In the Blood (3 page)

She is also very dangerous. I'll tell you that right now, just to make sure you don't
develop cold feet later on."

"This 'wild woman' you want me to find-exactly what is your relationship to her?"

"She's my granddaughter."

Palmer doubted that was the truth. Pangloss certainly didn't look old enough to
have a grandchild capable of helling around. But you never can tell, what with
plastic surgery nowadays. And while Pangloss hadn't exactly told the truth, Palmer
had the feeling he wasn't lying, either.

"I'll pay you a thousand dollars a day, plus expenses. I trust that is satisfactory?"

Palmer nearly choked on the bourbon. "It'll do."

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"There will also be a twenty-thousand-dollar bonus should you find her and
successfully deliver this letter." Pangloss pulled a legal-sized envelope from one of
the desk's pigeonholes. It was expensive cream stationery, stiff and heavy, and bore
an old-fashioned wax seal on the back: a dragon looped around itself.

"Can I ask a question? A purely hypothetical one, that is."

"Go ahead."

"What would you do if I decided not to take the case?"

"That assumes you have a choice in the matter, Mr. Palmer. I prefer keeping the
fiction of free will intact, don't you? I find my employees work much better when
they believe they have some say in what they can and cannot do."

Palmer stared at Pangloss's pleasantly smiling face, the expensive liquor suddenly
bitter in his mouth.

Pangloss slid a companionable arm over Palmer's shoulder, walking him to the door.

For the first time Palmer noticed how long the other man's fingernails were. "I have
confidence in you, Palmer. I'm sure you'll be a great asset to our team. Now that
you're here, why don't you make yourself at home? I've had the guest room
specially prepared for your arrival, and I'll see to it that my cook gets your dinner to
you. If there's anything you need, don't hesitate to ask."

"There's just one thine..."

"Yes?" Although Pangloss was still smiling, Palmer was certain the eyes behind the
tinted aviator shades were watching him intently.

"What's the name of this girl you're looking for?"

"How thoughtless of me! Her name is Sonja Blue."

Pangloss opened the door. Palmer wasn't surprised to see Renfield standing on the
other side of the threshold.

"Renfield will see you to your room. Oh, and Mr. Palmer?" Palmer glanced over his
shoulder. Pangloss was grinning at him, showing way too many teeth. "Pleasant
dreams."

2

"Will there be anything else, sir?"

Palmer stared blankly at the bellhop for a double heartbeat before answering. "Uh,
no. No, I don't think so." He stuffed a couple of dollars into an outstretched white
glove. The bellboy grimaced as if Palmer had just hacked a gob into his hand.

Well, he wasn't going to let some college student's wounded sense of self-worth sour
the pleasure of having his very own suite at the Hilton.

Palmer shrugged out of his jacket and plopped down on the couch in the sitting
room. He rang up room service and ordered a New York Strip and a couple bottles
of imported beer, all courtesy of the good Dr. Pangloss. He wasn't sure what his
employer was a doctor
of,
but it sure paid well.

While he waited on his food to arrive, Palmer thumbed through notes scribbled
during his time as Pangloss's "houseguest."

1. is sonja blue really pangloss's grand-d?

2. is s.b. into illicit drugs? prostitution?

3. is pangloss?

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4. what the hell am I doing here?

So far he'd failed to turn up answers to any of those questions, although placing a
jet flight between himself and his employer made #4 seem less pressing than when he
first wrote it.

He glanced at the stiff, cream-colored envelope jutting out of the breast pocket of his
jacket. No doubt the letter would give him some answers, but that wasn't how the
game was played. At least not when he was on the field. Still, for a man supposedly
desperate to locate his grandchild, Pangloss had been stingy with personal
information concerning the girl. After some questioning, Palmer had finally learned
that she might be traced through a boyfriend, if that was the proper word to use,
named Geoffrey Chastain, better known as "Chaz."

From what little Palmer had pieced together, this Chastain was an expatriate Brit
with a taste for hard drugs and unsavory sex partners. Your basic lowlife hustler.

Palmer scrounged a pencil from his hip pocket and added to his notes.

5. is chastain s.b.'s lover? connection/pimp?

6. pangloss sure s.b. no longer in area, but thinks it good place to start
Palmer looked at the photograph of the elusive Chaz that Pangloss presented him
with before he left the estate. Odd that Pangloss should have a picture of the bad-ass
boyfriend but not a single snapshot of his own granddaughter. It looked like a
passport photo, either that or a mug shot. The man glowering at him from the other
side of the camera was in his late twenties, his hair combed in a rebellious rooster
tail. There was still a hint of masculine beauty in the shape of his cheekbones and
the tilt of his eyes, but what physical attractiveness Geoffrey Chastain had once
possessed had been eaten away by his addictions. The drug hunger was obvious
even in a photo. Still, it was easy to see how a young, impressionable girl might
become fascinated with such a sleazeball.

Room service brought him his steak and beer. He always prepared himself for a
night on the prowl by eating his fill of red meat. It put him in the proper mood for
the hunt.

"You know this guy? "

It was roughly the four hundredth and fifty-seventh time Palmer had asked the
question that night. His feet were tired and his bladder ached from too many beers.

The man with the anarchy symbol chalked across the back of his black raincoat
glanced first at Palmer then the snapshot. He took a swig from his beer and shook
his head.

"Sorry. Can't help ya."

A slightly built youth seated on the opposite side of the man in the anarchist coat
craned his head over his companion's shoulder, looking mildly curious.

