She turned her head quickly and looked at the demon Kanastorous, her red pigtails bouncing on her back. “Can I do that, Zeke?”
“If you’re contracted to do it, and if you want to do it,” Zeke said.
“Oh, I’d very much like to,” she said. She looked at Jessie and grinned winningly. “It sounds like fun, spying on the embassy, snitching on old Willard. It appeals to me. I’m really sort of perverse.”
“I’ve heard,” Jessie said.
“How much you willing to pay?” Zeke asked.
Jessie said, “That depends on how soon she can get back to me with Aimes’ reaction.”
“I’m supposed to see him in a little while,” Gayla said. “I can bring it up then, when he’s in the right mood, and be back to you by dawn or a little after.” A succubus could come and go in both darkness and daylight.
“That would be fine,” Jessie said.
“How much?” Kanastorous asked again.
“A hundred credits?”
“Impossible. Five hundred as a minimum.”
The detective looked at the hell hound and said, “Well?”
“I know this greasy little fiend,” Brutus said. “We spent half a century together, corrupting virgins. He’ll settle for the hundred, but he’ll be pissed off. Give him a hundred and fifty to soothe him.”
“A hundred and fifty,” Jessie told the demon.
Kanastorous sighed, reached for his drink, knocked it over, grabbed for it and, in his clumsiness, knocked over Gayla’s milkshake as well. As the succubus giggled and Kanastorous cursed his missing thumbs, a waitress mopped up the mess and brought them fresh drinks, with a warning to the demon to use both hands in lifting his glass.
“Where were we?” Kanastorous asked, warily lifting his glass to take a sip of his martini.
“A hundred and fifty credits,” Jessie said.
“Five hundred,” the demon insisted.
“You heard Brutus.”
Kanastorous looked at the hound and made a face, his pointy teeth biting into his hard lips and drawing no blood. “It is a damnable thing to have to do business with old friends.”
“A hundred and fifty credits,” Brutus said.
“When I take my commission,” Kanastorous said, “the girl is left with only a hundred and five credits—and me with only forty-five.”
“A hundred and fifty,” Brutus insisted.
“I’m sure that Gayla, here, makes out quite well from Willard Aimes. And other contractees, I wouldn’t doubt.”
“She has eight contracts to fulfill,” Kanastorous admitted, rather like a proud father.
Gayla giggled and drank more of her milkshake.
“Then it’s settled at a hundred and fifty?”
“Okay,” the demon said. “For you, my licensed snoop, a special price—but the whole hundred and a half up front, now.”
Jessie dialed for an open, public channel on the booth’s computer keyboard, made the transaction.
“Well, I better be off to see Willard,” Gayla said, finishing the last of her new milkshake, wiping at her mouth and getting up. She did a modified curtsy, her little breasts jiggling, and said, “I’ll see you after dawn, Mr. Blake.”
Then she was gone, pigtails bouncing, tight little behind twitching.
“She isn’t what I think of when I think of a succubus,” Jessie said.
“Well, most of my girls are the voluptuous types,” Kanastorous said. “But not all my customers have the same tastes.”
Brutus said, “Arf, arf!”
Chapter Five
When they got to Blake’s high-rise apartment in downtown L.A., it was nearly five o’clock in the morning, not much more than half an hour until sunrise, and little more than an hour or two before Gayla would drop by to report what she had learned from Willard Aimes. Jessie made breakfast, had a bloody mary to top it off, and decided to stay up until he got word from the succubus.
Seven o’clock came and passed.
Seven-thirty.
Eight o’clock.
“I wonder where she is?” he said to Brutus who was curled up in front of the fireplace, nose to tail.
“If Aimes is smart,” the hound said, “she’s in his bed.”
Nine o’clock came.
“She should be here by now,” Jessie said.
“Depends on how much stamina Aimes has,” the hound said.
By nine-thirty, they were both aware that something must have gone wrong, or that Kanastorous was cheating them, somehow.