Magic City Blues, page 5
“The roll?”
“I keep a roll in my pocket.” He hesitated. “You never know. I might see something I want to buy.”
“How much?”
He was silent for a time. We could hear the cleaning woman. She was in the suite now. D’Agostino was talking to her. They were coming closer. I went to the door and locked it.
“Still time for a little guy talk,” I said. “How much did she take?”
“A little less than ten grand.”
I guess my face showed my surprise.
“What?” He said.
“Why the hell did you have ten grand on you?”
“I always do.”
I didn’t know what to say to that, so we sat there for a minute. Pretty soon, though, he shook his hands against the silk bindings.
“Are you going to let me out of this?”
“In a minute. Where do you think she went?”
“How the fuck am I supposed to know?”
Behind me, the doorknob turned. I twisted around and said, “Uno momento, por favor,” and the rattling ceased.
“You really have no idea?”
“Of course not. I’d tell you if I did. She took my money, took my car keys—”
“What kind of car?”
“Does it matter?”
I rubbed my face with both hands. It felt like a lifetime since I’d slept last, even though it had only been the night before.
“It’ll make finding her easier.”
He gave me the year, the make, the model, and the license plate number. I was pretty sure D’Agostino could do something with that information, and she could do it quicker than I could. I stood and grinned down at him. I thought about taking his picture. Somebody somewhere would pay a good deal of money for something like that. But I decided against it. I had Doyle on my back already. Who needed more heat? I stood up.
“Thanks for the cooperation,” I said.
“Hey, aren’t you going to let me out? I gave you everything you asked for.”
I shook my head.
“You got into this mess,” I said. “You can get yourself out.”
That’s when the curse words started.
“Son of a bitch,” he said. “I’m going to kill you for this. No, fuck that, I’ll have you killed. No motherfucker does this shit to me and gets away with it.”
I leaned over him and picked up the ball gag.
“Do you know who I am?” I said.
“No,” he said, and paused. “Are you supposed to be someone important?”
“You don’t know who I am. How do you expect to find me?”
He struggled as I slipped the leather strap over his head, but Abby had tied him tight. He didn’t make it easy, but it didn’t take a ton of effort to make sure the gag was in place. I got up and went to the door. Opened it, looked out.
The detective was waiting for me, but the cleaning woman had moved on. Behind me, Martin James screamed into his gag.
“I put a ‘Do Not Disturb’ sign out and shooed the help away,” she said. “Who’s in the bedroom?”
“Look for yourself.”
She did, and burst out laughing. I went back in and took her by the arm.
“Come on,” I said. “Let’s get out of here.” On the way downstairs, I filled her in on everything James told me.
SIX
Pale Eddie’s Pour House is on Second Avenue, a little hole-in-the-wall bar where they pour a good drink and then leave you alone. If you get there early enough, it’s quiet and you can talk. D’Agostino was drinking amaretto on the rocks. I had a double shot of Black Bush and water back. She’d already called in Martin James’s plate with instructions that anybody who found the car should call her first. I was checking my phone every five minutes for social media updates.
Pale Eddie’s isn’t much. There’s a half-assed bandstand to the left as you come in, and the bar runs pretty much the length of the room on that same side. There’s a scattering of tables along the right-hand wall. We were at a table, staring at each other and racking our brains for the next step.
D’Agostino’s phone rang. She picked it up and turned partially away from me, so that I couldn’t see her face. Her voice was low, but I was right there. I could hear everything.
“I told you not to call me anymore.” She paused, listening to the person on the other end of the line. “I don’t care. We’ve been over all that. It’s done. You need to let this go.” She hung up without saying goodbye and drank down the rest of her drink without pause. I gestured to the bartender for another, and he came over with a fresh lowball glass. D’Agostino’s knuckles were white where she gripped her drink.
“Ex-boyfriend?”
