Magic City Blues, page 4
I knocked twice. When she didn’t answer, my heart rate sped up. I didn’t know why. I knocked again. Still nothing. I turned the doorknob, and it moved easily in my hand. I stepped into the inky blackness of Abby’s bedroom and flipped on the overhead light.
She wasn’t there.
The bed was unmade, the covers bunched at the footboard. At one end of the room, the door to a half-bath stood ajar. I checked there. I checked under the bed and in the walk-in closet.
No Abby anywhere.
I left my high-octane coffee cooling on the counter and went out the door at a dead run. By the time I reached the stairs, I stopped.
I had no idea where to go. I didn’t know her well enough to understand where she might have gone nor what might have happened to her. I called her cell phone, but it went straight to voicemail. Son of a bitch.
What to do? I didn’t know. I’m not a detective. I don’t find people. That’s not part of my skill set. I tried to calm down. Called again, voicemail again. So her phone was either off or the battery was dead. Maybe she’d gone out to get breakfast. Or lunch. Maybe she’d figured she was being thoughtful and let me sleep.
I didn’t know enough. All I knew was what my gut feeling told me: Something was wrong. I let myself back into Abby’s apartment, forced myself to calm down and take a good look around.
I checked the bedroom. I didn’t know enough about her to know for sure, but it seemed to me that there were some empty hangers in the closet that should have held summer clothing. There was no makeup on the bathroom counter. No hairbrush. I couldn’t find a purse or a phone charger anywhere in the apartment.
So Abby had left, probably on her own accord. A kidnapper wouldn’t have given her time to pack. I sat on the edge of her bed and turned my cell phone on. No new messages. Shit.
I didn’t see that I had much choice. I called her father.
Doyle answered on the second ring, and I told him what had happened the day before, and what I suspected about Abby’s disappearance.
“What do you mean she’s gone?”
“I said what I said. Clothing is missing. Her phone and charger are gone. No makeup in the bathrooms. She left of her own accord.”
“Where the fuck is she?”
“I don’t know yet,” I said. “But I will.”
“You fucking find her,” Doyle said. His voice was deadly. He didn’t scream or shout. He didn’t threaten. He didn’t need to.
“I will,” I said to the empty air. Doyle had already hung up. I looked at my phone and dug out Detective D’Agostino’s card. I looked at her name. Laura. Huh. Didn’t sound like an Italian name. The lettering on the card was embossed, the card stock heavy. I thought about her name. Laura D’Agostino. I remembered her slightly abashed grin when she came out of the apartment bathroom after checking the toilet tank for my weapon. She wasn’t ashamed of getting caught at it; she was ashamed she’d thought I’d be that easy.
Stalling. That’s what I was doing. D’Agostino was expecting me to come in and make a formal statement, and to bring Abby with me. I couldn’t do that right now.
But I could call her. Why didn’t I just do it? Punch in the number, talk to her. She wouldn’t know the number, would probably let it go to voicemail.
So I called. Haltingly, hesitantly. When she answered, I almost hung up. It reminded me of when I was a kid and nobody had caller ID. You’d call the person you had a crush on, just to hear their voice, and hang up when they answered. She said “Hello?” for a second time, but I couldn’t say anything.
“Third time’s the charm,” she said, and I could hear the rich undertones of exasperation and amusement in her voice. “I’ll say it one more time, but then I’m hanging up.”
“Don’t,” I said. The word croaked out of my lips, barely audible. I could taste the fear on the back of my tongue, an electrical taste like copper.
“Who is this?” She asked. I told her. And then I said something that surprised both of us.
“I need your help.”
FIVE
D’Agostino did everything she could unofficially. She didn’t put out an APB, but she called on some patrol cops she trusted and sent them to the local hotels. We figured someone like Abby wouldn’t stay in a pit. Spaces like those were reserved for guys like me.
