High Bloods Read online

  But we made love again—in the best sense of those words—on the double futon in my bedroom, taking time for a leisurely appreciation of each other’s bodies. The humanness of sexual need.

  Once I thought, from the slow, deep rhythm of her breathing, that she had fallen asleep, I started to get up from the futon platform.

  But Beatrice quaked in alarm and took a fierce grip on me.

  “You’re leaving?”

  “Not going to work yet, but I need to report in. Find out how the investigation is going.”

  Premeditated murder by a werewolf—if that turned out to be the case—made hash of everything that ILC thought it knew about the species. Just the possibility was enough to give me a sick stomach.

  Beatrice relaxed her grip. “Please don’t be gone long.” Her eyes were serious, meeting my gaze. “My body is yours now. Just don’t ever fuck with my head.”

  “Not my style, Beatrice.”

  I touched one corner of her lips, then the other, then with a fingertip drew a smile on her relaxed face.

  “No,” she said. “I didn’t think it would be.”

  Sunny and I conferred on the dedicated and encrypted ILC channel. I transferred her hologram to a breakfast-nook booth and sat opposite it.

  “What have we got so far?”

  “West Hollywood turned up that dust shroud in an alley off Melrose about a mile from de Sade’s. It was custom, so—”

  “Probably stolen from a similar SUV in storage. Trace the ownership anyway.”

  “Better news, we found the mesh purse you were talking about. Along with a dress, shoes, and the Lycan crucifix in the ladies’ lounge stall where she haired-up. Other women using the facility had the good sense to stay locked in their own stalls while that was going on.”

  I nodded. The involuntary groans werewolves make during the hair-up is unmistakable, as terrifying as the act itself.

  Sunny said, “The Lycan is, or was, Miss Chiclyn Hickey of Melbourne, Australia. But you knew that already, didn’t you?”

  “She came on to me in de Sade’s like the Saturday Night Special, until I sort of let it slip that I was a Wolfer.”

  Sunny heard that with a wry smile.

  “Not that you’re a bad-looking guy, and the hair certainly works for you, but you know they’re all just looking for someone who reminds them of daddy.”

  I ignored her; it was one of her favorite critiques, one I heard, along with not very subtle hints about a nose job, when she was feeling bitchy or miffed at me. After all, I’d left her with a crime scene to run.

  “What about the designer wristpac?”

  “We haven’t come up with one yet.”

  “She may have passed it on to someone else. Which makes me think—”

  “Chickie the Hairball might’ve had a little helper on the inside?”

  “Someone who knew to disconnect the rooftop TRADs. Put Joel and Tink to work reviewing the discs from all the surveillance cams. And confiscate every cell phone or wristpac in de Sade’s before you let the Ravers go home.”

  “We might need to strip-search.”

  “If it adds to your fun.”

  “Speaking of good times, R, how is your interrogation coming along?”

  “Her full name is Beatrice Harp. I found out that much.”

  “How could she resist your, um, relentless probing?”

  “Be nice.”

  “So tell me, did you take the local or the express with Beatrice? Were you up front with her, or did you go in the back way?”

  “I’ll see you at the office,” I said. “Probably I’ll be late. There’s someone else I need to talk to.”

  After I finished talking to Sunny I made coffee, toasted a bagel, and turned on the five o’clock news.

  The second-stringers who worked the A.M. beat were outside de Sade’s, but the word there was mum and they had no one to interview who had a coherent story to tell. There had been screams, a shape in the night that could have been a large dog or someone wearing one of the popular Jazz Age chinchilla coats and a porkpie hat. Just as a formality ILC investigators were on the scene. There were rumors of bodies in the Montmorency. At this point nothing was confirmed.

  Around the world the usual pointless but lethal squabbles were going on over this and that, as if the warring factions didn’t have enough to do keeping Lycanthropy in check. A religious cult in Tierra del Fuego had played follow-the-leader in committing mass suicide; he had guaranteed them a better world somewhere else.

  Cults always had been the first refuge for the emotionally immature, those who couldn’t cope, even with the counsel of therapists and antidepressants, with the reality of the world they’d been born into.