“Ex-girlfriend,” she said, and took another long swallow. “Together for three years. We broke it off six months ago, but she still calls me all the time.”
D’Agostino patted the breast pocket of her shirt.
“Shit,” she said, and shook her head. “I gave up smoking about the same time Samantha and I broke up. Just hearing her voice makes me want a cigarette.”
“Sounds self-destructive.”
She laughed.
“You have no idea. I left my husband for her—you can imagine how that went over—and I thought I was in love for the first time in my life. What I was, was desperate. I hated being married.”
Her phone rang again, and this time when she turned away, I didn’t listen. Not my business. There was an old-fashioned cigarette machine in the corner beside a newfangled Internet jukebox. I broke a ten-spot at the bar and fed dollars into the juke, picking out some Tom Waits and Dave Van Ronk tunes. Those cats aren’t everyone’s cup of tea, but I thought D’Agostino might appreciate them. I bought a pack of Camels from the machine and nabbed a matchbook and ashtray from the bar.
When D’Agostino got off the phone, I tossed the cigarettes and matches down in front of her. She looked down at them and grinned.
“Oh, you’re a sonofabitch.” She laughed, then took a cigarette and lit it. She took in a big lungful of smoke, held it, and then blew it out toward the ceiling.
“Shit.”
She motioned toward her phone.
“And that was the guy I’m supposed to go on a date with on Friday. I never meant for things to get this complicated.”
“I guess that’s being an adult,” I said. “Things get out of hand when you don’t mean for them to.”
She snorted.
“Try being bisexual in the deep South,” she said. “We’re smack dab on the buckle of the Bible belt. The women who are gay don’t know it or won’t admit it—it amounts to the same thing—and the guys get turned on because they think you’ll be up for a threesome.”
My drink was gone. I motioned for the bartender to hit me again, and he did. I wanted to ask him to leave the bottle, but I didn’t need to get that drunk. Irish whisky goes down easy, and when you’re drinking the Black Bush, it’s almost as if the liquor evaporates as soon as it hits your tongue.
“I always thought sex was a one-on-one sport.” The words escaped my mouth before I could call them back. D’Agostino blinked in surprise, and then laughed. I looked away.
“Are you hitting on me?” Her eyes were full of challenge.
I thought it over for a few moments before I answered.
“I don’t think so,” I said finally. “You’re a cop, and I’m a crook—or at least the next thing to it—and I don’t see what good that would do either of us.”
We were staring at each other over our drinks now, a lot of words left unspoken. I could feel the machinery in my head clanking around and around, thinking of witty things to say and discarding all of them. And rightly so.
Ralph saved me. He was so big that when he opened the front door, he had to turn sideways to get inside, and then he had to waddle down the narrow walkway between the bar and the booths to where we were sitting. When he got to me, he glowered down and said “Outside” in that diesel engine voice of his.
“You see,” I said to D’Agostino, “the mountain does come to Muhammad.”
She snorted, but her eyes were wide. Ralph was nearly seven feet tall, and probably just as big around. There was something prehistoric about him. He wore khaki-colored pants and a white button-down broadcloth shirt so large it probably doubled as a sail down at the yacht club. Each of his hands were curled loosely into fists, and I knew he carried rolls of quarters in his palms. I’d seen Ralph work before. When he wanted to work someone over, they ended up looking like raw hamburger meat.
“I’m not going anywhere with you, big guy,” I said. I kept my voice calm. Ralph was like a mean dog; showing fear would only excite him. “I know why you’re here, and you can tell your boss that I’m working on it.”
Ralph shook his head, and I swear I could hear tectonic plates shift and grind against one another. I could smell the smoke of D’Agostino’s half-finished cigarette and the stale aroma of spilled beer and liquor that always seemed to pervade the air in Pale Eddie’s. The dark walls leaned closer and I was aware that Ralph could yank me out of the booth at any moment. He was big enough and strong enough that there was no way I could stop him.
“Nope,” he said. “I’m here to give you a message.”