I was expecting more, to be honest. You watch the cop shows on TV, they’re always triangulating someone’s location by the signal from their cell phones. But real life isn’t like that.
“I mean, I could do it,” D’Agostino told me. “Let me get a search warrant for a material witness, and I could track her credit cards and bank accounts, too, but you wanted to keep this on the down-low.”
I ran a hand through my hair, racking what little brains I had.
“I know,” I said. “But it feels like we’re not doing enough.”
“Police work is like that. You do what you can. You comb through the evidence, and you wait. And then you wait some more. You either get very patient or very, very bored.”
D’Agostino had breezed into Abby’s apartment a little over thirty minutes before. She’d done everything I did, gone over every corner of the apartment, and come up with the same thing I had: Abby had left on her own accord. Hearing her come to the same conclusion as me made me feel simultaneously smarter and more hopeless.
She sat at the kitchen table while I made coffee. When it was done, I poured a mug for her and set it down on the table in front of her chair.
“How’d you know I like it black?”
I flashed my teeth.
“I’ve known a lot of cops,” I said. “Never saw one that took it any other way.”
I added cream and sugar to mine and stirred it with a silver teaspoon from the cutlery drawer. D’Agostino watched me with a look of envy.
“It’s not being a cop,” she said. “I look at half-and-half and I gain three pounds. I don’t want to wake up at fifty and weigh three hundred pounds.”
I grunted. She had a long way to go to weigh three hundred. Like a whole other person. I bet during her time on patrol that her gun belt had weighed almost as much as she did. But it was none of my business.
Of course, if I’d minded my own business more, I wouldn’t have gone to work for the Doyle family, and I wouldn’t have a missing client.
“What about her social media?” I asked, but D’Agostino was already ahead of me. She opened her laptop and pecked away for a couple of minutes, then shoved the laptop over so I could look at the screen, too.
“Her Facebook profile hasn’t been updated in, like, a year,” she said. “She updates Twitter every week or so. Our girl is not very active on social media.”
“What about Instagram?”
D’Agostino raised an eyebrow.
“I spent a lot of time with her yesterday. She took pictures of the food, the drinks, the view. She posted ‘em somewhere.”
There are approximately four thousand Abby Doyles in the United States. Fewer in Alabama, and only two in Birmingham. We narrowed it down to @abbadoo24 within a couple of minutes. She’d posted photos from the racquet club, from dinner, and then, that morning, a photo of a bottle of Veuve Clicquot champagne in a silver ice bucket. The background appeared to be a swanky hotel room that rang a distant bell in my memory.
D’Agostino and I stared at each other.
“I know that hotel,” I said. “I’ve been there before. It’ll come to me.”
The detective showed how she earned her badge. She used a reverse image search and came up with a photograph taken from a similar angle. It might’ve even been taken in the same hotel room for all I could tell.
“It’s the Tutwiler, downtown,” she said. “Hell, it’s a ten-minute walk from here.”
We drove instead. She wanted to take her car, an official BPD cruiser, a slickback Dodge Charger without the light bar on top, but I talked her into the passenger seat of the Mustang. We were at the hotel in no time, pulling into the circular driveway and parking under the big awning in front of the hotel. The valet started toward us, but D’Agostino badged him and he waved us forward.
The Tutwiler is old Birmingham, a throwback to the lie of genteel white benevolence. The marble floors in the lobby give way to thick plush maroon carpeting in the hallways, and the elevators are still maintained by aged black men wearing the traditional operator uniform that matched the carpet. If we’d known Abby’s room number, we’d have headed straight for those elevators. Instead, I let D’Agostino take the lead as we approached the front desk. After all, she was the one who had a badge.
And she knew how to use it. She had the badge and her police ID out on the counter.
“How may I assist you, officer?” The young African-American woman at the counter asked.
“Detective, actually,” D’Agostino said, and the desk worker nodded.
“I’m sorry. Detective.”