  Speaking of feel-good nostrums, Miles Brenta’s pharma colossus near San Jack Town seemed to have come up with a hot new one as we cut to commercial. On-screen an ideal young couple, healthy and happy in a setting of green hills, blue skies, and fleecy clouds, exulted in their well-being, courtesy of a drug called SECÜR.

  And back to the news as I poured a second cup of coffee: a rancher named Max Thursday had been found guilty in SoCal Superior Court of hosting a mal de lune hunt on his Seco Grande spread with Hairballs as prey. It had happened a few months ago. Because he had no priors, he received a fine and probation. A LALALY (Legal Assistance for Los Angeles Lycans) pro bono team had registered “strenuous objections” to the leniency of the sentence and were “filing motions of appeal”—as if their actions could hope to stop an increasingly popular sport on either side of the border.

  A pair of young Lycans had been murdered in the backseat of a car parked in a trysting spot near Laguna Nigel. The boy’s throat was cut. The girl, already conveniently naked and in heat, was gang-raped, then slaughtered. From tire tracks around the vehicle police estimated that at least a dozen bikers had been involved. They didn’t go so far as to implicate Diamondbackers, who had much better lawyers than LALALY. And deeper pockets, going by the quality of the motorcycles they owned.

  There was a public service spot featuring gang-pressed young Lycans whitewashing a handball wall on a playground, obliterating the spray-painted legend KILL ALL HI BLUDS. The voice-over narrator solemnly reminded us that promoting such violence only inspired more intolerance throughout the cultural ingroup, namely High Bloods.

  We all just had to try and get along, in the immortal words of someone whose name I had forgotten long ago.

  The entertainment minute of the news was devoted to clips from the opening of another Miles Brenta resort in Paradiso Palms the previous Saturday night. I didn’t pay attention. I was rinsing out my cup when I heard Miles say, “… seen a rough cut, and let me be the first to say Chickie is just fantastic in it; this girl is going to be a major star.”

  I turned from the sink in time to catch a few seconds of a radiant Chiclyn Hickey, wearing a stylish gown and a fall, snuggled next to Brenta, maybe bending her knees a little so as not to appear taller than the stocky billionaire. Brenta had a casual arm around her bare shoulders. They were onscreen long enough for me to tell that Chickie had left her wolf’s-head crucifix at home: she had on a diamond choker with a small pendant instead.

  Anyway Brenta would know that Chickie was Lycan; he wasn’t careless about who he bedded.

  Assuming Chickie had been his date for the evening, I wondered how that had gone over with Mrs. Brenta, who no longer made public appearances. She was one of the few survivors of a werewolf attack I knew of. All of whom were much the worse for the experience.

  I went on the Internet and gave a couple of Lycan-oriented sites a fast look. Sometimes they were first to post stories the so-called legitimate media hadn’t caught on to or were reluctant to report if they did know something. But this morning the pages were largely filled with gossip, wishful thinking, or just plain fantasy: UNBORN CHILD BECOMES WEREWOLF IN MOTHER’S WOMB and EVIDENCE THAT EARLY CHRISTIANS WERE LYCANS FOUND IN HIDDEN CAVE.

  While I was choosing something to wear to a second b
reakfast from the tansu wardrobe in my bedroom, Beatrice rose up on one elbow, eyes still filled with sleep. I told her where I was going and how long I expected to be gone. She mumbled something and lay down again.

  I kissed a bare shoulder, had a quick shave, inhaled enough upper vape to keep me awake and alert for the next twelve hours, dressed. I was on my way down to the Beverly Hills Hotel as the first rays of sun appeared on the high, dry hills and gently stirring acacia above the canyon.

  Five mornings a week, as soon as the rising sun permitted his entrance into the Privilege, Johnny Padre took his place at a table for eight in the Polo Lounge for a power breakfast.

  Johnny was a senior partner in the talent agency EiE (Excellence in Entertainment) located in Century City. The biggest of the Bing Three. Always there were two or three Juniors in attendance, along with whatever talents and/or studio honchos EiE was wooing.

