Mob Magic, page 12
"So ... if it isn't the cat detective," Richards said, turning from his terminal as I came in. He did not bother getting up. I did not bother asking his permission to jump up onto the expensive, tufted leather chair. I just proceeded to make myself comfortable, doing that claw thing up and down on the nice, soft, nappa hide. He could not quite hide the wince as the leather made satisfying little scritching sounds. "Catseye Gomez. I've heard of you," he said. "Saw that interview on Today."
"I'm never at my best that early," I replied. "Look, Mr. Richards, you're a busy man, I'm sure, so I'll get right to the point. I'm looking for Phoenix Summers."
"I'm afraid I can't help you," he said.
"Can't or won't?"
"Can't," he repeated. "I haven't the faintest notion where she is."
"She came back with you from Mars last month."
"We were traveling together, if that was what you mean."
"I understand there was more than traveling involved."
"And if there was, why would it be any of your business? We were both consenting adults."
I could've given him the line Sedona tried on me, but I didn't waste my time. He knew the law as well as I did, I was sure of that. The minute they left Mars orbit, Phoenix Summers ceased to be a minor. The fact that she was young enough to be his daughter ... well, that was not my business, either.
"You paid her fare," I said.
"No law against that, is there?" he replied.
"No, I guess there isn't. But I'm sure the employees would love to hear that over by the water cooler."
He stiffened slightly. Didn't like that. "I was polite enough to see you, Cat," he said, "but since you came in, you've done everything short of messing on the rug to tick me off. I take it you remember where the door is. Or should I call a guard dog to help you find the way?"
I didn't think I'd get much out of him. His sort, you never do. But I had to cover all the bases, just in case. "Tell me just one thing before I go," I said. "Did you at least leave her with some money, or did you just dump her like a load of dirty laundry when the thrill was gone?"
He commed his secretary. "Rachel? Call the dogs," he said.
"Just one or two more questions and I'll leave," I said. "When was the last time you saw her? C'mon, save me some legwork and at least tell me where you dumped her. It might not be much, but it's a place to start. She must have been worth something to you. I mean, hell, you paid her fare to Earth."
"Chump change," Richards said. "She was pleasant company. A bit of fluff that livened up an otherwise dull and routine business trip. There was no more to it than that. She knew what she was doing. In a lot more ways than one, if you catch my drift."
"Oh, I caught it," I replied. "I'll stop by the clinic and get a shot for it tomorrow."
"Cute," he said, "very cute. You'll be meowing out of the other side of your mouth in about a minute, when the dogs get here."
"Don't scare me too much," I replied. "I might piddle all over your nice clean carpet."
"Look, Cat, the last time I saw Phoenix, she was getting into a cab outside El Morocco with the five hundred dollars that I gave her in her purse. Just to help her out, you understand."
"I'll bet she earned every single cent."
"You know, I've had about enough of you," he said, and right on cue, the door opened up behind me and security came trotting in. Three German shepherds, with radio-equipped collars and little blue jackets that said "K-9 Security" on them in gold letters.
"Get this flea-bitten furball outta here," said Richards.
Two of the dogs looked like they were ready to go for me right then and there, but the bigger, lead dog stopped 'em in their tracks. "Cool it, boys," he said, with a casual look in their direction. "I'll handle this." He turned to me. "Hello, Gomez."
"How's it going, Bruno?"
"Can't complain. I'm workin'."
"This is the best you could do?" I said.
Ever see a German shepherd look sheepish? It looks kinda ridiculous. But then, German shepherds are supposed to be smart, and Bruno kinda breaks the mold there, too. He used to be a police dog, but he took a few too many shots to the head with billy clubs. He was a pretty good attack dog, he just wasn't too good at letting go once he got his teeth into something. In other words, he wasn't all that bright, and with a temper that made a Doberman look mellow, that didn't make for a particularly stable combination.
"What is this, old home week at the animal shelter?" said Richards. "I told you to get this mangy alley cat the hell outta here!"
Bruno bared his teeth and growled.