“We need the room number of an Abigail Doyle. Checked in sometime in the early hours of the morning.”
Already the clerk was shaking her head.
“Company policy doesn’t allow us to release information on past, current, or future guests,” she said. The muscles at the hinges of D’Agostino’s jaw tightened.
“I’m asking nicely,” she said. “I can go get a search warrant and make this very messy for you and your employers if I want to.”
The clerk held her ground.
“Perhaps you should do that,” she said. Her voice was nearly robotic, and her gaze stayed somewhere in the middle distance between the detective and me. “The Tutwiler complies with all legal procedures. I’m sure a duly authorized warrant would be honored.”
A small smile played at the corner of D’Agostino’s mouth. Before she could say anything else, I put a hand on her arm and gently pulled her back toward me. Her entire body was quivering with anger.
“Let me try,” I whispered. My lips were so close that they brushed her ear when I spoke. I took out my wallet, selected a bill, and folded it into my palm.
“I’m sorry about my partner,” I told the clerk. “Sometimes she gets a little aggressive when she doesn’t need to.”
The clerk’s eyes flicked toward me and away again. “I can see that.”
“Perhaps we don’t need a search warrant?” I moved my fingers to show her the bill was a hundred.
The clerk cocked her head to the side and smiled at me.
“I’m sorry, sir. Information about the Tutwiler’s guests is not for sale.”
So much for the nice guy approach. I thanked her and stuffed the bill back into my pocket. I steered D’Agostino by the arm, and we went out the front door and down a side alley. She was still fuming.
“Goddamn it,” she said. “That little bitch.”
I laughed, but only a little.
“She called your bluff,” I said. “She’s dealt with cops before.”
D’Agostino crossed her arms over her chest and leaned against the wall of the hotel.
“Yeah. I’d like a chance to run her sheet sometime.”
She paused. I could see her fighting her anger. The battle was all over her face. This was a formidable woman, and one who didn’t like being thwarted. But she took a deep breath and set it aside.
“We should’ve tried your approach first. I screwed it up by coming on too strong.”
I wasn’t going to agree with her — at least not out loud — because I’d seen what she looked like when she was angry. But I thought it would have made a difference. So we waited beside the locked service entrance to the hotel until one of the maids came out. A twenty got us in the building, and then we cautiously made our way to the rickety old elevators, keeping out of sight of the woman at the front desk. We rode up the first elevator, chatting with the operator who had been on shift since midnight. D’Agostino showed him a picture of Abby from one of the social media apps on her phone. He hadn’t seen Abby come in, and was most sorry he couldn’t help us. I duked him a twenty to forget he’d seen us, and he made the folded bill disappear as if he were starring in a magic act on the Vegas strip. We rode back down and caught the other elevator. This time we struck gold.
Abby had come up with another guest, and they’d gotten off on the sixth floor. I motioned for the operator to kill the elevator, and he stopped the car on the fifth floor, pushing a button to keep the doors closed.
“I don’t suppose you saw what room they went in.”
The operator grinned at me, a gold tooth glinting far back in his mouth.
“I did not,” he said. “You her husband? Here to cause her some trouble?”
Beside me, D’Agostino smirked. I ignored her.
“No,” I said. “But it’s important that we find her.”
“How important?” He didn’t actually put his hand out, but the implication was there. I handed him the Benjamin I’d offered the woman at the front desk. He tucked it away inside the ridiculously formal coat he wore.
“I didn’t see what room she went in,” he said, “but I seen who she was with, and that’s just as good. Martin James keeps a suite on the sixth floor, number 604. She come up with him, she’s probably still there. I see a lotta girls come up with him. They usually stay the night.”
I gave him another twenty to forget he’d seen us, just like the other operator. He made that bill disappear just as neatly as the hundred. D’Agostino and I got off on the fifth floor and went up one flight of stairs.
Number 604 was a corner suite. A few doors past its door, a cleaning cart stood. I looked at D’Agostino. It was time for her to take the lead again.
