Blood Debt

she was a great deal shorter than her personality suggested. When she smiled, she showed enough teeth to remind him that many of the people he'd run into over the last couple of years weren't exactly human. "See that you do."
    It was pleasantly enough said, but a threat for all of that. Dick me around, and you'll be the story. It won't be fun.
    Under other circumstances, he might have reacted differently, but short women made him vaguely uncomfortable, so he merely showed himself out—counting on his fingers in the corridor to make sure he'd gotten them all back.
    A few moments later, he was sitting in the van going over what he had.
    A handless body short one surgically removed kidney had been found in Vancouver Harbor.
    Patricia Chou's information on why the kidney could have gone to an illegal transplant was entirely plausible even if her dislike of Ronald Swanson was not.
    Organized crime did have a history of using dead men's prints which would explain the missing hands. And Vicki was right about organized crime always looking for a new way to make a buck. Some sort of criminal bodyshop made more sense than a well-respected, socially conscious businessman selling used organs like they were high-priced radios ripped out of parked cars.
    According to Patricia Chou, there was a market out there for kidneys.
    Resting his forehead against the top curve of the steering wheel, Celluci closed his eyes. Great, now they've got me beginning to believe it…

    Six
    " KEEP your ears open …"
    Tony stuffed another cartridge in the rewinder with more emphasis than was absolutely necessary. So far he'd overheard a totally unbelievable excuse about a destroyed tape, a conversation that could be used to script a bad made-for-TV movie, and three long-winded reviews from a retired office machinery salesman who expressed opinions on his weekend rentals every Monday. Not exactly the buzz on the street.
    " Vicki says you're the best …"
    "Yeah, right," he muttered, staring out the window. While he wasn't stupid enough to wish himself back into cold and hunger and fear, he couldn't help feeling cut off from the one thing he did well.
    On the other side of Robeson, two teenagers leaned against a bank building soaking up the sun. One was thin and black. The other, thin and white. Skin color their only visible difference. They both wore filthy army pants, old scuffed Doc Martens, and sleeveless black Tshirts—one faced with a red peace symbol, the other with an ivory skull. Steel rings glinted in both noses above moving mouths.
    Eyes narrowed in irritation—lipreading was not as easy as it looked on TV—Tony started to ad-lib the words he couldn't hear. "You know about that gang selling organs? Yeah, man, like I'm droppin' off a kidney tomorrow."
    "What the hell are you talkin' about, Foster?"
    Tony jumped and whirled to face his boss who'd returned, unnoticed, from the store room. Squelching the lingering instinctive street response to growl, "None of your business," he muttered.
    "Nothing."
    The older man shook his head and handed him a pile of boxes to reshelve. "I've said it before, and I'll say it again; you're a weird one.
    Get back to work."
    " Vicki says you're the best …"
    It wasn't so much that he was letting Vicki down, more that he'd lost a part of himself.
    Scooping up the boxes, he came around the end of the counter just as one of the teenagers across the street held out his hand to the other.
    It was such an unusual gesture that it caught his attention and he stopped for a moment to watch. They shook hands formally, uncomfortably, then moved apart. As one of them turned to face the store, the ivory skull smiled.
    Tony rubbed at his eyes with his free hand and looked again. It was a T-shirt, old and faded and nothing more.
    Of course the skull was smiling, you idiot. Skulls always smile.
    Tony Foster, you have been hanging around with vampires too long.
    But a line of sweat dribbled icy cold down the center of his back, and the hand that set the video boxes on the shelves was shaking.

    "You got my money?"
    The driver's smile was so nonthreatening it was almost inane. "It's in the bag."
    The bag had been printed with a cheap rip-off of the Vancouver Grizzlies logo. There were at least a million of them around the city.
    After a brief struggle with a zipper that seemed intent on snagging, it opened to show several packets of worn tens and twenties.
    "All right!" Considering how many dreams it held, the bag weighed