Blind God's Bluff A Billy Fox Novel - By Richard Lee Byers Page 0,41

lords was controlling Rhonda and the Martinez brothers, with magic hypnotism or whatever, then the real point of taking Vic prisoner was to get me out of the poker game. Which meant they wouldn’t let her go even after they got paid. They’d just keep using her against me.

A picture flashed into my mind. I walked into the nightly buffet, and this time, it was Vic lying in pieces on Wotan’s long silver tray, with her face still untouched so I could recognize her.

I needed to go to Rhonda’s store and see what was happening. But even desperate as I felt, I realized it would be a bad idea just to head for the front door and my car. Timon might have told his flunkies to stop me if I tried to leave, and it was possible that one of the other lords had agents waiting right outside to jump me.

I asked one of the Tuxedo Team where A’marie was. I found her on the fourth floor, brushing at the carpet in the hall with a broom and a kind of dustpan on a long handle. I guessed that was how everybody had to sweep a rug before Edison and Tesla gave us electricity.

Her face lit up when she saw me coming, and even with everything else I had on my mind, I winced when I realized I was about to disappoint her all over again. “I need your help,” I said, and then filled her in on what had happened and what I needed.

By the time I finished, she was frowning. “And if I do this,” she said, “are you going to give me what I want in return?”

“No,” I admitted. What else could I say? I felt more obligated to Timon than ever, now that I’d actually taken his money. “Look, you said it yourself. I’m a stranger in your world. I don’t know anything about anything. I’m not the guy you should be looking at to win the revolution.”

“Then why would I help you?” she replied.

“Well, I saved Rufino. I even got knifed doing it, or near enough. Didn’t I score any points for that?”

She looked at me for what felt like a long time. Her silver eyes reflected the light of the candle burning nearby. Finally she asked, “Do you really love Victoria?”

I shrugged. “I used to.”

“Wait for me in your room,” she said. She leaned the broom and pan against the wall and hurried away.

It took her a while to come back. I’d figured it would. But I was so impatient that I was about to say screw it and just make a dash for the T-bird when the lock clicked and she opened the door.

As I hurried over to her, she reached inside her black coat with its white carnation and shiny lapels, brought out a Smith and Wesson Model 439, and offered it grip first. “Is it all right?” she asked.

I wasn’t a big handgun guy. I would have felt a lot more at home with a rifle. But the automatic would put a hole in somebody, and it’s tough to tuck an M16 into the back of your jeans and hide it under the tail of your shirt.

“It’s fine,” I said, ejecting the magazine, then shoving it back in. “Where’d you get it?”

“It belongs to one of Timon’s guards. He won’t miss it for a while.”

So Timon let his people keep loaded pistols? I wondered again why they didn’t just kill him. Were they just that scared of him, or was he bulletproof? Was that possible, considering what the brownwings had—

I shoved that line of questions out of my mind. Timon wasn’t the problem, not right now.

“Are you ready to go?” asked A’marie.

I tucked the pistol into the back of my jeans. “Yeah,” I said.

This time we had to grope our way down the service stairs without a candle. I understood why. She didn’t want anybody to spot a light moving through the dark.

We had light for just a few seconds when we got to the ground floor, because one of the hurricane lamps was still burning. She took my hand and led me on, back into blackness and around a couple turns. Past the storeroom where we’d met the finheads, probably, although I wasn’t sure. Voices echoed, too soft and distorted for me to make out the words. The sound gnawed at my nerves. I told myself it was just the kitchen workers talking, not ghosts. Although for all I knew,