The Night Beat

conversation, we’d have just walked through the door. So that’s what we’re doing to do now.”
    With that, he turned the knob. Interestingly, the door opened in, not out. Jack stepped through and, praying to Yahweh and suggesting that, if he had pals around they keep an eye on us, too, I followed.

Chapter 29
     
    Like every dive bar or club in every city or town, The Pleasure Palace had no windows. It was dark and murky, and smelled of tobacco, booze and a variety of other scents, most of them indicating squalor and decadence.
    Unlike most other dives, it was huge. I thought about the rest of the block and realized it had taken over the buildings on the side that didn’t have the pawnshop. It easily stretched to the end of the city block. The walls were dark red, the lighting leaned towards the red side, and the furniture was all black. They had a theme, all right.
    Music was playing, loudly. This wasn’t unusual in a dance club, but most dive bar denizens liked lower volumes. I didn’t recognize the song but I did recognize that it wasn’t recorded by any act a normal human would have heard of. The lyrics were in Latin, and they weren’t nice lyrics, either. Humans who wanted to accuse heavy metal rockers of being Satanists should have taken a listen to this -- this was truly evil music, and it bore the same resemblance to heavy metal as I did to a Pekinese.
    Also unlike most dives, it was packed. There were people everywhere, mostly men but more than enough women, and they didn’t all look like they were in the Sexy Cindy Sisterhood. Some of them were in suits and had clearly come with men in suits, and probably in the Beemers and Benzes.
    I sniffed deeply. Every drug known to mankind was in evidence. Every liquor and burning substance, too, other than sage and cedar. No cleansing scents were allowed in here, that was clear.
    Jack and I shoved through the patrons. I couldn’t see Freddy or Sexy Cindy, but I could smell them. Because they were afraid and they were the only ones in here who were. No one looking at me and Jack gave off the smell of fear, which was proof, as if we needed it, that this place was bad to the bone. No one, no matter how cool or deadly, doesn’t feel a twinge of fear when a cop shows up, at least no normal human. But these weren’t normal humans, not by a long tail.
    I grabbed Jack and headed for the other half of our team. They were huddled in a booth in the back, in the corner and in the dark. Before Jack had been born there had been a song with those lyrics. It had no relationship to our current situation, but it did remind me that I had a couple of hundred years on him. It didn’t feel like it when we were together, though. He’d been a cop longer, and he was so incredibly male that it didn’t matter.
    I dragged my mind back to the situation. I could get moony about Jack later. We needed to ensure we all had a later.
    We reached the booth and both Freddy and Sexy Cindy looked relieved. “Took you long enough,” Freddy said quietly.
    I put my back against the wall and took another long look around. No one, literally no one, was paying any attention to us. “You getting what I’m getting?” I asked Jack.
    “Total lack of interest in the police? Yeah. By the way, to ease your troubled mind, now that we’re in here, I don’t feel anything.”
    “Nothing at all?”
    “Normal revulsion, desire to burn the place down, strong wish to make arrests. Standard cop feelings. But nothing else. Other than a longing for nose plugs. This place reeks.”
    “Tell me about it,” Sexy Cindy muttered. “Can we go?”
    Before I could answer that, someone slithered over. Sure, he walked, but it was slithery walking, the kind of walking that only certain beings can do -- and none of them are human. He was slender, had slitted eyes that slanted up, very little nose, and a wide, smiling mouth. However, I didn’t need more than his walk to know what he was.
    I moved in front of Jack and the others. Not because I was trying to make Jack think I was as tough as Black Angel Two, but because the chances of any of them knowing what to do when a lesser snake-demon attacked were slim to none.
    But the snake-demon in front of me just smiled even wider. “No reason to fear,” he said, the “s” in “reason” slightly elongated. “We welcome all here.”
    “I’ll bet.” I decided to just go for it. “We’re looking for a drug dealer named Anthony Tomio. Seen him lately?”
    “I