Premonitions Page 3

  “Looks clear,” he said.

  “It’s late,” Karyn said, shaking her head. “I must be overtired.”

  “You sure?” Nail asked.

  “Yeah. You guys be careful going home, though. If you see anything weird—well, just be careful.”

  Nail gave her a long questioning look, but finally he put his gun back in the waistband of his cargo pants. He trusted her to know her business better than he did.

  “All right. Catch you later.”

  “Hey, wait up,” Tommy said. He grabbed his backpack of questionable implements and followed Nail out.

  The noise of an ambulance siren swelled, screamed by, and diminished—probably one of fifteen tonight, Nail figured, but now he was jumpy. He descended the stairs slowly, checking left and right as he did. There was nobody out here. A sloppy-looking party had spilled out of one of the units across the courtyard, but it mostly looked like a handful of really smashed couples slow dancing, bizarrely enough, to Metallica. Really smashed.

  Probably just a false alarm. It had certainly happened before.

  “Hey, uh, that was a pretty good game in there, huh?” Tommy said.

  “It was all right.”

  Tommy scratched nervously at the side of his neck. Blue-white light from the outdoor floodlights lit up the left side of his face, but the shadow of the building slashed across, leaving the other half nearly invisible. “Yeah, well, I was wondering—I kinda went a little nuts in there, you know, and I could really use a few hundred bucks. Just for a week or so. You know?”

  Nail didn’t have to do any counting—he knew exactly how much cash he had in his wallet. He put a heavy hand on Tommy’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, man. This ain’t a good time.”

  “Your brother?”

  “Yeah. If we hadn’t got paid today . . .”

  “He’d be fucked. Again.”

  The whining edge in Tommy’s voice was a little too far, especially talking about Nail’s family. “Careful.”

  “Sorry. I’m sorry.”

  “It’s cool.” And, yeah. “Again” is right. “But I show up a few hundred short, somebody gonna get hurt. Maybe DeWayne, maybe a lot of other people.” More likely, his fool brother DeWayne and a lot of other people. “I still don’t know what the fuck I’m gonna do about next month.”

  “Shit.”

  “How bad you off?”

  Tommy put his hands in his pockets. “It’s not that bad, I guess. I’ll get by.”

  “You and me both.”

  * * *

  Once the two men had made their exit, Karyn’s nerves toned down their jangling some, if not all the way. Nothing had happened, nothing had gone wrong. For a moment, she had seen a flash of—something. Blood, she thought, spattered all over Tommy’s face. Then it was gone so quickly she wasn’t sure she’d actually seen it. Even the memory of the vision was already beginning to fade. Probably just a false alarm. That happened sometimes, particularly when her stash was low and the images started crowding around, possibilities overlapping with certainties overlapping with reality in a jumbled, confusing mess.

  Anna sat in the chair to Karyn’s left and leaned forward, elbows on her knees. Her hair hung in her eyes as she looked up at Karyn. “What was that about?”

  “Thought I saw something.”

  “And?”

  “It went away.”

  “Mm-hmm.” Anna’s mouth tightened. “And how’s your stash holding up?”

  “Let’s just say it’s a good thing we got paid today.”

  Anna straightened, crossing her arms like an irate mother. “You’re out.”

  “See, this is the problem. You’ve known me way too long.”

  “Oh, that’s the problem.”

  Karyn managed a slight smile. “It is time to see Adelaide,” she admitted.

  “Great,” Anna said, baring her teeth and doing a lousy job of hiding her lack of enthusiasm. “When?”

  Karyn gave a half-embarrassed shrug. “Tonight would be good.”

  “I’ll get my keys.”

  “Not yet. First, give me the lowdown. What was the deal with the drop? With Joe Gresser? What happened?”

  Anna pulled out one of the chairs, reversed it, and sat with her arms draped over the back. Karyn leaned back against the wall, swigging from a bottle of Old Milwaukee, and listened while Anna related the story.

  “Two million dollars,” Karyn said, once Anna had finished. “That’s a lot of scratch.”

