I drove back to the Bigfoot Room. The bar was closed, of course. I parked down the block and walked by the outside. There were no bullet holes in the glass front. None of the shots had gone in that direction. I checked the top of the door; someone had already wiped the words BIGFOOT ROOM away.
I walked around to the alley, half expecting to find stinking clouds of tear gas there, but of course there weren’t. Even the smell was gone.
The security light above the bar’s back door gave me enough light to look around, but first I waved my arms and kicked my feet along the walls in case an invisible person was standing there. I didn’t find any.
The fire exit had a half dozen bullet holes punched through it. My eyes had been closed for most of the gunfire, but it appeared that the bullets had gone in one direction—toward Arne.
Then I noticed my name. I stepped closer to the door and saw that someone had written my name in black Sharpie. It read: RAY LOVES TO HANG AT THE QUILL AND TYRANT ANY TIME OF DAY OR NIGHT.
I touched the ink; it wasn’t wet. It could have been graffiti written by a disgruntled customer, but the way it was phrased made me think it was a message for me, in case I came back. Arne would never have been sloppy enough to leave a message right where the cops would see it, but maybe Bud or Robbie would.
I returned to my car. I knew people could look up addresses with their computers or with more expensive phones than the one I’d thrown away, but I was going to have to make do with the yellow pages.
I went back to my motel room and looked up the Quill and Tyrant. The address was in North Hollywood; I had to drive back the way I’d just come.
The Quill was just a door in a cinder-block box, and of course the lights were out. It was after 5 A.M. I went up to the door anyway and looked through the window. Everything was pitch-black inside, except for one lone beer sign.
When I turned around, there was a cop car at the curb, with a cop inside it asking me what I thought I was doing. I told him I’d lost my credit card and started looking around on the sidewalk. He grunted, looked me over once, and drove away without wishing me luck.
When he’d turned the corner, I walked around the building to the back. There was a dumpster back there along with a row of recycling bins. Behind that, by the cellar door, was a heavily tattooed Mexican man with a crooked nose and full beard. He was smoking a reefer, and he had a .45 S&W in his lap. He looked so stoned he was nearly comatose. “You got lost,” he said.
“I’m looking for Robbie. Is this the right place?”
He laid his hand on his weapon. “Ain’t no Robbie here.”
“My mistake,” I said, and started to leave.
“Hey! I didn’t say you could go. Who’re you?”
I turned back and looked him in the eye. It had been a couple years since I left prison and this life behind me, but I knew better than to show fear or try to make friends. “I’m Ray,” I said, keeping my voice flat.
He pursed his lips in a parody of thought. He really was amazingly stoned. I wondered, briefly, if I could rush him if I had to. “Ray Lilly?” he asked.
“That’s right.”
He rolled his eyes. “Well, you should have said so. Go ahead down. Fidel is waiting for you.”
Fidel? I didn’t know anyone named Fidel. But Stoned had waved at the cellar door, so I stepped toward it and lifted it open.
Light and music came through the opening, but no voices. I walked down the stairs, letting the door fall closed behind me. There were two more young guys on my left, both tattooed and bearded like Stoned. Bud and Summer sat on a low couch on my right. Robbie stood at the far end of the room with a very short, very muscular man with a shaved head. He was covered with jailhouse tattoos, including one along the side of his neck that said THUG in Gothic letters.
And everyone was watching me.
Robbie smiled. “Ray! You got my message.”
He didn’t walk toward me, so I walked toward him. “Good to see you again, Robbie.”
His smile faltered a little. “That ain’t my name anymore, dude. It never was. It’s Fidel Robles.”
“Really?” I said. “All those years we knew each other and you never told me your real name?”
He shrugged and smiled more broadly. His teeth were straight and white, his face full. He looked healthier than anyone in the crew, myself included. “I used to be embarrassed, man. My parents named me after an enemy of America! Oh no! The shame!” He laughed, and I laughed with him. “Then one day I realized I had brown skin just like Castro, and a nasty habit of taking things from rich people. Then I realized, hey, I’m an enemy of America, too. And proud of it.”
I laughed and held out my hand. “It’s good to see you again, Fidel.”
He glanced down at my hand but didn’t take it. His expression told me that he thought it was a test he didn’t want to take, which it was. “I know you know,” he said.
CHAPTER FIVE
I let my hand and my smile drop. “We gotta talk about this,” I said.
“I agree.” Robbie waved toward the room. It was just basement storage—a couple of stools with torn seat covers in the corner, a massive beer fridge against one wall, with stacks of whiskey crates beside it. There was a tatty carpet on the far side of the room, and a yard-sale couch set on it. Bud and Summer were all alone over there. “Humble beginnings, huh? But we’re tired of being humble. We’re ready to move into the big time.”
Arne had looked at me with resentment and anger. But Robbie looked ready to thank me. “What happened to you?” I asked.
“I got a super power! Want to hear my origin story? It’s pretty fucked up.”
“Actually, I do. I really, really do.”
“That’s cool, Ray, but later. I need something from you first. Okay? We got more important things to talk about. What did Arne say when he called you back to L.A.?”
“It wasn’t Arne,” I told him. His smile became a little strained, as though he didn’t believe me. “It was Caramella. She said she was in trouble.”
“Come on, Ray. Are you kidding me?”
“Of course not. Caramella came to see me in Seattle. She said everyone was in trouble and that it was all my fault.”
“Well, she was wrong. I’m not sure I’ll ever be in trouble again.” He rubbed his chin, thinking of a new way to come at me. “Ray, you know that Arne was never really your friend.”
“I know it.” Robbie had been the closest thing I had to a friend. Still, though: only the closest thing. “And you were his second-in-command.”
“Yeah, but he trusted you. He always thought you were smart.”
“And he kept food in our bellies and games in the PlayStation. So why aren’t you with him anymore?”
“I already told you, dude. We’re through playing it safe. No more stealing cars, no more tiny payouts. We jumped the fence. No one can touch us now, so we’re moving up.”
“To what?”
“Anything we want! If I want to rob a bank, I can do it. If I want to kill a guy—even the best-protected guy in the world—I can do that, too. How much you want to pay me to kill the royal family in England? I could fly over there and fly back in a couple days and the job would be done. Me, I’d have the money in my Swiss bank account.”
I stared at him, trying to decide if he was joking. I was pretty sure everything Robbie knew about being an international hit man came from the movies.
“You don’t look all that convinced, Ray.”
“Can I hear that origin story now?”
“Don’t you get it? You could be in with us. I’m going to take my cousins over to see your boy later, and you could come with us.”
“Wally King isn’t my boy.”
“Oh yeah? He told us he was your friend.”
I couldn’t talk for a moment because my jaw wouldn’t unclench. Wally had murdered a woman to steal spells from her. He’d claimed to be able to cure any disease or injury, when all he could really do was implant predators into people—including the oldest friend I had in the world. He’d turned my friend Jon into a monster, and God help me, when Annalise came to put a stop to it, I’d fought her.