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“Language,” I admonished. “There are children in the house.”
“Then come outside,” he said evilly.
I considered that. “You know, I’m kind of comfortable where I am.”
He looked past me. “What is Verrell doing here?”
“Who?”
“Louis-Cesare’s chef!”
“Oh.” I looked over my shoulder at the vamp, who was humming happily to himself and whisking the hell out of some eggs. I turned back to Marlowe. “Making me an omelet.”
“Why?”
“He didn’t like my sandwich.”
“He didn’t—” Marlowe stopped and looked skyward, forgetting that it was still daylight out. Which I guess must have burned his retinas, because he cursed viciously.
“If you keep that up,” I told him, “I’m going to have to ask you to—”
“Who is this?” he demanded, shoving a photo in my face.
I didn’t answer, because it was all of a millimeter away from my eyeball. But I stepped back a pace and checked it out, because it seemed the easiest way to get rid of him. It showed a guy who looked like a cross between the maître d’ and the chef, only not as pleasant-looking. He had a little black mustache that was vainly trying to add character to a round pudding face, bushy black brows and small, suspicious eyes that he’d focused with loathing on whoever had taken the photo.
“No idea,” I told Marlowe.
“You’re sure?”
“As sure as I can be from a photo. Why?”
“Because you were on his yacht two days ago.”
I thought about that for a second. And then I let him in. Because his temper was short enough when his brains weren’t frying, and I doubted I’d get any info otherwise.
“The one at the bottom of the sea?” I asked, as he pushed past me.
“It’s not on the sea bottom any longer,” he said, batting at slightly steaming curls. “It must have been sucked in by that damned portal.”
“Then how do you know it belonged to this guy?” I asked.
Marlowe tucked the photo back under his jacket, which was steaming slightly, too. That was weird for someone at his level, unless he still hadn’t gotten any sleep. Which would also explain the mood.
“It had something better,” he told me shortly. “Or did you make up the raven over the doorjamb?”
It took me a second to remember the ugly statue cheapening an otherwise tasteful room. “No, it was there.”
“Then unless there are two black yachts with raven mascots, it was the Corvus.”
“That’s Latin for ‘raven,’ isn’t it?”
“Yes,” Marlowe said, looking vaguely surprised that I’d know that. “More to the point, it was the name bestowed by Roman soldiers on the planks they used to board the ships they were attacking. It had a ‘
beak’ on one end to grab hold and bite into the other ship’s deck.”
“So that guy was Roman?” He hadn’t looked it.
“No, but the person who sold it to him was. The yacht used to belong to Geminus, before he sized up a few years ago. He sold his old one to his good friend Slava—who I want you to ID. If you saw him at that pier, it could be the break we need.”