  For all the Excellence in Entertainment execs, the Amish look was de rigueur: blue shirts with the collar buttoned, black trousers, suspenders, high-topped black shoes. Chin whiskers were optional. They all wore identical flat-crowned white straw hats with black bands, even at table. In sync sartorially as they were, aligned in dignity and humble power, they had the august presence that belied the truth of their profession, made up of numerous rival nests of frenzied, conniving, backbiting rats.

  Johnny wasn’t pleased to see me walk in. The client for whom they were negotiating a deal this morning was a longtime best-selling author, a tall, serious-looking octogenarian with a shaggy gray haircut and thick glasses. The A-list director also present already had turned several of the novelist’s wildly popular Luke Bailiff western novels into cinema classics. Neither the author’s fans nor moviegoers could get enough of Luke Bailiff or the western genre. The good old days of pioneer America. When there was still half of a country to be explored and settled, and most men—probably a few women too—felt energized by opportunity, fully in control of their destinies.

  Almost no one felt that way anymore. The future was a black hole. Suicide rates all over the world were climbing in what statisticians called parabolic curves. The newest satellite maps no longer bore the ancient legend across empty quarters of ocean or trackless wasteland that read Here there be monsters. But they might as well have.

  After introductions and a few pleasantries I asked the rest of the breakfast club to excuse Johnny Padre for a few minutes.

  Because I had some power in my own line of work, Johnny, an Off-Blood, made the best of the interruption, cracking wise about being cited for sneaking too much Château Mouton-Rothschild ‘84 into his most recent blood-swap, and followed me to a banquette we both knew wasn’t bugged.

  Johnny had a pallid face and a chronically constipated expression. The little sideways lurch of his mouth when he attempted a heartless smile always reminded me of a math teacher I’d hated in high school because he never graded on the curve. Johnny sat hunched and watchful opposite me as if he were harboring a secret mean spirit.

  “I’m loving this like a boil on my dick,” he growled. “So give me the bad news first—as long as it’s happening to somebody else.”

  “Chiclyn Hickey,” I said.

  “She’s a client. Not what you’d call intellectual property, but the camera worships her. She’s got the fucking star quality: young sin in her eyes and that sexy overbite. I’ve been bringing her along slowly, small but important roles with A-list directors. Now it’s Chickie’s time. Eight to five she breaks out in Ghost Galleon.”

  “Is she fucking Miles Brenta?”

  “How would I know? It’s his money in the movie. He fucks who he wants. What’s your interest in Chickie?”

  “She’s a Lycan.”

  “This is breaking news? In show business, who’s not hairy these days?”

  “When their time of the month comes around.”

  “Meaning?”

  “Chickie’s an OOPs.”

  Padre winced, looked down, dry-washed his thin pale hands worriedly.

  “C’mon. Out-of-Phase Hairballs? That’s just an urban legend.”

  “We do our best to promote it as such.”

  Artie fumbled in his shirt pocket for a blister pack of small white pills and swallowed one. He was beginning to look clammy.

  “That’s fucking swell. Potential five mil her next contract. What’s she done that we can’t plea-bargain or buy her out of?”

  “She did a Hairball number on Artie Excalibur at de Sade’s a few hours ago. Sorry, Johnny. But this you keep to yourself.”

  Johnny breathed through his mouth, a hand over his heart as if he were about to give sworn testimony.

  “I love the kid like a daughter!” He looked up at me accusingly. “Is she dead? Did you kill her, Rawson?”

  “I shot her. Not fatally. But she’s missing. I doubt that there’s much chance she’s still alive. If my silver didn’t do it, then whoever drove Chickie away from de Sade’s has finished the job, maybe after she skinnydipped.”

  “Somebody had the stones to put a werewolf in his car? Reminds me of the old joke.” Assuming I had heard it, he went straight to the punch line: “‘Thought it was the best pussy I’d ever had, until she told me she’d bikini-waxed her face.’” Johnny squeezed his hands together so hard some color appeared in his cheeks, a mild pink flush.

  “It was an SUV,” I said. “Chickie was low sick by then, from the last look I had of her. Right now she’s either in the upper Mojave under a pile of rocks or marinating in a dump. I hope we find her, although by the time we do there won’t be a trace left of whatever they programmed her with.”

