That went south fast. The kid must have backed off quick because Mokoto would have probably knifed him otherwise.
“What does this Knickknack look like?” Tommy had been down to Liberty Avenue a couple of times this summer but he’d left most of the night crew management to Mokoto and Babe. They usually only called him in when they couldn’t kick the shit out of whoever was bothering their people. During those times, Tommy’s focus wasn’t on the other whores working the street.
“I’ve got pictures of them all.” Mokoto reached over to the nightstand to grab his phone. “I’m not sure why. I just had this feeling that one day I would need something to help identify them.”
Mokoto secretly took pictures of almost everyone he knew, which wasn’t hard since most of his family didn’t realize some phones had cameras. The first few were of Babe, alternating being his dorky lovable self with the family and full-on angry enforcer mode at some stranger.
Mokoto growled with irritation and swiped at the phone’s surface and got a grid of photos. He leafed through the pages and pages of thumbnails. Apparently Mokoto liked to take pictures of Tommy when he wasn’t paying attention too.
“This is Knickknack.” Mokoto held out his phone for inspection. The picture was the two of them together. The boy was taller than Tommy expected. He seemed unexpectedly sunny, but that impression might be based on his yellow hair, blue eyes, and huge smile of white straight teeth. Nothing said off-worlder more than perfect teeth.
“This is Toad.” The boy seemed surprisingly ugly to be a whore. He had the teeth of an off-worlder but nothing else appealing about him. “He’s actually been on Elfhome for a couple of years and works Liberty Avenue only when he hits a rocky period. He’s very bold and funny. He can usually talk himself into and out of any sort of trouble. I didn’t think I had to worry about him.”
Another boy, much cuter than Toad, followed. “Joyboy — but he’s full of himself, so not much of a joy to be around. I’ve figured that he would be the first to die; he’s such a drama queen. There’s been times I’ve been tempted to stab him just to shut him up.”
The girls were named Bambi, Candy, Chardonnay, Nevaeh, Peanut Butter Pie, Red, and Tawny. They all looked about twenty, except Red.
Tommy pointed at Red’s photo. “I just saw her. She cut some deal with Forest Moss. She’s got an entire troop of royal marines following her around like puppy dogs. The elves are acting like she’s equal to Tinker.”
“Really?” Mokoto said surprise and amazement. “Wow! Okay. I can see that. Red’s not like the other girls. She showed up about a month ago, at least two weeks after the last Shutdown. She didn’t come to Pittsburgh because of elves and magic and fairy tales. Something nasty happened to her on Earth. Other girls would talk about where they were from and why they were in Pittsburgh, but not Red. She kept walls up around her. Massive stone fortress walls. Nobody got in. She would walk with Peanut Butter Pie and Candy but at the end of the night, she’d head in the direction of Station Square. I think she had a squat on Mount Washington.”
“Where did Knickknack squat? Oakland?”
Mokoto flinched at the question. “They closed his dorms and he couldn’t find any place to squat in Oakland. Toad has a big place somewhere on the North Side that he calls Toad Hall. From what they’ve told me, it’s like a warren, taking up part of a block. Joyboy moved in first, and then Knickknack, and then when everything started to go south, most of the girls. The girls started to jokingly call Toad their pimp, but I know that he didn’t carry any weapons.”
“They all disappeared at once?”
Mokoto shrugged. “A couple of girls had been killed on Liberty Avenue. One died when Tinker’s fight with Malice went through Downtown and dropped an entire building’s worth of broken glass on the girl. Another whore was killed across from the train station. Red disappeared. None of that seemed related. Then one night all the rest of the Undefended stopped coming to work.”
“Did you go to the squat?”
Mokoto curled tight and shook his head. “The elves hit our warren, you took off, and we had to find someplace safe to move everyone to. I couldn’t take off to go find this Toad Hall — not with all the shit going down. It’s not like the Undefended are children; they’re all adults. They’re human. They decided to work without protection. They signed up for all this shit. Our little ones who don’t pass for human are the ones that need me. I was hoping that the Undefended got smart and just decided it was too dangerous to go out. I was hoping that they would be out on Liberty last night. None of them showed up. Whatever happened to them, happened days ago. There was no point of leaving Babe alone to protect our people.”
“Do you know the address?” Tommy asked.
“No,” Mokoto whispered. “I didn’t want to fight with Knickknack. If I didn’t ask him where he lived, then he couldn’t ask me where I lived. Things weren’t going well between us. He was starting to realize that he didn’t know me at all. He did share these pictures with me. I think he was trying to get me to ask him where it was.”
Tommy studied the photo of Knickknack standing in an open doorway of a brick town house. “This looks like the Mexican War Streets district. It shouldn’t be too hard to find it.”
“Really?” Mokoto’s voice was full of doubt.
Tommy realized that his work as his father’s messenger meant that he’d learned the city better than his other cousins. Mokoto only left Oakland to work Downtown on Liberty Avenue. The North Side had been heavily infested with true-blood oni until the royal marines stacked their dead bodies on the sidewalks. Mokoto would have avoided the area.
“I’ll find out what happened to Knickknack and the others,” Tommy promised.
Mokoto rolled suddenly to pin Tommy down. “Remember that you promised to be careful. We all need you, Tommy, so don’t even think of going off and getting killed.” And his voice broke again as he added, “I don’t want to be the oldest. I can’t do that. I can’t.”
“Hey, hey, I promised.”
There were two men in business suits sitting and chatting in the lobby. Tommy could smell bourbon in the lowball glasses on the cocktail table between them. A small mountain of luggage surrounded them. He counted ten pieces of wheeled suitcases — all different sizes.
Tommy could easily control what one person saw, but with each additional person it became more difficult. Luckily the two were sitting so that only one of them could see the counter where Trixie and Quinn were standing.
Tommy focused on the man facing Trixie. The man was in good spirits, thinking of nothing but good food, a hot shower, and a big, clean, soft bed. Tommy blurred himself out as he walked to the counter.
Quinn was one of the teenage boys who could pass as human. He sported the same black blazer over a white button-down shirt combination as Trixie. Instead of black slacks, though, Quinn wore a pair of worn but clean blue jeans. Several room service menus lay on the counter in front of Quinn — apparently “borrowed” from other hotels in the area — along with a supermarket receipt showing the purchase of rice, a long list of fruits and vegetables, and fresh fish.
“They all feature ‘a special selection of international cheeses with crackers’ called All Hands On Deck,” Quinn whispered to Trixie as Tommy walked up. “What’s this fascination with cheese and why haven’t I heard of it before?”
Quinn sounded like his mother, Aunt Flo.
“We’re Chinese; we don’t believe in cheese,” Trixie answered while counting out hundred-dollar bills. “If the other hotels are all offering it, then we should get some too. We’ll send Alita and Zippo back out since they probably didn’t look in the dairy section. You can make up a new menu if they find any. For now, figure out what we can make with what they already bought and what the price point should be.”