  “Yep.” Anna looked in her eyes, briefly searching for something on Karyn’s face, then back down at the floor. She was nervous about the offer, Karyn could tell, or maybe about the job itself. That was enough to give Karyn pause by itself. Anna wasn’t nervous about much.

  “Got any details?”

  The worn jean jacket Anna had been wearing since forever was hung over the back of her chair. Anna reached into the inside pocket and pulled out a thick envelope. She held the envelope out to Karyn. “I haven’t looked yet.”

  Karyn took the envelope but didn’t open it, instead watching Anna’s face. It had gone still, frozen and expressionless—her robot face, Karyn called it, and she’d learned that nothing else was as reliable an indicator of Anna’s anxiety as that locked-down nonexpression. Some people smoked, tapped their fingers, or, like Karyn herself, chewed their nails. Anna shut down all nonverbal cues whatsoever, a tic that Karyn had only slowly learned to identify as a nonverbal cue of its own. “You haven’t even looked yet, and you’re this worried about it?”

  “I ain’t worried.”

  “Uh-huh. You know something I don’t?”

  “Ha.” Anna reached for her own bottle of beer. It was empty, as far as Karyn could tell, but Anna rolled it between her palms and eyeballed it like she was ready to drain the dregs. “You ain’t the only one with the occasional bad feeling, that’s all. It’s one thing when we’re talking ten or fifty large, but when you show up with your hand out for this kind of money, it starts to look a lot cheaper for the buyer to just shoot you in the head and find an out-of-the-way place for the corpse.”

  “You think it’s risky.”

  “Yeah.”

  “Five hundred thousand each,” Karyn reminded her.

  “Yeah.” Anna nodded, but she didn’t take her eyes from the bottle. “It also means getting in with Enoch Sobell.”

  “Might be a good thing. Lots more work.”

  “I hear getting out again ain’t so easy.”

  “Five hundred thousand dollars,” Karyn said again. “You seriously think we ought to pass on that?”

  A long breath escaped Anna, the whispering of wind over a dry, empty place. “Maybe,” she said, the word so quiet Karyn almost didn’t hear it over her own breath.

  Maybe it was the hour, or the remnants of the booze sloshing its way through her system, but a low anger flared up inside her. “Yeah, you can walk away from half a million dollars,” she said, the words spilling out before she’d really understood what she was about to say.

  Anna flicked a wary glance in her direction. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means . . . It means you can walk away from this shit. One day, you’re going to get it all out of your system, go find a nice office job, shack up with some nice girl, and adopt an army of kids. And me”—she shrugged, trying to look noncommittal—“I’ll still be here, shifting cursed necklaces and crap like that for the terminally insane.”

  “I don’t like nice girls,” Anna said.

  Karyn looked toward the window. Why had she even opened her mouth? She’d known for a long time that she’d never have what you’d call a normal life—her condition and the constant need for serious amounts of cash wouldn’t allow it. There would be no career, no SUV, no house in the suburbs, no husband to come home to and trade boring work stories. She was OK with
that, or at least had come to terms with it. It was only during the latest of nights she got maudlin like this and ended up thinking about how Anna didn’t need this crap, how she surely wouldn’t put up with this forever. Even the best of friends drifted apart eventually; that was just part of life. People moved on, sent the occasional Christmas card, and called every year or two. One day, Anna would move on. That was a fact, and Karyn did her best not to let it get to her, tried not to wonder how she’d keep her life, such as it was, together afterward. And she for damn sure didn’t talk about it.

  After a long moment, Anna made an exasperated noise. “I’m not going anywhere. And if I ever did, you could walk, too.”

  Karyn mustered a sad smile. “Not really,” she said. “I’ve got a very expensive habit—and I can’t even drive myself to my dealer.”

  “True that,” Anna said. Then, a speculative sound in her voice: “Half a million dollars.”

  “That’ll keep your average hallucinatory precognitive in blind for a good long time.”

  Anna snorted. “There are no average hallucinatory whatevers. There’s you, and there’s Adelaide.”

