Murder and Mayhem (14 page)

“Stevens!” Montoya’s silken rumble dissolved into a roll of hot Spanish, prickly words Rook learned from the transient workers on the circuit. “Where are you? What’s going on?”

“’Toya, think I’m sick.” His muttering was nearly lost in another course of water he’d somehow had left inside of him. “I need some help, man. Shit, Dante, I really need you.”

“
Dios
, Stevens, you look like shit.” Montoya sighed, hooking his hands under Rook’s arms, then lifting him back up onto the bed. The floor was wet and smelled. While the damp was probably Rook’s fault, the smell probably came with the room. “Well, at least you’re alive.”

“Hello, my name is Montoya. You killed my suspect. Prepare to die.” Stevens wiggled his fingers as if he expected Dante to know what he was talking about. “Come on. Really? You
really
don’t know that movie? Best movie ever. Maybe. God, so many movies. If my last name was Montoya, I’d totally want Inigo as a nickname or something.”

“You’re not a suspect any more, and I have no idea what you’re talking about, but if you get up on the bed, I’ll watch the damned thing.” Moving Rook was like handling a greasy wet noodle. Six feet of bendable, bruised, and sensual body, a naked Rook Stevens was proving difficult to maneuver. “Help me out here, Stevens. Get up on the damned bed so I can take a look at you.”

“Dude, I’m not wearing any clothes. How much more of a look do you need?” Rook slurred.

Dante didn’t like the heat coming off the man’s skin or the pale tinge of green on Stevens’s face. In the time it took him to find the hotel Rook mumbled over the phone line, he’d given himself an ulcer wondering what the hell his former suspect had gotten himself into.

The hotel’s location hadn’t done Dante’s already tortured nerves any favors. Sitting like a misplaced mole on skid row’s temple, the brick building did its best to hide its flophouse origins but to no avail. The cramped, musty room reeked of old skin and bleached-out mold, and Dante was less worried about Rook’s gunshot wound than he was about the bacteria Rook smeared over his body when he hit the carpet.

Rook gave a halfhearted roll with his hips, brushing Dante’s thighs, then oozed onto the mattress. Throwing his arms up, he shot Dante a silly grin. “Ta-da!”

Despite the splatter of bruises, dried blood, and stitches, Rook Stevens was adorable, and Dante hated himself for noticing.

“Are you drunk?” He was trying not to look at Rook’s thickening cock as it lengthened down Rook’s thigh. “I thought the hospital said you didn’t have a concussion.”

“Probably not when I left. I probably smacked my head again when that car hit me.” Rook’s gleeful expression was quickly replaced with panic. “Gonna throw up again, Montoya.”

Dante got the trash can to the side of the bed in time, just as Rook rolled over onto his stomach. If the bruises on Rook’s hips and shoulder were startling, the massive tracts of purples and blues on his back were horrifying. He rubbed at Rook’s shoulders as the jerking retches took over, stopping only to offer a bottle of water when Rook gasped for breath.

“I’m going to have to get you to a doctor. What car hit you? Where? Did you see the driver?” Dante peppered Rook with questions, throwing a blanket over Rook’s hips. Dante angled the bedside lamp’s shade up to get a better look at the man’s pupils and was relieved to see they were relatively normal. “Talk to me, Stevens. What happened? Why’d you leave the hospital?”

“You want car or hospital?” Rook sipped at the water bottle, his hand shaking so much Dante helped him tip it up.

“Both. Someone tried to kill you today. Where did this happen?”

“No one I knew. She ran the red light and screamed up Third. Or at least I think it was a she. I didn’t get a good look. I don’t think she was
trying
to kill me. Just kind of almost happened. I ended up on the curb.” Rook shrugged, and pain poured into his eyes. “Shit, okay, I might have hit the street kind of hard, but dude, I needed to… get out of that place. So I left.”

“Checking out against medical advice—”

“Yeah. I didn’t wait for that either. I just walked out when no one was looking,” Rook confessed softly.

“God, you are the—” Dante didn’t hold on to his English and slid into a round of curses his mother would have been ashamed to hear him say. “I’m getting clothes on you and taking you to the ER. No bitching or complaining. Understand?”

“Fine.” There was a bit of muttered grumbling, but Rook appeared resigned to the trip. “Just one thing. I kind of don’t have anything to wear.”

