The Love-Haight Case Files (29 page)

He opened the door and let another wave of odors assault him. The greasy food being served at the bar was the strongest, the spices at the same time exotic and unpleasant. Everywhere was beer, and the floor was sticky with it. Cigarette smoke lingered on the clothes of the patrons, and there was an assortment of men’s and women’s colognes to battle with the scents of some of the customers who’d clearly gone days without bathing. Dagger managed to keep from gagging.

The interior was dimly lit by neon tubes that wrapped around the main room and along the base of the stage in the middle, on which two overly skinny human women in G-strings undulated while clinging to brass poles. Lava lamps were perched on each of the dozen small tables, the colors twisting in slow, dizzying patterns. All of the speakers sat on the floor, and so the songs that spewed from them sent vibrations up through the soles of Dagger’s feet. “Play That Funky Music” was the current selection.

He took a quick head count. Except for the two “dancers” and three bartenders, the occupants were all men: thirty-five patrons—a good number for a bar given that the sun was still up. Only a dozen of the customers were human. Four ghouls sat at a table near the door, munching on fingers that looked like French fries in a basket. Another table had three other undead seated at it. They were neither ghouls nor zombies, but they had the taut, pale skin and empty eye sockets of the departed. Maybe he’d Google their description later and find out what they were.

A troll sat on the floor against the far wall, probably no chair large enough to accommodate his considerable rear end. A half dozen gold-skinned fey were pressed up against the stage and shoving money at the dancers. They didn’t have the graceful-looking wings that the females of their species did. Wings too small to support them in flight, Dagger figured. The remaining OTs consisted of eight men with German shepherd dog-like heads and furry hands, along with the rotten-banana-smelling imp, who was at the far end of the bar apparently talking up a storm to one of them.

The imp had led Dagger straight to the Libyans.

The average San Franciscan would think the men lycanthropes who’d decided to “wolf out” despite the lack of full moon tonight. But then the average San Franciscan would be wrong.

They called themselves the dog-headed, and Dagger had clashed with one of them a few years back when he was tailing a woman whose husband believed she was cheating. She was cheating … with one of the dog-headed. Dagger had done his research on the case. The dog-headed traced their origins to Western Libya and still held to a heritage that stretched back to before the Sahara was formed. They could well be the oldest OTs on the planet.

Supposedly birthed through dark rituals conducted on the Wadi Mattendush, which was now a dry riverbed, the dog-headed had remained hidden until hunter-gatherers and nomadic pastoral farmers discovered their community around 1,000 BC. Libya’s
messak
, or plateau region, was peppered with rock carvings of dog-headed men dragging rhinoceroses and other large beasts. More carvings were found by archaeologists working at sites over the Algerian border at Tassili n’Ajjer. Dagger had been in the area many years ago, searching for someone. He’d seen the carvings, though at the time he’d known nothing about the race.

Dagger’s own roots reached back to that part of the world, but he wasn’t one of the dog-headed. Dagger opened his cell phone and called the law office. Pete picked up on the fourth ring. Dagger heard the sounds of swords clashing in the background and ominous music, probably a computer game.

“Pete, Google something for me. Google ‘Hounds,’ ‘Tenderloin,’ and ‘recent activity.’ E-mail me whatever you find that looks interesting.” He closed the phone without waiting for a reply. Then he growled from deep in his throat, thrust his hands in the pockets of his jeans, and headed toward the dog-headed the imp was talking to.

“All salt and no sugar,” Dagger said. “This probably won’t go well.”

Chapter 3.12

Thomas noticed ghosts on O’Farrell. They’d not been visible when he’d made a circuit of the block earlier, or perhaps he hadn’t been looking close enough then. There were four. Two looked to be couple, a man and woman in garb from the 1800s. They were linked arm-in-arm and glided through oblivious passersby on the sidewalk. The wispy pair paused in front of a bar a few doors south of the Golden Pumpkin, faces halfway through the front window. The other two—one probably a hooker from the skimpy suggestion of clothes, and the other a man in a business suit clutching an ephemeral briefcase, sunk into the sidewalk when they caught Thomas staring at them.

