Call us. We employ. 1-800-555-0606
How lucky do you feel?
“Balls,” I said. I’ve seen this sort of thing before. Sometimes it’s an ad for low-end commission work-at-home crap. Cold calls to sell products people wouldn’t want even if it was free. Follow-up calls for people dumb enough to put their email addresses down at a restaurant, hotel or resort. Or time-share pitches. Stuff like that.
If that was what it was.
I turned it over. There was a hand-written note on the back. That was different. Most of these kinds of cards are just the basics. A hook, no real information, and a contact number.
With the ‘How lucky do you feel’ thing I wondered if this was a new marketing scheme for second-string call girls.
I’m horny, but I haven’t ever been so horny I wanted to pay for ass.
The note on the back said:
2:45, your office.
I looked at the wall clock.
2:43.
Shit.
There was still time to pull the shade, lock the door and turn off the office lights. I wanted a client, not some yuppie entrepreneur trying to see some college-girl tail.
But then I caught a whiff of something.
Literally a whiff. I put the card to my nose and sniffed it.
The odor was very faint, but it was there. Just a hint of it. Like freshly-sheared copper.
The smell of blood.
Human blood, too. And, yes, I can tell the difference. Some people can do that with wine or truffles or chocolate. Me, I can tell you anything you want to know about blood. Other things, too, but in my trade it really matters that I can tell a lot from a little noseful of blood-smell.
Thing is, there was no stain anywhere on the card. Not a drop, not a smudge. Nothing.
Smell was definitely there, though.
I put the card against my nose and took a longer, slower sniff.
There’s so much you can tell if you have the knack. My whole family has the knack. My grandmother, Minnie, is best at it. She can tell blood type. I may not be in her league — and really, no one is, old broad or not — but I could tell a lot. If I ever sniffed that blood again I’d know who owned it. Better than fingerprints for me. Back when I was a cop in the Twin Cities, I closed a shitload of cases that way. Finding the right perp was the easy part for me. Finding evidence that tied him to the case was harder. Sometimes it was impossible, which frustrated the living shit out of me. Nothing worse than knowing someone did something bad and then having to watch him skate through the courts back onto the street with a free pass to hurt someone else.
Most of the time.
A few of those guys tripped and hurt themselves. Or, um, so I heard.
I tapped the card against my chin, thinking about it. What kind of marketing stunt was this? What kind of—?
Out in the hall I heard the elevator open.
The wall clock told me it was 2:44.
“Early,” I said.
But as soon as the visitor knocked on the door the clock ticked over to 2:45. The exact second.
I went around and sat behind my desk before I said anything. I let the seconds tick all the way to 2:46. Just to be pissy.
The person outside didn’t knock again. But I saw a figure through the frosted glass. Tall, dressed in some kind of suit, and definitely female. Her silhouette was rocking.
With my luck, though, she’d have the right curves but a face like Voldemort.
“Come in,” I yelled.
The door opened.
She came in.
I actually said, “Holy shit.”
She had the kind of face that you read about. The kind of face that if it looked down at you from a movie screen you’d absolutely believe you were on your knees in the Temple of Athena. The kind of face Hollywood women pay a lot of money for and never quite get. You’re either born with that face or you spend your life in therapy because it’s just not going to happen.
That kind of face.
Pale skin with pores so small it looked like she was carved out of marble. Not white marble, though. She had some natural color that I’m pretty sure wasn’t a tan. Couldn’t peg her race or nationality. Maybe she was from the same island Wonder Woman came from. I don’t know. I never visited that island. I knew right there that I couldn’t have afforded the boat fare.
She was maybe thirty, about five-eight. Tall, with good bones and great posture, and enough curves to make my hair sweat, but not so many that it walked over the line into cartoonish. That’s a very delicate line. Her hair was a foamy spill of black with some faint red highlights. Her lips were full and painted a discreet dark red. Make-up applied with skill and restraint. Pearl earrings, a drop-pearl necklace that rested half inch above the point where her cleavage stopped. Yes, I looked.
The only flaw — if you could call it that — was a small crescent-shaped scar on her cheek near the left corner of her mouth. If she was a different kind of woman I’d think that it was the kind of scar you can get when someone wearing a ring pops you one. But I couldn’t sell that story to myself. This was a class act. But, I like scars. They’re evidence that a person’s lived.
She said, “Mr. Hunter?”
“Sam Hunter,” I said, rising and offering my hand.
Her grip was cool and dry, but she withdrew her hand a half-second too quickly. Maybe she was afraid I hadn’t washed. Not an unrealistic thought. I suddenly felt grubby.
I gave her an expectant smile, waiting for her name, but she didn’t give it. Some clients are like that. Either they like being mysterious or they have to be careful. A lot of them hedge because they seem to think that if they withhold their names it somehow distances them from whatever problem brought them here. Nobody comes looking for a guy like me unless they’ve stepped in something. A bear trap, a pile of shit. Something.
“Have a seat,” I said, gesturing to the better of my crappy visitor chairs. She sat and smoothed her skirt over her knees. She wore a charcoal jacket that had a pale blue chalk stripe that precisely matched the color of her silk blouse. Her skirt matched her jacket. Her shoes looked more expensive than my car, and probably were.
She sat there and studied me for a long time without speaking.
So, apparently the ball was in my court. Fine. I tossed the card onto the desk between us.
“Yours?”
“Ours,” she corrected.
She waited for me to ask, but I didn’t. I couldn’t tell from the mouth she made if that was a good move on my part or not. She was clearly evaluating me, but I didn’t know what kind of yardstick she was using. So I leaned back in my chair and waited.
After a while she gave a single, short nod and said, “We want to hire you.”
She leaned on the ‘we’, so I guess I was supposed to ask.
“We being…?”
“The Limbus Corporation.”
“Who are they?”
“That’s not really—.”
“No,” I said.
“Pardon?”
“You’re going to tell me that it’s not really important. It’s a cheap answer to a question that actually is important. You left a card with the company name. You’re here as a representative of that company. That puts the company into play. So… who or what is Limbus Inc?”
She gave me a few millimeters of a smile, but she didn’t answer the question. Instead she opened her purse — an actual Louis Vuitton that would have paid off my mortgage — and removed two items. One was a standard-sized envelope with a thick bulge in it that was exactly the right size and shape to make me want to wag my tail. She placed that on the desk and held up the second item. A plain black flash drive.
“Will you agree to help us in this matter?” she asked.
I blinked a couple of times before I said, “Is that a serious question?”
“It is.”
“You haven’t told me anything yet.”