“He’s not breathing.” There’d been no mistaking the blond bombshell in the hospital lobby for anyone but Charlene Canada. Built like she should have been painted on the side of a World War II bomber, Charlene was a teetering tower of bright yellow hair, red lipstick, and curves. “Do you breathe when you throw up? He was throwing up when they took him. Isn’t that how people suffocate? Because I don’t think you can breathe if you’re throwing up.”

“He’ll be fine. Did you bring clothes with you?” Dante wasn’t going to question how Rook’s assistant got to the Urgent Care before he did, but she’d already set up camp with two comfortable chairs, a table, and cups of steaming coffee.

“Oh, yes. Let me give it to them.” She pursed her lips. “I’ll be right back.”

Somehow she’d also managed to talk someone into giving her actual plates to put a stack of homemade cookies on, and from the appreciative look on the male clerk’s face as they walked past the front desk, Charlene Canada definitely made an impression. She tottered about, her generous hips swaying as she walked over with cookies and a duffel bag to the nurses’ station. Smiling benevolently, she leaned forward to give the duffel to one of the male nurses.

“It’s for my boss, Rook. He’s back there.” A few seconds and a cookie later, the duffel was on its way to where Rook was being examined and Charlene was heading back toward Dante. She settled into a chair, then picked up one of the coffee cups from the table. “They’re going to make sure he has it. I even bought him some underwear, but he’ll probably hate it. He only likes boxers. I keep telling him those do nothing for his ass. Don’t you think?”

What Dante’d seen of Rook’s ass, it didn’t need much help from a pair of underwear. Pushing aside the image of a naked Rook spread out over a cheap hotel bed, he shook off the stream of confusion Charlene seemed to weave around him as she spoke.

The Urgent Care intake area ebbed and flowed with activity. There were long minutes of solid noise. Then a whispering silence crept in once people were moved back to the examining rooms. Double glass doors swished open periodically to let new patients into the beige and powder-blue cocoon, most wearing the dazed expression of someone caught in things they weren’t quite ready for.

Dante knew that look. He had it on his face when he’d found Rook lying naked and crumpled into a ball in his grubby hotel room. Now with Stevens in the hands of doctors who could possibly talk some sense into him, he turned his attention back to his case and the blonde actress Rook seemed fond of.

“How about if we talk about the Betties?” He’d hoped by bringing Charlene to the hospital, he could leverage some information out of her. “That was the deal, right? I find Rook, and you tell me what you know?”

“He’s still… you know, hurt. Suppose he needs something and I—” Charlene’s lashes fluttered hard enough to ghost a breeze across the small table. It was either her lashes or the breathy whispering she affected, but the look on his face must have told her she wasn’t going to get very far, because she sighed hard, and her shoulders slumped. “I don’t know what I can tell you. Not really. I mean, there’s—you’re a
cop
, you know?”

“That’s what my paycheck from the city says,” Dante agreed. “I also know Rook’s in a bad place because someone is trying to frame him, kill him, or both. You can either help me catch that person, or you can stay quiet and help them kill Rook. Your choice, Charlene.”

He’d hit the right note because Charlene nearly crumbled in on herself. Picking at her cup’s zarf, she began to peel away a layer of cardboard as she kept her gaze pinned to the floor. “Pigeon will know I talked to you. It’s just not… you don’t talk to cops.”

“Will this Pigeon person do something to you if you talk to me?” He pressed in, leaning forward to reassure Charlene. “Rook said something about Pigeon working with the Betties. If you tell me about the Betties, is Pigeon going to hurt you?”

“Hurt me? Pigeon wouldn’t hurt a fly. It’ll just screw up anything the Betties have going. Well, she’s not running them anymore. She went clean too. Do you know how hard it is to run a long con?” Charlene’s remorse was gone in flash, replaced by an incredulous smirk. “It’s not that I don’t want to talk to you. Well, I don’t. I mean, no offense, but it’s just not… we don’t talk about stuff like this. It’s just not right. You don’t know—”

“I know that they’re dead, Charlene. Someone killed Dani Anderson. And maybe the same someone killed your friends. It’s not just about Rook. Three people are dead, and I need to catch their killers.”