His hands moved in small circles near what would have been a waist on a normal person. I’m not even sure he knew he was doing it. Of course I knew what kind of message Doyle would send. I was usually the one who carried those missives. But taking a beating here and now would only slow me down. It wouldn’t get me any closer to finding Abby. I blew out a breath and looked over at the detective across the table from me. She was studying Ralph as if he were some heretofore undiscovered dinosaur fossil, huge and grotesque, an apex predator from a different age.
“I’d better go with him,” I said, and D’Agostino shook her head. She took her badge off of her belt and placed it face-up on the table. Ralph paused and looked at her, taking her in as if filing D’Agostino’s features away somewhere for future reference. He shook his head again and looked at me sadly.
“Okay, not right now. Don’t matter to me none. But the cops ain’t always gonna be around, buddy boy. You got a beating coming. The longer I gotta wait, the worse it’s gonna be for you.” Ralph turned away from us slowly, a glacier with feet, and moved toward the door. I didn’t relax until I watched the door close behind him.
“Jesus Christ,” D’Agostino said. She expelled a breath I didn’t realize she’d been holding. “So that’s Ralph Miller.”
I’d never heard his last name before.
“Miller, huh?”
“Yes. He’s got a rap sheet longer than my arm. Assault and battery, kidnapping, terroristic threats, attempted murder.”
“How many convictions?”
“One fall, five years.” She lit another cigarette and blew the smoke away from us. “Nothing recent, though. Witnesses decide not to talk. Some don’t show up. One was never heard from again.”
“Eek,” I said.
“You should take this seriously,” D’Agostino said. “People who get crossways of Ralph don’t usually come out whole.”
I nodded.
“I take him seriously, but I can’t do what I do if I’m walking around scared,” I said. “I’m sure you’ve been threatened before, right?”
“Sure,” D’Agostino said. “It comes with the job.” She was spinning the cigarette pack on the table in slow and nearly hypnotic rotations. Her fingers were agile, the nails cut right down to the quick, with some kind of clear polish on them that gleamed in the dim light. Around us the room had quieted as time passed, and it dawned on me that we were the only two customers in the place. The bartender sat on a vinyl-covered stool at the other end of the long room so that he couldn’t overhear us.
“You know the question I’m not asking,” she said, and flashed a wintry smile. It was there and gone, blink-and-you’ll-miss it, and its fleeting nature made her even more attractive. I pushed the thought away and focused on the task at hand.
“Why did Abby leave?” I asked. “I want to know the same thing. She was safe where she was. The apartment was locked. I was on the couch. There was almost no chance Britt’s killer would come back.”
D’Agostino shook her head as if waking from a dream. We were both conscious of our surroundings, the quiet intimacy of being almost alone, with the rest of the night open to us. My throat felt close and hot, and I resisted the urge to clear it.
“Almost no chance isn’t the same as no chance at all,” she said, and we both thought about that for a minute.
“The killer had a key,” I said, and watched as the detective nodded along as I said it.
“And knew some way to get in the building, maybe a security code. Makes sense. Killer lets himself — or herself — in, unexpectedly finds Britt. But why kill him like that? It looked like a professional hit.”
I didn’t have an answer. I had no illusions about bringing Britt’s killer to justice. I wasn’t a detective, and had no desire to be one. All I wanted was to find Abby again. It didn’t matter to me that Ralph wanted a piece of my hide; it didn’t matter that Doyle himself was ready to carve me up. I wanted to find the girl and do the job I hired on to do. My only interest in the killer was that he — or she, as D’Agostino said — might be gunning for Abby, too.
The detective — Laura, damn it. I could think of her as Laura, couldn’t I? — drained the last of her drink and caught the bartender’s attention with a wave. When he brought the check, I scooped it up before she could put a hand on it.
“Hey—”
“Nope,” I said. “You’re in this because of me. The least I can do is buy the drinks.”
