on the opposite side of the wall.
He glanced away. “You got the LVMPD on your hot dial?” She nodded.
“Is she on your instant dial?”
Temple nodded. “I know her number, all right, but I don’t want to use it except as a last resort.” “Ballsy little broad.”
Temple nodded. “Where and when does this all go down?”
“Out back. Midnight. You got backup?”
“Ballsy big dudes.”
“Really? Not police?’
“I don’t do police.”
“Neither do I. Anymore. Are you sure?”
“No. But the price of not being sure isn’t worth it. This one’s for Danny.”
He considered. Didn’t like it, but he considered. “For whoever you say.”
Temple nodded. “You’d be surprised.”
“Maybe I would. Let’s roll.”
*
The back of Maylords after midnight was spooky. Empty. Dark. A loading dock with nothing to load. A parking lot with nothing to park.
Temple lurked-that was the only word-behind the roll-down garage door, Rafi at her side.
She held her suspiciously heavy fanny pack in her hand. From it had come a big black beret to cover her betraying red hair. She was as black as she could be.
“What else is in there?” he asked in a whispered rasp. “Nothing. My … protection.”
“Shit. Don’t tell me, girl, that you’re not carrying anything more than condoms?”
“None of your business. And if I am, I’m qualified.”
“You have a permit for that vague ‘protection’ of yours?”
“I’ve shot it off a few times at a firing range.”
“That’s the problem.”
“The few times?”
“And shooting off at a firing range. This isn’t a firing range. There’ll be real people here. You better give me the gun.” She was silent.
“Or I bail.”
She gave him the gun. He tucked it in his suitcoat pocket like it was no more dangerous than a pack of Juicy Fruit gum.
Or Doublemint gun. Gum!
The sound of a serious engine growled like a Big Cat in the distance. Coming closer.
Rafi nodded. “Behind the Dumpster. Quick.”
Sure, she was always eager to Dumpster dive… .
Temple crouched behind the huge, dented wall of painted steel. Something on claws scurried away as she and Rafi settled behind the Dumpster.
Not even the odor of orange peels left over from the blessing ceremony could cover the conjoined reek of dead cigarettes and food.
“Everybody left,” Temple complained in a whisper after a while.
“Yeah. Me too.”
“Won’t they miss you being on duty?”
“Nah. I was let go yesterday.”
“Let go!”
“Yeah. That’s why we’re here.”
“You’re not supposed to be here?”
“Are you?”
“Well, not out back here sitting on my heels inhaling dead shrimp. But you’re not supposed to be here! What good can you do?”
“You don’t wonder why Maylords would let the hired security go a day early, before the Wong to-do is over and done with?”
“Oh. They don’t want impartial witnesses.”
“Yeah. Only I’m not impartial to anything. Maybe you’ve noticed.”
“I have,” Temple said, “and that’s what makes me nervous about this.”
“Stay nervous, then. A little sweat would improve on the Dumpster cologne.”
“I do not sweat. I use a really good deodorant.”
“Couldn’t tell it by me, kid.”
She didn’t have a comeback to that one, so she didn’t try.
Okay. They were here, their knees ready for a rack, inhaling leavings the rats didn’t stick around to protect, and no one else was to be seen. Rafi was an ex-employee. She was about to become an ex-employee. Wow. Together, they didn’t have one leg to stand on for being here.
“I’m actually glad they’ve all left,” she whispered, wishing she could do that too.
“They appeared to have left,” Rafi said.
A bit of overhead parking light caught his profile. It was hunter-intent. Temple realized she’d been allowed along on this outing, like a bird dog, not like a partner. Not that she’d want to be Rafi Nadir’s partner! That was something even C. R. Molina had run screaming from over a decade ago.
Or was it?
“Shhhh! “
Jeez, he could hear her thoughts?
She heard the grinding gears, the squealing breaks, the creaks of a big truck turning into the Maylords lot. A lot of big trucks pulled up to the Maylords loading dock. All day.
Not all night.
Stealing the slightest glance, she saw the usual furniture delivery truck, big and square and bearing the Maylords name on
the side.
What was it doing here now?
The brakes squealed as it backed up to the loading dock, and silenced as it finally stopped.
The night grew quiet again. Nothing more happened with the truck. No door opening and slamming shut, no driver dismounting. Nothing.
Then she did hear something. A faint whine, like a radio that’s on with the volume turned down, so you only sense a presence, not what it is. Not what’s causing the hair to rise at the nape of your neck.
Temple wished for her firearm back.
The almost imperceptible noise increased, in waves, like a gust of wind coming closer at forty miles per hour. The weather forecast tonight had been clear and calm. She’d checked.
Rafi Nadir’s hand closed around her forearm.
Closer. Coming closer.
It was a strange sort of purring sound really, like Louie at the foot of her bed, heard but not yet felt.
The purr became a grumble, became a rumble, became a loud, grating noise and then a coughing sputter.
Temple recognized that mechanical throat-clearing: slowing motorcycle. Slowing motorcycles, plural. A gang.
She gasped, but Rafi’s hand covered her mouth. Not a New Age experience. She forced back her automatic gag-bite reaction. This was the only partner in crime busting she had at the moment.
While she mentally fussed, she heard the snap of metal hitting asphalt, the snick of something-switchblades?-sliding open.
Whoever or whatever they were, they were settling in for a while.
Rafi touched her lips with an icy finger. No! With the cold steel of gun barrel to caution continued silence.
He had it.
Temple did so want to be at home in her own bed, with her knees not jackknifed and the reek in her nose not nauseating her, with Louie. Or Max. Or Matt. Or a NOW magazine. What the hell.
Rafi had scrambled to the other edge of the Dumpster and was peering around the edge. The gun barrel he held up and behind him caught a gleam of light. Temple thought of Darth Vader’s metal-gloved trigger finger.
Temple heard the loading dock’s small side door opening. Grunts. Something heavy hitting concrete. Muffled laughter.
Steps walking back and forth between the loading dock and the slap of something against metal.
She was so busy interpreting the unseen sounds that she was startled when something soft and live and tickling brushed her cheek. On her face.
She blinked and caught a fan of passing hair in her eyelid. It floated like a marabou boa, stung like a diving hornet.
Temple spit out hair. Louie! She’d know that tail anywhere.
“What the hell?” The voice was male and astonished. “Put up your X-actos, boys. Looks like a buzz saw has already been at this stuff. Make that a real big wood chopper. Man, our grass is cooked and our powder blowed. Something’s big-time wrong.
Let’s get outta here.”
No sooner had the mysterious man gathered his troops than the presence that had air-kissed Temple’s cheek rocketed out into the parking lot proper, screaming like a V2 rocket over England during World War II. A whole bombardment of Screaming Mimis poured out of the parked truck back and whistled past her.
She stood despite a hand pulling on her elbow.
The growling sound that had followed the truck into the lot was a mob of motorcycles now mounted again and revving their engines, a whole gleaming circle of them.