“Yeah, just remember, now there’s space for someone to pick us off with a quick shot from one of those windows,” I said, nodding to the row of arrow slits running along the buildings tightly packed around the Market. “Better chance of a clean hit, so keep your head down, and the sooner we get into the stalls, the better.”
To call the Market chaos was to say there were a lot of stars in the sky in the middle of a deep desert. There’s a certain point when the visual noise simply takes over everything around it and nothing can puncture through the sea of colors and textures your brain struggles to take in.
I liked grabbing things from the Market when I had time, so I was familiar with the legacy stalls, but the pop-ups were always interesting, offering everything from cheaply made ammo to ostrich eggs. We were closer to the food stalls, where whiffs of fish-scented ice carried through the densely packed crowd, then disappeared under the weight of piles of fresh mushrooms and truffles nearly spilling over stacked baskets at a corner stall. I was tempted to grab a bag of peeled lychee, but the last thing I wanted was sticky fingers in case I had to draw a weapon, but Cari wasn’t going to go by the kiosk without stopping.
“Starfruit, Kai. They have sliced starfruit with tamarind powder.” She dug into her pockets, looking for change. “Do you want me to grab some lychee for you?”
“On the way out. If we’re still alive.” I scanned the walls above us, looking for movement. I’d activated the patches on my leather jacket, lighting up my badge sigils on my shoulders, and Cari’s jacket sleeves proclaimed she was SoCalGov law enforcement, the tiny lights a soft glow under the blaze from the bands of lights strung overhead. “Don’t grab too much. Where we’re going might not have bathrooms, and you know what happens when you eat too much lychee.”
“Worth it.” She held her hand out to me. “Give me some money. I’m short.”
“In more ways than one,” I grumbled, digging into my pockets. Coming up with a handful of credits, I handed them over to her. “Grab napkins. Lots of them. And some wipes too.”
She strolled next to me, happily stabbing pieces of chili-tamarind-mottled starfruit out of a cup with a tiny skewer the fruteria man gave her. The bag of lychee was stashed somewhere in one of the thousand pockets her jacket had sewn into its lining. If there was one thing I could count on with Cari, it’s that she was stocked up with everything she needed to toss out a spell or two should we need one. A good hibiki came prepared, her mother used to lecture her, and prepared sometimes meant having everything from packets of salt to single shots of tequila squirreled away in your jacket.
It also made for passing the time on stakeouts a lot easier, because most of the time, a good dose of tequila, some li hing mui, and salt made getting through a long cold night a piece of cake.
“Here. This way.” I nudged her to the right, toward the inner part of the maze. “We’re looking for Spicy Kat.”
“Hey! Gracen! Come here!” The Cantonese man calling out to me from a corner stall waved one hand up over the crowd, jumping to catch my attention. He’d moved his stall closer to the food kiosks, mainly to take advantage of the thicker crowds, and I’d known that. Known it coming in, but it was still a shock to see his slender hand waving a paper-wrapped rectangular package high over his head. “Last one! You come get it!”
“Looks like that guy wants to talk to you,” Cari murmured, nudging the small of my back. “That does not look like anyone named Spicy Kat.”
“No, it’s not. Just… hold up,” I answered. “Be right back.”
“You just told me to watch my back,” she reminded me, keeping in step behind me. “You think I’m going to let you wander off? Keep walking, Gracen. I’m right here on your ass.”
I got up close to the booth, careful not to jostle the glass bowls and spirals stacked on risers on a table running across the front of the space. The more expensive merchandise was behind Henry, with a bit of contraband tucked away in various spots beneath the tables. But that was an open secret. Most of the stalls in the Market did a shadow-market business of one kind or another, and Henry was the man you came to when you wanted something exotic to inhale or smoke.
Much like the packet of thick, cheap, disgusting, hand-rolled, Philadelphia-made cigars Henry was holding in his hands.
I was glad for the table, leaning against it for a bit of support. I shouldn’t have lost my words, but they were gone, my attention focused on that stupid paper-wrapped box Henry waved about as if he were surrendering to an invading army. My knees were shaky, nearly cut out from under me, but I took the box when he held it out to me, my fingers slightly numb from the unexpected shock of Dempsey’s loss hitting me once again out of the blue.
Just like him. Take your eyes off him when he was trying to teach you something and he’d smack you like you had a squadron of mosquitos on the side of your head. That’s what it felt like to hold the pungent box of cigars and know Dempsey would never have another one again.
“This is the last one I can get for you. Maybe it’s time for him to quit. The company is folding. Family sold it to some guy in Jersey, and I don’t think he’s going to continue doing this cheap crap. There’s tobacco farms down on the coast that’s supposed to be as good as Cuban, so they’re putting all their money into that.” Henry nodded at Cari, as if I always had a sloe-eyed hibiki-Stalker shadowing me. “This stuff’s bad for him. It’ll kill him. Bad for anyone. Even you. Hold on, I’ll throw in some kreteks for you. Good faith so you come back and get yours from me. If he wants to change, I can find him something, but maybe better for him to quit.”
“Yeah, I’ll tell him. Last package,” I replied, finally holding my wrist out for Henry to scan my link. “I’ll come back to you for my kreteks. Thanks for doing this for him. I appreciate it.”
Cari said nothing to me and fell in beside me as I turned away. We were shoulder to shoulder for a few strides. Then she tossed the rest of her fruit into a bin, shoving her hands in her pockets once she wiped them off on her jeans. The silence lasted another few steps. Then she cleared her throat.
“You didn’t tell him Dempsey died,” she said, pulling in close against me.
“He’d blame himself. Been telling the old man he had to stop smoking those things for years.” The weight of the cigars dragged down my pocket a hell of a lot more than any of my weapons, and for a brief moment, I debated tossing them into the next bin we saw, but something held my hand back. I carried a lot of Dempsey on me—his ashes, his cigars, and probably more than a little bit of his attitude. I couldn’t keep shedding parts of him hoping I’d feel better about him being gone. “Better to let Henry think he did Dempsey one last favor with these. Maybe I’ll give them to Jonas. He liked to puff on one every once in a while.”
“Only if you want Najiri and Angus to kill you,” Cari snorted, pulling a face at me. “Those damned things stink.”
I was going to leave Dempsey behind. At least for now. I couldn’t carry the weight of him and hunt down his brother at the same time. Once I pinned Kenny down, I’d deal with everything else—providing no one killed me first.
“Come on. Sooner we find that asshole, the sooner we can go home.” I wove through the crowd, half of my attention on any movement above us.