Skeleton Crew. Cameron Haley

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СКАЧАТЬ surprised me, but maybe he was thinking about it. Getting your ass handed to you was no fun in any walk of life, but it really sucked in the underworld. I couldn’t really blame him.

      “No fucking way,” Terrence said finally. “I ain’t gonna lay down ’less someone puts me down.”

      “Okay, so what are you going to do about it?”

      “Mobley ain’t shit. He’s not my problem—motherfucker’s just exploiting my problem. I can hit him just like he’s hitting me. I can drop bodies on his corners and put blood on his streets, but that just makes it worse. I need soldiers, Domino. It’s simple as that.”

      “I know where you can get some.”

      Terrence narrowed his eyes. “Where’s that, D? You can’t send me muscle—that’s no different than letting you hit the Jamaicans for me. I got to prove my outfit is strong enough to protect itself.”

      “I can’t send you troops, but I could let them go if they got the idea on their own.”

      “Who you have in mind?”

      “Simeon Wale’s crew. The prick likes you a hell of a lot better than me, anyway. He’d cross if you offered him lieutenant. I’d let him.”

      “Simeon Wale is a bad nigger and he got juice, but I’m not sure I trust the motherfucker any more than you do. I’d be watching my back night and day if I brought him in.”

      “Why you think I’m letting him go? Nothing’s free, Terrence. You know that. Question is, is watching your back better than lying down? I’m getting pressure. Everyone’s worried. If you can’t hold your ground, something else might move in that’d make the Jamaicans look friendly.”

      “The Turk is on you about this?”

      “No, I don’t even know where that son of a bitch is. He said he was going on sabbatical, left routine operational control of the outfit to the heir apparent.”

      Terrence laughed. “Adan’s making trouble for you. My pops always said, be careful what you wish for—it might just get you.”

      “Your pops sounds like an asshole.”

      “He was, but he might have been right about that.”

      Adan Rashan was my boss’s son. He’d been swapped out with a changeling as a baby and spent the first twenty-plus years of his life in Avalon, the fairy otherworld. A few months earlier, I’d killed the changeling and averted a war with the Seelie Court, but not before I’d fallen for the fucking guy. Now the real Adan was back and he was turning out to be a major pain in the ass. I couldn’t just flip the switch and turn off the attraction, either. I didn’t understand it, I didn’t much like it, and I sure as hell wasn’t going to make the same mistake twice.

      “Adan’s got no say in this. I’m still the wartime captain, you’re my ally and supporting our alliances is part of my job description.”

      “He can still make trouble.”

      “No, all he can do is bitch and moan about it. He’s been doing a lot of that. He can’t move on you unless I give the word.”

      “You gonna give the word?”

      “I wouldn’t be here if I was ready to push you out.” Even if Terrence hadn’t been my ally, he’d betrayed his former boss to save my life. Maybe saving my ass hadn’t been his only motive, but that kind of thing still counted for something. At least to me.

      “So it got to be Wale’s crew?”

      I nodded. “Anyone else, it looks like I’m propping you up. This way it just looks like you’re taking advantage of disloyalty in my ranks. No one will have a problem with that.”

      “Except Mobley. You think you can arrange a sit-down?”

      I shook my head. “Not yet. Mobley thinks he has you by the short ones, Terrence. You’re going to have to hurt him before you sit down.”

      “I can put Wale on him,” he said, and laughed. “You got all this worked out, don’t you? Remind me never to piss you off.”

      I shrugged. “It’s time to play hardball. You turn Wale loose, Mobley will come to you. He’ll be begging for a sit-down.”

      Terrence nodded and was about to respond when a sound like a snapping tree limb split the air. The sound came from behind us.

      From the graves.

      Terrence and I turned together, toward the sound. Splintered wood from one of the coffins lay scattered around the gravesite. As we watched, one of Terrence’s nephews climbed from his shattered coffin and stood up. He staggered and then braced himself with both hands on the sides of his grave. He looked down at himself, at the dark suit his mother had buried him in, and then he looked around. His gaze landed on us, and his eyes were a dull, filmy gray. They were a dead man’s eyes.

      “What the fuck, Uncle T?” he said. “Why you got to put a brother in the ground?”

      The kid climbed out of his hole and stumbled toward us. He seemed a little stiff. After a few jerking steps, he wobbled to a stop and fell back on his ass, his legs splayed out in front of him.

      Terrence and I just looked at him.

      “I feel like shit, Uncle T,” the kid said. He was holding his head in both hands and craning his neck to either side. It snapped and popped like dry kindling in a fire.

      “You got shot seven times, Tony,” Terrence said. His voice sounded dry and harsh, like he just woke up from a hard night of drinking and too many cigars.

      “Damn, Uncle T, it’s Antoine, I keep telling you that. No one calls me Tony anymore.”

      “You got shot seven times, Tony,” Terrence repeated. “One of the bullets went in your brain. They didn’t even bother to dig it out when they put you on the table.”

      I thought it was a little more detail than the kid probably needed, but Terrence sounded like he was saying it to remind himself more than for his nephew’s benefit.

      Tony raised a hand to his forehead and probed the gray, puckered entry wound with his fingertips. “Why ain’t I dead, Uncle T?”

      Terrence didn’t say anything. I didn’t either—I just relaxed my vision and looked at Tony with my witch sight. Terrence had said the kid didn’t have any juice, but that wasn’t exactly right. Every human has a little juice in them—an aura or whatever you want to call it. I could see what was left of Tony’s juice soaking into the soggy earth with the rain. It was exactly what I’d expect to see on a human body that had been dead a couple days.

      I dropped the sight and looked over at Terrence. He turned to me and I shook my head.

      “Tell me what you remember, Tony,” he said, looking back to the kid again. He stayed where he was, about ten feet from where Tony had dropped into the mud.

      “I remember all of it. I remember getting shot. We were just hanging out at the store and the Rastas rolled up on us in a black Escalade. I didn’t even have time to be scared, Uncle T. I saw them СКАЧАТЬ