“He’s still not answering?” Wolfe asked from the backseat of the minivan that was driving Shel and him through the ritzy part of town to Big Man Grimm’s club.
Shel shook her head. “No. I’m sorry, Wolfe. I don’t know what happened, or why he isn’t answering.”
Shel appeared nervous, twisting her finger in her hair and biting her lip. Wolfe figured she was worried about her brother, but wisely wasn’t expressing her worry to Wolfe. To put it mildly, Wolfe wasn’t feeling charitably inclined toward her tweaker brother.
Wolfe leaned back and tried to recover his calmness. I’m a deckbearer, I’ve got like a million dollars in spare cards now, I’ve dealt the cobras some really bad blows and I’m going to be cutting their head off. Soon, I’ll finish my good deed, and then I can focus on working on my deck and minor shit for the Grimm family.
Wolfe couldn’t help but think that he would have to give Damian Cereboo for that to happen, however.
He sighed. Wish Miriam had been willing to take over, or that Big Man Grimm were a lot younger.
“Are you okay?” Shel asked nervously.
“I’m fine,” Wolfe said, nodding to their Uber driver, who was just a shaggy brown-haired haircut over the back of a seat from the angle Wolfe was sitting at.
“O-okay,” Shel said.
“Where are we going?” Shel asked.
“To see Big Man Grimm at his club, remember? He wants to talk to me. We should be there soon. We’ll figure Kevin out when that’s done.” Wolfe should have probably stopped, but he was deeply frustrated. “Although man I can understand why the Cobras wanted to throw him a beating. I want to throw him a beating so bad, I might pick it over sex with some Hollywood model at this point if I could only have one, swear to the gods. That guy is as talented at being a pain in my ass as I am at kicking ass.”
The uber driver chuckled at that one even without any context. Shel, however, didn’t answer but turned to face forward again, and silence filled the van.
After a few minutes, the minivan pulled up to the front of Big Man Grimm’s club. Wolfe left the back seat at the same time Shel got out of the front. He had been there countless times, once or twice a week for nearly twenty years, but he still glanced at the front. It was lit up like a neon Christmas tree, and a giant sign in garish, crimson neon on the front read ‘Ekron Eternal.’ Wolfe had heard—from about seventy people that thought they were smart and wasn’t just regurgitating the fundamental lore for the Grimm family—that Ekron was a Philistine city first associated with the cards Beelzebub dropped.
Wolfe was honestly surprised some religious fanatic hadn’t taken the club out yet. Few things advertised their Infernal association quite so openly as Big Man Grimm’s club.
The two girls dancing in their underwear in cages as Wolfe entered probably didn’t help the general vibe, either. He nodded to the guard at the front—James Devonshire, another enforcer—and passed him two hundred cash as he passed the door. James’ eyes widened as he took in Wolfe’s obviously beat up condition—and bloody shirt—but he wisely didn’t say anything as Wolfe entered the club.
Wolfe knew that the real reason the club existed was to launder money. Most of the cash that the Grimm family made was passed to its associates, who went and bought ridiculously over-priced drinks and various other things—not to mention the hundred-dollar cover charge to get in for men and not-previously-approved women. Ekron Eternal was the funnel through which the millions of dollars a year made it into the Grimm’s pockets safely every year—for almost twenty-five years now. The huge lines and massive earnings also made the club itself appear popular, and Wolfe wouldn’t be surprised to know that a lot of money was made legally as well by the club.
Hell, the Grimm family even paid their fucking taxes religiously. They weren’t going out like that one prohibition era gangster had.
Wolfe entered the dance floor—the same one that he had been at for the Drop Night party. Now, as then, it was filled with statues of demons and flies, as well as fog and half-naked dancers. Wolfe wove his way through the club to the table at the back, Shel following him half a step behind.
Harry and Pete were both here, in new suits that were matching navy blue for some reason, but otherwise they appeared as they always did. They nodded to Wolfe as he moved past them and slipped into Big Man Grimm’s personal booth. But when Shel tried to follow, Harry held his hand in front of her and shook his head no.
