The small crowd in the bar clapped for the lone singer on the stage as he finished his latest song. He was a skinny white guy in his late 20's or early 30's. A thick beard covered his chin and his curly hair was hidden underneath herringbone flat cap. He wore blue jeans and a leather jacket and had an acoustic guitar in his lap.
"This next song... I like to read, you know?" He said with a chuckle. "Always liked poetry. This next song, it's a new one I just wrote a few weeks ago. It was inspired by a Lord Tennyson poem."
The singer ran his fingers over the strings and began to strum a steady tune. He leaned forward and sung into the mic in a raspy voice.
"Got a wife and kids in Baltimore, Jack, I went out for a ride and I never went back. Like a river that don't know where it's flowing, I took a wrong turn and I just kept going..."
Elliot Shaw watched the performance from the back of the room. Finnegan's was his regular bar and had been for years now. After he left the force he hung around the cop bars, but he could always feel that disconnect that came from being out of the loop when the rest of the boys talked about the comings and goings of the BPD. He was a successful PI and well connected in the system, but he was still on the outside looking in. That got to him after a while so he found Finnegan's and stayed here ever since.
He lit up a fresh cigarette and nursed a highball as he read over the information city councilman Liam Kane's office gave him earlier that day. Jane Wilson, the missing girl Elliot had been hired to find, worked as a secretary for Kane for six months before disappearing with whatever it was Kane really wanted. A copy of an application listed Ms. Wilson's date of birth as 7/7/61.
"Happy belated birthday, Jane," Elliot said to himself, tipping his highball in mock toast.
The application listed a Beacon Hill address as Ms. Wilson's residence. No phone number listed. The lack of a phone wasn't so surprising since lots of homes in the neighborhood were without phones. The neighborhood was heavily immigrant and many of those old tenement houses barely had electricity.
"Elliot," the stocky man said as he slid into the booth.
"Sean, how's tricks?"
"Tricky," Sean said in a thick Irish accent. "The PI business?"
"Trickier still," Elliot said with a grin.
Sean McKenna, the beefy Irishman with the ruddy face, started in the BPD at the same time as Elliot. While Elliot topped out as a detective sergeant, Sean turned out to be quite the rank getter. Even now as Sean approached his mid-40's he had three gold stars that came with the rank of deputy superintendent. By 1990, Sean would be police commissioner.
"What are you drinking, Sean?" Elliot asked as he tried to get the bartender's attention.
"Just here for a quick chat, Elliot, that's all. I need to get home soon. So I got your message, what's up?"
"You were always the political one, Sean. I need your reading on a client of mine. Liam Kane."
Sean whistled and licked his lips slowly.
"That bad?" Elliot asked.
"It's not good, boyo."
"Well, I know he's an ambitious one. That's all I know."
"It's more than that, my friend. Liam Kane is the heir apparent to Jim Dwyer."
Elliot cursed and took a long drag off his cigarette. For the past thirty-five years, Big Jim Dwyer ruled Massachusettes politics. As boss of the Combination, a political machine that dominated Boston since the 20's, Dwyer owned and used people the way everyone else owned and used shoes. Getting on Big Jim's bad side was something nobody did and lived to tell about.
"What are you doing for Kane?" Sean asked with raised eyebrows.
Elliot slid the papers across the table to his friend. Elliot sipped his highball and watched Sean squint through the dim light at the information. Sean looked up with a crooked grin.
"Was Kane fucking her?"
"Seems likely. He says she absconded with some sensitive information. I'm betting it's pictures of her and Kane doing the horizontal bop. I'm heading out to Beacon Hill tonight to see what I can find at her place."
"Good luck to you, lad," Sean said with a nod. "You'll need it. Tread very carefully, Elliot. I know your habit for speaking your mind got you in trouble on the force, but crossing these people could be very dangerous. First they ruin your life then they take it."
Elliot polished off the rest of his highball and flashed Sean a smile that was all bravado.
"They can sure as hell try."
--
Chicago
Johnny Leggario smoked his cigar and tried to figure out why exactly he hated himself. It wasn't for the usual reasons one engaged in self-loathing. It wasn't because he was broke. On the contrary, he had more money than he could ever hope to spend. It wasn't because of his looks. He was fat, but not too fat, and the extra weight helped give him a bit of boyish charm that the ladies liked. He never heard any complaints from the women he brought home when it came to what was between his legs. It wasn't because of his station in life. He was part of the inner circle of the Chicago's biggest crime boss, a place many men would give their left nut for. Johnny hated himself because he was becoming his old man.
Like Jimmy Leggario, Johnny was seen as one of the baddest motherfuckers in the Outfit, someone you avoided at all costs if you liked breathing. Like Jimmy, Johnny's power was simply an illusion. It was a gift granted to him by Bobby C. seemingly on a whim. Jimmy knew he was feared and respected as long as Bobby allowed it. That thought made him sicker than anything. He wanted to avoid becoming Jimmy, wanted to avoid this city altogether. He was living in New York six years ago when Jimmy's murder led him right back to Chicago and right under Bobby's thumb.
