying with lies.” Wolfe’s weirdly building anxiety and irritability was getting the better of him, and he had no idea why. “For fuck’s sake, Melissa, just tell me where the problem is. I have a lot on my plate and no sleep at all.”
She sighed again. “You seem wired, hon, but sure. 3D. I’ve closed the whole floor till you can handle it.”
Wolfe gave her a single upward jut of his chin. “Thank you. I’ll deal with it.”
He stepped into the elevator and hit the up button, tapping his foot as he did. A moment later, it chimed and the brass doors opened. Wolfe, followed by Shel, stepped inside—place smelled like ass for some reason—and Wolfe hit the ‘3’ on the panel.
“How old are you?” Shel asked.
Wolfe sighed. Why, by the gods, did they need to talk about this? “Thirty-eight.”
“That’s not that old,” Shel said. “I mean, you look a lot younger than she did. Really good for your age.”
Wolfe grunted but didn’t say anything. Thirty-eight was damned old to be a street enforcer. He absently touched his chest, a comforting sense of flame and hunger rising. Not that old now, though.
His scar still itched, though.
“Who was she?” Shel asked.
Wolfe shrugged. “Melissa was just some working girl once. I have no idea of her fucking backstory prior to that. But she was an unusually pretty and sociable whore. She made some decent money and then cut a deal with the Singh family, who run the prostitutes. Managed to somehow fucking finance this place—like with a damned bank—which she now owns outright. That was about sixteen years ago. She gives money to the Grimm family for protection and still works with the Singhs, keeping this as a place they can send their whores and johns. Knows to tell the cops they aren’t welcome and has a deal to call the Singhs when someone asks about prostitutes. She knows half the players in the city, even if she isn’t much of one herself.”
The elevator dinged and Wolfe got out.
He walked over to room 3D and opened the door. Immediately, the rank, copper-and-shit smell of death hit his nostrils.
Wolfe grimaced. Just as Big Man Grimm said. Don’t know why I keep hoping people will be wrong about this shit.
Shel gagged, like she was trying to keep from throwing up.
“You going to be able to handle this?” Wolfe asked.
She nodded, keeping her hand over her face, and Wolfe walked in. After half a second, Shel followed.
Wolfe glanced around the room, a frown on his face. It was like every fleabag motel room he had ever seen, only with a palette swap and a bucket of red paint. Cheap carpet, check. Old-ass bed whose mattress looked like it was begging for death, check. World’s most boring round table and flimsy-ass chair by the window? Another check. Nightstand with a built-in astray, the height of class? Also check.
The dead guy and girl, however, were unusual. Not exactly Mythic rare, but still.
Dead guy was lying faceup, completely naked, half-off the bed. Without even the slightest hint of a forensic degree—or finishing fucking high school—Wolfe could tell he had been shot right after ‘dismounting’ the girl. His head was perforated, but it wasn’t a clean shot, slightly off-center. A pro would have aimed for the torso—bigger target—or gotten the perfect headshot at five feet if they were odd enough to go for it. This was mostly likely a gang hit, but why?
Wolfe sighed as he stared at the still-present perfect teeth and salt-and-cinnamon hair. Heinrick Grimm, all right, even with the hole in his face. Big Man Grimm’s cousin and accountant, and a new deckbearer. There’s gonna be hell to pay for this.
He didn’t know the girl, but as he looked at her, he clenched his teeth. She had been shot three times in the chest, at close range. There were smears where she had flailed in Heinrick’s blood before dying. The sick fuck who had done this had reveled in killing her, it seemed, and more. He had reveled in her terror before she’d died.
“Why does her death bother you, but the guy’s doesn’t?” Shel asked. “Is it because she’s a woman?”
Girl is too fucking perceptive for her own good. “Shut up. We have work to do.”
He moved closer to the bed, careful not to step in the spreading blood, and glanced about. On the bed was a card with the stylized snake symbol on it.
The Cobras.
Why announce this? That makes zero sense, unless they want a war… but between this, our dead drug mover Johnny, and now the attack on me, I can’t come up with any other conclusion than they do, in fact, want one. But if so, why let us know and react? Why not hit our territories first?
Wolfe put that aside and kept looking. Knowing which gang didn’t tell him a lot. Not yet.
There were odd smears on the floor, faint, as if something had gotten blood on it, dropped on the floor, and then been picked up. Including some partial prints with blood. Sucks we can’t go to the cops for this.
