CHAPTER 7
All three of the men in my living room were Latino. They were very well dressed; two of them—the ones standing—were NFL huge, dark-haired, dark-eyed. I probably should have checked more closely for distinguishing marks—scars, tattoos, that sort of thing. But my eyes were drawn to the black SIG Sauer P220s they both had aimed at my chest.
The third man sat on the couch, his legs crossed, his arms draped casually over the back cushions. Him I recognized.
Luis Paredes was a weremyste whom I had known for years. He was short, barrel-chested, with a beard and mustache that he had trimmed since the last time I saw him, and black eyes that always made me think of the flat, disk-like eyes of a shark. Once, when I was still a cop working in narcotics, I had busted Luis for possession of pot with intent to sell. Later, after I lost my badge and became a PI, I helped him out with an employee who had been stealing from his bar. I never would have called us friends, but neither would I have expected him to show up in my house with a couple of armed goons.
He was an accomplished weremyste, powerful enough that his features were blurred. All weremystes appeared that way when I first met them—smeared, so that it seemed someone had rubbed an eraser across their faces. The effect lessened with time, or maybe the more time I spent with a runecrafter, the easier it was for me to compensate. But that initial impression was unmistakable; whenever I met another runemyste, particularly a powerful one, I knew it right away. Looking more closely, I realized that his friends were sorcerers, too, though the blurring effect wasn’t as strong with them. In a battle of spells, Luis would be the most dangerous of the three. Of course the other two guys could simply shoot me.
One of them stepped around my coffee table, his .45 still leveled at my heart. He didn’t say anything, but he reached into my bomber, pulled my Glock from the shoulder holster, and handed it back to the other goon. I heard the metallic ring of the round being unchambered and then the slide and click of the magazine clearing the grip. I didn’t figure I’d be getting that mag back. The guy in front of me grabbed my shoulder, spun me around, pushed me against the wall, and frisked me. When he was done, he turned me back the way I’d been, flashed a smile that could have frozen the tap water in my pipes, and crossed back to where he’d been standing.
“Why don’t you have a seat, Jay?” Luis said, his tone too smug by half for my taste.
“Why don’t you get the hell out of my house, Luis? And you can take your attack dogs with you.”
He frowned. I’m not sure his goons even blinked. They were well-trained.
“I think maybe we should try that again. Why don’t you sit down, Jay?” His eyes had the flat, sharky quality again, and his tone was more pointed this time. “Be smart, mi amigo. We’re three weremystes, you’re one.” He gave a little shrug. “We’ve got three guns now, you’ve got none. And Rolon and Paco here have biceps that are about as big around as your thigh. So how do you intend to make us leave?”
It was a fair question. I walked to the armchair that sat across from the sofa and dropped myself into it, my eyes never leaving Luis’s face.
He opened his hands and grinned. “There, isn’t that better?”
“What are you doing here, Luis? Why would you break into my place?”
“A friend wants to talk to you,” he said, leaning forward. “You know that I run the Moon, but I have another job. Something I do on the side.”
The New Moon was a bar in Gilbert that catered to weremystes and myste-wannabes—people who had no magical abilities but, for whatever reason, liked to act as though they did. I often went there when I needed information about Phoenix’s weremystes; in fact, that was one of the places I’d been planning to go to ask about the murder at the airport. I’ll admit as well that sometimes I went to the Moon for no reason other than to be with other mystes, to know that I could talk about the next phasing, or the one I’d just been through, with people who understood and put up with the same crap I did month to month. Sure, it was a dive, but it was a comfortable dive.
Luis had been running the place for as long as I could remember, and I always assumed that he owned it. But if he was working a second job, I might have been wrong, which left me wondering who the owner might be.
“Is this second job legal?” I asked.
“You a cop again?” There was no hint of humor in the question.
I laughed, high and harsh. “What do you want from me? You break into my house with a couple of guys who look like they’re itching to shoot me, or kick the crap out of me, or set my hair on fire, and you start telling me your employment history. Why the hell are you here? Who’s this friend of yours?”
“I’ll tell you on the way.”