  “Well, it’ll keep me in the present tense for a good long while, then.”

  “Plus we could move out of this shitty apartment.”

  “Let’s see what we’ve got here,” Karyn said, and she opened the envelope.

  Chapter 4

  “You are a demon.” Even with slitted eyes, one hand held out to a chair to steady himself, Enoch Sobell was able to expertly knot his tie. It looked immaculate. Gresser had seen this done maybe two dozen times, and it still impressed him.

  “Sir?”

  “No decent human being would wake me up at this hour. Ergo . . .”

  “Your instructions, sir.”

  “Even so.” Tie finished, Sobell pulled on a sock, wobbling on one foot. “Jesus Christ, did somebody order up extra sun this morning?”

  Gresser looked out across L.A. through the huge floor-to-ceiling windows. Around him, the detritus from the previous night’s debauchery lay in broken piles. Smashed glasses twinkled in the morning sun, a heavy leather couch had been knocked back onto the marble floor during God knew what kind of nocturnal calisthenics, and a line of alternating panties and boxers had been laid out along the entire length of the bar. All that was missing were the people, who had, in accordance with custom, presumably been rounded up and shooed out at some pitch-black hour before Mr. Sobell awoke. “No, I think this is standard issue.”

  “Fuck.” Sobell put a hand to his head and cracked open his eyes a little further. “Fuck.” He cupped his hand in front of his face, exhaled loudly, inhaled, and grimaced. “Fuck.” He straightened, tottering just a bit. “Seems I’m still drunk, Mr. Gresser. Thus, a little hair of the dog is in order. Would you mind?”

  Gresser shrugged. “Which dog?”

  “That goddamned vodka-and-tonic mongrel should do nicely.”

  Gresser walked around the bar and found a glass. This wasn’t the first time he’d found Mr. Sobell like this, nor even the twentieth, and he still wasn’t sure how much of it was an act. That some of it was an act was indisputable. One evening about five years back, Sobell had been playing the Merry Drunkard at some godforsaken dive he enjoyed when he was slumming, and some creep had tried to roll him in the bathroom. Gresser had walked in just in time to see Sobell sober up in a shocking hurry and bury a letter opener four inches into the guy’s eye. Sobell’s cheerful, drunken half smile was gone, his eyes hard and clear for one short moment—and then he’d gone right back to it. “Got a bit of a problem here, Mr. Gresser,” he’d said, and he’d hiccuped for good effect afterward.

  This morning, Sobell hobbled about looking for his other sock while Gresser poured. Ice, vodka, more vodka, open the bottle of tonic and pour some down the sink, and presto! A vodka and tonic the way Enoch Sobell liked it.

  Socks found, donned, and held in place by a couple of thousand-dollar shoes, Sobell made his way to the bar. Half the vodka went down in one toxic slug, and Sobell’s face brightened. And, just like that long-ago night in a men’s room in a shitty part of town, all at once he looked alarmingly sober.

  “Ms. Ames and company? I assume they’re on board.”

  Gresser put both hands on the bar and shook his head. “Not yet. They wanted to think about it. They did deliver the, um, object.”

  “Fine work, that.” Another gulp of vodka. “What did you do with it?”

  “Dropped it in the first trash can I found. Fucking disgusting.”

  “Too right.” Sobell cocked the glass, pausing before downing the last of it. “So, she wants to sleep on it. Not a lot of time for that, but it could be worse. Anything happen afterward?”

  “Met with her crew. Partied. Ruiz and Ames headed out at about three.”

  “Oh?”

  “Yeah. Went to just about the worst part of town I can think of. Looks like Ames’s got a connection down there.” He tapped the crook of his elbow with two fingers.

  Sobell’s brow tightened fractionally. “Where, exactly?”

  “You want an address?”

  “Yes. That’s exactly what I want.”

  “Uh, Norton Street? East of LaBrea, somewhere in the two hundred block.”

  “Hmm,” Sobell said, nodding. His eyes narrowed; with his body backlit by the rising sun, they looked like black slits. “Adelaide.” Gresser could have sworn that the fearless Enoch Sobell actually shuddered.

