"I'm investigating the identity of the male skeleton found in the Sunset Park grave."
"For whom?"
"For myself."
There was a long silence.
Snow's pale lips smiled. "For whom else?"
This time I shrugged. I doubted it did for my vintage suit what a shrug did for his Armani. Most easily available vintage clothes that survived were ordinary ready-made. A working girl couldn't afford the rest.
"There are…other interested parties," I conceded, rather pleased to have some cards to put on the invisible table between us.
"Parties, plural?"
That had increased his interest. "Yes." I didn't often have a chance to sound smug in front of Snow. I kept Night wine's and Hughes's names to myself.
"You're not saying who."
"No. I'm just saying that if you prove to be a reliable source, I might tell you the outcome."
"'Might'."
"Might."
He laughed as he swung the expensive chair from side to side. "I have my own very special and rather creepy operatives I could send to your bedroom by night to extract anything I want from your conscious or unconscious mind."
"Don't doubt it. My dog would eviscerate whatever it was, human or unhuman."
"Don't doubt it. You have interesting allies. But I have more. So, quit playing around and tell me what you know."
"Apparently your omnipotent allies haven't found this out yet," I said.
"Omnipotence is not a fail-safe substitute for one old-fashioned investigative reporter with the information-gathering instincts of Hell's pit-bull."
I kept still. Was that a compliment? I kinda thought it was and it wasn't even sexist. Must be this Katharine Hepburn power suit. She was a stainless steel hellion.
"The rumor is you're a vamp."
"The rumor is wrong."
"Then you wouldn't have any insight on who the vampire was who shared the Sunset Park grave with Cicereau's daughter."
"Cicereau's daughter?" He sounded impressed. "So that's who it was. Obviously Daddy Cesar didn't tell you that. Who did?"
"My sources are protected."
"Not enough."
I shrugged. Damn, I liked the effect of my buttressed shoulders. I felt like I could knock a lumberjack off a log with them.
Apparently they impressed Snow. He capitulated and answered, in depth.
"No. I don't know what vampire led young Miss Cicereau to bliss and butchery," he said reluctantly. "Vampires were keeping a low profile then. They'd let Cicereau and his werewolf pack get the jump on them. The Gallic werewolves had come to raw western America with Folies-Bergère ambitions and lots of francs. That attracted some of the more powerful Parisian vampires over too, and they had big dreams for a stunning hotel called the Inferno. The French vampires were used to a society where werewolves had been vigorously persecuted since medieval times and the vamps were civic heroes."
"Vampires were French heroes?"
"Who do you think had the ears-and probably throats-of Marat, Robespierre and Danton during the French Revolution, the bloodiest political rebellion in relatively modern Western civilization history? Who encouraged the reign of Queen Guillotine and the rain of severed heads into baskets while truncated necks shot out gouts of blood? Madame Defarge was Reine of the Cite…and the vampires. Her famed knitting needles made fast work of any aristocrat who didn't die quickly enough. They called her needles the Fer-de-Lance, iron spear, after the venomous pit vipers of the south and central Americas.
"It was a world triumph for the blood-based breed. They almost got one of theirs elected president of the French Assembly. They still mourn their loss of influence in recent centuries."
I sat back, silent in the face of Snow's convincing description of events two hundred and twenty years ago. His tales of French supernatural centuries after Caressa Teagarden's fairy tales of devouring dragons in the river Seine jibed more than was comfortable for me.
Snow lifted a hand. I sensed something behind me and turned. His security chief, Grizelle, was waiting with a small silver tray. Two Albino Vampire cocktails sat upon it.
She did the waitress dip. This six-foot-plus tall supermodel-type with a tiger-stripe pattern in her silken black skin who could shape-shift into a six-hundred-pound white tiger did the waitress dip to set the glasses on Snow's desk.
"Thank you, Grizelle." He lifted his glass and held it out for a toast. "If you were a wine, Miss Street, I would characterize you as 'cheeky and amusing, but also full-bodied and effervescent, to be drunk quickly, before it spoils'."
Well! "Those who can, invent. Those who can't, steal."
I referenced the yummy white chocolate Albino Vampire cocktail I'd created at his Inferno Bar on a whim to annoy him. The bastard had simply made it the house drink, charged a mint for it, and profited from my invention.
"I'd be willing to pay you a royalty for the drink, but it wouldn't be as lucrative as what Nightwine would give you for Lilith's onscreen use."
I had been about to sip my drink but stopped before I choked. "You know about his hopes for Lilith?"
"Lilith is a valuable commodity in this town, thanks to his forensics show empire. I know about everything of value and the value of everything."
"She is a human being."
He shrugged. "That's what you want to think. She's supposedly dead. As far as we know. That makes her no less valuable. Even more so. "
"As far as 'we' know?"
"Ask Nightwine to let you attend the filming of a CSI autopsy. They're always done on a strictly closed set. It'd be interesting to know if he'd let you see the process."
"I've already visited the city morgue, on your recommendation. Maybe I should ask to be a background autopsy tech on the show." I thought my voice had been scorching with sarcasm.
"Not a bad idea." Snow was too obviously enjoying a long swallow of my creamy cocktail. Vampires didn't drink "vine," but neither should they suck down white liqueur cocktails. "Nightwine would love to titillate his enraptured audience with those bright baby blues you share with Lilith glimpsed, say, behind the Plexiglas of a safety shield. Rumors would run wild that Lilith still… haunts… the autopsy set. Million-dollar publicity for the show, refreshes an aging concept. Brilliant! You can give Nightwine the idea and claim it was yours, a bit of return on the Albino Vampire. He'd even pay you for it if you play it right."
I knew better than to drop my jaw. Snow thought just like the ghoul I worked for.
Still, it was a good idea. I'd have a chance to get to know-and probe-the film crew about Lilith's turn on the steel table, and find out if there was any possibility she was alive then. And if she might still be.
I really didn't like the fact she was putting on a show in my mirror. Maybe I was wrong in concluding that only dead acts performed there. So I played my unexpected ace, something I'd concluded about Lilith.