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Tommy nodded, grinning. “Those things will kill you, Domino.”
I have a purification spell that rules that out, but I didn’t mention it. It’s the kind of thing that pisses people off. They don’t really mind if you smoke as long as it kills you. Out on the sidewalk, I drew a Camel and lit up.
Tommy immediately began scanning the area for attractive female pedestrians. “So what can I do for you, Domino?”
“Jamal is dead,” I said. Tommy’s gaze immediately snapped back to me. I wouldn’t be able to keep the murder a secret, and Tommy would need to know eventually.
“When? How?” Tommy asked. His store-bought tan had lost a little color.
“Last night. Probably a hit.”
“Jesus. Who did it?”
“Hard to say. Jamal isn’t talking.”
“How did he die? Where did you find him?” Tommy was fishing for all the details that would allow him to spin a good insider report to impress his friends.
“Skinned and crucified in his apartment, magical ritual. Squeezed.”
Tommy let out a low whistle. “Damn. Hell of a way to go.”
“Yeah, Tommy, not the best.”
“So what do you want from me? You want me to call it in?”
“No, just report him AWOL the next time he comes up on your schedule. I don’t need a police investigation, even if it is half-assed.”
Tommy nodded.
“What I really need is information. I already ran Jamal’s homeboys through the paces. They don’t know much.”
“Okay,” Tommy said, thinking hard. “Like what? I was his PO. It was my job to keep him out of Chino. I guess I knew Jamal about as well as anyone.” For once, I didn’t think Tommy was exaggerating, at least not much. A probation officer was the closest most outfit guys ever came to a confessional. Jamal probably told Tommy Barrow things he’d never tell his friends or family.
“I need to know if he was up to anything unusual. Maybe he had something going on the side, maybe he made a new enemy.”
Tommy shook his head. “Far as I know, Jamal was a stand-up guy. The outfit was his life, and he wouldn’t try to run something under the radar. He thought he had a future with the outfit…and more to the point, he didn’t think he had a future without it.”
That fit with what I knew about the kid. He was smarter than most, and ambitious. It wasn’t exactly helping me connect him to Papa Danwe, though.
“Any new habits? New friends?”
“Yeah,” Tommy said, after a moment biting his lip. “He was hanging out at the Cannibal Club. He had this thing he was trying with bondage and that kind of stuff, to work on his craft. He said it was a good place to find girls who were into that.”
The Cannibal Club was a nightspot in Hollywood that was popular with the black leather and porcelain fangs crowd. It was hard to picture Jamal there, and once you did it was a funny picture. Hollywood wasn’t Papa Danwe’s turf—none of the outfits controlled it. Still, maybe Papa Danwe had something working at the club. Maybe Jamal had gotten in the way.
“What about family?” I asked. It bothered me that I hadn’t thought about it before. Jamal had been a person before he’d been a corpse and a problem for me to solve.
Tommy shook his head. “You know the story. Father split, mother OD’d when Jamal was fifteen.”
“Okay,” I said. “You got anything else?”
“I don’t think so, Domino. If I remember anything, I’ll let you know.”
“Do that. Have fun with Sandy. You make a great couple.” I guess I can be a little catty, too, sometimes. I flipped my cigarette into the street, drawing a contemptuous sniff from a middle-aged woman in a white dress, saucer-size sunglasses and a ridiculous hat. I smiled at her and tapped a little juice, vaporizing the butt where it lay on the asphalt. She didn’t even notice.
About eleven o’clock that night, I left my condo and drove into Hollywood. It was a Saturday night, and as usual, traffic was a bitch. Fortunately I have a spell that allows me to weave through even the worst snarls with a little lane-jockeying.
Technically, the incantation I think of as the traffic spell is chaos magic—the old school would call it a luck spell. It’s one of my favorites. It’s subtle, and practical and complex enough that most sorcerers can’t manage it. In simple terms, it isolates and adjusts probability lines such that you just happen to find an open route through even the heaviest traffic. I surfed the probability waves through the Hollywood night and found the club on Sunset Boulevard.
I pulled up out front and spun my parking spell, muttering the words of the incantation. “Any place worth its salt has a parking problem.” I eased my car into a spot right by the door of the club just as a yellow Honda tuner pulled out. What luck.
There was a line of pasty, black-clad kids winding around the block, but sorcerers don’t wait in lines any more than we settle for lousy parking or sit in traffic jams. I walked up to the bouncer and smiled.
“I’m on the list,” I said. I wasn’t. I didn’t even know if there was a list. The bouncer’s meaty, clean-shaven head didn’t even budge as he checked me out from behind his wraparound sunglasses.
I reached out and touched the juice, channeling it through my imagination and rearranging it according to the pattern I’d learned.
“I have with me two gods,” I said. “Persuasion and Compulsion.” I released the magic and let it wash over him. Behind the sunglasses, the bouncer blinked.
“Oh,” he said, stepping aside to let me pass, “you’re on the list.”
I met the chorus of protests from the waiting kids with a smile and a little shrug. “I’m on the list,” I said.
