I wanted a little word with Harry the Weasel. To put it fucking mildly.
It wasn’t hard to round him up now that I knew where he drank. We both went that evening, to avoid any misunderstandings about whether I was serious or not. Trixie turned more than a few heads in the shitty dive of a pub that Weasel called his local, for all that I had told her to dress down. Trixie’s idea of dressing down was leggings and a T-shirt. Leggings, for fucksake. I could hardly take my eyes off her as I followed her into the pub, and I wasn’t the only one. Even I had put some jeans on for once, and dug my battered old leather bomber jacket out of the back of the wardrobe. This really wasn’t the sort of place you went to in a suit if you could help it.
“Oi,” I said, when I saw Weasel standing at the fruit machine.
He almost jumped out of his skin. He was wearing new Nike trainers and a new tracksuit and a big tasteless gold ring, like he’d recently come into some money. I dare say he had, at that. I hoped he had asked for a lot of money to sell me out. I hoped he had enjoyed it too, because I’d be fucked if he was going to enjoy the consequences of it.
“Mr… Mr Drake,” he said, turning to stare at us with a panicky look in his lazy eye. “Ma’am.”
“Hello,” Trixie said. “I think you should come with us.”
To be fair to the little bastard he at least had the sense not to make a fuss. I could only assume he had figured out that being dragged out of his local on his ear by a woman that looked like Trixie wouldn’t do much for what little reputation he had. We bundled him into our waiting taxi and took him back to my office.
Trixie left me to it after that, and went through to the kitchen to have a smoke. I shoved Weasel into my workroom and shut the door behind us. I pushed him into the centre of the circle and forced him down onto his knees, making myself not look at the inanimate fetish that had once contained the Burned Man. I didn’t want to think about that right then, not after what had happened.
“Do you know the difference between Heaven and Hell, Weasel?” I asked him.
He nodded, but I ignored him. By then I couldn’t give a fuck what he thought he knew.
“Right now, in this room, you’re on Earth,” I said, “but you’re about to go to one or the other in the next few minutes. Heaven for you is my office, the other side of that door. In Heaven there’s a comfortable sofa, and a cup of coffee and a fag. Maybe a whisky, if you want it. That’s Heaven. Does that sound good, Weasel?”
He nodded again, and I could see the fear in his eyes. Good.
“Hell…” I started, and I looked down at him.
I had to admit I didn’t really know how to do this sort of thing. I know I’d promised Trixie that I wouldn’t bully the Weasel again but that was before he set me up to get killed. I wasn’t having that. I thought of Gold Steevie. What would Steevie have said, before I melted him to the floor of his warehouse?
“Hell is a lockup about twenty minutes’ drive from here. Hell is boltcutters and blowtorches, and having your fingers and toes cut off. Hell is nasty little hammers and chisels, and losing all your teeth without anaesthetic.”
Weasel whimpered, but he still wasn’t talking. I glared at him. I glared at him, and I remembered Lavender. Oh dear God, yes, I remembered Lavender, who had been Wellington Phoenix’s pet torturer. I had met Lavender once, under very unpleasant circumstances. I didn’t think I would ever forget Lavender. I leaned forwards and got right in Weasel’s face, keeping my voice low.
“Hell is what the IRA used to call a six pack. Hell is having your wrists and elbows and knees destroyed. Hell is power drills and plastic explosive and me deciding whether or not you get to ever walk or feed yourself again, you little cunt.”
Weasel broke.
It was hardly surprising, all things considered. I had too, when Lavender had given me much the same little speech. Adam had sent Lavender to Hell with a .50 calibre bullet through the face, and I sincerely hoped he was still screaming down there. I like to think he was, anyway.
Weasel started to talk.
“It was a lady, Mr Drake,” he confessed, his lazy eye weeping slowly onto his stubbled cheek. “An American lady.”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. I had a sudden nasty suspicion that I knew who he was talking about. “Did she by any chance have a big feather fan?”
