Black Is Back (Quentin Black Mystery #4) (17 page)

“You hear me?” Clive snapped, unnerved by that stare. “Get the fuck out. I gave you what you came for. If the name’s no good anymore, then you’re on your own.”

Black nodded, that unfocused stare still on Clive’s face.

Then, all at once, his eyes clicked back into focus.

He glanced back down at the paper in his hands, then gave Clive another of those precise, machine-like nods.

Without another word, he turned with equal precision and walked to the front door and outside to the porch, letting the screen door bang shut behind him.

He didn’t look back, or even lift a hand in goodbye.

Clive just stood there in his sweltering dark cave of a living room, breathing too hard as he listened to the boots of the heavy-gaited man descending his creaky wooden stairs. A few minutes later, he heard the bike’s motor start up again as Black must have kicked the rice-burner’s starter.

Clive didn’t really relax until he heard it pull away from the curb, though.

He didn’t venture back to the door leading out to his porch until he could no longer hear the bike at all, and the neighborhood had slowly returned to quiet apart from its usual ambient sounds. Even then, Clive stood in the shadow of his own doorway for a few seconds more, drinking his beer and glancing both ways up and down his residential street.

“Cocksucker,” he muttered under his breath.

Feeling his fear turn into a hotter anger, he stepped outside finally and back into the faint breeze that was his only relief from the heat. Once he had, he collapsed back into the folding lawn chair where he’d been sitting before Black darkened his door.

“I hope you find them, you piece of shit,” he muttered louder. “I hope you walk right in the fucking
door
of Archangel Unlimited and they get a good long look at your vampire face. I bet I’d never see your sorry ass on my property again...”

After he said it, Clive wished he hadn’t.

Not aloud anyway. Not even under his breath... and not because he didn’t mean it.

For minutes afterwards, he had the creepiest feeling that Black might have heard him.

BEATRICE LORRAINE FRANKLIN couldn’t quite believe her luck.

When she opened her door after someone jammed their finger in her buzzer, she’d expected to be annoyed with whoever stood there. She’d half-expected that somebody to be Billy, since it was Saturday and he wouldn’t have to work.

Instead, she found herself staring up at something off the cover of a romance novel.

She really couldn’t believe what she was looking at when she finally opened her front door, yelling at whoever was on the other side to just shut the fuck up and cool their jets and she would get there. That same, romance-novel-looking motherfucker stood just outside her door now, but only because Beatrice hadn’t yet successfully figured out a way to get him to come inside. She’d offered him a beer, a glass of water... the bathroom.

He’d given her a polite “no” with every offer.

He had quite a smile though, Mr. Romance Novel did.

The tall man with the black hair wearing a motorcycle jacket and designer jeans looked more like a movie star, or maybe someone who modeled underwear for a living, than he did like most of the jokers who hung around this complex.

She really, really wanted to see his eyes.

So far, he hadn’t taken off his sunglasses, but she was just positive those eyes would be a gorgeous blue. Or maybe a really sexy green.

“She don’t live here no more,” she said, hearing the disappointment in her own voice. She would have liked a reason to keep this guy around, even just for a few minutes. She tried to think of another excuse to invite him inside, if only to get a look at his eyes behind those mirrored shades. She wondered if it would be rude to ask him to take them off. Tell him she had a bet going with herself on what color they would be.

“...She left with the kids about five years ago now,” Beatrice said, still hearing the stall in her own voice. “I heard Oklahoma, to be with her parents. Or maybe it was New Mexico? I could ask the neighbors if you want. Some of them knew her.” She leaned against the doorjamb, deliberately jutting out her hip.

“She a friend of yours?” she asked coyly. “‘Cause she got fat, you know. She didn’t stay skinny and hot after having kids, like me.”

If the man was looking at her jutting hip, Beatrice couldn’t tell through the shades.

She also couldn’t hear any hint of interest in his voice.

“It’s not actually her I’m looking for, ma’am,” the man said politely.

He had a strange accent.

Definitely foreign. She wondered if he was one of those Muslims, but he didn’t look like any Muslim she’d ever seen on T.V. He didn’t look like no Mexican either. He looked like he had money, and not only from the brand new motorcycle he’d parked in the Adams’ parking slot for the apartment complex. She wondered if he had a girlfriend.

She definitely didn’t see no ring, ‘cause she’d looked.

“You can’t leave your bike there,” she told him, smiling as she motioned with her chin towards the parking lot below her second-story apartment. “That’s the Adamses’ spot. Mike gets really pissy when people park in his spot... and it’s Saturday, so he’s liable to be around.”

“I won’t be here long enough for it to matter,” the black-haired man assured her.

