With Silent Screams (16 page)

“I figured you could take it, Roberto. We’ve known each other a long time, and like you said earlier, I’ve never asked you for a favor before. After you dumped that crap back in Stratford on me, I figured you owed me. Where can I find Karl tonight?”

“If you
really
want to find Karl he’ll be at a club on Ne
w Yor
k Avenue, about a ten-minute cab from here; it’s called Ray Ray’s. There are a lot of very rich people spending far too much money on stuff that doesn’t matter. Karl is there pretty much every other night. He’ll have at least five people with him, all human, but armed.”

“Why human?”

“Karl isn’t scared of humans. He knows he can kill one if they betray him. And there are very few in D.C. who aren’t human, and who would dare cross him.”

“Anything else?”

“You won’t get in unless you’re dressed for it. Having a pretty woman on your arm will help. That place is loud and crowded, but Karl will sit in the VIP area on the second floor, there’s a
balcony
overlooking the dance floor below.”

“That it?”

“Yeah, the guards carry silver bullets. I had the cops pull over a few the other week to check them out. They didn’t shout and scream about it, Nate. They didn’t even curse. They just nodded and agreed, because they knew that they were going to get out of whatever trouble they were in. These guys don’t rule
Washington
, but damn it, they certainly think they come close.”

“Any ideas on how to get close to Karl without causing
a fight?”

“If you’re set on committing suicide, I’d say you have some weapons to sell. He seems to be dabbling in buying swords and daggers. No guns, just blades.”

“Do you have this guy’s office bugged or something?”

Roberto put on his automated response voice, “I can
neither
confirm nor deny the existence of any bugs or bug-related
paraphernalia
that may or may not be in Charles Whitehorn’s office, car, and possibly home.”

“Right, so why the interest in the guy?”

“Because he’s bad news and this is my goddamn town. I put up with human crime, I’m not putting up with jumped-up little pricks thinking they can bully and corral people into doing their bidding because they have delusions of grandeur.”

I waited for a second to see if he’d finished. “What did he do? To you, I mean.”

“Nothing.”

“Roberto, you’ve gone to a lot of effort for nothing. Both of these men were on your radar long before I turned up. So why have they caught the attention of a four-star general?”

“My job is to keep an ear out for people who might upset the status quo and report back to Avalon. But on occasion, I make a special effort to look into people. And considering Charles’s association with that evil little bastard Simon, it didn’t take long for me to start searching for something. I would go to his office and let him see me; I wanted him to know that he couldn’t just get away with doing whatever he wanted. And then one day, my daughter was out with her friends and someone stopped them. They beat one of the boys in front of them and told my daughter that the next time her father made a nuisance of himself, they’d make her watch as they killed her family.”

“Threatening your family, very classy.”

“Yeah, well it worked. I stopped digging, at least in public. But I’m not about to let someone like them push me around, so we do everything covertly now. They think the message worked, and I know once they step out of line within Avalon law, I’ll have the lot of them executed. My wife doesn’t know I’m still keeping tabs—she’d probably leave me if she found out. But I can’t let that go, Nate. But neither can I risk my family. To suggest it’s been hard keeping up the lie is an understatement; every time my girl goes out I worry. But it’s not in me to quit.”

“Your family will be safe. Karl Steiner and his friends, well probably not so much.”

“You can’t kill the senior aide to a U.S. Senator, Nate, not without attracting a lot of attention to yourself.”

“I’m not going to kill him, Roberto. I learned long ago that apart from some rare occasions, you can only truly kill a man once. But if you ruin everything he is, he gets to live with that shit over and over again for the rest of his very long life.”

CHAPTER
19

I
finished on the phone with Roberto and immediately called Caitlin. “How’d it go with your dad?” I asked.

“Next question,” she said without much enthusiasm.

“Okay, so how’d you like to go to a club?”

The sigh was not encouraging. “Are you serious? I though we were here to find out who made those werelions, not go dancing until the morning sun.”

“Well, they’re sort of tied together.” I explained what Roberto had told me.

“They threatened his family?” Caitlin said after listening silently to the new information I gave her, her voice oozing anger.

“Feel like pissing off some really powerful and dangerous people?”

“What’s your plan?”

“Oh, now, where would the fun be if I told you that? But we need some clothes, and expensive ones, too. We’re also going to need somewhere to get changed.”

“My dad’s house will be empty. He’ll be working all day and night and probably forever more.” Her tone suggested there was a lot more to her meeting with her dad than she was ready to discuss. I really hoped whatever issues she was having wasn’t going to spill over into the evening and cause problems.