"Hey, You work for me, you dumb mutt!" said Richards.
I closed my eyes. "Oh, mistake," I said, shaking my head. "Big mistake."
Bruno launched himself right over my head, and the leap carried him past me, across Richards' desk and right onto his chest. Richards screamed, and the chair went over backward as they crashed to the floor in a tangled heap. From the high-pitched squeal that came from the floor behind the desk, I had a pretty good idea what Bruno had his teeth into. Richards sounded like a woman as he screeched, "Jesus! Get him off me! Get him off me!"
The other two dogs looked at each other uncertainly, apparently feeling they should do something, and they started forward, but I stood in front of them and shook my head. "I wouldn't get involved in this if I were you," I told them. "Trust me on this one, guys. It could get real ugly."
Ever notice how goofy dogs look whenever they get confused? I just left 'em sitting there, whining softly to themselves and looking stupid, and walked on out the door. The secretary was sitting at her desk, reading a celebrity profile magazine.
"You might want to dial 911 and tell 'em to send down the paramedics," I told her.
"No hurry," she said, without lowering the magazine. "Mr. Richards said he didn't want to be disturbed."
The noise coming from the intercom on her desk made it sound as though someone was butchering a pig back there. She'd had it on, and she heard every word we'd said. She peeked out from behind the magazine and winked at me.
I gave her a little energy twinkle with ole Betsy. "Later, doll," I said.
"Take care of yourself, Cat. And hey . .. good luck. I hope you find her."
Finding the cab driver who'd picked up Phoenix Summers at El Morocco wasn't all that hard. I knew most of the dispatchers in town, and it didn't take too long, especially with a recent holo to flash around. With that face and body, Phoenix Summers was a pretty memorable girl, and the cabbie who had picked her up remembered where he took her because it was one of those addresses in town that cabbies tend to know about, the kind that traveling businessmen will pay a little extra for. A young girl fresh off the boat from Mars doesn't just happen to get an address like that out of the phone book. Richards must've laid it on her when he kicked her to the curb. I could just see him doing it, too. "Here, honey, go see Paco, he's a friend of mine. He'll fix you up. He owes me. Just tell him ole Farron sent ya."
Yeh. Right. It was all coming together, and the picture wasn't pretty.
I knew all about Paco and his operation. There are two things that all big cities have in common: roaches and characters like Paco. Come to think of it, that's rather redundant. I had a feeling I was probably biting off more than I could chew, but then, I kept thinking about Sedona Summers sitting in her expensive room back at the Plaza, worrying about her little sister and waiting for the phone to ring. What the hell, I thought, things had been a bit too quiet lately, anyway.
Paco and I had crossed paths a couple of times before. Neither one of us had enjoyed the experience very much. It was inevitable, considering our respective lines of work, that we would run into one another every now and then. It just served to remind me, whenever I got to feeling cocky about my flamboyant and independent lifestyle as a private eye, that I was really nothing more than just another bottom feeder, rooting around down in the muck and grime along with Paco and others of his ilk. Except that Paco made a better living at it than I did. But then, I had my ethics. Which, along with about six bits, would buy me an overpriced cup of coffee with steamed milk, some powdered cocoa mix and a French name.
Paco was Connected with a capital C. He ran a whole bunch of unsavory little rackets for the mob. Drugs, gambling, loan-sharking, prostitution, Paco had his measly little claws in all of them. And he was pretty much untouchable. Protection money got paid every month; lawyers with diamond pinkie rings and custom-tailored suits collected fat retainers, and politicians happily accepted large campaign contributions without ever asking where the money came from. Organized Crime, just another aspect of the modern business world. They liked to think of it as "dealing in commodities." The only commodity that seemed in short supply these days was truth.
Farron Richards was what you'd call a "talent scout" who freelanced on the side for Paco. He took his business trips to Mars and Luna City and the habitats, and other more terrestrial destinations, and kept his eye out for likely prospects for Paco's little stable. Runaways like Phoenix Summers filled the bill quite nicely. Take them out of their home environment, bring them to a strange new city, dump them and get them totally off balance, then steer them Paco's way. And by the time he was done messing with their heads and tearing down their personalities, they were totally dependent on him, lacked any sense of worth, and felt too ashamed to go back home. They'd become just another commodity, the oldest one in the world.