The Cheetah Room was part of the Bobby's benevolent streak. The strip club was a gift to Johnny that was a pretty shitty gift. He got a ten percent cut of the profits for managing it. Running the club meant having to deal with all the headaches nobody wanted to handle. Most guys out of the loop thought running a strip club entailed lapdances and blowjobs gratis. Instead Johnny had to listen to the strippers' drama and get sucked into the day to day tragedies that were their lives. Think of dealing with hormonal teenage girls, crying all over the place and hating each other and themselves... only all the girls have big tits. Added to getting caught up into their personal bullshit, Johnny also had to make sure none of the girls or other staff dealt drugs or peddled gash on the side. Bobby approved of the girls hooking and pushing blow, but only as long as he got his cut.
Johnny was taking his boss's cut of the action that night, sitting in the backroom with Gingy, the closest thing this diseased hellhole had to an assistant manager. Gingy was over fifty with bright red hair that came out of a bottle. She wore cowboys boots and tight jeans with black t-shirts. She looked every bit of the butch lesbian that she was. While Johnny didn't take advantage of the girls, Gingy was known on occasion to shack up with a few of the sapphically inclined strippers. Gingy counted out Bobby and Johnny's cuts in twenties, a menthol hanging out of her mouth with half a cigarette's worth of ash dangling off the tip.
"That's 1,000," she said after counting out fifty twenties that went into Johnny's pile.
She dumped the ashes and started on another set of twenties when the phone on the desk rang. Johnny picked it up while Gingy kept counting.
"The property at Humboldt Park, Johnny. Be there in an hour."
The line went dead. Johnny put the phone back in the cradle and looked at the clock on the wall before standing.
"I have to go," he said to Gingy as he got his sports jacket. "Count it all out and put it in the safe below the desk, put my share in one bag and the big man's share in the other."
"You got it, sweetheart. I'll keep the ship running in your stead."
--
Johnny parked his car down the block from the four-story walk-up and made his way down the street on foot. Waiting for him on the building roof was Stein. Stein was one among the army of lawyers Bobby constantly kept on retainer. A few of them acted as messengers when the man himself was preoccupied with something. Everything said between Bobby, Stein, and whoever he relayed a message to would be covered by attorney-client privilege. A rumpled button-up shirt and khakis replaced the downtown lawyer's usual three-piece power suit.
"Johnny Legs, how are you, boychik?" Stein asked with a wink.
"It's four in the morning and I'm here with you, how do you think I am?"
"Right, so no small talk. Down to business, yes? Works for me. Now listen up, because none of this is on paper. You know the Greek, right? Well, his bookie shops have been getting hit over the past three weeks. Three robberies from a four man crew. They've been taking anywhere between ten and forty large each heist. Bobby wants the feygeles found and killed in a very public way. Ten grand per dead heister, got it?"
Johnny kept his hands in his pockets and silently mulled over what Stein had just told him. There was plenty of wiggle room inside of Bobby's vague orders, and he planned to use what he could to his advantage.
"Got it. Tell Bobby they're as good as dead."
--
Boston
The lock opened with a gentle click. Elliot eased open the door and stepped inside the apartment. The cramped little studio apartment was the last known address of Jane Wilson. He pulled a flashlight out of his coat and clicked it on. Kane said that afternoon she'd been missing for two days. The apartment was messy. Clothing and makeup were scattered across the living room and into the bedroom. Jane Wilson was a bit of a pig, Elliot surmised. He made his way into the bedroom and found a notebook with telephone numbers on a nightstand. The numbers were labeled innocuously enough with things like Mom or Jennifer or Italian food. One number stood out to Elliot because it was unlabelled and towards the back of the notebook. A hunch told him it was newer than the rest. He pocketed the notebook and left the apartment, heading for the closest payphone down the street.
"Boston Phone, how may I help you?"
"Yeah, this is Sergeant Stanley Mertz with the BPD Homicide Unit, I'm trying to get a reverse listing for a phone number."
"I'd be happy to, Sergeant. I just need your badge number."
"Sure," Elliot said nonchalantly, reaching into his jacket and pulling out a crumpled piece of paper with a dozen names written down. He scanned to the bottom of the paper with Mertz's information. "It's 1257."
"Thank you, sergeant," the clerk said after Elliot gave her the phone number he wanted to find out about. "I'll be just a moment."
Elliot smoked a cigarette while he waited. The smoke was down to almost the butt when the clerk returned.
"I have a location for you, sergeant. The address for that number is 6576 Sunnydale Lane in Brookline, it's listed as Ten Pin Win Bowling Alley."
"6576 Sunnydale Lane?" Elliot asked as he scribbled it down. "Got it. Alright, thank you."
