that’s why he’s using them? If that’s not an incidental feature of the little creepy guys but the whole point?” Riley thinks he’s onto something, but I don’t see it yet. I’m not even sure if he does. He’s just plunging forward on gut instinct and teasing out the idea as he goes. I’d roll my eyes, but it usually works for him.
“So you think there’s something special he wants to do and he needs the ngks in a cluster to do it?”
“What better way to get into some nefarious shit without the Council being able to touch him? Think about it: he’s got some very old, very nasty magic working for him, yes, but even with all that, certain things take time. And powerful though he may be, he probably can’t hold off a patrol of soulcatchers and complete his secret science project at the same time.”
“So he builds an impenetrable barrier against ghosts.”
“Exactly.”
“But what’s the project?”
Riley shrugs. “No clue. Was hoping you’d get that part worked out.”
“Great.”
We ponder in silence for a few minutes, shuffling papers and sipping corner-store coffee.
“Is it weird?” Riley says out of the blue.
I know exactly what he means, but I say, “What’s that?” anyway.
“You know, you’re this one and only for three years, and then all a sudden there’s half-dead guys popping out the woodworks. And they’re launching plots, being freaky, declaring war on the dead and all kindsa fuckery. Just wondering if you got feelings on it.”
“I do.” I almost leave it at that, but then the words slip out of me. “I feel caught between two worlds I don’t under- stand.”
Riley nods and sips cold coffee.
“I mean, that was always true. But now it’s even truer. And yeah, I don’t really know what to do with it. It’d help if the one guy weren’t a homicidal freak.”
“Amen. And it was all so deliberate, the killing. One ghost and that set off our boys, and then the Hasidic guy.”
I put some coffee in me and mull it over. “And the fact that he was looking right at me when he did it is just . . .” I shudder. “You know I don’t get icked out easy.”
“It’s true.”
“But this . . . yeah, it got to me some.”
We settle back into a working silence for a few minutes and then Riley curses. I look up at him. “I don’t know why I didn’t see this before.”
“Hm?”
“If you triangulate the ngked houses”—he drags the Sharpie in thick lines between the three dots—“you get an unpleasant surprise.”
“Mama Esther’s house.”
“Damn skippy.”
“Right in the center.”
“Correct.”
“Damn.”
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
I light a Malagueña to ward off this hangover as I trudge along toward Bushwick. It’s a brisk afternoon, the kind you can really get lovelorn over. Today I’m keeping it professional though; my mind still teems with ngks and halfie plots. I’m fast, so there’s still some cigar left by the time I reach Baba Eddie’s.
“You can’t smoke in here,” Kia says when I walk through the jingling door.
“Bullshit.”
She indicates a brand-new NO SMOKING sign hanging above her head. “I’m a growing child, and y’all’s nasty secondhand smoke is fucking up my uterus and lung capacity.”
“Your uterus, huh?”
“If I say so, then yes.”
“Fine.” I head back out the door. “Would you tell Baba Eddie I’m outside?”
“He’s with a client.”
I growl something at Kia, but it gets voided out by the clamor of bells and the slamming door. She smiles and flips me off over the heads of the saints in the window display and then gets back to work.
* * *
“Carlos!” The thing about Eddie’s boyfriend, Russell Ward, is he really looks like your average white dude. He’s pale and has thinning salt-and-pepper hair and a big white-dude grin that comes at you outta nowhere. He’s not white, of course; he’s Indian—like Indian from upstate, not Bangalore—and he used to be on some real hate-whitey shit back in the sixties, from what I hear. He’s some kinda big-deal lawyer now and, according to Baba Eddie, milking the corporate bastards for every cent they have from the inside. I ain’t mad. “What you been up to, man?” Russell says. “I haven’t seen you in forever!”
He gives me a firm handshake and settles in beside me in front of the store. “Life is good,” I say. “No, that’s bullshit. Everything’s a mess.”
Russell frowns. “I’m sorry to hear that, Carlos.” He sounds like a used-car dealer, but I know he really means it. “You want to talk about it?”
“I can’t, really. But thanks.”
We