“And I know what I’m doing,”Ash cut him off, words sharp enough to chop any further discussion.“Will you just trust me for once?”
Rick’s throat worked, but he didn’t want to start another fight. He bit his tongue, forcing the calm into his voice, and said, “All right. Just… be careful. We’ll talk later.”
“Later, big guy.”
The line clicked dead. Rick lowered the phone, staring at the screen a beat longer before tucking it into his pocket. He pushed the elevator button, his reflection rippling across the ornate bronze doors. His watch read just shy of eight. The night was deepening, but if he moved fast, he could still run this up the chain: captain first, the DA next, then the judge. The city’s gears turned slow, but you could make them scream if you leaned hard enough.
Easy answers had teeth, and Rick knew it. But if this one held, it might finally be the bite that dragged the Sculptor into the light.
He hoped to God it wouldn’t be too late.
Chapter Forty-Five
(8:04 p.m.)
The Harley purred to silence as Ash swung into the curb, black chrome catching the gin joint’s neon in sly, scarlet gleams. Above the doorway, the sign burned its name in crimson letters—Babylon—a wounded heart bleeding across the oily asphalt. Its glimmer baptized the loiterers in damnation’s palette: rumpots sagging against brick, dealers whispering from the gutter’s mouth, beggars stretching palms like poisonous flowers. He cut the engine, keys loose between his fingers, attention fixed on the door, on the fever pulsing behind it.
All day he had chased phantoms through Mokasset alleys and Old Town dives, slipping bills into eager fists, coaxing whispers that withered before they touched his ear. Too early, always too early. The carrion feeders only stirred after dark, and all he’d swallowed was his own frustration. So he had gone home, refilled Poe’s bowls, savored the rasp of that sandpaper tongue scraping devotion across his knuckles. A small tenderness, but reassuring. Proof that not everything he touched dissolved into smoke.
Now the night had ripened full. The streets throbbed with breath and sin: engines idling in the rain-slick dark, laughter cracking sharp as glass, the languid moan of a saxophone drifting from the pubs. The watering hole before him loomed like a shrine to ruin, windows blurred with steam, doorway yawning wide, exhaling perfume and ashes. Babylon had always been the place for a man to lose himself—or to find exactly what he craved. If you wanted beauty on the arm or heat against your skin, this was where you came. Ash wasn’t hunting pleasuretonight, but he knew desire left trails, and trails led to answers. He swung off the bike, boots shattering his reflection in the puddle, and stepped toward the glow.
The phone buzzed in his pocket. For a second, he thought Rick might have more news, but the screen showed a different name. Tess. Ash half-smiled and thumbed the call open. “Miss me already?”
“You have no idea,”she said over the low murmur of voices, glassware clinking, piano drifting faintly in the background.“The place is a tomb without you.I swear, Vinny’s so dramatic about it, I’m thinking of drowning him in the sink. Says he’s considering therapy.”
Ash struck a match, cupping it against the wind. The flame brushed his cheekbones as he brought it to the cigarette dangling from his lips. He started strolling down the street, weaving past a couple arm in arm, smoke trailing behind him. “Maybe he should get onstage. Put on a tragic hero act for the crowd.”
“Don’t give him ideas. He’s already moping like someone’s died. Meanwhile, Cody’s decided he’s the headliner now that you’re out. Struts around like the Eclipse was his personal runway.”She broke off to yell at someone:“Two minutes, hold your horses!”Then back into the receiver, dry as gin:“And I had to toss some creep who kept asking if you were dancing tonight. Your fan club’s still rabid.”
Ash moved a little farther from the traffic, leaning on a lamppost as he exhaled. “Rabid ones keep the rent paid. You shouldn’t scold them too much.”
“Yeah, yeah, keep your worshipers. I’ll keep the whiskey flowing.”
He chuckled, the weight in his shoulders easing as he drew another breath of smoke. “See? Always some drama. And they say I’m the trouble.”
“You are,”Tess shot back.“But it’s the kind of trouble I prefer. So please tell me you’re coming back soon. I’m not sure how much longer I can stand this place without you.”
Her words warmed him more than he wanted to admit. He glanced up; Babylon’s sign shone ahead, its crimson haze promising the usual mix of smoke and shadows.
“Soon,” he said, voice softened by something close to contentment. “But not yet.”
“Ash—”
“Gotta go, babe. Got something to do.” He cut the call before she could press him, slipped the phone away, and flicked his cigarette into the gutter. He ground it beneath his heel and walked on toward the bar’s red-lit mouth.
Babylon opened around him in a haze of nicotine and sour perfume, the air a jealous lover clinging to his clothes. Its lamps cast a bruised glow, amber drowned in scarlet, spilling over cracked leather booths that sagged with the weight of regulars welded to their seats. The bar’s mirror was smudged with decades of fingerprints, an altar to vanity clouded with ghostly faces. Somewhere near the jukebox, a clarinet moaned from an old record, unspooling a slow, aching lament.
Ash paused inside, letting his vision adjust, letting the room adjust to him. The first ripple was always the same: a hitch in the air, like dice stalling mid-roll. Heads turned, glasses lowered. Some gazes flared with hunger, others with calculation, a few with something like reverence—the familiar gravity of his own orbit. He felt their stares brushing his skin, light as the ash that drifts from a burning cigarette. Once, maybe, it might have quickened him. Now it was just another tolling of the same old bell.
He slid forward through the fug of haze and gin with the languor of a panther who already knows the jungle belongs to it, weaving past shoulders and half-spilled drinks, every step ameasured trespass into their lust. Eddie was behind the counter, as usual, polishing a glass with mechanical devotion, his gaze following Ash since he crossed the threshold. Ash supposed he could start from there, the axis around which everything here spun. He let the attention linger a moment longer, then slid onto a stool, elbows braced on the counter.
“Busy night?” Ash murmured, the words laced with a half-smile.
Eddie’s mouth twitched at the corner, eyes roaming over him with more than just recognition. “Always is. What can I get you, handsome?”
Ash leaned in, close enough for him to catch the faint heat of tobacco and leather off his clothes. “Actually, I’m looking for two of my buddies—James Cole and Declan Frost. Either of those ring a bell?”
Eddie shook his head with a shrug. “Most guys who come here don’t bother with names. Even if they did, I wouldn’t keep them straight. I serve hundreds every week. They all blur together after a while.” His smile deepened, a shade more personal. “Not you, though. You’re hard to forget.”