Wolfe glanced at her, then nodded slightly. She obviously interpreted his gesture as one to accept the denial and took a step back, but she stood watching him as he turned back to the table.
The Big Man himself was the only person in the booth, except for the same tiny east-Asian girl Wolfe had seen here the first time. Both the girl and Big Man Grimm were drinking from glasses, and both had dilated pupils.
Joy. He’s been using the product.
It was extremely rare for Big Man Grimm to use their product, but occasionally he partook. Normally he only did so under controlled conditions, however. Not when leadership was needed.
“Honey, I need to talk to Wolfe,” Big Man Grimm said. “Give us a moment, please.”
The girl smiled and left the booth, putting some waggle into her rear as she did. Big Man Grimm watched her walk away. “You’re late.”
Stolen story; please report.
“I was held up,” Wolfe said sourly. One of the things he really appreciated about Big Man Grimm was that he never put much stock in pretenses—as long as Wolfe got the job done, Wolfe could say damn near whatever he wanted.
Big Man Grimm turned back to Wolfe. He took in the condition of his best enforcer, including the blood-soaked shirt he was wearing. “What the fuck happened to you?”
Wolfe placed the ten new cards face up on the table. “I got another deckbearer, as well as another five mooks. You said you wanted a dead deckbearer. I delivered. But it was sort of an emergency situation, which was why I was help up.”
He didn’t mention Kevin.
Big Man Grimm smiled at Wolfe, an expression not dissimilar from what an antelope saw on the face of the lion that ate it. “Excellent. You really are my best. No one else can seem to accomplish a gods’ damned thing around here, and you’ve managed to waste two of their deckbearers, and who knows how many of their thugs. Have you gotten the guy that got Heinrich yet?”
Wolfe hesitated. “I got him, but… Damian had me release him.”
“What?” Big Man Grimm said, slamming his hand down on the table so hard some drinks fell over. “Why did my stupid ass kid do that?”
Wolfe grimaced but managed to grab the drink in front of him before it spilled. “Well, I grabbed him from the Lucky Fifty-Two, and Damian said the Renfeldt family was upset about it… I tried to call you but couldn’t get through. I asked Guinevere and she signed off on it.”
Big Man Grimm’s brow furrowed. “You spoke to my wife?”
Wolfe nodded and sniffed the drink in front of him. He wasn’t sure what was in it, but it smelled off to him, and he put it back down. Then he glanced over at Harry. “Get me a drink Harry. Whisky, please. Ask the bartender—Clive, not Larry—for my usual.”
Harry nodded and ambled off, content as a cow chewing its cud, and with an expression nearly as blank.
Big Man Grimm reached out and grabbed Wolfe’s shoulder. “Did you talk about anything else?”
Wolfe winced slightly. Big Man Grimm was still ridiculously strong, especially for a sixty-year-old. Wolfe wasn’t sure if his deck gave him a slightly expanded life or if he was just that much of a workout-aholic, but even his grip was still powerful.
“She, um, mentioned you were fucking some other girl,” Wolfe said. “Sorry.”
Big Man Grimm let go and leaned back in the booth, putting his huge hands over his face, then running them back through his salt-and-pepper, mostly salt, hair. “Fuck. Should have known she’d figured it out when she refused to come to the Drop Night party. She hasn’t missed a party here in ages.”
He slammed his fist on the table again, knocking most of the remaining bottles and glasses over. “Fuck!”
“Sorry,” Wolfe said again. It was a sufficiently awkward conversation and moment that Wolfe stared out into the club, watching all the hot, half-dressed young people dancing together amid the demon statues and fake fog.
Big Man Grimm sighed and gathered himself. “Thank you for telling me, Wolfe. Thanks also for taking care of another Cobra deckbearer—hopefully now that you’ve put two down we’ll get some breathing room.”
Wolfe nodded. “Well, it shouldn’t be a problem much longer, right?”
“What?” Big Man Grimm asked, staring at Wolfe.