  “I don’t know where that is.”

  “Not where—who. If Ames is visiting that charming young nut job, she’s almost certainly the real deal. That’s a good thing.” He didn’t look like he thought that was a good thing. He looked like he thought it was on par with eating a handful of lye.

  Gresser hesitated before speaking his next words. He hadn’t gotten into Enoch Sobell’s good graces by accident, or by being careless, and it wasn’t his style to extend himself much. But, still—two million dollars? For Ames? That was dumb. “Maybe we can leave her out of this,” he suggested. “Me and a few of the boys can—”

  “No.” Sobell put the glass on the bar with a dry, precise click. “For every job, there is an appropriate tool. Karyn Ames and her crew have a few rather specialized skills. And, frankly, you have a different role to play in this absurd comedy.”

  Gresser nodded. He’d learned long ago that many of his questions would be answered in time, as long as he was patient.

  Sobell pulled his jacket off the nearest barstool and put it on. “I assume the car is waiting?”

  * * *

  Sobell paused before the warehouse door, a dingy little side door next to the big overheads, and stepped aside. Gresser obligingly turned the knob and opened the door for him. He walked into the dimly lit space and stepped through the heavy, hunched shadows cast by obscure machinery rusting in the dark. Blue-white fluorescent lights flickered and buzzed, spitting feeble illumination into the vast volume. Gresser shut the door with a clang and quickly caught up.

  “All has been quiet here, I assume?” Sobell asked.

  “Yes, sir.”

  Sobell nodded. He wasn’t looking forward to this next piece of work at all, but he couldn’t put it off much longer. Any day now, Mendelsohn’s pet may very well escape and vanish beyond Sobell’s reach, or—rather more likely, he thought—escape, kill every living thing in Mendelsohn’s home and a hundred-yard radius, and then vanish beyond his reach. Ames and company needed to cooperate, and Sobell needed to get his preparation under way, which meant taking care of the nasty business at hand. He would have much preferred to deal with Mendelsohn’s creature without having to mess with the entity he was on his way to meet, but it simply wouldn’t do to show up without payment, and he couldn’t think of a better way to get it. Had, in fact, worked a small miracle or two to arrange this . . . meeting.

  He s
urveyed the darkness, unable to clear the self-satisfied smile from his lips. “Lead on, Mr. Gresser.”

  Gresser edged around him and took a sharp right at the next clear spot between shelves of inscrutable equipment. Sobell stepped over some kind of winch and narrowly avoided twisting his ankle on something that looked like a giant ball bearing—not that he’d know a ball bearing from a socket wrench, if it came down to it. His talents had always lain in other areas.

  “Charming place,” he said. “Union shop?”

  Gresser grunted a short laugh. “Through here.” The heavy overhanging shelf of his brow wrinkled in a question. “Ready?”

  “Of course.”

  Gresser pushed open a door covered in flaking paint, a green so dark it was nearly black in the fluorescents. Soft silver light poured from the room.

  Sobell squinted. “Bit shiny, eh?” Gresser had already stepped aside, outside the room. His face was an expressionless mask, though Sobell could see the tight bunching of muscles at his jaw. He didn’t like this one bit. Probably time to throw him a bonus, then. Good help, and all that.

  Sobell brushed past his discomfited lieutenant and went through the doorway. The room beyond, perhaps once a small storage room, was now quite plainly a cell. It had been emptied by some of Gresser’s gorillas, but the thousands of glyphs and symbols that lined the walls had been drawn on the panels by Sobell himself before they were installed. It was not the kind of work one left up to lackeys.

  In the corner of the room stood the source of the silver light. Man-sized and roughly man-shaped, it still wasn’t something you could call a proper human being. It was more like a department store mannequin of unearthly beauty, a form that suggested a thousand shapes rather than actually taking one itself. It didn’t even have eyes or a mouth that Sobell could see, merely indentations that implied some, and as it turned its head to acknowledge him, the pattern of light and shadow shifted to suggest disdain.