There were no door dogs at Paco's place, but an honest-to-God liveried doorman with gold braid, an admiral's cap, and epaulets on his coat. He called up and told 'em who I was and a moment later, got the all clear to let me in. He held the door open for me without an ounce of condescension and a polite tip of the hat. I padded across the ornate, plushly carpeted lobby of the brownstone, past the potted plants and velvet-upholstered furniture, pretending not to notice the security cameras discreetly tucked out of the way up by the ceiling molding. The elevator was all done up in burgundy leather tuck and roll upholstery, like a coach the Scarlet Pimpernel would ride in. The mirrors in there had that gold filigree stuff running through them, which I never saw the point of, anyway. But then, what do I know about interior decoration? I sleep on a blue foam cushion my secretary picked up at a yard sale in the suburbs. It's got a little palm tree on it and says, "Souvenir of San Diego."
The elevator stopped at the top floor of the four-story brownstone, and as the door slid open, I found myself looking at a slab of muscle in a sharkskin suit with a magnum-sized bulge beneath his left armpit. Why was it that muscleheads always liked big, shiny steel, long-barreled revolvers? There were little semi-autos that carried more rounds and did the job much more efficiently, but no, they had to have these cannons that looked like chrome-plated baseball bats. Humans had this size fixation I just didn't get. The males all wanted to be bigger, and the females all wanted to be smaller. Made no damn sense to me at all.
The steroid overdose escorted me to Paco's office, then knocked twice on the door. Another guy built like the Empire State Building opened it, filling the doorframe with lats that looked like batwings and arms the size of tree trunks. He stood there looking down at me until I said, "Well, you gonna let me in, or you just gonna stand there, blotting out the sun?"
"Let the cat in, Guido," a familiar, high-pitched voice came from behind him.
Guido moved aside with all the ponderousness of a tectonic plate shift and I stepped into the room. Paco had this thing about the color red. The carpet was dark red, like coagulated blood, and the walls were a dark crimson that was almost purple, like a bruise. The leather upholstered chairs were as red as cheap fingernail polish, with little brass studs all over 'em, and even the huge, handcarved desk was kinda red, one of those exotic hardwoods from Brazil or someplace with a name that sounded like a Latin dance step. Behind the desk stood two more bodybuilders whose combined weight had to be somewhere around six hundred pounds, and between them, underneath a black velvet painting of humans playing poker, sat Paco, four-and-half, high-strung, trembling pounds of malevolent Chihuahua.
His fancy red leather chair was placed on a dais, like a throne, so that he could look out across the desk and see whoever stood on the other side. When you saw how small he was, you started to understand this thing he had about surrounding himself with size. I hopped up onto one of the leather chairs placed before the desk and got myself a bit closer to eye level with the little guy. He gave a funny little yipping bark and one of the bruisers reached into a cut crystal dog bowl sitting on the desk. The bowl had the name "Paco" etched into it in a Florentine, gold-inlaid script. The bruiser took a small chunk of raw steak out of the bowl and handfed it to Paco, who gobbled it down, masticating like a starving rat.
"So, Gomez, long time, no see," he said. "What brings you all the way uptown? You lookin' for a little kitty, eh?" He chortled at his little joke, wheezing like a hamster with a hairball.
"There's a little holocube of what I'm looking for in the pouch around my neck," I said, and waited while Paco jerked his ratty little head at one of the goons, who stepped forward to take the little cube out of my pouch. He placed it on the desk and the girl's hologram appeared, looking very pretty and a lot more innocent than she would probably ever be again. "Her name is Phoenix Summers," I went on. "And I happen to know she came here."
"People come and go as they please," said Paco. "What is that to me?"
"It's the going part that interests me," I said.
"And this is because ... ?" said Paco.