Weasel nodded eagerly. “Yeah,” he said. “Them big ones with what look like eyes on the end of them. Peacock feathers, I think.”
I nodded. I knew who that was all right. Miss Fucking Marie. I had been sure she was taking an unhealthy interest in me and my affairs, and it looked like I had been right. One day I’ll learn to listen to myself, I promise.
“And what did she promise you, Weasel?” I asked him. “What was my life worth?”
“Five grand,” he said.
I kicked him in the face.
“Five grand?” I shouted at him. “Is that fucking all?”
Weasel snivelled and picked himself up off the floor.
“I’m sorry, Mr Drake,” he said.
For fucksake. Five grand? That was a fucking insult.
“Is that all you think I’m worth, Weasel?”
“I’m sorry,” he said again. “I’ve got debts.”
“I don’t give a fuck what you’ve got,” I snarled. “You sold me out to the peacock woman for five cunting grand, you little shit!”
I raised a hand and he cowered, and suddenly I felt about three inches tall. What the fuck was I turning into? I was no Nick Regan, I knew that much. At least, I hadn’t been. I looked at the empty fetish that used to contain the Burned Man, and I thought about where the Burned Man was now. I swallowed. I had changed recently, that much was for bloody certain.
“Get up, Weasel,” I said.
He gave me a fearful look. I held a hand out to him and eventually he took it, and I pulled him up onto his feet.
“I’m sorry, Mr Drake,” he whispered.
I sighed. “Yeah, you are,” I said. “You’re a sorry little bastard all right. Get in that office.”
He scurried out of the workroom and I followed him, shutting the door carefully behind me. I knew Trixie wouldn’t set foot in there unless I physically shoved her in, but all the same, the last thing I wanted was her catching sight of that fetish in its current state. She might be a bit naive but that would have given the game away good and proper.
“Sit,” I told Weasel, pointing at the chair opposite my desk. “I’m going to make some coffee. And Weasel, don’t even think about doing a runner. If you’re not still glued to that chair when I come back I’ll hunt you down and then I really will hurt you, you understand?”
He nodded miserably and I went through to the kitchen. Trixie was standing at the window with her back to me, staring out into the darkness.
“Is he still alive?” she asked without turning around.
“Yeah, ‘course he is,” I said. “Jesus, what do you take me for?”
“I’m not sure any more,” she said.
I winced. That hurt, I have to admit.
“Look,” I said. “Look, Trixie, about today. I–”
“No,” she said. “Don’t, Don. If there’s something you don’t want to tell me then there we are, but please don’t lie to me again.”
“Right,” I said. “Well, OK. Fair enough.”
I filled the kettle and stood in awkward silence while it boiled.
“I’ll have a coffee if you’re making,” she said, and it seemed that was the end of it.
I made three cups and took mine and Weasel’s back through to the office. At least he was still there. That was something, I supposed.
“Right,” I said as sat down across the desk from him. “Start fucking talking, you little git.”
Weasel sighed and put his head in his hands.
“I didn’t know it was a trap,” he said. “Not at first, anyway. There was people talking, see, about how they wanted to meet you, and I said I knew you and I could set it up. For a fee, like. I mean, ain’t nothing free, is there, Mr Drake?”
“No,” I said. “Not in this life there’s not. So were they really organising against Adam or did you just fucking make that up?”
“I… I sort of made that bit up,” he confessed. “Like a sweetener, you know, to get you interested like.”
I sighed. Weasel was one of those people who was just clever enough to get himself into trouble, if you know what I mean.
“So then what?” I asked him.
“Well, they offered me a bit more than I was expecting, and I got suspicious.”
“So that was when you came running to warn me, right?”
He had the good grace to hang his head in shame, at least.
“I needed the money,” he said. “I’ve got debts, and the sort of blokes I owe money to weren’t going to take no for an answer. I had to.”
“No, you fucking didn’t,” I said. “Oh whatever, Weasel. I shouldn’t expect any better from the likes of you, I know that. Who were these people?”
