Night and Day (Book 2): Bleeding Sky Read Online Free PDF Page A

his peers didn’t, was that Eddie was also feeding information to
the police department. He wasn’t exactly a snitch in the usual sense. Eddie
was a businessman, and he used every tool he had to get ahead of the
competition and remain the downtown kingpin. If that meant giving the police
something that would hurt his competitors or help him, he didn’t see a
problem with it.
    The
Downtown District cops hated him. They couldn’t touch him, not for anything
big. Orders from police headquarters in Central District. The cops downtown
could arrest his dealers and bust his whores. But they couldn’t go after
Eddie directly.
    I
didn’t mind Eddie myself. He was likeable enough, and he knew when to
cooperate. Sure, he was a criminal and responsible for a lot of bad things.
But I’d been in the business for a long time. There are always going to be
criminals. Eddie was a criminal you could work with.
    After
the third pawnshop, I was done. This June had been especially hot and it was
no fun walking the streets of downtown in a black suit. I couldn’t even take
off the jacket or my pistol would be hanging out there for everyone to see.
Carry permit or not, hand cannons made people nervous, whatever was running
through their veins.
    I
had enough time to change, so I wouldn’t show up at lunch smelling like a
goat. I went back to the Jeep, drove to my apartment, and took a quick
shower. After putting on a fresh suit and shirt, I hopped back in the Jeep
and headed toward midtown.
    If
you spent your days in midtown, you’d almost forget that there had been a
war, that people had spent years in internment camps, that there were
vampires sleeping in some of those fancy high-rise apartment buildings. It
was another world.
    The
hotels were doing good business, the offices in the skyscrapers were busy,
the classy chain stores and small boutiques always full of customers. Even
after dark, midtown was still busy, the only difference being that many of
the people on the street, in the shops, and working in those offices were
Vees.
    I
pulled up at the Hiatt-Regency and left my key with the parking valet. I’d
figure out an excuse to get Sara to cover it in my expense report for the
week. Business lunch with a prospective customer or something.
    The
lobby was relatively crowded with people wearing stick-on name tags on their
jackets, shirts, and blouses. Another convention apparently. I slipped past
Bob and Sandy and Frank on my way to Boyle’s Tavern at the back of the
lobby, near the registration counter.
    It
was still early for lunch, but Boyle’s was already half full, mostly people
with name tags. I was standing in the door, scanning the crowd, looking for
someone who matched my memory of what Marc Shuster looked like, when I felt
a hand on my shoulder. I turned.
    Shuster
hadn’t changed, at least not that much. Little gray at the temples, the
beginnings of bags under his eyes. But he had the same bright blue eyes and
big smile.
    “Interesting
suit,” he said as we shook hands. “I can recommend a good tailor in Omaha if
you want to send me your measurements.”
    He
clearly knew what he was talking about. My suits are a hundred bucks off the
rack. His was a light-gray tailored number that probably cost him ten times
that.
    But
it wasn’t the fancy suit that caught my eye. It was the little silver
pendant, nestled at the base of his neck.
     

Chapter
Three
     
    I
don’t know where the idea of pendants came from. Maybe the human employee of
some Vee got tapped dry by another Vee who didn’t know that particular human
was more than food.
    However
it started, not long after they released us from the internment camps, you
started seeing people wearing pendants. On one level, they were designed to
let Vees know that the person wearing it wasn’t just free-range blood on the
hoof. On another level, they often signified ownership, like a brand on a
cow’s ass. The pendant