"How about you? You know this guy?"

"He don't know him, either," snapped the man in the raincoat. "He don't know
nobody I don't know, do ya?" This he addressed to the boy seated next to him. It
didn't sound like a question.

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The boy cringed, smiling nervously at this friend. "Course not, Nick. I don't know
nobody."

"Fuckin' A."

Palmer cursed under his breath and headed for the men's room. This wasn't the
first time he'd run into such aggressive ignorance. He'd come close to getting
somewhere at least twice, only to have the parties in question suddenly clam up on
him.

As he relieved himself at the urinal, he heard the rest room door open and close
behind him.

"Hey, mister?"

Palmer glimpsed enough out of the corner of his eye to recognize Nick's boyfriend.

"What is it, kid?"

"I know that guy. The one in the picture."

"Do you now?"

"Yeah. Chaz. He's from England."

"How come your friend didn't want you talking to me?"

"Nick? Oh, he's just jealous, that's all." The boy giggled. "He and Chaz crossed
swords a couple of times, so to speak. Chaz muscled in on a couple of his
boyfriends."

Palmer shook off and made himself presentable before turning to face the boy. The
kid couldn't be more than seventeen, his strawberry blonde hair cut short in front
with a long, braided rat-tail at the base of his neck. He wore a pair of designer jeans
and a Psychic TV T-shirt.

"What's your name, kid?"

"Terry."

"Look, Terry, can you tell me where I could possibly find this Chaz? I'll make it
worth your while..." He produced a twenty from his pocket, holding it tight between
his knuckles. It was obvious the boy was interested, but his eyes flickered away
whenever Palmer tried to look him in the face. "Is this Chaz a friend of yours? Are
you afraid you'll get him in trouble?"

Terry snorted. "Chaz? A friend? I always thought he was a creep! Always looking at
me like he knew what was going on inside my head. Besides, no one's seen him in
almost a year. Not since what happened to the Blue Monkeys."

"The Blue Monkeys?"

"Yeah. This gang Chaz used to hang with. Bunch of real hard-asses. Used to dye
their hair blue. He was friends with 'em... but they only hung with him on account
of the blow he always had."

"Where can I find these Blue Monkeys?" Palmer handed Terry the folded bill.

"You can't."

"What do you mean?"

"They're dead."

"Dead?"

"Well, not
all
of them, but enough got killed off to deep-six the gang."

"What happened?"

"No one's real sure. It got hushed up pretty quick. But there was this gang war, or

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something, in the back of some bar. Those that weren't killed got crippled up bad.

I... wait a minute. Jimmy!"

"Jimmy?"

"That was the kid Chaz was seeing. He was the only one that didn't get trashed."

"Where can I find this Jimmy?"

Terry grinned and stuck out his hand, looking like a kid asking his father for this
week's allowance. "That's worth more'n a twenty, dude."

Palmer grumbled and produced another bill. Terry's hands moved so fast he
couldn't tell which pocket the money disappeared into.

"His name's Jimmy Eichorn. He lives with his mom somewhere over on Thirty-Ninth."

"You're learning quick, kid."

Terry shrugged his narrow shoulders as he turned to leave. "Nick's stingy when it
comes to buying nice things."

"Mrs. Eichorn?"

The woman peering at him from the other side of the burglar chain scowled, as if
deciding whether she should answer.

"Mrs. Eichorn, my name is Palmer..."

"Whatcha want? You from th' Welfare Department? If so, it's too late for a
business visit!"

It had taken him a couple of hours to find the right house. Terry's instructions had
been off by a few blocks. It was long past Palmer's supper time and his scar was
giving him trouble. He'd been forced to climb five narrow, badly lit flights of stairs,
the smell of human piss and old garbage pungent enough to make his gorge hitch.

He felt his temper start to flare.

"Mrs. Eichorn, do I
look
like a fuckin' caseworker?"

Where Mrs. Eichorn was concerned, there was no such thing as a rhetorical
question. He could feel her taking in his shaved temples and narrow goatee,
lingering on his wavy, gray-shot hair, combed straight up; a holdover from the days,
more than a decade gone, when he used to slam dance down at Club Lies.

"I'd like to talk to Jimmy, Mrs. Eichorn. Is he in?"

Mrs. Eichorn blinked. "Yeah, he's here. He's always here. Whatcha want with my
Jimmy?"

Palmer slid a crisp twenty through the crack in the door. "It's important, ma'am."

Jimmy's mother hesitated then closed the door, taking the twenty with her. A
second later the door reopened, allowing Palmer a better view of both her and the
apartment.

Mrs. Eichorn was an unsmiling woman with pale, washed-out hair that had once
been blonde. Her skin was pasty and her eyes so light a shade of blue they seemed to
lack any color at all. Deep lines creased the corners of her mouth. The only color
evident on her face was a purplish-red lipstick smeared on her mouth. She wore a
much-washed yellow waitress's uniform with the name "Alice" stitched across the
bosom in red thread. The few items of furniture in the living room looked as worn
and overused as their owner.

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"Whatcha want with my Jimmy?" She pulled a filtered cigarette from her apron
pocket and clamped it between purple-red lips. Palmer wrinkled his nose in distaste.

Funny how other people's smoking got on his nerves. "You better hurry it up,
whatever it is. I gotta leave for work in a few minutes."

"Mrs. Eichorn, was your son a member of a gang called the Blue Monkeys?"

The look she gave him was hard enough to cut glass. "You a cop?"