“You know the city better, where do you buy expensive clothes?”

“Do you have a budget?”

I removed my credit card from my wallet and was surprised to see there was no dust on it. “Nope, no limit at all.”

“Then I know exactly where to go. Penn Quarter has the kind of places we need.”

“Excellent, just don’t expect me to do any actual dancing while we’re there. Clubbing isn’t something I’m good at. I know, I’ve been inside nightclubs before.”

“Is it the loud music? Does it hurt your sensitive hearing?”

“You’re a very witty woman. When I was eighteen, clubbing literally meant hitting someone with a very large club.”

Caitlin snorted with laughter. “Well, no clubs tonight.”

“Well, let’s not count that out just yet. Maybe a good clubbing is exactly what the place needs.”

Finding the right clothes for the job wasn’t all that difficult. For me it consisted of a nice dark suit, a light blue shirt, and some black shoes, and for Caitlin
…
well, I have no idea. I’m pretty certain I dozed off at one point while she wandered the store in search of an outfit. But when we’d finally picked up everything we needed and gone back to her dad’s house to change, it was beginning to get late.

“Look, for you Ray Ray’s is just a sharp-dressed suit,” Caitlin said as she opened the front door and switched off the alarm next to the staircase. “For me, I have to look like I just stepped out of a model shoot. And that’s not exactly something I’m used to.”

The clock on the wall said it was 8 p.m. “Shouldn’t we be going soon?”

“We’ve got plenty of time, Nate. If this guy really is the big shot he thinks he is, he’ll want to make an entrance in front of as many people as possible. Just walk in, no line. He’ll enjoy that. Did you leave your daggers here?”

I moved my jacket to show the thin belt of silver blades against my back. “Okay, I’ll go find the kitchen and eat
something
.”

Caitlin pointing toward the rear of the house. “Kitchen’s down there.”

I found the room easily enough and grabbed a bottle of juice from the huge fridge that I was pretty certain was larger than some people’s entire kitchens. The whole place was immaculate, and I was concerned that if I actually did eat anything and crumbs fell onto the floor, that a maid would burst out of hiding with a broom and start shouting at me. So, I grabbed an apple from the fruit bowl and went in search of somewhere to sit and wait.

The main living room had a huge TV on the wall and a leather couch pointed at it, next to a recliner chair that really was as comfortable as it appeared. Several remotes were arranged in size order on a side table next to the chair. I thought about touching one, but decided against it. I didn’t want to put them in the wrong order or out of alignment and cause someone to have a meltdown.

Fortunately I didn’t have to wait in silence for long, as Caitlin appeared after a few minutes. She looked utterly stunning in a green top and blue mini-skirt that showed off her athletic legs. A pair of sexy four-inch heels helped to complete the picture.

“Wow,” I said. “You look incredible.”

Caitlin ran her fingers through her now-curly hair. “Yeah, I scrub up okay. And this should be good enough to get us in.”

“Remind me again why you don’t have a boyfriend?”

“I never said I didn’t have a boyfriend,” she said with a co
y smile.

“Then allow me to tell you that he is one lucky bastard and I hope you remind him of that on a regular basis.”

“I remember telling you that your flattery and charm will get you nowhere.”

“At one point, you also told me you were going to shoot me.”

“The night is young, Mister Garrett, the night is young.”

I stood up and straightened my jacket, tossing the apple core into a nearby bin. “Your dad is a neat freak.”

“Yeah, he likes everything in an ordered way. He can be a little OCD about it.” She glanced at the remote controls. “And sometimes he can be a lot. He’s usually doing it when he’s nervous. Probably work stuff.”

I held out my arm. “So, are you ready? I really wish I’d brought my Audi; it would have completed the picture.”

“Oh, I think we can do better than that.”

Caitlin took my arm and we walked through the huge house into the garage.

“How does a federal judge afford all of this?”

“Ah, my grandparents were loaded. And I mean,
loaded
. They left me and my dad pretty much everything, so I got to grow up in a beautiful house in Wisconsin. We lived there after Mom left until I went to college. And then Dad sold up and moved here.” She walked over to a car that was covered with a drape, pulling it away to reveal a dark-red Mustang Boss 429.

“Holy crap, I haven’t seen one of those in years,” I said with more than a little bit of excitement.

“I think it’ll make enough of a entrance to turn heads. Might even help get us in.” She grabbed a pair of keys from a well-organized key rack and threw them over to me.

A few seconds later the car’s engine was roaring with joy as a smile broke my face. Caitlin took a garage door opener from her tiny purse and clicked it open as she got into the car next to me.