Elliot hung up and headed to his car. It seemed strange for her to have a bowling alley's number written down. Maybe a friend worked there? Twenty minutes later he found the address. The place in question appeared to be old and rundown. Elliot felt intuition tingling the back of his neck. He turned into the parking lot and got out. The front door was sealed shut and boarded up, so he decided to go around. The back door was also boarded up, but planks were ripped away in strategic spots. To someone not paying attention, it looked like it was still sealed, but Elliot saw the door could be easily opened. He placed his hand on the door handle and prepared to swing it open when something hard crashed against his head.
He fell to the ground hard and dazed. Before Elliot could even attempt to fight back, somebody shoved the barrel of a gun into his face. "Don't move," a voice said calmly. He looked up and saw a woman, girl really, standing over him with a very gun in her hands and a very hard look on her face. "You move one inch, and I will fucking kill you."
"Jane Wilson, I presume?"
"Did Kane send you?"
"Maybe, maybe not-"
She thumbed back the hammer of her gun and a round went into the chamber with a solid click.
"Alright, alright! I'm working for him. He paid me to find you and some kind of documents you have. I don't want to hurt you, believe me."
"Why should I believe you? You're working for him."
"He's paying me, but I'm not working for him. If I were here to hurt you, don't you think I would have pulled a gun before I tried to go inside your little hiding spot?"
She looked at him for a long moment before asking, "Are you packing?"
"Oh, boy am I. Oh...you meant like a gun? I got one in my car, but that's it."
"Alright, stand up and hold your hands up," Jane said as she kept her gun on Elliot. He complied and kept his hands up while she did a quick frisk. "C'mon, get inside," she said once she was content that Elliot was weapons free. She opened the door and pointed him inside the abandoned bowling alley. He walked into the building with Jane Wilson right behind him and her gun trained on his back.
"As a guy who has been tricked into attending one too many furry orgies, let me assure you this is not a sex thing," Howard said. "What my friend, Captain America, is trying to say is hop on board the team train, loser. We're going to save the universe... and get kickass t-shirts for our troubles."
Howard removed his suit coat, revealing a navy blue t-shirt that showed a photo of himself and Star-Lord high fiving. BEST FRIENDS FOREVER was written underneath the photo in bright pink comic sans font.
"Where'd you get that?" Quill asked.
"That little gem of yours has a mind of its own," Howard said with a wink.
Tracy's charger cruised slowly through the posh suburbs. Hunter's Creek was just a scant thirty blocks away from downtown Center City, but it may as well have been on another planet. There was no trace of the old junkies on the corner, doing the dope fiend lean as they shot up and fried what little brains they had left. No sign of the hookers who walked the streets, selling their bodies to feed themselves and their children. No dilapidated buildings with its copper piping and electrical wiring ripped out by money hungry fiends looking for a quick payday.
He felt uneasy surrounded by these big lawns and big houses shining in the early morning light. Tracy was just white trash from the city, something that would never change. The people out here were tantamount to American royalty with their fleets of cars, jets, and boats. His destination, the Flynn mansion, loomed on the hill above it all. Guys like Tracy and Hyde were called criminals for no other reason than the types of crime they committed. Hyde peddled drugs, the guys who owned the houses out here peddled Democracy to any third world country with finite natural resources to exploit. They robbed pension plans and left retiring employees penniless. Society condemned guys like Tracy, saying they were the problem with America, all while the people out here overthrew governments to avoid paying fifty cents on the dollar for exports. The only difference between Hyde's empire and the empires of business were that those criminal enterprises were deemed too big to fail by the government.
Tracy was stopped outside the big manor by an armed guard. His car idled outside a big iron gate while the man gave him the stinkeye and double checked Tracy's identification. Tracy had to hand over his gun before parking his car and being led into the big house by another guard. He wasn't too impressed by the large courtyard and expansive corridors. The place was small by House of Windsor standards. The guard showed Tracy into an office somewhere on the third floor and left him alone. He walked up to a wall that looked like a shrine to the home's owner. Three different photos of Thomas Flynn shaking hands with the last three US Presidents, one of him in New York ringing the stock exchange bell, a cover of a financial magazine with a younger looking Flynn on the cover. Photos of family accompanied the ones of achievement, but Flynn was always in the middle of whatever was going on. That didn't surprise Tracy. A man like that had to be center of attention in everything he did. For guys like Thomas Flynn, if you weren't first you might as well have been last.
"Are you the man Mr. Hyde sent?"
Tracy turned and saw Thomas Flynn enter the room. He was just a few inches shorter than Tracy, but lean and trim in a bathrobe and pajama pants, slippers covering his feet. If not for his white hair, Tracy would assume the man was closer to his age than the sixty some odd years he was supposed to be. He strode forward and shook Tracy's hand.
"Thank you so much for coming, Mr..."
"Tracy, just Tracy."
"Right," Flynn said with a nod. "Have a seat, Tracy."