“Because it’s your job?” She looked up at him through her lashes. “Now that Pigeon’s out, the Betties work too—”

“It’s more than a job, Charlene. I
owe
these people the peace they deserve. It’s my… I can’t explain it to you better, but it’s what I
have
to do. It’s a part of me. They need justice for what’s been done to them.”

It was difficult explaining what was a fundamental truth, something so ingrained in him Dante couldn’t imagine
not
being a cop. The only time he’d not stood up for what he believed in was the day his father beat him out of the family, throwing him away from the only home and life he’d known. If anything, those final moments of blood and pain cemented his resolve. He was going to love another man, spend his life with someone who had a dick, balls, and probably as many issues as he did. He was going to wear a badge and fight for anyone who couldn’t fight for themselves. With each shuddering, painful breath, Dante
knew
he’d die without any reservations about who he was or what he wanted to be.

Justice, no matter what the victim had been or did. Murder was murder, and if Dante had anything to say about it, no one with bloodied hands would walk away without paying the price for someone’s life.

“If someone murdered you, Charlene, wouldn’t you want someone like me to catch them?” He took the cup from her hands, setting it down on the table. “I don’t know which Betties were left behind Potter’s Field. No one does. Not really. But that doesn’t mean I’m not going to find out who killed them. Because no one deserves to be forgotten and thrown away.
No one
deserves to die unnoticed.”

Charlene sat so still Dante wondered if he’d gone too far, shared too much with the woman. Then she gasped, pulling in a body-shivering breath. Nodding once, she finally raised her head enough to meet Dante’s gaze, then said, “Okay, Mr. Montoya. I’ll tell you about the Betties.”

“First thing you should know is, the Betties you found? They’re not the ones I know, because I called Jane and Madge and they’re still alive,” Charlene confessed over her coffee. “So those two? I think they’re new or something. You’ll have to ask Pigeon, but I don’t know if she knows them either. They might have just riffed off of what she did. You know, making it their own. People do that all the time.”

“Does Pigeon have a real name?” Dante looked from the notepad he was using to jot down Charlene’s information. “Or is she like Rook and named after a bird?”

“Rook? I don’t get it.” Confusion muddied Charlene’s blue eyes. “I thought he was named after a chess piece. The little castle one, you know? Anyway, Pigeon’s real name is Deb. We all call her Pigeon because her last name sounds kind of like it but—” She paused. “You probably don’t want to hear all of that.”

“How about if we stick to the Betties? What did you mean those weren’t the ones you know?” Dante began to diagram out the relationships, starting a box with Deb/Pigeon and working downward to his two murder victims. He called up the close-cropped photos of the latter two victims’ faces on his phone and showed the images to Charlene. “Are you sure you don’t know them? Stevens said you might.”

She studied the image, then shook her head. “I mean, they all try to look alike. It’s part of the scam, right? But you totally can tell which one is which if you know them. Those two look like Betties, though. So either they’re Pigeon’s, or someone’s running the same con.”

“What kind of con?” Dante sighed as Charlene shook her head. “Okay, so say if a con was going to be run. How would someone do that?”

“Oh, like explain how it all happens without saying for sure Pigeon’s doing it? Rook talks like that sometimes. All pretend. Okay, sure.” Charlene’s smile glittered. “So say someone like Pigeon runs a bait and switch. She finds a really rich mark. Then one of the… B-women gets up a relationship with him or her… ’cause we’re all about equality these days. After they’ve been together a bit, they figure out what’s good to take, and then one day when the first one is out with the guy, the second B-woman comes in like she’s been there a thousand times and takes what they agreed on. Then it’s a split because the P worked out who to get close to.”

“So if there’s a doorman or security, they’re used to seeing this woman coming and going.” Dante sat back in his chair. “What about the fingerprint erasing? Do they all do that?”

“Like what? Like the whole sandpaper thing?” Charlene wrinkled her nose. “Why? People just wear gloves. Rook used to do gloves or superglue, but the Betties don’t run jobs like he used to. Fingerprints aren’t going to… shit, I just spilled the beans on Rook. He’s going to kill me.”

“I spent three years trying to get him into a jail cell. You’re not telling me anything I don’t already know.” It was a shameful truth but a truth just the same. “Let’s just say I’m happier in Homicide. I’m leaving chasing after cat burglars to someone else now.”