Coyote and I stepped out of the truck and trotted toward the church.
Halfway across the lower parking lot, Coyote stopped. He began walking backward toward his truck. "Vato…"
A searchlight from uphill bore upon us. The light hurt my eyes and I brought my hand up to shield them.
A voice yelled through a megaphone. "This is private property. You are trespassing."
Two red auras moved behind the glare of the spotlight. At our far right, two more red auras sat in a vehicle with the lights dimmed. The vehicle rolled down the driveway on the eastern side of the parking lot. Yellow lights suddenly flashed and rotated on top of both vehicles.
Security guards. Armed perhaps. But no matter, subduing them wasn't worth the risk of blowing our cover.
The second vehicle hit us with another spotlight. Scissored between the two intersecting shafts of light, Coyote and I skulked back to his truck. To add to the humiliation, his Ford wouldn't start and I had to push.
A guard taunted us through his megaphone. "Next time get a truck with a motor, you stupid bastards."
Asshole.
When we rounded the turn and headed down the slope on Lake Avenue, the spotlights went off.
For all my street smarts and vampire cunning, we were driving down the road to nowhere. "What the hell is with this goddamn investigation?"
Coyote shifted gears and the truck lurched forward. "Simon. It's confusing."
"More than confusing. What do you think is going on?"
Coyote's expression became uncharacteristically serious. He tipped his ball cap back. A wispy tuft of hair curled free. "Don't put me on the spot, ese. I'm not much in the 'think' department."
"Let's start at the beginning. Interrupt when you have something to add," I said. "Freya Krieger rats on Dr. Mordecai Niphe for botching an operation and killing the patient. Niphe gets his revenge by destroying Freya's medical career."
"And she comes back as Roxy Bronze, the porn star working for that pinchi Cragnow Vissoom," Coyote said. "I'm with you."
"Then for reasons I still don't fathom…"
"Fathom?" asked Coyote.
"It means 'understand,' " I explained. "Roxy teams with Veronica Torres at Barrio Unidos to stop Project Eleven-the plan to redevelop Pacoima. Which they do."
"And that pissed off a lot of rich people because they lost money," Coyote said.
"One of those people is Lucky Rosario, who it turns out has been siphoning…" I waited for Coyote to interrupt again.
"I understand siphoning," he said. "That's how I get gas for my ride."
"Rosario funds Cragnow's movies and in return gets to play with some porn tail. Now it turns out that Dr. Mordecai Niphe is sending thank-you gifts to Cragnow."
"Let's not forget the dump truck treatment, ese."
"I haven't."
"l Porque?" asked Coyote. Why?
"Don't know," I said. "Does it have to do with money? Sex? Or something else? If that's not confusing enough, now we've got Dr. Niphe sneaking off to meet with the Reverend Dale Journey."
Coyote slowed at a traffic light and gunned the engine to keep it from stalling. "You sure, vato?"
"What do you mean?"
"Dr. Niphe only went to Journey's church." The light turned green and Coyote let the truck jerk forward. "We're not sure who he went to see."
"True. But I'll bet that Niphe wouldn't have been invited unless Dale Journey knew about it. Notice that the security guards didn't show up until we got there."
Coyote frowned. "Vato, that's too much shit for me to think about. And you still haven't gotten to why Katz Meow is missing or why someone killed Rebecca Dwelling."
Or mentioned a lot of other people I knew wanted Roxy dead.
"Don't forget the real reason you're here, raza…"
I hadn't been called raza in a while. Short for La Raza-the race-meaning us mestizos.
"… to find out what this has to do with vampires and humans."
Whatever had been going on in L.A. was serious enough to alarm even the Araneum. They expected me to infiltrate the suspected vampire-human collusion and bring the offending bloodsuckers to undead justice. Trouble was, I hadn't done much so far except practice push-starting Coyote's wreck of a pickup.
Discussing the investigation with Coyote should have helped. Instead, reviewing the details of the case and coming up with zip made me feel like one big dumb ass.
Coyote grasped my shoulder. "You okay, Felix?"
I brushed his hand off. My aura should've told him how pissed I was. Plus I hadn't eaten anything since morning, so I was cranky with hunger.
Working in the daytime, no matter how much we vampires tried to adjust to the cycle, left us with perpetual jetlag. After a few days of having the sun leach psychic energy from our bodies, we needed a nice blood meal and a good nap in a coffin to refresh us and smooth the kinks out of our attitudes.
"Relax, ese," Coyote said. "We'll go to my place, get something to eat, and take a snooze." He circled a finger next to his temple. "Mientras"-meanwhile-"you get those gears turning in your head and see what we have to do next."
I had plenty of gears to turn; problem was, I couldn't get any two of them to mesh.
One traffic light from the freeway on-ramp, a red Ferrari rumbled beside us. The young man at the wheel looked up at Coyote's truck and sneered. He gestured to someone beside him, and a woman's face appeared in the driver's window, laughing no doubt at the heap Coyote and I were in.
Bad timing on the part of these two yuppies. I was pissed at the world and hungry. Might as well get these two birds with one stone, or rather one stare.
I turned my face to them and flashed my fangs.