Read Online Cajun Gothic (Blood Haven) by Nya Rawlyns - Free Book Online Page B

separate one from the other might be fodder
for a shrink. When I got back from New Orleans, I had to seriously consider
calling Dr. Farnesworth for a consult.
    If I got back.
    I replayed the bizarre conversation in my head…
     
    “Yer gonna shoot yer dick off.”
    I was actually surprised he seemed concerned about
that.
    He elucidated, “Me, I like a Glock.”
    Familiar with the argument about decocking versus
long trigger pull, I simply shrugged. Chalk it up to taste.
    What Sasha wanted was my undivided attention and I
had to admit, it was unconventional and very, very effective. A Swiss army
knife on the other hand might have been a complete turnoff.
    As insane as it seemed, I’d be willing to take that
for a test drive, assuming I ever got down and naked with her again. My ego was
more than willing to pretend the blow job had been above and beyond just
services rendered.
    But like Ivan had said… it was a retainer and I held
the to-do list in my hot little hands.
    “In a nutshell, exactly what am I looking at here?”
I waved the envelope.
    A board creaked upstairs. Then the house settled.
Ivan got twitchy all of a sudden, looking left and right, then leaned forward,
his voice a bass rumble, pitched for my ears only.
    “We hear shit, me and her. She don’t do the clubs…
you gotta understand that. But some of the others do.”
    “Svetlana and Nairi.”
    “Yeah, coupla others. Not from here.”
    I assumed that meant they were safely ensconced in
the 7 th Street bordello.
    “So what’s that got to do with anything?”
    He stared at me like I was dim. And here I’d been
thinking about asking him to draw pictures because text-wise he was coming up
short in the information department.
    “They got noticed.”
    Pulling teeth had to be easier. “By who?” Dammit
all to hell, get to the effing point.
    “Manny, he knows this guy in the Council. They asked
for our girls so he did a delivery, door-to-door, special services kind of
shit.”
    “Go on.” I reached for the notebook. Ivan didn’t
object.
    “It got real regular. Apparently one of the
muckety-mucks took a fancy to Svetlana and made an offer.”
    “What kind of offer?” My spidey-sense went on full
alert. I wasn’t aware that the Council of Gotham ran any side businesses, other
than the clubs and keeping tabs on the loonies. Even in subcultures flaunting
all of society’s rules, image was still everything.
    “Ya gotta understand. The Council’s making big bucks
off tourists, but that ain’t all there is.”
    “So educate me.”
    “It ain’t cheap to use their special services, and
even the top doms like to indulge every now and then.”
    “I know they handle the festivals and co-ordinate
events, skimming off every venue. You’re saying there’s more?”
    “That’s exactly what I saying.”
    “Forgive me, but I’m still drawing a blank here.
What’s that got to do with Svetlana and Nairi getting…” I choked on the words
and picked a spot over his left shoulder, praying for enlightenment.
    “At first, Manny thought he’d been dealing with just
the Council, ya know?” I nodded encouragingly. “But the one who did Svetlana?
There was something off, like he was weird. Nobody seemed to know much about
him, yet he was the one pulling the strings, doing deals. Like I said, you hear
stuff if you pay attention.”
    “So what happened?”
    “Sasha and me don’t know exactly what they offered
Manny, but he said no. He even took a meet with some of his people and they
backed him up.” A frown crossed his face. “A couple days later she turned up
dead.”
    That was interesting and exactly what I suspected.
This whole case was looking like whores being drained was just a sideshow. A
message. The fly in the ointment was that Svetlana had been victim number
three. So who else was involved?
    I was looking too low on the food chain, not seeing
the forest for the trees.
    Ivan worried at a hangnail for a while. I jotted a
few things down, then