He’d not spoken to many ghosts since his murder. Valentino Trinadad, of course, the ghost who lived on the corner outside the law office. But Valentino had appeared when Thomas was still alive, and they’d struck up a friendship then. There was a ghostly doctor in a hospital that had been helpful to Thomas in December when he checked on Evelyn after she’d been shot. But Thomas, while curious, felt a reluctance to approach spirits. He didn’t want to intrude on their “lives” … or perhaps recognize himself as a contemporary. Maybe it was like the elderly who refused to visit senior centers because they didn’t want to admit they’d gotten old.

He floated through bars and boutiques and paused in a head shop operated by a busty green-skinned hag. One wall looked like a slice out of the 1960s with psychedelic posters that probably popped under a black light. The hag took casual note of him, and then busied herself arranging water pipes on a shelf.

Eventually he reached the Golden Pumpkin. The hours on the window listed noon to 10 p.m. Monday through Thursday, 3 p.m. to midnight Friday through Sunday.

It wasn’t quite sundown, and so he traveled through the building top-down first, five stories, the top floor was empty and sheets of cobwebs draped from the rafters, the next two storage—he stopped himself from poking his head into the various crates and boxes, the second floor had three good-sized apartments with tenants elsewhere at the moment … and not of the vampire variety, as there wasn’t a coffin or boarded up window anywhere.

The restaurant had a reasonable crowd, most of the diners human, though there were six goblins on booster seats at a round table near the salad bar. Servers went in and out of the kitchen through a swinging door.

What does this place smell like?
Probably amazing
, Thomas thought, judging by the array of various dishes. The empty feeling intensified. He listened to the clink of glasses, gentle laughter, and pleasant conversations.
What does everything taste like?
He was incomplete, a suggestion of a man, one who could hear and think and interact, but—

Two dog-like men in black leather jackets shouldered their way out of the kitchen, ending Thomas’s morose descent. He had time to register their narrowed eyes and the angry way their snouts curled, and then they were past him, threading their way through the tables and out the front door. They weren’t werewolves, Thomas had seen one of those. Rather, they more resembled two-legged German shepherd dogs with hairy hands.… like the ones he’d spotted outside the sandwich shop earlier today.

Thomas followed, taking a short cut through the diners and passing through the wall and out onto the street. The dog-like men had long, quick strides, and Thomas did his best to keep up, but quickly fell behind. He rose higher, following them visually, and then losing sight.

Thomas spotted them again, still shoulder-to-shoulder, still in black jackets, but their dog-visages had been replaced by human faces. He hurried toward them … as much as he was capable of hurrying. It was the same pair that had ridden the bus and went after Evelyn in front of Glide Memorial and had warned her off the case. At the end of the next block they entered another restaurant. He drifted in that direction, disappointed that at best he traveled half the speed of a living man. Were he still breathing, he could have stayed even. He’d been an athlete.

He reached the next restaurant, a German place with Bavarian dishes advertised on a placard out front, just as the pair emerged, again with dog heads. Neither spotted Thomas, but he was in “stealth mode,” and they pointed across the intersection and took off at a jog, ignoring the red traffic light. The thin one flipped a finger at a taxi driver who laid on the horn.

Thomas managed to barely get inside the next establishment they visited, a vintage clothing store, just in time to see them whirl away from a clerk at the counter. They rushed through Thomas on their way back outside, and he glided after them, finally giving up four blocks later when they appeared human once more and he lost them. He’d hoped they would have stopped at one of their apartments, or stayed in one spot long enough so he could catch up and learn more about them. He wanted to turn the information over to the police and get some justice for Evelyn. More than that, he wanted to know why they didn’t want Evelyn to defend Dimitar.

Frustrated, he pointed himself toward the Golden Pumpkin. The sun had set. Time for a conversation with Javor Vujetic.

He wished he could have gone through the restaurant’s front door and glided across the dining room. Instead, Thomas had drifted around the back. A waitress stood next to a Dumpster, a human in her early thirties, smoking and looking at her watch, tapping her foot. She was waiting for something. A few moments later a man in a chef’s apron came out the rear door. Thomas’s vision was keen, able to see in utter darkness, and so even with the shadows he noted the paleness of the man’s skin and that his chest didn’t rise and fall. A vampire; Evelyn had said the cooks—at least in the evening—were vampires.