Flynn took a seat behind the large mahogany office desk while Tracy took a chair from across the desk. He watched Flynn as he settled into the chair and leaned forward, both palms flat on the desk. He had a stern look on his face that read too stern for Tracy. It seemed more like a put on than anything.
"They said they would call again at noon to confirm I have the five million dollars they're asking for. Details for the hand off will follow."
"Will you be able to get the money that fast?" Tracy asked. "I know that a lot of rich people don't have that kind of cash on standby."
"I have enough bonds and stocks I can liquidate quickly once trading opens up on the Asian markets. I'll have to be quick about it since it's Friday and there won't be a chance to do it for the weekend."
"Hyde wants me to also look into who may have kidnapped your daughter. Mr. Flynn, can you think of anyone who might want to do this?"
"Take your fucking pick," Flynn said with a wave of an arm. "You don't get where I am in life without pissing people off. Rival capitalist, politicians, labor unions, even my own employees, you name it and I have stepped on their backs to get ahead. You don't make an omelet without breaking eggs."
"Right," said Tracy. "Anything recently?"
"Not at the moment, no. At least nothing obvious."
"Did you daughter live here? Would it be possible to look into her room?"
"As you wish," Flynn said with a nod. "I'll have a guard escort you."
--
Linda Flynn's room screamed trust fund brat. Expensive furniture in the big room with an ornate four-poster bed in the center. A walk-in closet held a wardrobe that cost as much as many people's homes. What Tracy thought was another closet turned out to be a whole room just to house Linda's jewelry. The guard shadowed Tracy while he searched the room. He found drugs in the dresser, a little bit of pot with a fair amount of coke and X. The CDs in her room were all electro club bullshit. Tracy pegged her as a club kid. All the rich kids with nothing to do but sponge off mommy and daddy all hit the clubs.
A pink laptop on a desk was password protected. Tracy tried the usual common passwords, 1234 ABCD, but couldn't crack it. He settled for the consolation prize beside the computer. A post-it note had a phone number scribbled on it with just a single letter above it: X. It Linda Flynn was indeed a party-hard club girl, she would need her X if she wanted to party right. Tracy pocketed the number and headed out the room with his guard in tow.
Scott Andrews struggled for breath while Jed throttled the life out of him. He was sprawled out on the hood of his unmarked police car, flailing and trying to reach the gun on his hip. Jed grinned widely while Billy Brown looked over his shoulder and down at Scott with an impassive look that conveyed disappointment.
"Good help is so hard to find these days," Billy said with the shake of his head. "I tell you to kill a guy, you botch that. I tell you to find him, two of my boys find him first. He ends up dead, only he might be a goddamn undercover state police officer, so we come up with a plan to put the heat off of us... only you can't find the guy we're supposed to be framing!"
Billy patted Jed's back and he let go of Scott's throat. He gasped for air and slid off the roof of the car, falling into the dirt that surrounded the deserted boat ramp. Scott saw spots around the corners of his vision as he stood and pulled his sidearm, aiming it square at Jed's big frame.
"You touch me again, you fucking nigger, and I to God I will shove this gun down your throat and pull the trigger till it goes click!"
Jed just winked as Billy stepped forward.
"Put the gun down, Scott," Billy said calmly. "Jed got a little too carried away, I admit that, but there's no need to escalate it. Think calmly and think rationally about this."
Scott hesitated a moment before finally holstering his gun. The pain around his neck was stinging. In a few hours it would be a dark ring of bruises.
"Now," Billy said one the gun was gone, "If this guy Jed killed was indeed a SLED agent, we need to find out who knows about it and, more importantly, what he knew about us. I think Jed's girl is the key."
"Fucking Carol," Jed said dismissively. "Bitch don't know when to close her legs."
"She's your woman," Billy said with a look back to Jed. "Find her, goddammit." He turned back to Scott and aimed a finger in his direction. "And you, find John Norman. Make sure he dies resisting arrest."
"It ain't that simple, Billy," Scott said. "I--"
"No," Bill said curtly. "It is that simple. We are in a world of shit, and you will get us out of this. Because I say so. Don't forget who the fuck you really work for. Get out there and find Norman and kill him dead."
Billy walked away towards his truck without another word while Jed stared straight ahead at Scott with a smile that had no trace of warmth of friendliness in it. Scott turned around and got in his car. His hands trembled against the wheel. What exactly had he gotten himself into? This wasn't the usual bullshit Billy paid him to do, he wasn't making evidence disappear or tipping him off on a raid... this was murder, plain and simple. And he wasn't sure if he could do it.
Don't forget who you really work for, Billy had said. All the warmth and the sons dried up real fucking quickly when Billy Brown showed his true colors. Scott sighed and started his car up, pulling out the boat ramp a few minutes after Billy and Jed.