I started to object, but he continued, talking over me. “And before you start another fucking speech, keep in mind that I could have grabbed you, let my boys knock you around a bit, and thrown you in the back of my car.” He paused, rubbed a hand over his face. “But the fact is, you were right about the Blind Angel Killer being a myste, and I was wrong. I feel I owe you one.”
“Thanks,” I said, and meant it. Killing Cahors was pretty much the beginning, middle, and end of my résumé these days; but it was a big deal, and no one understood that better than another weremyste.
Luis stood. “Come on.”
“Can I change? I’ve been . . . working out.”
I didn’t have it in mind to run, or to call the police; I really did want to change. But Luis wasn’t ready to trust me that much.
“I’m not taking you out on a date. Now, get up.”
I stood, and let the three men escort me out of the house. Luis paused to let me lock the door, and then led me over to the lowrider.
“Yours?” I asked.
He shook his head. “I drive an Audi. This is Paco’s.”
The behemoth who had taken my pistol grinned again.
I sat in back with Rolon, who still had his weapon in hand. I had no idea where we were going, of course, but I had assumed that we would be headed into Gilbert. Instead we got on the 101 northbound. We sped through Tempe and crossed over the Salt River.
“You going to tell me where we’re going?” I said, breaking a lengthy silence.
“To see my friend,” Luis answered.
“That’s helpful.”
Nothing.
We exited the freeway in North Scottsdale and followed the side streets into one of the wealthier neighborhoods of a town known for its wealth. Before long, Paco steered us into a gated subdivision called Ocotillo Winds Estates. The uniformed old man in the guardhouse waved the car through on sight; although he didn’t appear to be too happy about it. Beyond the guardhouse was a round lawn that probably demanded more water in a week than the entire state got in rainfall each year. And to make the display that much more ostentatious, a huge fountain danced in the middle of the expanse, its waters misting in the wind.
“You’re moving up in the world, Luis.”
“You ever heard of Jacinto Amaya?”
I opened my mouth to answer, then closed it again. I’d been on edge from the moment Luis said my name and made me drop the mail. But for the first time this evening, I felt truly afraid.
“Jason Amaya? Are you screwing with me?”
“Jason is a name he uses to make Anglos feel at ease. If you want to get on his good side you’ll refer to him as Jacinto. And you’ll call him Mister Amaya.”
“That’s who we’re going to see? That’s the guy you’re working for?”
Luis stared back at me, his silence all the confirmation I needed.
“I thought we were friends.”
“What does that have to do with anything?”
“Everything! I worked in Narcotics for eighteen months, and then I was in Homicide for over five years. And I spent a significant part of that time trying to nail Amaya for one crime or another. This man hates me; I’m pretty sure he wants me dead!”
Luis rolled his eyes. “Do I need to remind you again that you’re not a cop?”
I stared out the window, watching mansion after mansion slip by as we crawled through the lanes of the subdivision. All of them were vaguely similar: manicured lawns, acacia trees in the front yards, sprawling Spanish mission-style houses behind faux-adobe walls and wrought-iron gates.
“It’s not my memory I’m worried about,” I muttered.
“Believe it or not, I am your friend, Jay. Jacinto doesn’t want to kill you. Not today. If he did, do you really think he’d have me bring you to his home?”
I exhaled, not realizing until then that I’d been holding my breath. Luis was right, though that did little to improve my mood. Jacinto Amaya was one of the Phoenix area’s most prominent crime lords. He ran a drug trade that distributed to much of the American Southwest, and he was reputed to traffic in people as well. Some said that he helped undocumented workers reach the States and then set them up with employers, taking a finder’s fee as well as a cut of the pay the laborers received. He also had a stake in Phoenix’s prostitution industry, from street-level hookers to thousand-dollar-per-night call girls. And, naturally, he controlled several legitimate businesses as well, most prominently the Chofi Luxury Hotels, which, as I understood, he had named for his eldest daughter and which had strong ties to Arizona’s growing tribal casino business.
I’m sure there were other components to his criminal empire that I was forgetting. But the drug trade was the most important by far; it brought in the lion’s share of his cash, and it accounted for the most brutal of his crimes. He had been implicated in more killings than I cared to count, most of them so clean, so professional, that we’d never been able to prove a thing, and most of them so brutal that no one was likely to come forward with evidence against him.
