Demon Card Enforcer 3, Chapter 36

Chapter Thirty-Six: Wheeling, Dealing, and Warnings

            “I’m surprised you let that fat fuck go,” Miriam said over the table they all sat at in the Ekron Eternal. Wolfe noted that even though it had only been a few days, the bullet holes and blood from his assault here were gone—and despite being in the early afternoon, Miriam was keeping the place dim and foggy, its ambiance restored from when Wolfe had last seen it.

            Although she isn’t playing the club music, thank the gods.

            Derek and a new guy named Anthony were talking. Anthony was Miriam’s replacement deckbearer with the Egyptian/undead deck, with the same chiseled Egyptian features as the dead and barely lamented Ahmed, although he was a couple inches taller even than Wolfe’s six-foot-two, which was impressive.

            Shel and Fern and even Malviere were talking as well, and Cereboo lounged at Wolfe’s feet, panting happily.

            Wolfe yawned, his hand over his mouth as he involuntarily did an impression of a snake eating an egg. It had been a long night, even with Miriam’s crew, cleaning up everything… to the extent it had been cleaned up.

            Mirima gently rapped a silver-and-black stiletto onto the table, leaving the tiniest groove, which she frowned at. “I said, I’m surprised you let the fat fuck go.”

            Wolfe focused on Miriam again, blinking slightly. She was dressed with her usual ‘panache,’ a white, semi-diaphanous gown over a black slip that left her barely decent, with a silver and onyx necklace that drew the eye, even in the dim light of the club.

            “Yeah, well, it’s my only chance to get cards before I have to face the Renfeldt family, and with the rate things are moving, probably Adam’s stooge Nathan as well,” Wolfe said with a grimace, taking a sip from his whiskey before continuing. “Fern doesn’t think he’ll tattle on us—she things he’s gonna run. Given how bad my one beating of him last year broke his spirit, I suspect she’s right.”

            “That’s an awful risk to take,” Miriam replied, leaning back and snuggling between Derek and Anthony before crossing her thin arms over her chest.

            Fern glanced up from her conversation. “We’re already fine on that front at least.”

            “What?” Miriam asked, startled enough to immediately lean forward again. “How do you know?”

            Fern placed her laptop on the giant table and turned it around, facing the group. “A credit card registered to Gopal bought a plane ticket to Pakistan half an hour ago. He’ll be gone in less than an hour.”

            The screen showed a bank transaction list, and second from the top, below a hefty ‘lobby concession’ purchase, was a ticket on Elemental Lines.

            “He could still call the police from outside the country,” Miriam said.

            But Wolfe was more concerned with Fern’s other choice of words—she didn’t tend to use language in manner other than precise. “What did you mean when you said ‘fine on that front at least?’”

            Fern didn’t answer directly, instead turning the laptop around and tapping on it for a few seconds. After, she turned it back around. Everyone leaned in.

            It was a memo from Chief Huang, head of the entire Noimoire police department, to the heads of every single precinct.

            Wolfe read through quickly, his frown deepening with each line. “So, basically, they’re going to be putting everything into finding out who killed the Singh family, and bringing them to justice?”

            Fern turned the computer back around, nodding. “Yeah. Given that it was a borderline paramilitary style hit and left two flaming wrecks on the freeway and one giant flaming mansion in a posh neighborhood…”

            “Yeah,” Wolfe said, grimacing again. “Even for deckbearer fights that was a bit past the norm.”

            “It was a very blatant hit, even if you hid who did it semi-well.”

            “So, we’re on a clock before I’m an out-and-out bad guy again?” Wolfe asked. “Only we don’t know how long till they figure out it was me?”

            Before anyone else could respond, Wolfe’s phone buzzed in his pocket. He glanced down at the phone, seeing ‘Liutenant Righteous Prick’ on his phone.

            Wolfe held a hand up for silence. “Guys, hold up. Rhett’s calling.”

            He answered the phone. “Didn’t think I’d be hearing from you, at least till um… everything blows over, let us say.”

            Rhett’s voice was tight. “I wanted to give you a heads up, just in case your involved with the Singh family situation. Chief Huang of the Noimoire police has made it his absolute top priority to find and arrest the ones responsible.”

            “We know,” Wolfe replied.

            “Did you also know that he sent out calls to all the other police departments around, including my Joliet one, and that the FBI has been called in?” Rhett asked.

            Shit. Wolfe glanced at Shel, whose eyes were very large. Then he glanced at Fern, who shook her head.

After a moment, Wolfe responded. “No… didn’t know that. Thanks for the heads up.”

            “If you were involved, William, you might want to find a way to get out of town… fast. They’ll track it all to you soon, one way or another.”

            “I read you loud and clear,” Wolfe said.

            “Alright, I’ve got criminals to catch, I’ll talk to you some other day.” With those clipped words, Rhett hung up.