Laura shook her head. “As bribes go, that’s pretty cheap.”
I laughed. The bartender took my credit card and went to the cash register. I kept my eye on him because I didn’t trust myself to look at D’Agostino. It felt like we were skirting something between us that could not be said, at least not yet. What it was, I wasn’t sure. The bartender came back, and I signed the receipt and added a tip.
“What do I get for two drinks?”
“Some advice: Don’t turn your back on anyone.”
SEVEN
D’Agostino went out the front. She could do that sort of thing, because she was a cop. I watched her climb into the Uber she’d summoned. She showed little effect of the drinks we’d consumed other than a slightly exaggerated roll of her hips as she strode out. I’d known a lot of cops at one time or another, and they almost always have a little bit of swagger. It looked better on her than most. I turned to the bartender and asked if I could use the employee exit. My car was parked at the curb on Second Avenue, but I wanted to approach it from an unusual angle to see if anyone was watching.
There was a squeal of rusty hinges as I stepped out into the alley behind the bar. The door swung shut, and I was swamped in semidarkness. Pale Eddie’s was set near the easternmost corner of the street, so that the walk toward the street — toward the relative safety of the sodium-arc streetlights — was short. Instead, I turned away and skulked down the dark alley, taking the long way around.
I don’t believe in magic. I don’t believe in God. I don’t believe in much, other than the money in my pocket and a gun in my hand. But there is something out there, even if it’s simply a vestigial leftover of man when he came down from the caves and the other predators had sharper teeth and longer claws. The hairs on the back of my neck rose, and goosebumps prickled the flesh along my arms.
I wasn’t alone in the alley.
I still can’t tell you how I knew. But there was someone there, and they meant to do me harm. I slid my hand back for my gun, sweeping the tail of my suit coat aside in one motion when something hit me. A hand the size of a dinner plate slammed into my jaw and a whole universe of stars exploded into my vision. My gun clattered to the asphalt pavement, and I staggered in the other direction, away from it, trying to make sense of the Big Bang going off in my head.
In the quiet gloom of the alley, Ralph came for me. He didn’t say anything. He didn’t have to. There was enough glowering light cast from the streetlamps that I could see the murderous look on his face. This wasn’t business for Ralph. It wasn’t a beating, or a message. He meant to kill me. I shook my head and wished I hadn’t, because the buzz of that first shot redoubled, and I nearly fell. The wall on the far side of the pavement saved me, and I leaned there waiting for Ralph to come. Sweat stood out on my face, and there were tears streaming from the corners of my eyes.
He shifted toward me, slow and implacable. The next shot came whistling down low, a hook to my ribs that would have crushed them if it had landed. Instead, I pushed off the wall with all the force I could muster, bringing myself inside the wide loop of his punch, and head-butted him in the face.
There was a satisfying crunch when his nose broke, and now it was his turn to stagger away from me. My own head still rang, but I knew I had to put Ralph down as soon as possible, so I stayed on my feet, sodden with fury and pain. When he came for me again, I waited until he lunged in close, and kicked him in the kneecap.
He screamed and fell, a tree in the urban forest of a back city alley. He gripped his knee and tried to scramble up. When you scuffle for a living, you can’t allow yourself to be on the ground while your opponent is on their feet. It’s a good way to get stomped to death. Ralph almost made it, shifting his weight to his good leg and trying to rise, his arms making swimming motions in the heavy summer air as he tried for balance.
His breathing sounded loud and hoarse in his throat. I could hear it over the blood pounding in my temples.
I stomped on his other knee, trying to drive the hard heel of my shoe through the side of his leg, and for the second time in less than twenty seconds, Ralph screamed again. His hands opened as he caught himself on the pavement, and I saw a roll of quarters escape his fist. I scrambled for it—I was faster than the big man, if only because I had two good legs—and when my own hand closed around the roll, it was Ralph’s turn to be hunted.