Paco steered us onto a cul-de-sac and followed it to the end, stopping before a broad pair of gates and another guard house. Amaya’s guards were a lot younger and a lot bigger than the guy who’d let us into the subdivision. They wore ballistic vests over their uniforms, which must have been stifling, even with the sun down, and they carried modified MP5s with laser sights.
One of the men came to the car and peered inside.
“Hola,” he said, grinning at Luis. “Quien es el gringo?”
“Fearsson,” Luis said. “Jacinto nos espera.”
“Sí.”
The guard straightened and waved to the uniformed man. A moment later the gates began to swing open.
“Hasta luego,” the guard called as he tapped a hand on the roof of the car.
Paco eased the car forward into the brick courtyard that served as Amaya’s driveway. We parked, and my three friends walked me into the house, passing another pair of armed and armored guards.
We passed through a foyer—tile floors, exposed beams, and a stylized crucifix that appeared to be made of ivory—into an enormous room with polished wood floors, more exposed beams, and some of the most beautiful Oaxacan folk art I’d ever seen.
A man stood at a bank of windows, which faced back toward downtown Scottsdale and encompassed a twilight sky that glowed with yellows, oranges, and pinks.
He turned at the sound of our footsteps, and I halted midstride. He was dressed in suit pants and a matching vest, a blue dress shirt and a silk tie. His hair was shot through with silver and perfectly groomed, his skin was a soft olive. I thought his eyes were brown, and I had the sense that he was smiling at me, but I couldn’t be certain.
The magical blur of his features was too strong.
“Justis Fearsson,” said Jacinto Amaya, his voice a deep baritone, his words untinged by any hint of an accent. “I’ve wanted to meet you for a long time.”
He strode across the room, a hand extended. I gripped it, not yet trusting myself to speak. He put his other arm around my shoulders, leading me farther into the room. I could make out his grin now. It was unrestrained, and utterly sincere. I’d been in Amaya’s presence for no more than a few seconds, and already I could see what I never would have known from a police file or a newspaper article: This was a man whom others would follow, regardless of where he led.
“Would you like a drink, Jay? It’s all right if I call you Jay, isn’t it?”
“Yes, thank you,” I said, finding my voice and adding “Mister Amaya” as an afterthought. “Club soda, please. And Jay is fine.”
He nodded and began to fix my drink, but I noticed he didn’t offer to let me call him Jacinto.
“I’m sorry to have sent Luis and his friends for you, but I wasn’t sure you would come if I merely requested that you do so. And I’ve been eager to speak with you.”
“There was a time, I believe, when you were eager to kill me.”
Amaya laughed, stepping away from the bar to hand me my drink. “Not really, no. You were never important enough to kill. Forgive me; I mean no offense. But I have far more dangerous enemies than detectives in the Phoenix Police Department. And once you left the force—forgive me again—but you were not someone to whom I paid much attention.”
I raised my glass in salute and sipped the soda water. “You and everyone else.”
“But that’s changed, hasn’t it?”
“I suppose.”
“You suppose,” he repeated with a chuckle. He put an arm around my shoulder again and steered me to a plush leather chair near the window. I sat, and he took the chair next to mine. Luis, Paco, and Rolon were still in the room, but Amaya seemed content to ignore them, and so I did the same.
“Killing Etienne de Cahors was no small thing,” he said.
I looked his way, raising an eyebrow. Cahors’s name had been in the papers as Stephen D. Cahors, and I’d only spoken of him by his true name to a handful of people.
My obvious surprise seemed to please him. “My resources within the magical world are as extensive as those outside of it.”
“Did you know who he was before he died?” I asked.
“No,” he said, without any hesitation or hint of pretense.
“What would you have done if you had?”
The smile sharpened. “An interesting question. I’m not in the habit of giving aid to the PPD. On the other hand, he was killing Latina women, and he was using dark magic to do it.” He fell silent, perhaps still weighing my question. “But you have me getting ahead of myself.”
“I didn’t know that you were a weremyste,” I said, placing my glass on the small side table next to me and meeting his gaze. “That would have been handy knowledge back when I was on the force.”
He laughed again, showing perfect teeth. “Yes, I’m sure it would have been. That’s not something we tend to share with the general public, though, is it?”