“Just some blokes,” he said. “Persian geezers, from Iraq or somewhere. Maybe they really were Yazidis, I dunno, but I kinda doubt it. Anyway they took me to this posh gaff up North London and that’s where I met the lady.”
“The American lady with the fan, right?”
He nodded. “Yeah,” he said. “Her and some young blonde bird – I think she was her girlfriend, like. They was all over each other when we came in. Anyway, these geezers brought me in and she chased the blonde one out so we could talk. Turned out she wanted a word with you. A… you know, a bit of a stern word as you might say. So I made a deal with her, and she paid me five grand. Shit, they didn’t hurt you, did they, Mr Drake? I mean, you look all right.”
“Six of them and their pet demons tried to kill me,” I said. “Didn’t work.”
“Fucking hell…”
“What’s her name, this American woman?” I asked. I mean by then I damn well knew who she was, but I wondered if she had even bothered to make up a fake name for Weasel.
“Marie something or other,” he said. “Dunno what, the geezers all just called her Miss Marie.”
Obviously not. That’s how sure she had been that this was going to work. I glared at him for a moment, thinking back over what he had said. Something was nagging at the back of my mind and it wasn’t just the presence of the Burned Man. Something he’d said…
“A young blonde bird,” I said suddenly. “What did she look like, this little blonde?”
“Cracking,” Weasel said, with an unpleasant leer. “Bit too young really but, well, you know. Posh, too.”
“Did you get a name?”
He shrugged. “I dunno. Some posh bird’s name. Jo… Josephine? Joanna?”
“Jocasta?” I suggested.
“Yeah, fuck, that’s it,” he said.
Fucking hell. That was a turn up for the books. I wondered if Papa Armand knew. He was either up to something very clever or he was being had, and I wasn’t sure which it was. Either way, something wasn’t right about this.
“When was this, exactly?” I asked him.
“Day before yesterday,” he said. “About, I dunno, five-ish?”
I nodded.
“Keep quiet,” I said, and picked up the phone. I punched Papa Armand’s number from memory.
“Papa?” I said when he picked up. “It’s Don.”
“Don-boy Drake, good to hear you,” he said, and I could hear the big grin in his voice.
I hated to take that cheerfulness away from him, I really did, but I knew I had to.
“Papa, I need to ask you something,” I said. “Where were you the day before yesterday at five pm?”
“Home,” he said. “Watching the football. Why?”
I cleared my throat. “Was Jocasta with you?”
He paused. “No,” he said. “She was out, visitin’ with her sister.”
Was she fuck as like.
“Look, Papa,” I said, “I think I need to talk to you. Do you fancy a beer?”
“I don’ think I’m going to like what you have to tell me, am I?” Papa said. “All right, we’ll drink together. I’ll come you, you tell me where.”
I had a feeling that meant he didn’t want to have to explain me in the sort of swanky Knightsbridge bars he probably frequented when he wasn’t at Wormwood’s, but whatever. It saved me the cab fare over the river if nothing else. I gave him the address of the Rose and Crown, and then had a sudden vision of him swanning into the place in a tailcoat and top hat. I could just picture the look on Shirley’s face if he did that, not to mention what some of the local lads might have made of it.
“Oh, and Papa? Dress down. Really, dress down.”
“Sure,” he said, and hung up.
I looked at Weasel. “We’re going for a beer,” I said.
“We are?”
“Yeah, we are.”
To be fair it was getting late by then, but the Rose and Crown didn’t have much of a concept of closing time as I’ve said. I went through to the kitchen to tell Trixie.
“I need to see Papa about something,” I said. “Me and Weasel are meeting him for a beer at the Rose and Crown if you fancy it?”
She turned and looked at me, her face expressionless. I swallowed. Perhaps that hadn’t been the end of it after all.
“All right,” she said after a moment. “Yes, why not?”