“Damian’s plan, our own inside guy…” Wolfe trailed off at the obvious confusion on Big Man Grimm’s face.
“What plan?” Big Man Grimm asked. “What plan has my son concocted?”
“Nico is turning on his boss, Jason Klaus. They’re letting me in to assassinate him in three more days.”
Big Man Grimm leaned forward, his hands and teeth clenched. He stared into Wolfe’s eyes and spoke in a menacing whisper. “I’ve never heard of this. Tell me everything.”
Wolfe did. Partway through, Harry brough him his drink, and he sipped at the whisky, which went down smooth as always, warming him and taking the edge off. As he spoke, Big Man Grimm got angrier and angrier.
Finally, Wolfe finished. Big Man Grimm drummed his fingers on the rich darkwood table before speaking. “Do you think this plan is legit?”
“Yeah… Nico kinda got the drop on me at one point and didn’t kill me,” Wolfe admitted with a grimace, and felt the need to defend himself. “In my defense, I killed his allied deckbearer and five of his thugs first, nearly alone, and I think I’d have gotten him as well. But the point was that this was after he got his face wrecked in a fight with me just a couple days ago… yesterday? Was it only yesterday?”
Wolfe was floored by how little time had passed, but finished up. “You know how we already felt about each other even before he got shot in the face. This has to be real at some level.”
“Fine… Carry my damn son’s plan out—it has merit. But once that’s done, we’re cleaning house, Wolfe, you hear me?”
“Yeah,” Wolfe said, wondering what exactly that entailed.
Big Man Grimm continued. “I don’t like how independent Damian’s becoming. My son is going to take a vacation somewhere without phone service, and you’ll put him on the plane at gunpoint if necessary. He doesn’t get to run things till I’m good and gods damned ready to step down.”
That pretty much means I’ll have to retire when the big man does, Wolfe thought, with a surprising amount of happiness at said thought. He didn’t want to work for Damian… and he really didn’t want this life anymore, Wolfe realized with a shock. You couldn’t normally retire from it, but if he carried that job out, he suspected that Big Man Grimm might make an exception. Although Wolfe had absolutely no skills, so he would need to save up an incredible amount of money or live a very low-key lifestyle if he was making it another forty years. Even a cool million was only twenty-five thousand a year over forty years…
Big Man Grimm interrupted his thoughts, seemingly unaware of Wolfe’s musings. “Also, we’re not letting Nico take over the Cobras. I’ll be in contact, but we’re putting a plan together to sweep his people—buy out the low-level drug pushers as their new source, kill anyone we think will be a serious problem. A lot of that is going to fall on you.”
Okay, so, retire if I make it that far, Wolfe thought, already tired at the thought of even more killing.
Although it’ll help me grow my deck and level I suppose.
Big Man Grimm settled back in the booth again.
“Hey, what did you call me here for?” Wolfe asked, realizing they still hadn’t talked about it.
“Right,” Big Man Grimm said. He reached into a suit jacket pocket and pulled out a scrap of paper with an address and handed it to Wolfe. “This is the place where Thad Junior, that idiot, has gotten himself to. He’s upset that he didn’t get a god-gifted deck, and ran away with his hippie girlfriend to a fucking gardening commune to try and convince once of the Nature gods that he deserves a nature deck. Idiot. No way he would stay there another decade, but even if had the balls to see anything through, the Cobras would get him long before that.”
“Why are you giving this to me?” Wolfe asked.
“I want you to get him, tomorrow, and bring him back. He’s refusing to come home, but I’m afraid if word gets out someone will kill him. It’s clear as fucking day that we have a leak. I don’t want you to tell anyone about this, or call anyone… anything. Got it?”
Wolfe slowly nodded. It’s getting really bad if I’m literally the only one left he can trust.
Even as Wolfe was thinking, screams came from the dance floor. Wolfe glanced over and saw two men with honest to god tommy guns, like old time gangsters, pushing toward the front of the club. Gunshots and screams rang out throughout the rest of the club as the Tommy guns came up.