            “Shit,” Wolfe said, lying back against the booth and putting the arm with the phone across his face. “Shit, shit, shit.”

            “I… I think I’m going to have to quit being a police officer,” Shel said, quietly, her eyes staring out into the statue-and-fog filled dance floor, but obviously seeing nothing.

            “At least here, yeah,” Wolfe responded to her, then hit his fist on the table. “Shit.”

            “You have a ton of money, and you said Cerberus himself gave you a quest,” Fern said quietly. “This is just a setback… you’ll likely have decades longer than usual to be together, and to build a life somewhere. But this is another time-table… and a variable one that we don’t know the end point for yet. We can still win and we can all get to safety.”

            Shel pulled her head back around. “Yeah, that’s true. And the first step…”

            “Is to see about trading cards,” Wolfe replied.

            It was Miriam’s turn to hold up her phone, which she did before rapping her fingernail on the table. “Well, in good news… they’ve agreed to meet you. But we all bring guys.”

            “Guys?” Wolfe asked.

            “Guys with guns,” Miriam said, “So that, and I quote, ‘nothing untoward happens.’”

            “Lovely.”

***

            The meeting place was a fancy restaurant that wasn’t officially open yet, called ‘Louie’s,’ something that felt to Wolfe more Quebecois than Noimorian, but whatever floated their boat, he supposed. They met in the back, in one of the fancy secluded dining rooms for special occasions.

            It was an uncomfortable fit, regardless. Miriam and Derek and her new guy were all here, as was Wolfe and Shel. On the other side of the table sat Hans and Lisa Berwick; the two they had traded cards with at the Rat Arena over a year ago.

Hans was still tall and overweight, but not grossly so. Wolfe remember his eyes as kinda sad, but now, they darted from side to side and he was visibly sweating and rubbing at the huge wart on the inside of his arm. Next to him sat a Lisa, a cute, blonde-haired girl who was obviously trying to hide her looks. She was dressed like a pile of laundry—she had on baggy, black sweatpants and an oversized black hoodie; it was so similar to the one before Wolfe had a brief doubt she had changed clothes, even. But this time she sat hunched and had the hood up.

Wolfe wasn’t sure why they were so nervous—they had four guards with guns with them. Any attempt to do anything here, in a closed room, would result in dead people on both sides, and no one wanted that, least of all Wolfe. He would never forgive himself if he got Shel killed, and even Miriam would hurt him quite a bit, he admitted to himself quietly.

“So, what have you got for us?” Hans asked.

Wolfe took the cards he’d gained from the fight—every single one except Klireen, the Infernal Gate set, and the Deck Slayer card—and passed them over. At the sight of the huge pile, Hans eyes widened.

But Lisa was the one that picked them up. “Give me a few minutes… or near an hour, really. I need to see what this is all going for, and what we’ll trade you for it.”

Wolfe didn’t actually know who Hans and Lisa worked for, which concerned him. He had always assumed that the six ‘families’ were the real crime powers in Noimoire, but the Rat Arena and Hans guys had been a surprise. Wolfe wondered if he was missing anything else.

He glanced around the tiny room as Lisa began slowly shuffling through cards and banging away on the keyboard.

“Parchisi, anyone?”

***

            Twenty minutes into the waiting, it had occurred to Wolfe that this might be a trap even though it hadn’t triggered yet—something to get him to wait around. But at his query, Fern texted that she hadn’t seen anything, and that it made total sense they had to check the cards.

            Forty minutes later, when Wolfe was on edge enough he was giving at least slight though to leaving, Lisa finally looked up.

            She pushed her glasses up on her forehead and rubbed at her eyes before staring at Wolfe. “My organization will give you thirty-seven million in trade for all seventy-seven cards.”

            “What?!” Shel asked heatedly, leaning forward. “How is that fair? Gavin would give us forty-five million in cash—there was some rare stuff in there, even a legendary! Plus, I know the cards you sell us will be marked up as well! We’re gonna get barely more than half value.”

            Lisa shrugged. “You’ll get it in untraceable cards, and you’ll get it within twenty-four hours, even if our selection is far more limited and a touch more expensive than Gavin’s. Take it or leave it—this isn’t a charity or a debate society.”

            Shel sat back and crossed her arms over her chest, but Wolfe got it. Close to sixty percent on stolen goods—even if they were cards, about the most valuable to weight thing in the entire world—was actually damn good.

            “We’ll take it. What have you got?”

            “I need things more specific than that.”

            “Unique Infernal creatures,” Wolfe replied. “Rare or Legendary civic mortal or divine cards. Anything that benefits orphans in Mortal, Divine, Beast, or Infernal.”

            Lisa reached down and tapped the computer, then turned it around in a motion reminiscent of Fern, showing them a list of cards.

            Wolfe, Shel, and Miriam all leaned in to stare at the list.