And with that, I finished the glass of blood. I brought it over to the sink and immediately washed it out. When I wasn't hungry, the site of blood made me want to vomit.
About that time, Kingsley stuffed the rest of his sandwich in his mouth, chewed a half dozen times - surely not enough to fully masticate such a large section of sandwich - and then swallowed it down like a whooping crane, tossing back his head.
We both sat back, looking at each other.
"We have a problem," I said.
Kingsley nodded. "Is it that I'm too sexy?"
I didn't feel like smiling. I felt like clawing his eyes out, if you wanted to know the truth. "You got Ira Lang out of jail the first time around," I said.
"Sure," said Kingsley, shrugging. "And he didn't even have to pay me."
"What do you mean?"
"I was his court-appointed attorney."
"But I thought you were one of the most expensive defense attorneys around."
"I am. But sometimes when there are emergencies or the other attorneys are swamped, a judge will ask me to take over a case."
"So you took over the case."
He winked. "Of course. You don't say no to a judge."
"But Ira tried to kill his wife," I said. "And not just tried. The piece of shit did everything within his power to kill her."
"Right. And I got him out of jail," said Kingsley evenly. "It's what I do best."
I searched for words, fought to control myself.
As I did so, Kingsley continued, "Look, Sam. Don't take this so personally, okay? If it wasn't me getting him out of jail, any other defense attorney worth his salt would have done the same. Ira had no previous record. He was a first time offender. He was ordered to stay away from his wife - "
"And I am sure you are proud of yourself for getting him out."
"I did my job well."
"And how did you feel when you heard the news that he had gone after her again, but this time killing her father, who fought to protect her?"
"It was unfortunate."
"And you couldn't have seen that coming?"
"I saw it coming."
"But you did nothing to stop it."
"It's not my job to stop it, Sam. It was my job to get him out of jail."
"You're an animal," I said.
He folded his arms over his great chest. His black tee shirt was stretched to the max over his biceps and shoulders and pectorals and even his slightly-too-big gut. His deep voice remained calm; he never once took his eyes off me.
He said, "You are emotional because you have grown close to the victim."
"I am emotional because I let an animal put his hands on me."
"I seem to recall that you liked my hands on you."
I stood abruptly. "I can't talk to you right now."
He stood, too, and grabbed hold of both my shoulders. He towered over me. His shaggy black hair hung down over over his face. He smelled of pastrami and good cologne. He had put the cologne on for me, I realized. He had wanted more tonight, perhaps to sleep with me. I shuddered at the thought.
"Don't go," he said. "I'm not the enemy."
"No," I said. "But you might as well be."
He tightened his grip on my shoulders, but with one swipe of my hand, I easily knocked them off. Shaking, I turned and walked out of the kitchen.
"Don't go," he said after me.
I didn't look back.
Chapter Thirty-eight
I sat on the same thick tree branch and watched the crime lord's regal estate. Just a giant black raptor with a love for cute shoes.
The massive island home was ablaze with lights as Jerry Blum did his personal best to accelerate global warming. Activity had picked up since the last time I was here a few days ago. Now there were more guys with big guns, more beautiful women, and more cars coming and going. The cars looked armor plated. Once, a man and a woman strolled beneath the very tree I was perched in. The man lit a cigarette. The woman was wearing a blouse cut so low that I could see straight down it to her belly button. Probably a good thing neither of them thought to look up.
As I watched them, sitting motionless and squatting on the thick branch, I wondered if I emitted an odor of some sort. I had read years ago that Bigfoot sightings were often preceded first by a horrific stench. Well, I had showered just a few hours earlier, thank you very much. Granted, I had showered as a human. Either way, neither crinkled their noses and looked at each other and asked, "Do you smell a giant vampire bat?"
Again, probably a good thing.
The man finished his cigarette and mentioned something about being off in a few hours and why didn't she come up to his room then? She said sure.
He nodded and flicked his cigarette away, and Mr. Romantic and Slutty McSlutbag drifted off over the grounds, to disappear in the controlled mayhem of the estate house. Something seemed to be up, but I didn't know what. I caught snatches of conversation, but couldn't piece anything together. Once I saw Jerry Blum himself, surrounded by a large entourage of men. Big men. Dark-haired men. They moved purposely through the house, and I watched them going from window to window, until they slipped deeper into the house and out of view.
Jerry was going to be hard to get alone. But I was a patient hulking monster.
As the wind picked up and the tree swayed slightly, I adjusted my clawed feet, stretched my wings a little, and hunkered down for the night.
Chapter Thirty-nine
I turned off Carbon Canyon Road, which wound through the Chino foothills, and onto a barely noticeable service road.
Stuart Young, my beautifully bald client who was sitting in the passenger seat next to me, looked over at me nervously. I grinned and winked at him.
"Um, you sure you know where you're going?" he asked.
"No clue," I said.
"Of course not," he said good-naturedly. "Why should you? We're only driving through the deep dark forest in the dark of night."
"Fun, isn't it?"
I doubted we would get lost since there was only about a quarter mile of wilderness between the road and the grass-covered hill before us. Even a soccer mom could get her bearings here. We had been driving down the twisty Carbon Canyon Road, a road some think of as a sort of shortcut from Orange County to Riverside County, but, if you ask me, it's just a more scenic way to fight even more dense traffic.
The van probably wasn't made for dirt roads, but it handled this one well enough. We bounced and scraped through shrubbery until we came across a metal gate that consisted of two horizontal poles.
"It looks locked," said Stuart.