“No, it’s not. Why am I here, Mister Amaya?”
His eyes narrowed shrewdly. “Why do you think you’re here?”
It hit me like an open-handed slap to the face, and I kicked myself for not thinking of it sooner. The plane, and the attempt on the life of Mando Rafael Vargas. In that instant I would have given a whole lot of money to see the color of Jacinto Amaya’s magic.
But I wasn’t sure how much I ought to say. Kona had brought me in on an ongoing investigation involving not only the PPD, but also several agencies of the federal government. She had faith in me, and in my discretion. I had a pretty good idea of what she’d think of me sharing what I knew with the leading drug kingpin in Arizona.
“I’m not sure,” I made myself say, realizing that his question still hung between us.
Amaya’s eyebrows bunched. “You disappoint me. Of course you know, or at least you know some of it.”
“Well, let’s assume for a moment that I do. You must realize that I can’t tell you anything about an ongoing investigation. The person who brought me in is trusting me . . .” I trailed off, because he was laughing. At me, most likely, which tended to piss me off. “Is something funny?”
“Who do you think you’re dealing with?” he asked, some of the polite veneer peeling away from the words. “Do you honestly think I need a PI to tell me what’s going on inside the Phoenix Police Department, or inside the FBI, for that matter?”
“Is that how you’ve stayed out of jail all this time?”
He went still, like a wolf on the hunt. But I heard Luis and his friends stir behind me. Amaya glanced back at them and put up a hand, probably to stop them from pulling me from the chair and beating me to a bloody pulp. When he faced me again, the pleasant veneer was back in place, though more strained than before.
“What do you think?”
“I think it’s helped, though maybe not as much as being a weremyste. And being successful, and rich, and ruthless.”
“You see? When you try, you can be quite smart. So again I ask you, why do you think you’re here?”
Thinking about it for all of two seconds, I came to the conclusion that playing games with the guy made little sense, and could very well get me killed. By this time, news of the attempted bombing was all over the media—television and Internet—as was speculation about the intended target of the bomber. And as Amaya had made clear, he had plenty of sources to fill him in on those details that wouldn’t find their way into standard news reports.
“You want to talk about the attempt on Mando Vargas’s life.”
“Better.” He glanced at my drink. “Finish that club soda and then have a beer with me.”
He stood before I could respond. I drained my soda water, and by the time I was setting it down, he was handing me a bottle of Bohemia Stout.
“Do you want a glass?” he asked.
I held up the bottle. “It’s in a glass.”
Amaya grinned, and we both drank. It was a good beer, heartier than most Mexican lagers.
“So, what can you tell me about the man who tried to blow up Mando’s plane?”
“Mister Amaya, I was called in by a friend on the PPD—”
“Kona Shaw. Your former partner.”
I masked my frown by taking another sip of beer. “Yes. She asks me to help her from time to time, because she knows that I’m discreet. I can’t help her if—”
“I’m going to stop you there and make this easy for you,” Amaya said. A note of impatience had crept into his tone. I’d pushed him about as far as I could. “I want you to assume, for the remainder of this conversation, that I have a gun pointed at your heart.” He opened his hands and flashed another of those perfect, predatory smiles. “Now as you can see, I hold no weapon in my hands. But you’re going to pretend that I do. And you’re going to keep in mind as well that if by some chance you lie to me, or hide information from me, I’ll learn of it before long. And I will be very displeased.”
I said nothing, but after a few seconds I nodded once.
“Splendid. Now, the man with the bomb?”
“I assume you know that he was a white-supremacist,” I said, with a silent apology to Kona. “As far as I could tell, he wasn’t a sorcerer, but he did have access to some high-tech toys. The bomb in his luggage was sophisticated enough to get past security and onto the plane.”
“You’re sure he wasn’t a myste?”
“Why would a weremyste need a bomb to blow up a plane? For that matter, why would he need to sacrifice himself to do it?”
“He might use a bomb because it would raise fewer questions than would magic, and because it would make a statement on behalf of his fellow skinheads. And if he was a good enough myste, he might not have sacrificed himself.”
