Page 63 of Devil and the Deep Blue Fish

Nicky grinned. “Wow! I’d almost forgotten why we were here!”

“Well, I haven’t,” Killian said dryly. “Hey, so our manager at the bar says that Catches can help with Nicky’s legal fees—”

Ellery waved his hand. “Only filing fees for the motions,” he said. “The rest is my treat.” He looked meaningfully at the emergency repairs. “Overall, you all have paid for yourselves already. Now come, let’s hear about this man trying to assert you assaulted him. Was he a bad man?”

“Dude,” Nicky said sincerely, “he was theworst.Would you believe he threw cats out of a moving vehicle and thenbraggedabout it!”

Ellery blinked at him. “That’s horrendous!”

“Yeah—they were in a crate, and they’re fine, but this guy—bad news. Popped Killian in the nose out of nowhere, man, and I had to chase him out of the bar.”

And then Nicky made a sound that Ellery knew well.

“Heh heh heh heh heh….”

And Ellery was given to know that what had happenedthenwas the tricky part of the defense.

“I’ve heard that before,” he said pleasantly. “Let’s retire to my office. Lewis, Killian, you may want to remain here while Nicky and I conference.”

“Plausible deniability,” Nicky said soberly. Then to his friends, “See? I told you. Don’t worry. Me and Mr. Cramer got this. I’ll be out in a sec.”

And Ellery proceeded to his office, feeling strangely content about his job.

Fish in the Dark

THE SKYwas getting that soggy concrete sort of gray that happened as shadows drew long during a damp and rainy day. Jackson piloted the minivan through rush-hour traffic, trying to picture the block where the Stepford Dragon Castle sat and wondering where to park.

“The church,” Cody said, breaking into his thoughts. “There’s a church about four blocks away. They have meetings at night and sort of a ragged-looking batch of attendees—you know, like me—and this….” He swallowed, probably because Jackson had done a good job of impressing the temperamentality of their ride upon him. “This wonderful vehicle will not stand out like the shining star she is.”

Jackson nodded approvingly. “Nice one,” he said. “We want to keep her.”

“Of course we do,” Cody told him, nodding along for good measure. “A, uhm, flashier vehicle that, say, your boyfriend could afford certainly wouldn’t do, now would it?”

Jackson could hear the question in his voice.

“Those vehicles don’t have Jennifer’s… shall we say, strength of karma,” Jackson said diplomatically.

He watched Cody play with that one a couple of times before he absolutely had to ask.

“How many cars did you go through?”

Jackson wrinkled his nose. “Four? Wait… five. No, four and a half. Because one got rebuilt and then it got taken out, and then we shipped it down to SoCal to get rebuilt again. I don’t think it’s coming back.”

“Wow,” Cody said, sounding truly stunned. “And this one’s lasted longer?”

“Than any of the other two combined,” Jackson confirmed, slowing to let a couple go by. They were both androgynous under their rain gear, but they were huddling under a giant pink-and-yellow flowered umbrella. Jackson wouldguessfemale, but he wouldn’t put money on it, and he smiled a little when they cleared the intersection and he could go.

“Impressive,” Cody told him sincerely. “I’m still tooling around in the Sportage I got a couple of years ago. It was paid off, so it was one of the few things I could keep after I got out of rehab.”

“Can’t shit on a vehicle that works,” Jackson said, patting Jennifer’s steering wheel so she’d know she was included. Something was niggling him, something about what had just happened with Ellery, and he realized he was gnawing at his lip as he was gnawing on the problem.

“What are you thinking about?” Cody asked, and Jackson grunted, realizing it was sharing time.

“How? How did that woman that Ellery pissed off know where to find that starving kid? I mean, we’re going to assume that poor Otto was like Cowboy. He was indoctrinated into the pray-the-gay-away thing, and then he ran away. Well, Ellery said he looked like he’d been on the streets for as long as Cowboy—and Cowboy said that Otto had gotten recaptured during the great escape. When did he escape again? And how did that Piper Lutz/Bertha Dunkel woman know where to find him? I mean, the pray-the-gay-away camp obviously has a problem keeping kids—have they simply kept replacing them as they bleed away? Or do they know where they go? And what happens to them once they return and piss off Shitbag Retty or her friends again? Because I washopingif a kid was coming back out of thewoodwork, it would be Caleb—but Otto mentioned Caleb and started to cry, so….” He shuddered, his stomach in knots.

“No happy ending for Caleb,” Cody said soberly.

“I’m really thinking not,” Jackson muttered. “It’s why we gotta check inside this compound. I need to see some papers or something, or talk to some of the inmates still there. This feels… bigger somehow. Like this isn’t just the story of one kid, or one rogue piece-of-shit enforcer nailing Henry, but like there is somethingbigthat everybody is afraid is going to come out if Cowboy talks to somebody who will listen. Am I making any sense here?” he asked, a little desperate for affirmation. It occurred to him that his head was starting to pound with a sleep headache from hell, and while he wasn’t hungry, he couldreallyuse a soda or a coffee or something. “And is Starbucks still open?”

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