--
It took Carol a few hours to wake up and have half a mind about her. John and Mike sat parked at a spot a half mile down the road from Beggs house while she came to. Mike napped while John spent that time trying to make sense of what all was going on. He thumbed through the information Parker gave him at the start of it. Scott Andrews started it all by arresting Howard Beggs last week on bullshit charges. Beggs made bail, and then pulled a vanishing act on the Pickett County sheriff's Department and Billy's Boys. From there enter the hero John Norman, whose investigation goes to shit and Beggs is dead with the hero the likely suspect. John wondered what was so important about Beggs that they went through all this trouble? Did he reveal something to Andrews while he was in lockup? Or was Andrews gunning for him right off the bat, but Beggs made bail before that? Something was gnawing at him besides all those questions. He felt like I was missing something, something his white trash brain couldn't figure out.
They were a few miles outside of Mt. Carmel, a small community a few miles away from the Pickett County line. The rain from earlier stopped an hour ago, but the trees still shed the excess moisture from their branches and leaves. John needed a cigarette but he was all out. The smoke would help his brain,likke nicotine would be the Drano to eat away the clog in his mind. He went back over it again; Beggs get stopped for small potatoes, goes to jail and makes bail...
Makes bail.
He started to dig through his jacket and came up with a few sheets of paper folded several times over. John opened them up and rifled through the sheets that made up Beggs' arrest report and record. Suprisingly for someone that looked as strung out as he did, this was only his second pop for drugs in the past year, a felony wrap for Beggs. He had a record, but it was for shit like DUI, public urination, even a few spousal assault charges, but no drugs until last year. John stopped when he reached the latest charge. Possession of a Controlled Substance, Schedule II. The amount they found on him was enough to get the charge, but not enough to bump it up to the felony Possession with Intent to Sell that cops love to tack on regardless if you're selling it or not. After reading through all that, John came to the end and the part where the judge sets bail. It was blank. Nothing from the judge about bail, which would have been a pretty penny for a guy like Beggs. No bail, so what? He just waltzes out of jail? No way he broke out, not even Parker could hush something like that up and it still doesn't explain Billy's angle.
That entire train of thought violently derailed when he heard a groan from the backseat of the Cadillac. he quickly turned around to see Carol sitting up and rubbing her eyes. The rubbing made the mascara smear and made Carol look like a racoon. She pulled her hands away from her eyes and saw him.
"John," she said cautiously. "Where the hell am I? Why are you here?"
"Just calm down and everything's going to be okay, alright." He held his hands up as a sign of peace and threw in a smile to go with it. "I saved you."
"Saved me from what?"
"From whatever's our there, uhh... I found you at Howard Beggs' house, passed out."
"Whose car is this?"
"It's my grandpa's," he said, motioning towards Mike snoring in the driver's seat.
"John," she said slowly. "What the hell did you do? I fall asleep and then I wake up in a car with you of all people."
"You didn't fall asleep," John said a scowl. "We both know what you were on back at Beggs' house. And as for me doing anything, you damn well know I didn't do a goddamn thing."
His face was beginning to flush in anger, that basic need to just lash out and hurt the closest thing he could find was beginning to creep up the back of my spine towards his head. He tried to shake it off by holding his hands up again. That old familiar feeling. When it came to Carol, some things never changed.
"Carol, what happened between us was the past. ..I've done good since. I'm being honest when I say that calling the cops on me was the best damn thing you could have done."
"We talked about this," she said quietly, her body wincing in advance of some outburst.
John sagged a bit. It's a hell of a thing to love someone that don't love you back. He got out of prison thinking they would be back to how they were, but she had moved on and he couldn't accept that. He ended up being arrested for harassment and stalking. Sheriff Parker, for whatever reason, stepped in to talk to Carol's parents about dropping the charges. They did so in exchange for a restraining order. He was never charged with anything, but the restraining order stayed valid until a few years ago. He still kept his distance before this shit forced them together. They weren't good for each other, he knew it... but why is it the things that aren't good for you feel so good?
"Tell me what's going on," said softly. "Please."
"Alright. Beggs is dead. Did you know that?"
"No," she said in a hollow voice. "I didn't. I've been at his house since he got let ot I... I knew something bad might happen to him if Jed or Jim Brown caught up with him, but..."
"Sheriff Parker hired me to find him, force is more like it. I found him dead, killed by either Jed or Jim Brown. They're setting me up to take the fall for his murder, Carol." He made sure to look in her eyes when he said the next part. "I need to know why they wanted him dead. What did a tweaker like him do to piss off people like that?"
"I think he was trying to steal from Billy." Carol turned away from John's gaze, but he could see the tears beginning to well up in her eyes. "I think him and George Silvers were gonna start expanding outside Pickett County and cook meth for the other counties."
"That shouldn't have been a problem, I always thought Billy didn't mind guys making some money on the side."
"But they were going to cut him out the deal."