She badged the maid, a stout Latinx woman wearing a gray uniform and orthopedic hose. I turned away from the fear in her eyes. It occurred to me that D’Agostino’s badge was just as much a weapon as her gun. While the detective distracted her, I went to the cart and found what I was looking for: a magnetic card about the size of a credit card. It was a master key that would open any door on the sixth floor. I nabbed it and strode quickly down to Martin James’ suite. I slid the card through, watched the red light on the door lock blink once and then switch to green. I turned the handle and the door swung free.
I left it open a crack while I replaced the key card. D’Agostino kept the maid distracted, and I saw her nod a little at me, acknowledging that everything was clear. I slipped back to Room 604.
My breath came shallow and irregular. I inched the door open and waited, hoping that I wouldn’t smell gunpowder again. The scent from the day before had dissipated from my nostrils, but the memory of it was fresh. I breathed out slowly and pushed the door open the rest of the way. I couldn’t smell anything.
I moved further into the suite.
Abby wasn’t there. Or at least she wasn’t in the sitting room. There was a big bouquet of fresh flowers on the coffee table, and the drapes were open to let in the light from the outside. A couple of bottles from the minifridge had been cracked open and left on the bureau where the flat-screen TV stood. The door to the bedroom was closed.
On my way there, I stopped to check the bathroom. I’d look like an awful fool if some guy stepped out of the john and shot me in the back. I flipped on the light. No one sat on the toilet. I checked the shower, too, just to be safe. No one there, either. If someone was in the suite, they had to be in the bedroom.
I was only a couple of steps away from the closed door when I heard a long muffled moan from behind it. I don’t remember drawing my weapon, but it was in my hand when I went through the door.
I don’t know what I expected, but seeing Martin James naked and tied to a four-poster king-sized bed wasn’t it.
James was a developer, a guy famous for getting a lot of the Avondale and Crestwood neighborhoods rezoned and gentrified. He wasn’t yet thirty years old, but he owned a piece of three downtown restaurants, a microbrewery, and a couple of bars on Second Avenue. He had friends in the mayor’s office and on the Jefferson County Commission.
In other words: James was a big fucking deal in Birmingham.
He was long and lean, except for an incongruous little potbelly that mounded his middle like an Appalachian foothill. His nose had been broken once upon a time and set inexpertly, and his cheeks bore the broken capillaries of a man who likes the liquor a little too much. I knew the signs because I had an early version of that same red-veined road map on my own face.
And here he was, laid out and trussed up neat as a Christmas turkey. Silk scarves ran from his ankles to the bedposts at his feet. His wrists were similarly bound at the head of the bed. He wore a red ball gag in his mouth and nothing else.
I moved over to him and took the gag away. He moved his jaw tenderly for a few seconds.
“Where is she?” He rasped.
“Who?”
He looked even more annoyed, if that was possible.
“Abby Goddamn Doyle is her name. She left me like this, goddamn it. Untie me. I’ve got to go to work. Ah, Jesus, when I get my hands on that little bitch—”
It didn’t take a lot of imagination to see what had happened here. Abby let herself get picked up, came up here to the hotel room with James, and then suggested a little something unusual. Once she had him tied up, she left. The trail was cold.
“What time did she leave?”
“I don’t know. Now untie me, motherfucker! I’ve got to take a piss.”
I pursed my lips and looked around the room. A pair of gabardine slacks puddled on the floor at the foot of the bed. Beside them, a slim black wallet lay open. I picked it up and thumbed through it. No cash, but that didn’t necessarily mean anything. James’s ID and credit cards all seemed to be present. I closed the wallet and tossed it onto his naked belly.
“How much cash did she take?”
He wouldn’t look at me.
“I said—”
“I heard you. I don’t know how much. I keep a couple hundred in my wallet for emergencies. I guess she got that. She took the roll, too.”
