Internecine by David J. Schow Page B

kind of goofy ritual—I was glad that I never did. It separated me from the walking dead a little bit; perhaps a little bit that could buy me negotiating time or room to lie. One thing was for certain: After tonight I was going to make sure my own wallet could never betray me again.
    But Dandine had access to secret files and dossiers. How much of your life, or mine, is really a secret from anybody? Your “personal information” is anything but. I watched Choral’s eyes follow Dandine’s every violation of her personality. It was obvious that the whole“Mr.  Butcher” thing had been a one-off for her, a quick and easy dodge, because her contact with Varga had likewise been intended to be a quickie. A dip into the dark side, like kissing a stranger in an elevator. Her every twitch and blink told me that she was not used to this business. She was an errand girl.
    I stopped short of making her as “innocent” as I was supposed to have been. But the deadly magnetism, the attraction for a strange woman who was now being squeegeed through a ringer almost identical to mine, was present and insistent, working on autopilot to erode my composure. Charm the rattler? No, you don’t. But maybe you wonder what even a viper might be like.
    “Here we go,” said Dandine. He pulled out a MasterCard (not gold or platinum) and an AmEx card (entry-level green, not corporate). “How’re these, Choral-Linda?”
    “Why?”
    “Because we three hardy travelers are going to the airport, to rent another car, since mine just blew up a little bit ago.” LAX was practically the only place around where you could still rent a car at three in the morning . . . and not be subjected to a lot of undue scrutiny. “Oh, wait . . . even better,” he said, discovering another card and holding it up for me to see like a brass ring. “Hertz Travel Club. This is going to be smoother than I thought. You got this by working for Alicia Bran-denberg, didn’t you?”
    “Whatever you say.” Her composure was chipping. Soon enough she’d either have an outburst, or try to take action.
    He spun her to get her full attention. “Hey! Let me fill you in on something, Choral-Linda. You got a woman killed tonight. Her hand was blown off, then her face, in roughly that order. Ten seconds after Varga called you, his place was swarming with narcos, and
he’s
probably dead now, too. Please understand that the night is young, and the body count can get a lot bigger while you worry about splitting a fucking fingernail or being inconvenienced. You’re probably safer with us, right now, than you would be in your own home with a guard dog and a machine gun. Clear?”
    His tirade put the shakes into her. Her eyes began darting about. I knew the feeling too well—looking for an exit. An excuse to resumewhatever less thrilling thing she was doing before her phone rang, and she was foolish enough to pick it up.
    “Not a dog,” she muttered, eyes down, submissive and hurt. “Cat. His name is Horace.”
    That almost derailed Dandine; I saw it in his eyes.
“Horace?”
he said, caught between doubt and absurdity. “That’s a
terrible
name for a cat.”
    “Rough night,” I said, mostly to contribute.
    This was clinical, bug-under-the-microscope stuff. I was watching Linda a.k.a. Choral Anne react the same way I had when Dandine first showed up in his ninja suit. Except now I was on the other side of the fence, watching her and judging her weak, full up with denial. Now I was one of the good bad-guys. Dandine shot me a glare, already knowing what was going on inside my head.
Don’t protect her,
the glare said.
Not worth it
.
    “Those guys you said, you know, the narcos?”
    I realized Dandine had not made a mistake; he had said “narcos.” If Choral had responded by saying NORCO , then she would have been lying to us. Normal people weren’t supposed to know about NORCO .
    “I think they may have been the same guys Licia had some meetings with. Closed-door