This she did, trying to stay in his wake as he cut back through the crowd to the front of the room, narrowly avoiding razoring her cheek on some guy’s Liberty spikes, and out the front doors.
Desultory clumps of people huddled outside, braving the cold to get a free listen once the band started playing. They shuffled out of the way when Terrible headed for the side of the building. Chess followed. For a second the cold soothed her heated skin before it became too much and she shivered. She should have brought a jacket, but they were such pains in the ass to hold on to in a club.
“Got problems.” He didn’t look at her as he dialed the phone and lifted it to his ear. “You know Red Berta, aye?”
“I know who she is.” Red Berta handled all of Bump’s girls—which meant she handled all of the Downside prostitutes west of Forty-third.
“Well—Hey.” Whoever he’d called must have answered. “Aye, she—When they find it? Shit. Aye, hang on. I’ll be there.”
She knew before he snapped the phone shut that he wanted her to go with him. What she didn’t know was why.
“What’s going on?”
He stood for a moment with his eyes narrowed, sliding the phone back into his pocket without paying attention while he worked out whatever it was he needed to work out. “Feel like ridin with me?”
“What’s going on?”
“Dead body.” His other hand went into his pocket. The movement made his shoulders look even broader, but the threat of his size had never been less evident. “One of Bump’s girls. Third one they find.”
“Somebody’s killing hookers?”
He shrugged. “Lookin like a ghost doin the killin. Wouldn’t ask otherwise.”
“What, just in the streets?”
“Ain’t you cold? Whyn’t you come on, Chess. Warmer in the car, aye? Just take a look.” His head turned back toward the huddled crowd. Right. Probably not a good idea to discuss this in public. So she nodded and followed him across the street while the music kept playing inside the bar.
Terrible’s ‘69 BT Chevelle straddled the curb two doors down, making the streetlight look like it was set up just to display it. New black paint gleamed in the orange glare. Chess was almost afraid to touch it, the way she would be afraid to approach any predator. The car seemed ready to leap forward on its fat black tires at any moment and start swallowing the road.
Sitting on the leather seat was like sitting on a block of ice, but Chess didn’t mention it. Terrible didn’t seem in the mood for jokes. Instead she waited for him to talk, knowing he’d get to it in his own time.
They’d gone about ten blocks through the abandoned streets west of Downside’s red-light district before he did. “First hooker,” he said. “But the third body, dig? Bump ain’t paid much attention before, outside getting pissed. Dealer first. Slick Michigan, know him?”
She shook her head. The heater was starting to work; she could have relaxed if it weren’t for her nerves. The last thing she wanted to do was get involved with a murderous ghost. Another murderous ghost, that is—she still hadn’t fully recovered from the Dreamthief.
Terrible kept talking while she fished out her pillbox and popped a couple of Cepts, washing them down with the beer she still held. “Found him maybe five weeks ago, down by the docks. Nobody think much of it. You know how them docks get. And Slick weren’t exactly the calm type. Figure he gets into a fight, aye? Plays with some boy got a quick knife hand.”
“He was knifed?”
“Aye.”
“But then—”
He glanced at her. “Second one came a couple weeks ago, guessin. Little Tag. He a runner, aye? Ain’t sell, ain’t handle much. Just carryin from one place to another. Found him in an alley off Brewster.”
“I didn’t even know there were alleys off Brewster.” She looked out the window. They’d gone south first, down to Mather. Now Terrible swung the big car left against the light. What was a hooker doing this far off the drag, this close to the end of Bump’s territory?
“Aye. Ain’t much good in them places, neither. Nobody even sure how long he was there. He body…ain’t pretty, if you dig. Hardly any left.” He took a long pull on his own beer and set it back down between his thighs, then took two cigarettes from his pocket and lit them.
Chess took the one he offered her and leaned back in her seat, letting the smoke curl out of her mouth and up toward the roof. “And now a girl,” she said.
“Aye.”
“You still haven’t told me why you think it’s a ghost.”
“Ain’t sure it’s a ghost. Not me, not Bump. Got others thinkin so, though.”
“So you want me to come in and say it isn’t?”
“Be a help, aye.”
“But what if it is?”
He glanced at her as he pulled the car up by a burnedout building. “You think be a ghost, Bump gonna call the Church, ask them take care of it? Or you think he come to you?”
Shit.
His jacket practically swallowed her when she slipped it on. She shrugged it off and handed it back. Best not to look like a little girl. Probably best not to show up wearing his clothes, either. Their casual friendship already sparked enough rumors—although those probably wouldn’t have been as fierce if she hadn’t lost her head and let half of Downside see her practically fucking him in a bar three months before. She shrugged the memory off, too, tried to focus on what was in front of her instead of what was behind.
Fires in steel trash cans added a little heat to the air and cast eerie shadows against the blank, broken walls along the street. Forty-fifth was practically no-man’s-land this far down, a street constantly under siege from Slobag’s men as they struggled to gain more territory. Here and there lights flickered in broken windows, indicating human inhabitants, but for the most part only shattered bottles and dirty needles called the street home.
Chess glanced to her left, across the street. A block away Slobag’s buildings started. Ten or eleven blocks farther north and a few east lived Lex. She shivered and had to force herself not to cross her arms over her chest. If she was going to suffer the cold in order to look tough, she needed to do it right.
The cold was abating a bit anyway as those last two Cepts worked their way into her system. Speaking of Lex, she’d need to go see him in the morning.
A tall woman with a mane of red hair so bright it glowed in the light strode away from the ragtag crowd and headed toward them. Her long legs were wrapped in woolly tights almost the same color, finished with thick knee-high orange-striped socks that peeped from the toes of her red high-heeled sandals. She wore no skirt, only a thick green sweater, and over her shoulders hung a sleek black fur coat. On anyone else Chess would have thought it was rat, but this was Red Berta. It could have been sealskin from before Haunted Week, or just about anything else. She looked terrifying, like a doll dressed by a homicidal child.
“Terrible,” she said, and beneath the brashness of her tone Chess heard her fear, felt it tingle. “Took you long enough.”
He didn’t reply, just pushed his way through the ring of people and glanced back at Chess. She followed, her steps slowing against her will. A dead body was not what she’d had in mind when she went out for a drink. A dead body, in fact, was never what she had in mind for anything, and feeling so many eyes on her did not make it easier.
Some watched with curiosity, some with hostility. Those she could ignore. It was the hope that drove a knife into her stomach and twisted it. A few girls in short skirts, their pale legs the ashy pinkish-white that indicated the beginning of hypothermia, huddled together and stared at her as if she could wave a magic wand and bring their