[center][b]Part III Bruce Vain[/b] "Everyone uses everyone. Way of the world, isn’t it?" -- Greg Rucka [/center] [b]Gotham East End[/b] Slam swung by his pad on the way to Doheny's. He sat in a chair, slugged gin straight from the bottle, and worked angles. FEATURE: Bianca Doheny, scion of the oil-rich Doheny Family, was missing. Old Man Doheny paid Slam to find her. Slam scoped out her flop house and got some of the skinny. Bianca does blow, Bianca shoots horse, Bianca turns tricks on the streets of Gotham. Bianca has a trust-fund. Slam inferred: The hooking is pure thrill seeking. A middle finger in the face of the old man. The plot thickened an hour ago when a ransom note showed up at the Doheny house. Slam was en route. He got his .38 snub out of a locked drawer. If the kidnapping was legit, things might get rough and he'd need the piece. Slam slipped it into a shoulder rig and slipped the rig on under his coat. He pocketed the gin after a few more slugs from the bottle. The hooch hit his throat and sent buzzes through his brain. Booze clicks clicked his brain into working order. Something gnawed at him. The gin amplified the gnawing. Bianca Doheny's mom, the old man's daughter, was out of the picture. Slam asked the old man for the dope. Doheny: "She ran away some years ago and never came back." The answer didn't jake with Slam. His response was too quick and dismissive. Slam pressed for more details and got the short shrift. Doheny said, "Do your job and find this one." Slam left it at that but didn't have to like it. A few more plugs of hooch to work up the nerve before he flopped on the couch and called up the number he wanted. "City Desk, Agee." Arthur Agee, city news editor for the [i]Gotham Gazette[/i]. A lifetime ago, Agee was on the cop beat hungry for copy and Slam was a young Homicide detective looking for press. A match made in heaven that came to an abrupt end when Slam got the boot from the GCPD. "Artie, it's Slam Bradley." "Slam?! Boychick, long time no speak. How the hell are ya?" Artie was all mick but still liked talking like a jew. He could spit Yiddish like the old world jew in Bennett Beach. "I'm fine, Artie. Making ends meet." "I heard you were a private dick now. Meet any sexy femme fatales yet?" Slam thought about the crack whore from last week. She had only three teeth and could trip on her tits if she walked too fast. "Oh, yeah. The sexiest." "You'll have to tell me about it." Slam tipped the bottle back again. Somehow it had gone from full to half empty faster than he thought it was supposed to. "I will," he said. "But for now I need some help on a job." "Gimme the spiel, Slammy. What do you need." "James Doheny, you know him?" "Yeah, rich oil guy back when Gotham still had oil. Owns all those creaky oil derricks south of town." "I want you to comb through your paper's archives and see what you can dig up on him and his family, especially his daughter." "Interesting. Anything you can tell me about this job?" "Just that if it ends up being story-worthy you'll be the first one I call." "Promises, promises, Slammy. I'll hold you to that. What number can I reach you at?" "I'm on my cell, let me give you the number." Slam gave Artie his phone number and hung up. He sucked the gin until a quarter of it was left in the bottle. Properly buzzed, he headed out to James Doheny's house. [center]****[/center] [b]Dutch Hill[/b] Slam walked into Doheny's house. The two heavies from before stood in the hallway, all big muscles and hard stares. They eyeballed him with attitude. He winked and passed on by into the study. Doheny sat in a chair facing the door, his pasty face coronary red. The old man shook a piece of paper at Slam and flew spittle as he talked. "Where the hell have you been?!" "I had to pick up some things from my apartment." "You goddamn drunk goldbrick, you better not be conning me." "You keep talking like that I'm apt to leave and let you deal with this on your own." Doheny scowled and passed Slam the paper. A ransom note straight out of a movie. Cut out letters pasted to form sentences: We HavE the giRL. 4 MILLion doLLars 2 see hER ALIVE again oUr pHone CAll wITh instRucTIons will BE sOOn NO COPS! Slam passed it back before lighting up a smoke. Doheny scowled again and waved smoke from his face. Slam took the hint, stubbed the cigarette out and asked Doheny questions. "How did it arrive?" "One of my men found it at the front door. The doorbell rang and he did not see anyone nearby when he answered it. He brought it in and I called you after I read it." "That was an hour ago?" "Yes." Slam reread the message and brooded. A real cop would dust the message for prints. A hunch gnawed at him worse than the mom angle. The hunch: Bianca Doheny's fingerprints would be all over that ransom note. "Mr. Doheny, sir." One of the gorillas sauntered in with a cordless telephone. "It sounds like them." Doheny snapped for the phone. Slam skittered out the room and down the hall. A second phone sat on the wall. He slowly picked it up and listened in. Dohney: "Hello? This is James Doheny, who am I speaking to." THEM: "Peter. Peter Cottontail. Hopping down the bunny trail--" The voice sounded hard. Too hard, thought Slam. Like the note, it was a Hollywood production of what a kidnapper would sound like. Peter Cottontail put on his