We made a jolly little group walking down the street, me in jeans and a jumper and my old leather jacket, Weasel in his garish new tracksuit and Trixie still wearing those bloody leggings I could hardly take my eyes off. She had put on a short coat that at least covered her arse, that was something I supposed. No one was really talking to anyone else, admittedly, but other than that all was well. I sighed inwardly. Oh we happy three.
We got to the pub in about fifteen minutes, and it must have been nearly eleven by then. I herded Weasel to the bar with me while Trixie claimed a table for us in the corner.
“Evening, Duchess,” I said.
Shirley turned her twinkling eye on me and smiled.
“Hello duck,” she said. “Pint and a G&T, is it?”
“Please darlin’,” I said. “And whatever this article is drinking.”
“Pint please,” Weasel muttered.
He looked nervous, and no wonder. What with his track record and the sort of place the Rose and Crown was, there were probably people in there he’d rather not be seen by. Well that was just tough. I glared at him for a moment, then felt a faint spark of pity. The poor little bastard was obviously shitting himself.
“Do us a round of chasers as well, will you, love,” I said. “And one for yourself, obviously.”
Shirley’s smile widened as she stuck a glass under the optic and sorted herself a large vodka and tonic, then three whiskies as well as our beers and Trixie’s gin and tonic. That lot was a bit of a juggling act to get back to the table but me and Weasel managed it between us. Blokes don’t make two trips from the bar, you know what I mean? Fuck knows why not, thinking about it, but I’ve never met a geezer who wouldn’t rather try to carry five glasses at once than go back for the others. I dunno, it must be a bloke thing, by which I mean it’s basically stupid.
We sat down with Trixie and she got up to visit the ladies. I couldn’t help noticing the way Weasel stared after her like a dog with the itch. I jabbed him sharply in the ribs.
“You can pack that in right now,” I said.
He gave me a wounded look. “I’m only looking, Mr Drake,” he said.
“Yeah well fucking don’t,” I said.
“Ain’t no harm in looking,” he muttered, picking up his pint.
“There’s a whole world of harm in looking at her, you understand me?”
He sighed and nodded, and I realised I probably ought to have a bit of a word with myself again. She wasn’t my old lady, and he wasn’t my slave to push around however I pleased. I knew that. I knew that, but I wasn’t too sure the Burned Man did. Or more likely it did and it just didn’t care.
“Look, Weasel…” I started, but then the pub door opened and Papa Armand walked in.
To be fair he had dressed down, just like I’d asked. He was wearing jeans with a pair of old boots and a white T-shirt and a black leather jacket that hung in folds from his thin shoulders. He wasn’t wearing his hat, thank fuck, and the pub lights gleamed from his shiny bald head. He had a very sculpted looking skull, like he had been designed for maximum aerodynamics. He might have looked a bit like the missing black member of the Village People, but for once he wasn’t dressed like a Houngan at all. And that made no fucking difference whatsoever.
I saw Billy from the market turn and stare at him as he came in. Billy’s black but he’s every bit as English as I am, but as soon as he set eyes on Armand he crossed himself right there in front of everyone and stood with his head bowed as the old man passed.
“Papa,” I distinctly heard him say.
Jesus, some people just can’t be inconspicuous can they?
I waved and he headed over.
“Hi Papa,” I said. “What’re you drinking?”
He grinned and shook my hand before he sat.
“In here, I think lager,” he said.
That was probably for the best. I mean, I’m sure Shirley had some cooking-grade supermarket rum behind the bar but I couldn’t imagine it would be up to his standards. I got up to get him a pint, and met Trixie on her way back from the ladies.
“Papa Armand is here,” I said.
She nodded and returned to the table without speaking. Oh this was going to be a fun night all round, wasn’t it? I got him a pint and a whisky as well. I had no idea if he even drank whisky, but we all had one and I didn’t want him to feel left out. By the time I got back to the table he was already flirting with Trixie, which was no more than I expected.
Weasel gave me a wounded look as much as to say “why is it all right for him to make fresh with her and not me” but I ignored him. If he had to ask how things like that worked he would never understand.
“Cheers,” I said, raising my pint.