Beatrice frowned, unable to hide her disappointment. “You sure? You sure you don’t want to come in for something to drink? I got lemonade. Stronger stuff, too. And there’s a pool out back. You could relax here for awhile before you go back out in that heat...?”

If he heard the come-hither in her voice, he ignored that too.

He shook his head, once, like anything more than that would have been a waste of energy he needed for other things.

“No, thank you,” he said politely. “Do you know anything about her husband? Where he might be?”

“Her ex-? Sure. He still lives around here. Milly ditched him when she took the kids. They were on the outs by then anyway.” She frowned, looking him up and down again. “You a friend of his? Cause you don’t look like no friend of his
I’ve
ever seen.”

“Work associate,” the man said.

Beatrice laughed. “Work associate? That shit-bird don’t work. Not for but a few months out of the year. Unless you call passing gas and scratching his balls work...”

“He’s gone a lot, right?”

Beatrice nodded, still squinting up at him. “Yeah. He’s a trucker half the year. But you don’t look like a trucker, mister.”

The man didn’t smile. She didn’t see a single muscle move in that long face.

“You ever see him in a friendly way, Beatrice?” he said. “Travis?”

She shrugged. “Sometimes.”

“He has family here, right?” the man said. “Other kids? Not Milly’s?”

She frowned. “How’d you know about that?”

The man smiled. “I told you. We’re work associates.”

Beatrice watched him nervously, wondering now if he worked for Milly after all. Maybe he was a cop. Not many cops looked like that, or dressed like that, in Beatrice’s experience, but he might not want her to know he was cop.

That, or maybe he was a lawyer. That might make a lot more sense.

“Who are you... really?” she said warily.

“Someone who wants to talk to Travis,” the man said, still giving her that weird smile. His voice was strangely calming, soothing, and she found her wariness dissipating again as she looked at him, a dark slash of shadow in the bright sun. “...One of these kids his, Beatrice?” the man asked in that soothing voice, almost sounding far away now, dream-like.

Did Travis like that you stayed skinny after having kids, Beatrice?

She didn’t see his lips move that time, but the voice seemed to echo in her mind, lulling, pulling on her, reassuring her it was okay to confide in him. That she could trust him.

“Uh-huh,” she said. “He likes it just fine. Likes a lot of other things about me better than Milly, too...”

Does he still come by with presents sometimes? Presents for you? Money? Things for the kids? Things he doesn’t give Milly?

Beatrice found herself nodding again. “Uh-hunh.”

She found herself refocusing on that handsome face. He stood over her, expressionless, his features as still as a windless lake.

Nervous suddenly, she stepped outside, shutting the door behind her so the kids wouldn’t hear them from where they were watching television.

“You can’t tell nobody,” she whispered to the man in the sunglasses. “That Milly... she’ll sue his ass for child support. Alimony too. She
can’t
know he has money. She don’t have any money herself, but she’s got a brother who’s a lawyer... you understand?”

“I won’t tell anyone, Beatrice,” the man assured her. “I won’t tell Travis, either. I just want to talk to him. Can you help me?”

“You not gonna hurt him?” Beatrice said, thinking suddenly there was no way this guy was a cop. “You promise you won’t hurt him, mister?”

The tall man in the motorcycle jacket and the black hair shook his head, once.

“I only want to talk to him...” he repeated.

I won’t hurt him...
the voice murmured in her mind, and she knew she could believe it, the certainty resonated there.
I would never hurt the father of your children, Beatrice...

“...Maybe you could give him a card from me. Tell him to give me a call.”

She snapped back again, once more gazing up at that handsome face, the perfect mouth above that strong jaw. He handed her an all-black card, with a raised imprint of an eagle on it and two letters stamped at the bottom.

“Q.B.?” she said, looking up at those mirrored shades. “Who’s that?”

“It’s me,” he said, not explaining further. Tapping the card with a finger, he added, “Make sure he looks at the back, Beatrice. Travis. Have him look on both sides.”

She nodded, fumbling for words, but when she looked up, he was already walking away.

She watched his casual strides, saw him putting on backless leather biking gloves as he walked down the cement landing towards the stairs at the end of the balcony. Beatrice walked out further away from her apartment door so she could watch him.

He looked pretty damned good from the backside, too, especially in those designer jeans.

When he reached the top of the stairs and began to descend them without looking back, she let her eyes drop back to the card he’d given her. After touching the eagle and the two initials, she flipped it over to expose a white back, shockingly bright after the pitch black face of it.

On it, someone had drawn two detailed angel’s wings in dark blue ink, with a strange symbol set right in the middle of them.

The symbol looked almost like the letter “A,” but it had a whole bunch of ladders on it.

Beatrice frowned, staring at it, and wondered what it could possibly mean.

Seven

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