Selected Short Stories Featuring Cry Wolf Read online

with his eyes to tell me he’s being polite right now instead of talking with his fists. “He’s a kebab. I also didn’t check my bacon at breakfast for a pulse- or my burger at dinner.”

  “Bacon and burgers? Not going to live long that way.” His eyebrows shoot up. Pawn laughs, because between the two of us we justify keeping a Burgerville open 24 hours- the manager on MLK told us as much one night- whereas Tim's built like a Finnish underwear model.

  “And who was here?”

  “Just the stiff.”

  “Why was the champagne room empty?”

  “In this economy, we don’t always staff the room. Bringing in girls who can’t make cab fare during their shift - let alone cover the stage fee- that’s not fair.”

  “Stage fee?”

  “Yeah. It’s pretty standard. The venue charges a dancer a flat stage fee to perform, to me always seemed more honest than taking a cut. A lot of the clubs in Portland will hold the good shifts hostage unless girls commit to working dead weekday shifts. But they’re more dependent on dancers than we are. We cater to a slightly more diverse crowd.”

  “So you’re not just the bouncer.”

  “Part owner, now. I started bouncing, and back then room and board was part of the compensation. Then the recession hit and things started going lousy, Trish began paying me in shares of the club. Eventually I just owned half- so now it’s half mine and I work here for a cut of the profits- which is usually just enough to cover my tab at the bar, plus the cot and hots.”

  “Was all that before or after you started shtupping Trish.”

  He blushes a little, which is even easier to tell with his cue ball head. “Uh, I think I had about a 40 percent stake, then. We’d worked together for seven years or so. She tends bar, and I bounce, seven nights a week. Spend that much time with somebody and you either really get to appreciate them, or really start to hate them.”

  “So you’re plowing the bartender, congrats,” Pawn says, but he’s distracted, nods to himself that something finally makes sense. The amount of time he spends here, he certainly hit on her- and now he thinks he knows why she shot him down. “That part of your compensation package make up for the lost pay?”

  “I could pop you like the hairy little zit that you are,” Tim says, without ever losing the glee in his eyes. I bet he could- and it kind of makes me want Pawn to keep provoking him.

  But when he doesn’t, I continue with the questions. “That does muddy the waters, though. If your girlfriend is your alibis for not being in the room when it happened.”

  “Ask around. The place wasn’t exactly empty when it happened. Just about any table should have at least one person who can vouch for me.” I nod at Pawn and he heads back to the main room to find out.

  “You weren’t in the room. What’d you hear?”

  “Loud pop. Like a car backfiring, or a gunshot. I actually got a little scared it was a gunshot.”

  “This place got a gun?”

  “Under the bar.”

  “And you didn’t get it?”

  He smiles, that kind of smile that says he knows he did something foolish. “Well, I’m four steps down the hall when I think I should get the gun. But then you have me turning tail away from trouble- which never looks good- a bouncer lives or dies on his reputation. And it would showcase me second-guessing myself, which makes me look like an indecisive fool.”

  “In front of Trish.”

  He blushes all over again. “Yeah. So I tell myself I’ve never had to pull the shotgun before, tonight can’t be the night I’ll need to. Denial to save my pride- and I’m sure Trish will give me an earful tonight about it. But I bust in. And there’s the corpse. I’m relieved, actually, not to have a gun in my face. So I come out all calm, shrug at people looking to me for some kind of information, and tell Trish we’ll want to put in a call to you. But then I see somebody at the bar, somebody I remember seeing with your stout friend, so I tell her to hold off a sec.” He nods at where Pawn had been standing a moment ago.

  “The vamp?” Pawn comes back in, and nods that he’s got confirmation.

  “Yeah. So the vamp sniffs out the area, and of course there’s magic in the air. But before I can even get back to Trish to put through a call, your Pawn shows up.”

  “Before?”

  “Hey, I was in the car, in the area. On my way to a strip club, if you need to know, but I wasn’t more than three minute’s distance when I get the nod from my CI.” That seems too convenient. But I’d seen enough of Pawn’s expense reports to know he probably didn’t have a CI he didn’t wine and dine in strip joints.

  “So am I done here?” Tim asks.

  “I think so,” I tell him. “But we’ll need to get the body out. You mind doing the honors?”

