He started to say something, then stopped himself. “Laria. She name is Laria.”
“Yeah, her.” Chess scanned the little crowd of women, picking out the frizzy brown head. Laria stood near the back, a confused look on her face. Chess tried to catch the girl’s eye, but she wasn’t sure if it was possible for anyone to catch the girl’s eye at this stage; she looked like she was ready to keel over backward.
“I get her.”
Laria looked younger close up than Chess had thought. Sixteen, perhaps, or seventeen at the oldest. Her pale blue jacket had stains on the sleeves and a tear in one elbow. When she squeezed her arms tighter around her chest her pinkish-white skin poked through the hole like a turtle peeping from its shell.
“Laria, I’m Chess. Could you tell me what you saw earlier? The man who killed Daisy?”
Laria shook her head. Her clouded brown eyes filled with tears. “Ain’t seen nothin.”
“You said earlier you saw—”
Laria shook her head again. Her hair moved with it like a clump of dirty steel wool.
Chess glanced at Terrible, not bothering to hide her irritation. She had sympathy, sure, but it was late and freezing cold and she just wanted to go home, and Laria’s reticence wasn’t helping anyone.
He gripped Laria’s arm. “You tell she, girl. Only way for us to catch him, dig?”
“I ain’t—”
“Ain’t nothin. You the one left she alone so’s you could go stab up, aye? Least you owe she some knowledge.”
Laria gasped; Terrible’s fist was so tight around her arm that his thumb pressed the second knuckle of his middle finger. “Terrible, you hurtin—”
“Be hurtin worse, you don’t talk up.”
Chess held out her hand. “We can do this tomorrow, can’t we?”
“Come the morrow she won’t get any recall,” he said. “Gotta get what we can now.”
Laria’s cheeks were wet. “He had a hat on. All’s I remember, he had a hat on.”
“He big? Small? You see through him?” Terrible’s grip relaxed, his voice softened. “Come on, Laria. You recall it, aye? You just gotta think on it.”
“He weren’t big. Ain’t much bigger’n me. He were bendin over her when I come close enough to see—he stood up and he was…” Laria swallowed once, then again. “I seed through him.”
“He was transparent?”
“Could see through him,” Laria whispered. “‘Ceptin he looked up at me, under the brim o’ his hat, aye…funny hat, with a point in the center and them flaps on the side, on the ears? All of him clear, his clothes and all, ‘ceptin…” She raised a hand to her face, patted trembling fingers beneath one eye.
“His eyes?” The chill creeping up Chess’s spine had nothing to do with the temperature of the air.
“Not his eyes,” Laria said, and it came out like the low moan of a wounded animal. “Hers.”
“What?”
Laria started to cry. “Him were wearin she eyes.”
You must always be vigilant in guarding against the desires of the flesh. Even those acts not deemed illegal can stain the soul in some situations.
—The Book of Truth, Rules, Article 278
The knock on the door came just when she’d started to think it wouldn’t. Typical Lex. She opened it, determined not to let her tiredness loosen her lips.
Of course there were other things to do with those. Despite the way she’d hung up on him earlier, he seemed to be in a good mood—at least his kiss indicated he was. She was almost dizzy by the time he pulled away and set a plastic baggie in her hand. More pills.
“Plan on giving me the clapperclaw, Tulip?” His dark eyes gleamed with amusement—or desire. She didn’t bother to analyze.
“It’s no more than you deserve, being so flippant. I thought I was going to get killed in that damn alley.”
“But you ain’t killed.” He opened her fridge and grabbed a couple of beers. “Look, you still here. So whyn’t you tell me what was on the happening?”
She stiffened. “Why do you want to know?”
“Ain’t I allowed some curiosity? You get stuck in the middle of some road brawl, I can’t ask why you was there in the start? Why you always so mean to me?”
“I’m not mean.”
“Aye, you sure is mean.” He kissed her forehead and handed her an opened beer. She watched him slump gracefully onto the couch and lean back, his Buzzcocks T-shirt riding up to expose a thin line of flat stomach. “Especially after I called them men off. But no matter. Come on in here and sit down.”
She drank off half her beer in one nervous swig. She did not want to sit down. If she put herself within easy reach of him, they’d never get around to discussing anything, even if she wasn’t still jacked from the sex magic around that poor dead girl. “Tell me what you meant first.”
“Meant by what?”
“You know what. You said it was about time Bump got some payback. What did that mean?”
“You ain’t really wanna talk about dead folks and that Bump, do you? I ain’t seen you in a week.”
“Just tell me what you meant, and then we can talk about anything you want.”
She didn’t want to ask him if Slobag’s men were responsible for the dead girl. Didn’t want to ask, because fear coiled in her stomach when she thought about what his answer might be. Payback could mean a lot of things, yes, and she honestly couldn’t believe he would have anything to do with men who would cut the eyeballs out of a human head, living or not. But still…
Finally he shrugged. “Lot goes on here, you know that. Sometimes people turn up dead, and no way of knowing who did the killing.”
“That’s not an answer.”
“You ain’t asked a question.”
“Do you know anything about the dead girl? Do you—do you know who killed her?”
He didn’t act offended, or as though he didn’t understand the question. That, more than the way his gaze grabbed hers and held, made her believe him. “Nay, Tulip. Ain’t had nothing to do with it. Nothing at all. Don’t know who does—order ain’t come down from us, dig?”
The