John stayed silent while Carol silently wept for Howard Beggs. A low-life methhead rated higher in her book than he did. That pissed him off more than he ever wanted to admit, and he hated himself for it. Carol had just lost a man she cared about, and he was getting jealous over the fact she'd never cry like that for him. There was another flash of anger from deep down somewhere. He wanted to slap Carol, wrap his hands around her neck and make her love him.
"Where do you fit in with all this?" John asked after he pushed the anger down to a safe enough level. "Were you just with Beggs?"
"No," she said between sobs. "Jed... he made me hook with him. Th-they were suspicious that Beggs was working with George, so they wanted me to find out for sure."
He let her go on crying some more while he tried to make sense of it all. George and Beggs were planning to branch out without Billy getting his cut. To run a racket and not give Billy a taste is tantamount to breaking a commandment around here. But why was Beggs dead but George still walking around?
"Listen," he said, reaching out across the backseat to touch Carol's shoulder. She flinched at the touch, sending another ripple of anger through him. He shoved the anger down again and instead laid his hand on the headrest of the seat and started again. "Listen, whatever's going on, you should get out of town for a few days. Find a motel or something to stay in and lay low until this all blows over."
"I can't," she sniffled. "I have my kids to think about."
"Carol," he said with a sigh. "I went by your house. Your momma's more of a mother to them than you are. You're just afraid you'll run out of pills, right?"
"Fuck you, John! Who the fuck are you to judge me? You sell weed! There are a bunch of goddamn dope fiends and drunks in your fucking family, and you're just as crazy as the rest of them."
"I'm not judging," he said through gritted teeth. "I'm not preaching at you, I'm just stating the truth. If I give you enough money to get your shit, will you do like I said and get out of town."
Carol looked out the window before she nodded slowly "Yes."
"Good."
John turned around and gently woke Mike up. A few minutes later they were back on the highway and John told his grandfather all Carol told him..
"Where we headed?" Mike asked.
"North through town, all the way up to Anderson."
"Why?"
"Get her to safety," he said with a nod towards the backseat. "I got some money, she can lay low in a hotel for a few days."
Mike grunted as they headed north. John felt uneasy about the whole damn thing, but he knew getting Carol to safety was at least the right thin. If she got out of this mess, he would at least be able to say he did one good thing in this whole goddamn mess.
Linda Flynn and her girlfriends walked down the sidewalk on unsteady feet. The group of four girls swayed and bobbed on their big high heels, clinging to each other as they walked. All four wore expensive and tight cocktail dresses and heels that were just a bit too big for them. They didn't care how gaudy they looked. They were young, they were rich, and they wanted the whole damn world to know it.
"Denise, you are such a slut," one of them said in a drunken slur. The rest of the pack broke out into a fit of giggles.
"You're the slut," Denise countered. "I saw you with that guy, just grinding on him. He looked so fucking ugly! You're such a slut."
The girls looked up at the sound of a roaring engine. A large black van raced down the road and skidded to a stop beside them. Two men in balaclavas jumped out with pistols in their hands. The girls let out screams of horror as the two gunmen zeroed in on just one of them. They took Linda roughly by the shoulders and shoved her into the van. The three remaining girls tried to reach out to their friend, but were pushed back by the kidnapper. He aimed his gun at them and put a finger to his lip.
"Tell her father, we'll be in touch," the masked men said. "Tell him if he goes to the cops, she fucking dies."
The two men jumped into the van, slammed the door shut, and the van peeled off into the night, leaving the drunk and hysterical young women to cry and panic for their kidnapped friend.
--
4:48 AM
It was the middle of the night, but Tracy Lawless was wide awake. He sat on the edge of the bed, smoking a cigarette and staring through the darkness at the city outside. Sleep was something he no longer seemed to need much of. Years in the military had taught him how little he actually needed to function. No more than five hours a night and he was good until another twenty-four hours.
The woman in his bed stirred and he looked back at her. Gennelle was her name, or at least her stage name. She was one of the strippers at the club he managed for Hyde. It was stupid, taking her home that night after they closed... but Tracy's base biological functions had been gnawing at him for the past few weeks. He needed to clear the works out, so to speak, and Gennelle with her long legs and rich coffee colored skin was just what he needed. He should have just went to a bar and picked a woman up, or even better bought a call girl for the night. Sleeping with one of the girls would no doubt cause some sort of trouble back at the club.
The cell phone on the dresser across the room rattled as it vibrated. Tracy stood and padded towards it. A blocked number was calling.
"Yeah," he said softly.
"It's me."
The voice on the other end was recognizable enough. John Galston, some lawyer type Hyde just recently started to use as a go-between for him and all the people he dealt with. It made Tracy wonder why he set up the stop-gap. Maybe he was getting paranoid in his old age?
"He needs some work done," said Galston. "Get to his office right now."
"Okay. I'll be there."
Tracy hung up without another word. He walked towards his closet and started to dress. When he was done, he took a key off his ring and placed it on the nightstand beside the sleeping woman. He left her a note, asking to lock up after she left. Tracy tucked his piece, a Smith & Wesson compact .40, into the shoulder rig he wore under his coat and left out of the apartment before the morning son had a chance to creep up over the horizon.
