High Bloods by John Farris Read Free Book Online

such.”
    Artie fumbled in his shirt pocket for a blister pack of small white pills and swallowed one. He was beginning to look clammy.
    “That’s fucking swell. Potential five mil her next contract. What’s she done that we can’t plea-bargain or buy her out of?”
    “She did a Hairball number on Artie Excalibur at de Sade’s a few hours ago. Sorry, Johnny. But this you keep to yourself.”
    Johnny breathed through his mouth, a hand over his heart as if he were about to give sworn testimony.
    “I love the kid like a daughter!” He looked up at me accusingly. “Is she dead? Did you kill her, Rawson?”
    “I shot her. Not fatally. But she’s missing. I doubt that there’s much chance she’s still alive. If my silver didn’t do it, then whoever drove Chickie away from de Sade’s has finished the job, maybe after she skinnydipped.”
    “Somebody had the stones to put a werewolf in his car? Reminds me of the old joke.” Assuming I had heard it, he went straight to the punch line: “‘
Thought it was the best pussy I’d ever had, until she told me she’d bikini-waxed her face.’
” Johnny squeezed his hands together so hard some color appeared in his cheeks, a mild pink flush.
    “It was an SUV,” I said. “Chickie was low sick by then, from the last look I had of her. Right now she’s either in the upper Mojave under a pile of rocks or marinating in a dump. I hope we find her, although by the time we do there won’t be a trace left of whatever they programmed her with.”
    “Program a werewolf? Last I heard, they don’t take direction.”
    “Chickie did. I’m reasonably sure. Any idea of who might have found Artie expendable in their scheme of things?”
    Johnny shrugged.
    “He was in and out of some deals, always with a profit. Had a savvy eye for the next good thing, little start-ups that need cash bad. There’s a lot of competish in those areas of investment. Artie couldn’t crack an egg with his punches anymore, but his footwork was still fancy. Never stepped on any important High Blood toes that I know of.”
    “His word was his bond?”
    “Good enough for me, yeah. He put me into a couple of real moneymakers. Wind turbine leases. That biodiesel utility company in Camarillo. Artie was big on saving the planet.” Padre smiled cynically. “Maybe he thought there’s gonna be somebody left to enjoy it.”
    “When did you see Artie last?”
    “Our Thursday-night game. Upstairs at the Redondo casino he has a piece of. Two tables, regulars only, twelve or fifteen of us, depending. Kind of a who’s who in SoCal, you know?”
    He seemed pleased to be including himself.
    “Miles Brenta one of them?”
    “Doesn’t gamble. Says he has no card sense. Poker would be the only thing he’s not good at. I think he just prefers fast toys and hunting dangerous game for amusement.”
    Johnny glanced anxiously at the table where proposals were being floated without him.
    “Listen. About Chickie. It’s a tragedy. A great loss. Maybe what you find out, you could keep me in the loop? Like a daughter to me.”
    His look of compassion for the presumably departed Chickie was enough to bring tears to the glass eyes of a stuffed moose head.
    “Aren’t they all?” I said.
    When I pulled up in front of the house on Breva Way I sat in the Humvee looking at a bed of red, white, and purple china asters, letting my mind slack off while my brain continued humming dependably along, putting out its steady twelve watts of electrical energy, impulses lighting up the glowworm cellular network that makes up the human—and animal—nervous system.
    It took a little while before I consciously realized I was trying to connect with something. Like another energy field from another mind that lingered on the periphery of psychic recognition, a spirit not unknown but unnamable in the bright, suddenly creepy silence of early morning.
    Human, animal, both? My internal séance, as they usually are, was unnerving. I broke it