“Lost, macho?” said the man in front, sliding along the fence’s perimeter as if pacing it.
“I’m not Lost, no,” Grif answered, earning an elbow in the ribs from Kit. He glanced over at the sign out front that’d previously been obscured by construction on the side of the building. LITTLE HAVANA. A restaurant.
The man—skinny as wire and tobacco-dark—squinted as he leaned against the front gate, trying to ferret out disrespect in Grif’s words as they came to a stop before him. Then he turned an equally calculating gaze on Kit. He held it there so long, licking his lips, watching her with eyes like burned-out bulbs, that she squirmed and folded her hands in front of her. A smile lifted one corner of the man’s mouth before he turned back to Grif.
“Don’t want no trouble with the po-po.”
Grif didn’t correct him. The assumption that he was a cop might help. Grif glanced behind him as if to call Dennis over, but he was, in fact, checking to see if the real detective was watching. Dennis was occupied with the dead, though, so Grif shoved his hands into his pockets, and turned back to the living. “No trouble. Just some questions.”
“What makes you think I got answers?”
“You look like a man with answers.”
He looked like a man who’d dust them if he didn’t like the way they blinked. Tattoos coiled his body from neck to wrist, with four dots forming a box cradled in the webbing of his right hand. These were different from the tattoos worn by Kit’s friends. Those were ornamental, expressive, joyful, and kitschy. These looked like blue veins that’d been pulled to the surface from within the man.
Grif lifted his gaze. The man’s nose had been broken, probably more than once, and never reset. His hair was short and thickly gelled. He cared, Grif saw, deeply about appearance. At least in his own way.
“Got nothing for you, macho.” The man jerked his head. “ ’Sides, I got customers to worry about.”
Grif let his gaze canvass the empty lot. The restaurant was undergoing an extensive renovation; Little Havana wouldn’t see customers for months.
“Maybe I got answers for you, then,” Grif said.
The man’s eyes steeled over at that.
Kit fiddled with her phone, as if uninterested. The man looked her over, and smiled. “We can talk. My house is just there.”
So they left Little Havana for the single-story home, followed by the other men. Kit was nearly vibrating with nerves, and Grif would have reached out to calm her, but he didn’t want the men following them to know she needed it. She wouldn’t want it, either.
The home was as down-at-the-heels as the rest of the neighborhood, and stuccoed like the rest of the city. A dog run stretched along its north side where, after a brief exchange of staccato Spanish, one of the men deposited the heavily leashed pit bull. Good. Animals sensed Grif’s otherness in a way people didn’t. More mutts had attacked him in the months he’d been back on the Surface than all of the thirty-three years of his “first” life.
There was no sidewalk, as the entire front of the lot had been paved over, as if concrete was the only thing keeping the thing upright. Errant weeds sprouted among the cracks like escaped convicts, yet the yard was swanky compared to the home’s interior.
Ducking in behind the man, Grif emerged in a living area with a popcorned ceiling, dingy gray walls, and a corner altar. The furnishings were sparse; just a sagging sofa and a dark recliner huddled around an empty coffee table, but he sensed an air of care to the place. Grif and Kit ventured farther inside, and the door snicked shut behind them.
The other five men remained outside.
Grif glanced over to gauge Kit’s comfort level. The hairs on the back of his neck had risen as soon as the door shut and the gloom closed around him, and he could see Kit struggling to find something nice to say, like, “It’s a lovely home you have here.”
The man saw it, too. The dark craters in his eyes sparked. “Seen enough?”
Not waiting for a reply, he jerked his head and turned toward the open kitchen. A refreshing odor wafted from within, meat stewing, thick and warm, as they made their way down a hallway studded by the gaze of silent saints.
“We’re not looking to interfere with dinner . . . or your business,” Grif said, trying to make up for Kit’s silence. “We