“Do you feel all manly?” she asked.

“I’m so goddamn manly, you better make sure you don’t get pregnant just by being in my proximity.”

Caitlin’s laughter echoed into the night as we drove out of the house and off toward a destination that I doubted was going to be anywhere near as pleasant as the journey.

Going out to a place where crowds of drunken people congregate would not make it onto any list of things I like to do. When you get so many people in the same place with lowered inhibitions and increased levels of self-importance, you tend you get trouble. Something I was hoping to avoid, at least to begin with. I didn’t want Karl spooked and running off before I’d had the chance to talk to him.

We drove past the huge line, which snaked around the corner of the building, turning more than a few heads as the roar of the engine, and Caitlin’s presence, stole their attention.

I parked the car in the lot opposite the club and climbed out.

“You think that did the trick?” I asked.

“One way to find out,” Caitlin said as she sauntered around the car and placed her hand in mine, almost hugging my arm as we began to walk toward Ray Ray’s. “Need to make this look good. You’re meant to be a rich playboy who’s here on business, and I’m your paid date for the evening, remember that.”

I smiled. “I think I can make that role work.”

The pair of us walked straight up to the bouncer on the door and stood in front of him, as if waiting for the door to be opened.

“And you are?” the bouncer asked before glancing behind me at the Mustang. “A hot girl and a nice car aren’t enough for you to get in here.”

I removed a hundred dollars bill from my pocket. “Is this enough?”

“Please, I’ve been offered ten times that for someone to jump the queue.”

“Okay, how about this?” I lent closer to whisper in his ear. “I have business with Mister Steiner, you know the man, yes?”

A nod confirmed that he did.

“Excellent, now, let me ask you this, if he discovers that you stood between him and several million dollars of merchandise, what do you think he would do to you?”

The bouncer swallowed hard.

“So, you have two choices, you could go get Mister Steiner and tell him that there is someone waiting for him. That is a bad plan, you would be interrupting his night and I doubt he would enjoy that. Or, the second choice is you accept my
hundred
dollars and you open the fucking door. Because if my date and I have to wait out in this shitty line for another second, I’m going to cut your fucking balls off, have them bronzed, and give them to Karl as a gift.”

I stepped back from the bouncer, the hundred note still in my hand. He took the note, opened the door and wished us a good evening.

“Right choice,” I told him and stepped inside the building.

“What did you say to him?” Caitlin whispered in my ear.

I told her.

“That could have backfired.”

“I took a chance that Karl doesn’t like to be disturbed for unimportant things. He may not own this club, but I’m guessing he has more than enough clout to deal in his own personal way, with people who annoy him. Besides, we’re in.”

We walked down some steps and opened a set of double doors, where the sound from within washed over me like a
tsunami
.

To say the music was loud did a disservice to the word.
Dozens
of people were dancing or gathered at the bar sitting at the far end of the room. A set of stairs snaked to an upper level beside the bar, and I guided Caitlin towards it.

A bouncer stood at the bottom of the staircase and another at the top, both nodded to us as we passed them and opened the door. The music was different than what was blasted out on the floor below, but no less loud. If anything, there were even more people on the dance floor and I wondered how I was going to be heard by Karl, let alone have a conversation with him.

Caitlin nodded toward the VIP area, the balcony of which overlooked the dance floor. Two men stood either side of a couch, which was occupied by a third man and two young women who spent just as much time kissing each other as they did him.

“Okay, so how do we get up there?” I had to almost shout in her ear.

Caitlin grabbed my hand and led me across the dance floor, stopping every few feet to dance a little until we reached the far side. For my part, it was much easier to pretend she was dancing for me and just stand and watch with a smile on my face.

By the time we were out of the throng of people, I discovered I wasn’t the only one who had been watching Caitlin dance. Along with several men and women who were sat on the couches that surrounded the floor, Karl was standing against the railing of the baloney, watching Catlin as she moved up against me and kissed me on the cheek.

“I think that might have done the trick,” she whispered.

“Yeah, one of the bodyguards has left the balcony, I imagine he’ll be out here in a few seconds to talk to you.”

Like clockwork, the bodyguard did indeed make an appearance a few moments later, walking over toward us, the gun in his holster evident to anyone who knew what they were looking for.

“Mister Steiner would like to meet with you,” he said to
Caitlin
, who glanced over to me and shook her head.

“I’m sorry, I’m otherwise engaged tonight.”

The bouncer glanced at me and I could tell he was
mentally
deciding how much of a problem I was going to be. “Bring him with you, I’m sure Mister Steiner would like to chat with hi
m too.”