"Her sister is in town, looking for her," I said.
"So, send the sister down," said Paco. "I could always use another girl." He gave his hamster-wheezing chortle again. "Good one, eh, Guido?"
"Yeh, good one, Boss," the meatbag said, feeding Paco another piece of steak.
"Just let me talk to her, okay, Paco? I'll pay the going rate."
"Tell you what I'm gonna do, Gomez, just because I'm feeling so magnanimous today. You can see the girl, no charge. Talk all you like, eh? What the hell, it's a free country, ain't that right, Guido?"
"Right, Boss."
I glanced from the meatbag to Paco. "You two oughtta take this act on the road. I hear the comedy clubs are dying for new talent."
"Now, you see how you are?" said Paco. "I try to be a nice guy, and you give me lip. You wanna see the girl or not?"
"Yeh, I wanna see her, Paco. I'm sorry. I'm just a wise guy at heart, you know how it is."
"Yeh, I always did say you were in the wrong business, Gomez. You oughtta come and work for me. There'd be a lot more profit in it for you."
"I'm sure of that," I said. "But you know me, Paco. I've always been the independent type."
"Cats," said Paco, with a sniff. "Who can figure 'em, eh, Guido?"
"Uh ... right, Boss."
"Take Gomez here down to see our little Phoenix. And then make sure he finds his way back out, kapish?"
"Sure thing, Boss."
"You see that, Gomez? I'm being cooperative," said Paco. "No problems, right?"
"Uh ... right, Boss," I said.
Guido looked at me and frowned.
"Go on, Guido," Paco said. "Take Gomez down to the third floor. And, Gomez, you ever decide to make some decent money, you just let me know, okay?"
"I'll do that, Paco," I said. "But I wouldn't stay up all night by the doggie door if I were you."
I didn't like it.
It was much too easy. I kept thinking about that as Guido escorted me back to the elevator and down to the third floor. Paco'd had Phoenix for at least a month. That was more than enough time for him to do a thorough tap dance on her self-esteem, which probably wasn't all that high to start with, especially after Richards tossed her aside like yesterday's paper. Paco had to be feeling pretty sure of himself. Maybe I was just wasting my time. And maybe Sedona Summers was just wasting her money. Maybe Phoenix didn't want to go back home again because she felt she never could.
The meatbag took me down a narrow, carpeted corridor with doors on either side that all had little gold numbers on them. There was laughter coming from behind door number four and moaning from behind door number six. I didn't know what the hell was going on behind door number eight, but it sounded like the soundtrack from A Christmas Carol, when Marley's ghost shows up, rattling his chains. Door number ten swung open to reveal a bedroom that was decorated like a little girl's room, complete with stuffed animals and dolls. Except the young woman who was reclining on the bed, reading a magazine, did not look like a little girl at all, despite the baby doll pajamas.
She looked up as Guido opened the door and I came in, then her eyes got wide with indignation and she sat bolt upright in bed. "No way!" she said. "You can just forget about it!"
"Relax, kid," I said, as Guido chuckled and closed the door behind me, "it isn't what you think."
"Yeh, well, it's not gonna be what you think, either," she replied, tossing the magazine aside. "I don't care if you are a thaumagene, there's no way I'm gonna do a cat!"
"Well, it's nice to know you still have some boundaries you won't cross," I told her. "Sedona will be relieved to hear that."
The girl's expression changed immediately. Her jaw dropped and, for just a moment, her eyes lit up with hope. And right then, I knew that she was not beyond redemption. It's when the eyes stay dead and flat, no matter what you say, that you might as well start shoveling on the dirt.
"Sedona?" Phoenix said. "You know my sister? You've talked to her?"
"I've seen her, kid. She's here, just a cab ride across town. And she's been worried sick about you."
For a moment Phoenix didn't say anything as it sank in, and then her eyes brimmed up with tears and she put her face into her hands and started sobbing. I couldn't just stand there and let her cry. I felt sorry for the kid. I hopped up onto the bed and started rubbing my head against her leg.