  “I was hoping to go home not smelling like old jerky tonight.”

  “And I was hoping not to catch a corpse. Tonight seems to suck all around.”

  “Shouldn’t we analyze the crime scene?” Rook asks.

  “This isn’t the scene, just where they dumped the body,” I say. But there’s something hopeful in her voice, so I decide to give her the remedial lesson quickly.

  I kneel beside the body, and use my pen to move what’s left of his pant leg away from his shin. “Look at the burns, melted skin, charred muscle. Heat of this kind would have destroyed this room, but the carpet isn’t so much as singed. Point of fact, there’s no blood, no melted skin, nothing in the carpet. He was well-done before he ever got here.”

  “The other reason we won’t find anything is here: look at the ankles. Snapped, but through the burnt flesh- you can see the difference between the meat on the outside and on the in; body fell post-mortem. And you smell the brimstone- sulfur, rotten egg stink? Killer teleported it in here, and either fucked up the transport spell or didn’t give a shit, because the exit was too high. Corpse came in in an orthostatic position- standing; the fall caused the compound fractures, probably to the tibia. Best we’re going to get will come from the corpse itself, but we’ll have to get it to the lab to analyze it.” I turn to Pawn. “Bring my car around.” I toss him the keys.

  I unfold a wedge of silk and lay it flat next to the body. Tim helps me roll the corpse up in it like a burrito, and I put my coat on its shoulders. “Now help me lift the bastard.” I get most of the weight in the legs, and Tim lifts the head and throws that over my shoulder.

  We make our way across the dance floor muttering apologies. “He’s a little drunk. Excuse me. My friend’s sick. Can you let me through?” We’re lucky it’s nearly last call, and everybody’s either hammered or looking to get laid. Rook’s an appreciated distraction, and makes two men carrying a body through the club less seedy than it should be. Tim stops at the front of the club, waves, then disappears back inside.

  Pawn pulls up, and Rook opens the door. I set the corpse in the front seat with a little difficulty, belt him in.

  Rook gets in the back, and Pawn saunters off. “What was that about a vamp?” she asks as I start the car and pull out into traffic.

  “That’s right, Salem doesn’t have a colony. Vampires can smell magic. They’re not too specific; this guy could either be magic or have died by it, but it at least lets us know when to look into things, and when to just leave it for the normal cops.”

  “So where are we taking the body?”

  “Bishop’s lab.” That didn’t seem to be enough for her. “You could call Bishop a renaissance man- but she’d probably say that’s sexist. She’s our resident polymath.”

  “She?”

  Her coven likely told her we don't allow women into gambits, which isn't strictly true- it isn't the norm, either. “Yeah. We recruited her from a Seattle coven, when our old bishop, Alfil- the elephant- quit. Back when I started, we didn't think he’d retire. He never used to forget anything, but his mind started to go. First little things, incantations, names of spirits, but it got worse, until half the time he’d forget I wasn’t a pawn anymore.”

&nbs
p; “About that. Pawn said he trained you. But unless I’ve got things backwards, you basically outrank him- at least as far as a gambit can be said to have ranks.”

  “It’s a long story. And since you’ve only met him tonight, a little too early to tell. But that long story short, I took his spot, he took mine.”

  “In other words, he got demoted, and they promoted you.” Almost too bad she isn’t looking to be a horsey. Seems to have the chops.

  And I’ll cop to being impressed that when we get to Bishop’s lab, she isn’t dainty about getting the corpse out of my car and back on my shoulder. He’s still heavy, but I shudder to think how much he weighed before most of the moisture was cooked out of him.

  Rook beats me to the front door by several seconds, and is about to reach for the knocker. “Wait.” She stops, and lets me through. I knock out, “Shave and a hair cut,” with my fist and leave a six beat pause before finishing with, “two bits.”

  “A second,” comes Bishop’s voice through the door, then she opens it. Rook is shocked that Bishop’s younger than she is.

  I push my way between them with the corpse. “Fresh delivery of long pig, a little overdone. But I know how you like your meat- as charred and blackened as your shriveled heart.” She grins at me.

  Bishop never knew her father. Her mother told her he was in politics, though she never knew if that meant he was in the Seattle gambit or if he worked somewhere in the non-mage legislature. Her mother died when she was 16,