Glasses were rather half-heartedly clinked together, out of tradition rather than any sort of real enthusiasm. Papa Armand gave Weasel a pointed look.
“I don’ know your friend,” he said.
“Papa, this is Harry the Weasel,” I said. “Weasel, this is Houngan Armand. Show him some respect.”
Weasel nodded weakly and held out a limp hand to shake. Papa ignored it.
“Why?” he asked.
Why is he here? He’s here because he caught your jailbait girlfriend making out with your… what? Your rival? Your enemy? I realised I didn’t even know what the mysterious Miss Marie was to Papa Armand, other than that every time I had seen them in Wormwood’s club together they had been arguing and looking murder at each other. It suddenly occurred to me that if they were playing some sort of weird threesome sex game I was going to look like a prize pillock. I mean it probably wasn’t likely, but to be honest I wouldn’t have put it past him. I don’t think I’d have put much of anything past him, now that I thought about it.
“Weasel works for me,” I said, for the sake of a better explanation. “He was approached by some people, some Middle Eastern geezers calling themselves the Initiates of the Melek Taus.”
“Yazidis?” Papa asked at once.
Not much got past the old goat, you had to give him that.
“Nah, I don’t think so,” I said. “I think they’re just calling themselves that. All the same, the peacock imagery probably resonated with them, if you know what I mean.”
His eyes narrowed suspiciously and he downed his whisky with a practised flick of his wrist. “Oh yeah?”
“Marie,” I said, my eyes holding his steady gaze across the table. “Miss Marie of the peacock feather fan. She put these wankers up to setting a pack of vorehounds on me.”
“You still here,” Papa Armand said. “Guess it didn’t work.”
“Oh it worked all right,” I said. “We fought them, me and Trixie. We won.”
He nodded and gave her a slow sideways look that I could see damn well lingered longer on her thighs in those bloody leggings than it should have done.
“Madame Zanj Bèl don’ take any shit,” he said, and laughed.
His laugh was so rich and dark and simply joyous that I forgave him instantly. Once again I thought I could see the kindly, smiling face of Papa Legba wavering in the air in front of him, with his battered old straw hat and corncob pipe. There was just something about Papa Armand, you know? Something fatherly that made you love him, and made you want him to love you back. I guess that’s the mark of a really good priest.
“Nor does Don, these days,” said Trixie.
Her voice was flat, not accusing but certainly not condoning either. It was as though she was stating a simple fact, like how much two plus two added up to. She sipped her gin and stared into the air over my left shoulder.
“Mmmm,” Papa Armand said. “No, I don’ ‘spect he does.”
I swallowed. Papa was staring at me now, a fixed, level stare that was no longer kindly or smiling. I couldn’t help but wonder… I mean, it had been his idea in the first place, hadn’t it? It had been Papa who had told me how to bind the Burned Man into a talisman to take it to face Bianakith, and to be fair, he had warned me the genie might not be too keen on going back into the bottle afterwards if I had to release it. Had he known what was going to happen? If he had even suspected and not told me, then we were going to have a fucking issue over it sooner or later, as far as I was concerned. I looked from him to Trixie to Weasel, and had to accept that this was neither the time nor the place to be having that conversation. I drained my pint.
“Same again, folks?” I asked.
When we were settled with a second round and everyone had loosened up a bit, I prodded Weasel in the ribs and nodded towards Papa Armand.
“Now would be a good time for you to tell us a little story,” I told him.
So Weasel told Papa what he had told me, about the Iraqi geezers and how they had taken him to Miss Marie’s house. About how Jocasta had been there, sitting half naked on Miss Marie’s ample lap until she shooed her out of the room so she could talk business. Just the way Armand had shooed her out when I had visited him, I realised.
Papa’s face set like a stone. OK, so this obviously wasn’t some weird threesome thing then. Oh dear.
“My Jocasta,” he said. “You sure, Don-boy?”
I shrugged.