“Hey, Wolfe?” Shel asked again.
“Yeah?”
“Shouldn’t I understand more if I’m going to help? You’re not… helping me to help you. We’re partners for a while, and I am a deckbearer.”
Wolfe started to grit his teeth but then relaxed. Can’t hurt, might help. “Yeah, you’re right. I keep thinking the plan is just to get you out of here—which it is. But I should teach you until we can get your cute ass on a plane with your idiot brother. Sorry. To answer your first why—of this room—it bothers me because she isn’t running with the gangs, not because of her gender—although her being a girl makes it worse, I guess.”
Wolfe exhaled noisily. “I mean, the families and gangs fight over turf, sure, and I’ll waste any idiot punk who tries to take Grimm family territory. He knew what he was getting into. But killing her is just… classless and… just wrong. She wasn’t involved.”
“Big Man Grimm’s rule?” Shel asked.
Wolfe shook his head, then frowned. “Well, yeah, it’s his rule. I just mean I feel the same way, regardless of his rule. I’d be pissed with or without Big Man Grimm weighing in. It’s not right.”
Shel nodded.
Wolfe pointed to Heinrich. “This dumb fuck, Heinrich, who never could stop screwing prostitutes—lost two wives over it—is Big Man Grimm’s cousin. Also the big man’s accountant. There’s gonna be hell to pay over this killing. Probably a gang war. Which I’m really not looking forward to, like I would have in my younger, dumber days. But at least he was in the game, so to speak. He knew the risks and made a lot of money—and slept with a lot of working girls—for taking part. With the rewards goes the risk.”
Wolfe blew out through his nose. “Anyway, we have to clean this up so that Melissa can get the girls back into the third floor. We still have business.”
Shel glanced around again. “What if we pinned this more directly on the Cobras?”
“What do you mean?” Wolfe asked her.
“Well… you could move the bodies. I see there’s a partial fingerprint on the sheet”—she pointed to one Wolfe had missed—“and if we move the sheet and the bodies to some part of the Cobras’ territory, I can call the cops on them.”
That… isn’t the worst idea ever. “All right, that’s not a bad idea. But just the girl.”
“Why?”
“Because if a known Grimm family member is murdered and ends up at the police station, it gives them a reason to check out Big Man Grimm. Never be the one who gets Big Man Grimm in the cop’s crosshairs, trust me. Plus, the big man will want to have a service for his cousin.”
Shel was slightly biting her lower lip. “That makes sense.”
Wolfe wasn’t done talking the idea through. “We’ll need you to become a mole for reals… We need a cop who’s really gullible and caring both and will want to believe you’ve seen the light.”
Wolfe fished a business card for Detective Laurel Whitehall from his wallet, handing it over. He had dealt with her before. She wore her heart on her sleeve and was new enough, she still believed in the good. “Use this. Tell her you just can’t stand the death and waste of life anymore. But wait till we move the girl.”
Shel took the card slowly, giving Wolfe an odd look. He was too tired to give it much thought.
Wolfe pulled his own phone out and called Rico.
He didn’t get an answer, and after half a minute, he hung up. Fucker better be sleeping off the best sex ever.
Wolfe dialed Harry instead.
Harry answered, his own voice blurry. Fucker has almost an extra hour of sleep, maybe two, over me. He shouldn’t be complaining.
“Harry, it’s Wolfe. I need you to get a couple of guys, a van, and a tarp. We’re going to move a body.”
“Uh… yeah, I’ll get on it. Where are we moving it from and to?”
As he was talking, Wolfe’s eye fell on something else. “From the Morning After Inn. I’ll let you know about ‘to’ in a bit.”
Wolfe hung up and kneeled down. One smear of blood went halfway under the nightstand. He reached down and grabbed the piece of furniture under its edge and lifted it.
On the floor, about dead center under where the nightstand had been, was a card. Wolfe stared at it. It had a bit of blood on the side, but it was the card himself that fascinated Wolfe the most.
Escaped Damned (Common Tier-1)
1 Infernal
A soul that has somehow escaped the Hells
Infernal, Undead, Fire
Creature Card
Attack
0
Magical Attack
3
Defense
8
Magical Defense
1
Health
10
Special: N/A
Right, Heinrick’s deck. Which they took… but somehow, they lost a card. Must have been knocked down here by the girl’s flailing and missed by whoever grabbed the cards.