  “Program a werewolf? Last I heard, they don’t take direction.”

  “Chickie did. I’m reasonably sure. Any idea of who might have found Artie expendable in their scheme of things?”

  Johnny shrugged.

  “He was in and out of some deals, always with a profit. Had a savvy eye for the next good thing, little start-ups that need cash bad. There’s a lot of competish in those areas of investment. Artie couldn’t crack an egg with his punches anymore, but his footwork was still fancy. Never stepped on any important High Blood toes that I know of.”

  “His word was his bond?”

  “Good enough for me, yeah. He put me into a couple of real moneymakers. Wind turbine leases. That biodiesel utility company in Camarillo. Artie was big on saving the planet.” Padre smiled cynically. “Maybe he thought there’s gonna be somebody left to enjoy it.”

  “When did you see Artie last?”

  “Our Thursday-night game. Upstairs at the Redondo casino he has a piece of. Two tables, regulars only, twelve or fifteen of us, depending. Kind of a who’s who in SoCal, you know?”

  He seemed pleased to be including himself.

  “Miles Brenta one of them?”

  “Doesn’t gamble. Says he has no card sense. Poker would be the only thing he’s not good at. I think he just prefers fast toys and hunting dangerous game for amusement.”

  Johnny glanced anxiously at the table where proposals were being floated without him.

  “Listen. About Chickie. It’s a tragedy. A great loss. Maybe what you find out, you could keep me in the loop? Like a daughter to me.”

  His look of compassion for the presumably departed Chickie was enough to bring tears to the glass eyes of a stuffed moose head.

  “Aren’t they all?” I said.

  When I pulled up in front of the house on Breva Way I sat in the Humvee looking at a bed of red, white, and purple china asters, letting my mind slack off while my brain continued humming dependably along, putting out its steady twelve watts of electrical energy, impulses lighting up the glowworm cellular network that makes up the human—and animal—nervous system.

  It took a little while before I consciously realized I was trying to connect with something. Like another energy field from another mind that lingered on the periphery of psychic recognition, a spirit not unknown but unnamable in the bright, suddenly creepy silence of ea
rly morning.

  Human, animal, both? My internal séance, as they usually are, was unnerving. I broke it off and went into the house.

  The washing machine was going in the laundry alcove off the kitchen. I found Beatrice in the courtyard wearing one of the dragon kimonos that were in most of the bedroom wardrobes, including mine. She was drinking coffee. The hand that held the cup still wasn’t all that steady. Other than the pewter coffee service there was nothing on the table but a shiny steel cleaver from the kitchen’s cutlery rack.

  She looked around at me with a troubled face. But she relaxed her grip on the cleaver.

  “Someone was here,” she said. “She scared me so bad I nearly freaked. I guess you didn’t have the time to tell me you had an ex-wife. Of course you didn’t. We’ve barely talked at all. But you would’ve told me sooner or later, wouldn’t you?”

  4

  t had been more than a year since I had seen or spoken to our closest neighbor, Ida Grace. She had lived alone in the next house up the canyon road since her daughter Mallory had gone Lycan at age seventeen and earned her banishment from hearth and home and the unforgiving wolfless society of the Privilege.

  The loss of Mal and perhaps advancing age had turned Ida into a recluse whose household needs were met by a complement of service staff, particularly a houseman named Duke, who put on his chauffeur’s cap whenever Ida ventured outside the walls of her brick colonial house, usually for medical reasons. She occasionally visited the gallery on Canon Drive that exhibited her paintings or the vet who looked after her dogs. She owned a white Maltese and two Neapolitan mastiffs, the only breed I knew capable of taking on a werewolf with some prospect of survival.

  These days Ida’s social life seemed to be limited to a weekly visit from a Buddhist priest. But I was convinced that during the earliest hours of his morning there had been another visitor.

  Although it was still early, Ida had breakfasted and was at work on a painting in the orangerie/studio semidetached from the main house. I hadn’t expected Duke to receive permission to bring me around, accompanied by the mastiffs, although I had stressed that it was important and not a social call.