“No,” I confessed, “I can’t be sure, I suppose. I wasn’t there, and Weasel has never met your Jocasta, but… well, come on Papa, what are the odds of it being a different teenage blonde called Jocasta who moves in our circles? Pretty slim, right?”
“Fucking anorexic,” Papa said. He glared at Weasel until the poor little bastard looked like he was going to wet himself in his horrible tracksuit. “I don’ like this.”
“No,” I said. “No, I never supposed you would, Papa, and I’m sorry to be the one to tell you but I figured you’d want to know all the same.”
“Yeah,” he said. “I want a cigar.”
He got up and necked the end of his pint, and Trixie stood up too.
“I could do with a smoke,” she said. “I’ll come with you.”
They headed outside together, leaving me at the table with Weasel. Damn, sometimes I really did wish I smoked too. If only it wasn’t such a rank habit I might have taken it up myself.
“That went fucking well,” I muttered.
“I did what you said though, right Mr Drake?” Weasel said. “I told the black fella what happened.”
“Yeah, and didn’t that just make his fucking day?”
Weasel nodded glumly and sipped his beer. I still didn’t know who Miss Marie was exactly, but it was plain as day Papa Armand was furious that his bird had been seeing her as well as him. Whether that was down to the infidelity or the disloyalty or a bit of both I didn’t know, but I dare say it didn’t matter. Either or both, I had a feeling little Princess Jocasta was going to grow up bloody fast when Papa caught up with her. I mean, I didn’t really condone him shagging a bird that young, but if you want to play in our circles then you have to learn the rules pretty quickly.
Me and Weasel sat and drank in sullen silence. I didn’t want to talk to him, and apparently he didn’t dare try to strike up a conversation with me. That was fine. The Rose and Crown wasn’t a chatty place at the best of times really. Most of the geezers who went there either came to do business, which generally happened in the back, or just to get pissed. Getting pissed doesn’t require a lot of conversation as it goes.
I was starting to wonder when Papa Armand and Trixie would be coming back when a bloke walked up to our table. I supposed a cigar probably took longer to smoke than a couple of fags and no doubt she was waiting for him to finish just to be polite, but when I looked up and saw the size of this geezer, I have to admit I wished she was at the table with us. He was Russian by the looks of him, or maybe Polish. You can just tell from looking sometimes, get me?
“Harry Weasel,” he said in a thick accent, like he thought it was really his last name.
He loomed over us in a scuffed black leather blouson jacket and tight jeans that strained over his meaty thighs, his broken-nosed face a butcher’s block of old faded scars beneath his cropped hair. He might as well have had a sign saying “hired muscle” hanging around his neck.
Weasel gulped.
“Nah,” he said. “You’ve got the wrong bloke, mate.”
“Fuck you,” Russian Muscle said, and grabbed Weasel by the front of his tracksuit.
He dragged Weasel out of his seat with both hands, ignoring me completely. That, as it went, was fucking rude of him. I glanced towards the door but there was still no sign of Trixie. That was probably best, I thought. A gorgeous blonde beating up a Soviet hardman in the Rose and Crown would have upset the local ecosystem beyond my ability to imagine. The world just didn’t work like that around here.
“Oi,” I said, and caught his eye.
“You got a fucking problem?” he said.
He let go of Weasel with one huge hand and stuck it in my face instead.
“Yeah,” I said. “I fucking have as it goes.”
I grabbed his hand and squeezed. I felt the muscles in my forearm clench with a strength I had never known before, and my hand closed like a hydraulic vice around the bloke’s meaty paw.
“Weasel is a greasy, lying, treacherous little shit,” I said, “but he’s my greasy, lying, treacherous little shit. You understand?”
My hand closed tighter, and I heard bones crunch in my grip. Russian Muscle let go of Weasel altogether and stared at me, his eyes bulging in his ugly scarred face. His other hand dipped towards the back pocket of his jeans and came out with a blade in it.
Oh you twat, the Burned Man thought.
