He looked me hard in the eyes. "It's the drug cartel kingpin, El Demonio. Torbellino is his surname."
"Your scumball kidnapper and zombie smuggler from years ago in Mexico? A kingpin now? Here in Kansas? Why? No ... it can't be."
"Think I'd ever forget his inhuman face, Delilah? If El Demonio has expanded his foul drug smuggling and zombie-running operations from the crime cesspool of the border up into Kansas heartland, where he's allied with weather witches, we have to grab the chance to take him and his cartel down before the whole country is fouled."
"'We'?" I asked incredulously. "Without backup or state troopers or the Reserves? He must have a ton of really fast zombies, not to mention his usual crime-lord army of gunmen."
Tallgrass objected in his low-key way. "We must find Torbellino's base of operations first."
"We didn't have the bastard's stink before," Ric said. "We'll start tracking at the WTCH-TV parking lot. When El Demonio made the mistake of setting shoe sole on asphalt, he made himself Quicksilver meat."
Quick had already leaped up to view the film. Now he was lunging for the office exit, ready to track and tackle.
"Delilah." Ric turned to me. "Stay with Ben in case he gets fresh contact from the blackmailers."
I was about to object to being left out of the track-down my minifilm had made possible, but I knew I'd blown it by regarding Sheena and Ted's unsavory connections as part of my personal history instead of something bigger.
So I nodded.
Ben lifted the Old Crow bottle to me with a questioning look as a peace offering. We'd both failed to recognize and report something important to our best friends.
I watched Quicksilver's thick, plumy tail flash out the office door, Tallgrass and Ric right behind him.
After a moment of mentally bemoaning being left behind, I pulled my chair up to the desk just as Ben, his hand shaking, poured amber whiskey into the water-spotted glass that had been mine.
"Miss Street prefers a smoother and costlier blend of poison," a beautifully resonant but all too recognizable voice said behind me.
My silver familiar turned tail and slipped down my clothes to wrap itself around my right upper thigh like a garter as I gulped down two fingers of Old Crow straight anyway.
Then I turned to confront the unexpected newcomer.
Chapter Twenty-four
BEN HASSARD WAS on his feet, nodding and bowing like a bobble-headed doll.
"I hope you continue to enjoy the accommodations, Mr. Christopher," he told the white man in white, "and that our ... discussions down here didn't disturb you in the penthouse."
"Your CinSims fanning through the hotel disturbed me. You do understand that the farmyard chickens and pigs and horses are part of the package, as well as Miss Gulch's bicycle?"
"Horses and pigs and chickens? Oh, my." Ben cast me a helpless look. "Miss Street was right. I'll need some sort of unifying attraction ... perhaps around a theme of Kansas, the Barnyard State."
Their byplay gave me mental time to insert Vegas's one and only albino rock star into this place and time and enterprise. I wasn't surprised that Hassard hadn't recognized the stage persona of Cocaine, lead singer of the Seven Deadly Sins rock group. Snow in white-suit civvies looked like a taller, younger, sexier ... oh, Mark Twain.
"You're the Vegas bigwig who's been so generous with CinSims leases?" I asked, none too smoothly.
Shock does that to even a professional objective observer, and I was in no way objective about Snow.
His Western-style suit was not that different from the white Italian designer ones he wore offstage, but his river-boat gambler hat seemed so like the ghost of El Demonio's black one it gave me shivers. Snow's long white hair was tied back into a very passe mob-style ponytail that suddenly looked back again, big-time. And, of course, he wore the eternal dark sunglasses.
"Me, generous?" he replied.
I could tell his hidden eyes were taking in my plain navy suit. Some men's looks could be said to undress a woman. His summation seemed to be burying my outfit under a chador.
"Hardly generous," Snow addressed me again. "This was a business deal. Ben and I are both well satisfied, and now I have the unexpected bonus of ... requisitioning Miss Street's presence in my suite."
"Ah," Ben said. "Miss Street is not a potential, er, hostess, Mr. Christopher. Her presence is not a matter of acquisition. In a month, Emerald City will be fully staffed instead of running with a