I considered this, but after a few moments shook my head. “I used a seeing spell, and so basically saw his murder. He was harassed by a myste before he died, and he had no idea what was happening. He wasn’t a sorcerer. But whoever killed him was.”
I watched Amaya as I said this last, hoping that he might give something away. He didn’t.
But he did ask, “Did you see the myste who killed him?”
“No. He must have had him or herself camouflaged, or concealed in some other way. Howell—the bomber—he didn’t see a thing before he died.”
“And the magical residue?”
“Green, vivid, fading fast. Whoever killed him is pretty powerful.”
“Was it on anything other than the body?”
I laughed. “You already know everything I’m telling you. Why would you waste your own time like this?”
“I’m wasting nothing,” he said, with quiet intensity. “I have an idea of what might have happened; that’s all. I need for you to confirm my guesses. Now, was the magic only on the body?”
I shook my head. “No. It was on the plane as well—on the instrumentation in the cockpit.”
He nodded at this, weighing it. Then, “Anything else about the magic?” It was his turn to watch me. But on this point, I could conceal what I knew with little chance of being found out. As far as I could tell, I was the lone person who had seen that transparent residue, so I assumed he wasn’t going to learn anything different from one of his many sources.
“Not that I can think of. Why?”
“No reason. I’m merely being thorough. So what do you think happened?”
“I’m sorry?”
“You’ve given me the basic facts, sparing no detail, I’m sure. And now I’m asking you to formulate a theory. What happened to James Robert Howell? Why is he dead, and why is Mando Vargas still alive and, by now, on his way to Washington, D.C.?”
“I have no idea.”
“But what do you think?”
I drank more of my beer, pondering the question. “Is Mando Vargas a weremyste?” I asked after some time.
“He is not,” Amaya said. “But you’re thinking the right way.”
“Does he rely on your magic?”
He shook his head and took a drink as well. “Mando and I have been friends for a long time. He relies on me for counsel, for support, and, on occasion, for financial contributions in support of his non-profit activities. But not for magic.” A smile thinned his lips. “He does not approve.”
“And he does approve of the rest of what you do?”
“Have a care, Mister Fearsson,” Amaya said, his expression hardening. “The rest of what I do or don’t do is beyond the purview of this conversation.”
When I didn’t respond or shy from his gaze, he sat forward. “You believe me to be the worst kind of villain, don’t you? You think that because of how I make some of my money, I must be a monster. Mando knows better. He sees nuance where you and your police department friends do not.”
“He doesn’t worry that his association with you might hurt the causes he fights for?”
Amaya laughed again, and once more I sensed that he was mocking me. “How many Anglo politicians associate with men like me, with men worse than me? Surely you’re not so naïve as to think that Mando is the only public figure with friends who have gotten rich by less than legitimate means.” He didn’t give me a chance to answer. “Mando knows that I have put far more money into the Latino community than I’ve taken out of it. He has watched me fund community centers, drug rehabilitation centers, playgrounds, housing initiatives, and take no credit at all for the work, because of the harm that would come from my name being associated with the projects.” He stood, walked to the window, and stared out over the city once more, his hands buried in his pants pockets, his broad shoulders hunched. The western sky still glowed like embers in a fire, and the lights of the city seemed to be scattered at his feet, glittering like jewels in a dragon’s lair. “The history of this country is littered with presidents and governors and senators who had ties to men far worse than me.”
“You told me a moment ago that I was thinking the right way,” I said. “So you must have a theory of your own about today’s events. Would you care to share it with me?”
He remained at the window, and for several moments he didn’t answer. At last he faced me. “You haven’t said yet what you think happened.”
Amaya had led me to an obvious conclusion, though I wasn’t sure I believed it, at least not yet. “If what you’ve said is true, then I would guess the murder of James Howell had nothing at all to do with saving Mando Vargas’s life.”
His smile this time was genuine. “Very good. And here I’d grown worried that you might let me down.”
“But whoever killed Howell and disabled the plane had to have been trying to save lives. Otherwise—”
“Otherwise why bother?”
“That’s right,” I said. “So the question is, who else was on that plane? Who was so worth saving that James Howell had to die?”
“My question exactly,” Amaya said, walking back to his chair. “A question I would like to hire you to answer.”