I surged to my feet with a snarl. The Burned Man was driving now, I already knew that. Don’t burn the fucking pub down, I begged it. Shit, I liked the Rose and Crown, you know? It seemed like the Burned Man knew that too. I hit the geezer instead, my left fist slamming into his solar plexus so hard I felt his sternum crack. He folded around me and collapsed in a wheezing heap, almost taking the table over with him as he went.
Alfie was there then, the baseball bat he kept behind the bar raised in his hands, and a moment later Trixie stepped back into the pub with Papa Armand behind her. I ignored the lot of them and stared down at Russian Muscle. He was finished, from what I could see.
“Fuck a duck, Don,” Alf said. “Where did you learn to hit like that?”
I shrugged, embarrassed. Obviously all this kung fu shit was coming from the Burned Man, not me. All I knew was my hands hurt like hell again, but at least nothing was on fire this time.
“Thanks, Mr Drake,” Weasel said in a shaky sort of voice.
Shirley had come out from behind the bar now too, and she was standing beside Alfie in her high heels and too-tight skirt looking down at the twitching Russian bloke.
“Get him out of here, Alf,” she said. “I ain’t calling a bleedin’ ambulance, it’s bad for business. Ambulances come with rozzers and no one wants that in here.”
“Yes, Ma,” Alf said.
He hooked the huge Russian geezer under the armpits with both hands and dragged him towards the door. I doubted anyone would see him again, or miss him for that matter. The Rose and Crown was that sort of place, if you know what I mean.
“Sorry about that, Shirl,” I said.
She smiled at me. “Don’t you worry about it, duck, he started it I’m sure,” she said.
He had, to be fair, but I knew damn well it wouldn’t have mattered either way. Shirley was a sweetheart like that, and very understanding about business.
“Thanks, Duchess,” I said, before Trixie came and got in my face.
“What exactly do you think you’re doing?” she hissed at me.
I swallowed. “He was after Weasel,” I said. “I, um… Yeah. I talked him out of it.”
“I don’t know what’s got into you, Don,” she said, “but I don’t think I care for it.”
You don’t know the half of it, Blondie, the Burned Man sniggered.
“Yeah, sorry,” I said. “Won’t happen again.”
Papa Armand sat back down at the table as though nothing had happened.
“Thank you for tellin’ me, Don-boy,” he said.
I nodded. “What are you going to do about Jocasta?”
“I don’ know yet,” he said. “Maybe something, maybe not.”
“Who is this Marie anyway?” I asked him.
“Oh, ol’ friend. Ol’ enemy. Just business to start with, but some things happen that she take personally, you know?”
I didn’t, particularly, but I supposed it wasn’t really any of my business. What was my business was that she had tried to have me killed.
“And why the hell does she want me dead?”
He chuckled. “You gettin’ conspicuous, Don-boy,” he said. “Pushing Wormwood around.”
A mortal speaking to an archdemon like that, shoving him around, I remembered Marie saying to me. That’s the sort of thing that gets a man noticed, and that kind of notice isn’t always good if you take my meaning.
Obviously not.
“You and Madame Zanj Bèl,” Papa added. “She conspicuous too.”
I glanced sidelong at Trixie, at her blazing white lie of an aura. I had to admit he had a point there.
“I suppose,” I muttered.
“Someone like you, gettin’ too powerful too quick, you know how it is. Some people think it best to just get their revenge in first.”
I sighed. Jesus, I needed more enemies like I needed a dose of the clap. I wondered if that would be the end of it, and decided it almost certainly wouldn’t.
“Look, Papa,” I said. “I don’t know what’s between Marie and you and if it’s personal then I understand that, but… well, I don’t need any more of her boys trying to feed me to their dogs, you know what I mean?”
“Oh, that won’ happen,” he said, and there was a grim set to his mouth now that I don’t think I’d ever seen before. “Papa talk to Guédé tonight. Papa sort this bitch out, don’ you worry ‘bout that.”
The Guédé are the death spirits of Haitian Vodou, in case you didn’t know. Papa Armand wasn’t fucking about with this one.