--
6:02 AM
To look at Sebastian Hyde's office, you would think he was a college professor or some well to do businessman instead of the kingpin of Center City. There were books, shelves and shelves of books on the three office walls. The lone wall not loaded down with books had an entire long pane of glass that stretched across the wall in a window that gave off a pretty impressive view of Center City. The books were all random as hell. Everything from Gibbon's six-part series on the history of Rome to Danielle Steel. Tracy doubted very much that Hyde had even cracked open one of those books in his library. The man didn't care about books, and he didn't care about his impressive view. The books and window were all a show to anyone who came into the office. It was projecting power. Look at how many nice things I have, it said, look at the entire town that I sit above like a king. All of that boiled down to a simple message: Do not fuck with me.
"Tracy," Hyde said as he came in.
Tracy stood and wordlessly greeted the old man as he walked towards his desk. Hyde wasn't in his usual three-piece, but he still wore dark slacks and a collared shirt. Tracy remained standing until Hyde sat down behind the desk.
"It's late, let's skip the usual bullshit, son. Do you know Thomas Flynn?"
"Rings a bell. Does he owe you money?"
"No, unfortunately not. Flynn owns a good deal of the industrial park here in town. Supposed to be worth half a billion. He keeps his nose mostly clean, as clean as anyone worth that kind of money can be. Early this morning, his daughter Linda was kidnapped by some masked men. They called the house a few hours ago, demanding five million dollars for her safe return. They also demanded no cops be involved. Flynn wants security and he's afraid to go to the police... so he came to me. For a nominal fee, I'm guaranteeing her safe return. For a cut of that fee, you'll provide the service."
Hyde working for money didn't jive true to Tracy. He had more than enough money than he or his kids would ever spend. But what was left unsaid Tracy knew all too well. Flynn was asking Sebastian Hyde for a favor. All it took was for Hyde to get his foot into the door and he owned you. Flynn thought it was a simple transaction, money for goods and services, but it would be so much more than that. For Hyde to get in good with a man like Flynn would give him something much more valuable than money. Flynn got you connections, contracts, businessmen, and politicians. Influence, a half a billion dollar's worth of influence Hyde could call on.
"Do I just watch over the deal, make sure it goes down smoothly?"
"Very much so. And when the deal is over, it is expected you find the kidnappers and liquidate them. These cocksuckers are operating with impunity in my city, son. I will not let that stand."
"And the money from the ransom?"
The old man's eyes lit up and his eyebrows arched as he smiled.
"You know how it is, son. Things sometimes go missing. If Flynn can't recover that money, it's a small price to pay for the safety of his family."
Message received. Tracy nodded and stood, heading towards the door. He hated when Hyde called him son. He made a mental note that when he got his revenge on the old prick, he would hit him in the balls for every time the old man had called him his son. After tonight, Tracy's count was up to 219.
| Identity | Tracy Lawless (From Ed Brubaker and Sean Phillips' Icon series Criminal)
| Origin & Backstory |
Tracy Lawless' early life was rough. He and his brother Ricky were constantly abused by their drunken criminal father, Teeg Lawless. Teeg acted as chief enforcer for Sebastian Hyde, the kingpin of Center City. While Tracy took the abuse and quietly hated his father, Rick loved and admired Teeg to the point that it made Tracy sick and made him hate his little brother. Tracy and Rick were arrested for auto theft when Tracy was 18 and Rick was 15. Rick went to Juvie while Tracy got the choice to go to prison or join the army. Tracy took the army as his chance to escape Center City and his father.
Lawless excelled in the army, so much so that he became a candidate for special forces training. His covert work in Bosnia led to the slaughter of an entire village in Bosnia. In Iraq, Tracy was arrested after killing four US Army officers for their mistreatment of an Iraqi family. The army hushed up the crime and deemed Lawless too valuable to send to jail or kick out of the service. After a year in a military prison, Tracy was released to continue working for special forces. Shortly after he found out his brother Rick had been killed back home. Tracy escaped from the military base and went AWOL back home to Center City.
Once home, Tracy infiltrated Rick's crew and began to figure out who killed his brother while helping the crew on the score. Tracy stole cash from a Sebastian Hyde courier upon his arrival back home. Hyde's people watched from afar as Tracy killed Rick's old crew in revenge. After discovering the true nature of his brother's murder and the pointlessness of revenge, Hyde's people confronted Tracy and brought him to the man himself. There Hyde made him an offer: Tracy would work for him as an enforcer or Hyde would kill the few people left in the world Tracy cared about. With no other option, Tracy accepted and the role of the father became that of the son.
| Attributes | While he has no powers, Tracy is a former Army special forces operator and has all the skills and abilities that come with that job. He is an expert getaway driver and is an extremely street smart and expert criminal.