Metal detector, pat down, cover charge and then I was inside and heading to the nearest bar.
The Cannibal Club was black decor, chain-link fencing, head-splitting techno-industrial you can dance to, blacklight and the smell of sweat and patchouli. It was teenagers and twentysomethings in black leather, black rubber, black nylon, black vinyl and black velvet. It was body piercings and tattoos, black hair dye and white clown makeup. Flat-panel monitors offered a live feed of the writhing, thrashing, swaying bodies on the dance floor. An electronic ticker scrolling at the bottom of the screens announced that sunrise was at 5:41 a.m.
I went to the bar and ordered a beer. I used a little juice, or I’d have stood there for hours without attracting a bartender’s attention. I took a lengthy pull from the longneck and scanned the club. I wasn’t sure exactly what I was looking for. I guess I was hoping to spot one of Papa Danwe’s guys hanging around, looking suspicious. I didn’t see anyone I recognized, but then it was dark as the Beyond and everyone was dressed like the Crow.
After a few minutes of fruitless squinting into the strobe-pierced gloom, I relaxed and tried my witch sight. A few of the kids in the club had a little juice. That was normal for a place like the Cannibal Club. None of them had the kind of juice to be my killer. I sensed stronger magic in the VIP area that ran along one side of the dance floor, but I didn’t have a clear view from where I was standing by the bar. I dropped the sight and headed that way.
The guy holding court in the semicircular booth was a prince among the pretenders. His glossy hair flowed to his shoulders and draped his white collar in black silk. He’d elected not to conceal the natural beauty of his caramel skin in the hideous clown makeup that seemed mandatory for most of the club-goers, male and female alike. His dark eyes were at once soulful and boyish, and the combination made my knees a little weak.
I’d been in the outfit most of my life, so I’d run into Adan Rashan on more than one occasion. I’d always thought he was attractive. Cute, even as an awkward teenager when his father had first introduced us. That night in the club, I thought he was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.
I don’t have a spell to counteract the intoxicating effect of a truly gorgeous man. If I did, I probably wouldn’t use it anyway. Even if it means I one day get sucker-punched by some seductive creature of the night, I say to hell with it. Some risks are worth taking.
So, yeah, Adan was hot. The Goth posse that flanked him in the booth was pretty much indistinguishable from the rest of the crowd, from where I was standing. One long-haired pale face sitting next to Adan stared at me menacingly. He leaned over and whispered something without breaking eye contact with me, and then he sneered. I hated him already.
I went back to the bar, juiced the bartender again and had her send over a couple bottles of Cristal. A waitress delivered the champagne, pointing in my direction. I raised my bottle and smiled, wishing I’d ordered something classier than a beer. Adan recognized me and returned the smile, then waved me over. The Gothtard next to him scowled, which I liked.
The VIP area was roped off, and I gave the bouncer the same Jedi mind trick that got me in the club. I handed him my empty before making my way over to Adan’s table.
He stood as I approached. He was wearing a tailored black suit, the ivory shirt unbuttoned at the collar just enough to be interesting. The rich fabric draped his slender frame like…well, like an expensive suit on a young male body that’s just about perfect.
“Domino,” he said, “thanks for the champagne.” He leaned across the corner of the table—and across Gothtard—to give me a hug and a chaste kiss on the cheek. He smelled like musk, and apples and cinnamon—and like sweat and patchouli, but that was just the fucking club.
“Hi, Adan,” I said. “You’re welcome. I’ll send the bill to your father.”
He laughed, and it echoed around the table, though the posse probably had no idea what I was talking about. Gothtard didn’t laugh. He just stared at me and brooded dangerously.
“I’ve never seen you here before,” Adan said. “Do you come here often?” Then, laughing, “Jesus, I can’t believe I just said that.”
I’d planned to play the tough girl and outbrood Gothtard, but I found myself laughing, too, because Adan’s dark eyes sparkled and because he had the tiniest little dimples in an otherwise classically sculpted face.
He introduced the posse—Edward, Louis, Armand, Elvira, Wednesday Addams, yada yada yada. I nodded, smiled and then politely ignored them.
Adan sat back down and turned to Gothtard. “Manfred, can you pour the champagne?” The intensity of his brooding deepened momentarily, but he slid out of the booth to do the honors.
“Thanks, Fred,” I said, and took his seat beside Adan.
“It is Manfred,” he growled. He had a cute little German accent, probably affected. I nodded absently and turned to Adan.
“Anyway, no, this is my first time here,” I said. Fred handed him the first glass of Cristal, and he passed it to me. Fred scowled and I smiled.
“And what do you think of the Cannibal Club?” he asked. He took the next glass from Fred and nodded politely.
“It’s growing on me.”
Adan grinned, flashing those dimples again, and we touched glasses. “So what brings you here?”
I waited until Fred finished pouring the champagne and wedged himself in at the other end of the booth, and then I stood up. “I want to dance.”
“That works,” Adan said and laughed. I could feel Fred brooding as we made our way to the dance floor.