best Jimmy Cagney and fronted for the old man. "Do you have my granddaughter?" "Sure do, old man. It's up to you if you ever see her alive again. You got our note, can you swing the ransom money?" "It will be a chore, but I can do that." "Good. We'll do the handoff tomorrow night at nine. The place is gonna be the north shore, near the ferris wheel. Got it?" "I'll be there if you can give me proof of life." "Hold on a sec..." "Poppa?!" Bianca Doheny's voice sounded more like out of breath than genuinely scared to Slam. The old man ate it up. "Bibi, baby! Don't worry. Everything is going--" "Tomorrow night at nine, geezer. Remember no coppers. We get a hint of flatfoots and we'll kill her." The line went dead. Doheny hung up. Slam read the caller ID. BLOCKED. He shrugged and went back into the study. "Can you get the money by tomorrow night?" Slam asked. "I can have it by tonight if necessary." "Good. Get the money ready. I'm going to spend tonight chasing leads and I'll be back first thing in the morning." Doheny protested, but Slam was out the door before the old man or his goons could get a paw on him. He drove six blocks straight before stopping in a parking lot and pulling his phone out. He lit up a cig and inhaled it deeply. Slam blew smoke and plotted steps. He pulled a battered notepad from his jacket and flipped through the pages of personal information and access codes. Jim Gordon? No. he was too high profile to use. Harvey Bullock? No. Bullock would have changed his passcode by now, the paranoid bastard. Nevermind that Slam was about to justify his paranoia. Cris Allen? No. He was probably a captain by now with different badges. Charlie Fields? Yes. A hump who kept his passcode his kids' birthday, no way he'd change jobs or codes. Slam flicked his cigarette butt out the window and dialed Gotham Tel. "Gotham Telecommunications Police Line, how may I help you?" "I need to get the number and location of a phone line that just placed an incoming call in Dutch Hill. I also need a location on an unlisted phoneline." "Yessir. I need your name, rank, badge number, and police access code." "Sure," Slam said, flipping to Charlie Fields' page. "Charles Fields, detective second class, badge number 01257, and my access code is 840221505." "... Okay, Detective Fields. What was the first number." Slam rattled off Doheny's phone number. A few quick keystrokes later and the operator had the phone traced to a downtown payphone. She gave Slam the address and he scribbled it down. "And that second number, Detective?" Slam filled through pages until he found it. The information he glommed from Bianca's flop. Vikki - Palisades Delight. Beneath it the phone number. He gave her the phone number and waited a few seconds. Another downtown address. The address just two blocks away from the pay phone. Slam thanked her and hung up. He killed the bottle of gin and looked at the note. Palisades Delight. The name sounded like an escort service. Vikki had to be a madam. The skin trade. When it came to whores and porn, there was only one man Slam knew who would be in the know. Bruce Vain. [center]****[/center] [b]Gotham East End[/b] He had black hair and clear blue eyes. Heavyset, somewhere between normal and fat. The extra weight threw off the resemblance, but otherwise he was a dead ringer for Bruce Wayne. To hear him tell it the extra weight all came from having to carry around that thing between his legs. He called it Wayne Tower, and according to him it was always open for business. He ran a gigolo service out of the East End. Old ladies, fat ladies, lonely ladies, the occasional man, and all kinds of freaks flocked to him. Who wouldn't pay a grand an hour to be reamed, steamed, and dry cleaned by the one and only Bruce Vain? "I know Palisades Delight." Slam watched him from across the diner table. Bruce was a good informant, the few ones he had left from his cop days. The only problem was Bruce charged Slam for information like he was a john. Slam supposed he was, just in a very different way than the usual clientele. "Call-girls, high-end stuff. I'm talking a few grand per hour. I've worked with them before on... things." "What things?" Bruce got cagey and looked at his tuna melt. Slam scowled and forked over a C-note. "Extortion," he said without making eye contact. "The rooms they used are set up with cameras. They blackmail businessmen and anyone else they can afford to squeeze. I was in on a few of the squeezes, lot of right-wing congressmen and councilmen who are in the closet. Let's see how much those bible thumping fucks will support them when they see the good congressman with his lips wrapped around Wayne Tower." Hookers and extortion. Slam flashed back to his last days on the force. A dead call-girl consumed him and the burnout that was slowly building became a raging inferno. He got fired, he punched the Homicide CO, and curled up into a bottle he still called home. "Thanks for the time, Bruce." Slam stood up and passed him another C-note before heading out into the night. A little under twenty-four hours before the ransom. Slam cut odds on the whole kidnapping being bullshit. No bookie in the world would take the odds he made. The truth, whatever it was, rested with the call girls and whoever Vivian was. And he was going to find out what that truth was.