The two embraced.

“You’re late.” This from the woman. “And now I’m going to be late for my shift.”

The vampire’s answer was to smother her lips. The kiss went on for a while, and emotions flitted through Thomas—jealousy and envy … he couldn’t touch a woman, shame that he was so voyeuristic, and suddenly revulsion. He was in the realm of TMI: too much information.

The woman placed her hands on the side of the chef’s face and extricated herself from the kiss. “Please, Jerry, please take just a little.”

The vampire—Jerry—shook his head. “Javor does not permit this here. Javor—”

“Just a little.” She pulled his face down to her neck, and the vampire obliged her. The woman made a purring noise, her eyelids fluttered closed, and she smiled dreamily as the vampire made a soft slurping sound. “Jerry … Jerry.” The woman swooned and the vampire caught her and held her against the brick, raised his face and wiped the blood from his mouth.

He didn’t look quite as pale as before, or was that Thomas’s imagination?

The woman tugged the collar of her uniform up and took a few deep breaths. “You go back first.”

The vampire kissed the top of her head and went into the kitchen. Thomas waited for several minutes more, seeing the waitress pull out a lighted compact and check her face and her neck, smooth at her skirt, and arrange her curls. The waitress entered through the alley door, announcing that she was tardy because she’d missed her bus.

Thomas spent the next hour hovering in the kitchen. It had a drop ceiling, and he floated there, poking his head halfway through it and spying on the crew. There were four vampires in the kitchen staff, two ghoul dishwashers … washing by hand, no machine, and an assortment of human waitresses. The chatter centered on politics, music, the city’s recent ban on public nudity, and finally on Dimitar.

“Do you think Javor will give in?” This from one of the cooks.

A ghoul dishwasher shook her head. “Never. Not Javor. He hired a good attorney for his brother. He will spend more on the attorney than he would have on protection money. Javor is about the principle.” The ghoul’s voice was scratchy and sounded forced, reminding Thomas of a previous client he worked with: Emmanuel Holder.

“I think he should give in.” This from the waitress who’d had some blood drained. She sashayed into the kitchen and with a flourish placed an order in front of the closest chef. “Javor is rolling in money and property. Why not cave and give the Libyans their share? Since the damned dogs have expanded their territory, everyone else on O’Farrell shells out to them.”

The dishwasher sat down her drying towel. “It is the principle, Kit. The Libyans don’t need to muscle into this neighborhood. Javor has drawn that so-called line in the sand, and I’m with him.”

“Me, too,” two of the vampire chefs said in unison.

The waitress shook her head. “Damn good thing for all of us, then, that the Libyans are picking on Javor’s brother rather than on one of us. But I’m keeping my options open. Any of us gets set up for something, gets beaten because Javor won’t pay … I’m high-tailing it out of the Tenderloin. Told Javor that a little while ago when he called. He’ll be in late tonight, said he was stopping by the jail to visit Dimmy.”

The chefs were meticulous in their preparation of each dish, arranging the food artistically before handing the plates to the waitresses. The conversations spun while they worked, and Thomas continued to soak it in.

“Besides,” one of the chefs said, ending the matter. “Why should we pay protection money to the Libyans when we don’t need protection?” He smiled, showing sparkling white fangs. “Maybe the Libyans should be paying us.”

“How about them Forty Niners,” the other ghoul dishwasher said. “They made the playoffs this year.”

Chapter 3.13

The imp scooted for the exit, glaring at Dagger and saying something that was lost in the bar clamor.

Eight dog-heads in the room that he had noticed, three directly in front of him at the end of the bar. Dagger took in their scents as he closed the distance. They smelled of smoke and alcohol and the streets. The largest had a crooked ear, and he stepped to the fore, nose quivering as he was undoubtedly taking in Dagger’s scent. That was the one Dagger wanted to talk with privately, the pack leader.

He growled and Dagger raised his lip in response. “Just want to talk,” Dagger said. “Got an office? Or will the alley do?”

The man’s hair melted like hot butter, the snout receded, and a human visage appeared. “We don’t serve your kind here.”