I know gangsters who use their magic to dance. I even know the spell. It’s actually a variant of a nonlethal compulsion that neutralizes an opponent, with the secondary benefit of making him look goofy. You cast the spell on yourself, relax your body, and with the help of a little juice, you literally let the music move you.
That’s just weak. Using magic for parking spots and prompt bar service is one thing, and I’ll admit to using my purification magic in ways that will keep me away from cosmetic surgeons indefinitely. But I draw the line at using it for sexy dancing. As far as I’m concerned, that’s just cheating. Maybe it’s nothing more than a different brand of vanity, but whatever sexiness I’ve got is all-natural, baby. Mostly.
In fairness to the weak-ass sorcerers who use the spell, club dancing does present a bit of a dilemma. If you really have no idea what you’re doing, you’ll look like an idiot. But if you try too hard, you’ll look like you’re trying too hard, and you’ll still look like an idiot. The key is to look like you have no idea what you’re doing, but sexy just comes naturally to you.
Out on the floor, I did my best to still my body, mind and soul and settle into this Zenlike state of nondancing dancing sexiness. I probably looked like an idiot. Mostly, I just held on to Adan and hoped no one would notice me.
As I moved against my boss’s son, I reviewed what I’d learned so far. First, the Goths in Adan’s posse were all normal humans, unremarkable but for their poor fashion sense. All except Fred, who was the genuine article. Judging by how much black juice was oozing from his undead hide, he had to be at least five hundred years old.
Adan, of course, was the source of the magic I’d picked up from the bar. Not him, exactly, but his accessories. The small gold hoop in his left ear, the star pendant hanging from a slender chain around his neck, a ring, his Rolex—all of it radiated first-class juice, mostly protective magic, and I recognized it immediately as his father’s.
As for Adan himself, well, the parts of his incredible body I could feel were lean, toned and hard, and I could feel most of them. Other than that, there wasn’t much to talk about. He had a little juice, about what you’d expect from a young man. He wasn’t a sorcerer.
After about ten minutes of dancing, I dropped a sound-dampening spell around us. The music faded into the background. Adan’s eyes widened and he smiled. “Are you trying to impress me, Domino?”
“Of course,” I said. “Adan, you know Fred is a vampire, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah, I met him here at the club. He’s never tried to, you know, fang me or anything.”
“How long have you known him?”
“A few months. Really, he’s nothing to worry about. He’s a little weird, I guess, but you know, he’s just a guy at the club.”
What did that mean? He’s just a guy at the club as in I don’t swing that way and he’s not any competition for you? Or, he likes me and promised not to drain my blood until my heart stops?
“Okay,” I said finally. “You’re a big boy…I guess you can choose your own friends.”
Adan laughed. Dimples were brandished disarmingly.
“So you like this Goth, emo, industrial scene—whatever they’re calling it now?” I asked. “It doesn’t really seem like your style.”
He shrugged. “It’s okay. I go to other clubs, too. I feel like a loser if I hang around Dad’s strip clubs too much.” Touché.
“Adan, I heard one of our guys had started coming here, kid named Jamal. You ever see him?”
Adan nodded. “He started coming in about a month ago. I hang out with him sometimes. Manfred doesn’t like him, but Manfred doesn’t really like anyone. Anyway, Jamal seems pretty cool.”
“Who else did he hang out with? Did you ever see him with anyone that looked, I don’t know, out of place?”
Adan’s brow furrowed. “He leaves with women sometimes, I guess. A lot of gangsters hang out here, so Jamal didn’t stick out as much as you’d think.”
“Really? This is a gangster hangout?”
“Yeah, mostly Papa Danwe’s guys. You know him?”
This detective stuff was easy. “Yeah, I’ve heard of him.”
“A lot of them hang out here. They all seem to know Manfred—at least the big guy does.”
“The big guy? Do you know his name?”
Adan shook his head. “I don’t know him, but I think he’s like a captain or whatever. Like you, I guess. He comes in here the most, sometimes by himself and sometimes with others. Anyway, he’s black and just a really big dude.”
There was one gangster in Papa Danwe’s outfit who matched that description pretty well. Terrence Cole, one of Papa Danwe’s lieutenants. He was the kind of guy who made a lasting impression.
“Did you ever see Jamal talking to this guy—or any of Papa Danwe’s boys?”
“No, other than the girls and when he was hanging out with me, Jamal mostly kept to himself.”
I guess that would have been too easy. “Okay. Thanks, Adan, this is really helpful.”
“Why are you asking? Is Jamal in some kind of trouble?”
I decided not to tell him, at least not yet. If his father wanted him to know about outfit business, he could tell Adan himself. He’d eventually hear about it anyway. I changed the subject.
“Do you have a girlfriend?” I groaned inwardly. It had been the first thing that came to mind.
“No. I did in college, but it didn’t work out. It’s hard to find someone, you know?”
I nodded.
“What about you?” Adan asked. “Boyfriend? Is there a Mr. Domino?”