| Character Notes |
Tracy lives in the Pacific Northwest, in a large metropolitan area called Center City. With the nature of the stories, there will be just a few NPCs:
Sebastian Hyde: Tracy's boss and boss of Center City
Jake "Gnarly" Brown: A former boxer who now runs the Undertown bar. A former friend of Hyde's, Gnarly's bar is a meeting place for the criminals of Center City
Leo Patterson: A criminal prodigy and Tracy's boyhood friend. Leo is currently serving life in prison for six counts of murder.
| Character Goals | I just want to do hoodrat stuff with my friends. I mean, you know what I do and what I'm capable of. I want to write good criminal yarns
| References |
Mission Hill 4:11 AM
Tracy Lawless cracked his knuckles and settled back into the seat of his car. Six hours into the stakeout and he began to settle in for a long haul. The house he was sitting on was a dump, a scorched husk of a building that someone torched years ago. It was the perfect place for squatters and people trying to lay low. Tracy had James Bagotti to thank for leading him here. Bagotti aka Jimmy Bags, capo to Mark Phlio and one of the many cogs in the Hyde organization, ran a dozen bookie shops around the outer boroughs. Tracy spent three days boning up on Jimmy Bags through his contacts, following the man and his family as they went about their day to day tasks.
Bagotti's bio read like a million others who joined the lief. He was old school Maggia, joined the outfit when he was still a teenager. Purse snatching led to strongarm robberies which led to hijacking and running numbers. Sixty years old and Bagotti had climbed as far on the criminal ladder as far as he could. To some that would mark Jimmy Bags as a suspect for the robberies. He couldn't get past old man Silvermane, so he was letting his own joints get heisted and he was splitting the money. He got paid and it was a way to rub s*** in the old man's eye.
The clues that tipped Tracy off to the real culprit were long sleeves and itchy arms. Bagotti's youngest son, Carlo, still lived with his folks at the age of thirty. Tracy watched him coming and going the past few days. He always wore a long sleeve shirt and always picked at his arms when he walked down the street. It took Tracy all of ten minutes to peg Carlo as a junkie, the sleeves hiding the track marks that itched so bad when the kid needed a fix. He followed Carlo to a shooting gallery down near the waterfront. From there Tracy followed the guy Carlo copped from which led him to a stash house in Bed-Stuy. A small pack of four dealers worked out of the house. Four dealers, a four man crew ripping off bookie spots, a weak junkie whose father ran the bookmaking shops, a junkie could give them information for a fix.
He waited until nearly five in the morning before he made his move. Tracy slipped on a pair of surgical gloves and carried a Glock with a supressor attached to the end under his coat. He looped around the back of the building and came through a broken window, slow and quietly. Tracy pulled the gun out along with a flashlight covered in tape, emitting only a pin-sized light to use as a guide. He held his nose when he passed by three buckets that had been used as latrine. It took him ten minutes to find their stash tucked away in a baseboard near the fireplace. Tracy found nearly a hundred grand in crisp twenty dollar bills inside a satchel, not the type of money junkies handed over for horse. No, this was the type of money Jimmy's places carried before a big payout was coming. In addition to the cash, he found a half pound of uncut H and four machine pistols. Tracy tucked the money, dope, and guns into the satchel and swung it over his shoulder.
Tracy slowly glided up the rickety stairs like a ghost. Muscle memory kicked in when he reached the landing where the crew was sleeping. Check the corners, clear the rooms, plan your escape, kill as soon as you have eyes on the target. Flashbacks went through his mind, killing a Bosnian national in the 90's with a sniper rifle, garroting an Al-Qaeda cutout in Iraq. He was a Lawless, he had killing in his blood, but it was Uncle Sam who polished him and made him into a sparkly diamond of murderous potential.
The four guys were passed out on piss-stained mattresses. Tracy kept the flashlight beam low and aimed. Recoil shot up his elbow as he fired off four quick shots. The rounds hissed through the room, four bullets exploding the four men's heads. He fired off four more to each man's heart to be sure he was dead before calmly walking out into the early morning air. Tracy tucked the gun into his coat and climbed into the car, driving six blocks away before burying the gun and his gloves in the trashcan.
Park Slope 10:11 AM
"Who the fuck are you?"
Jimmy Bags sized Tracy up like a piece of meat. Tracy stood on his doorstep, impassively meeting the mobster's gaze.
"I'm Lawless. You know who I am, who I work for. Let's take a ride."
The look of recognition filled Jimmy Bag's eyes, quickly followed by fear. He knew what Tracy did, and why he was visiting him like this.
"Oh, God... Please--"
"If I was going to kill you you'd be dead already," Tracy said with slight annoyance. "Let's take a ride."
Thirty minutes later Tracy and Jimmy Bags were sitting in Tracy's car, parked outside a coffee shop ten blocks away from his home. Tracy retold the story, the guys robbing Jimmy's shops, following the trail and killing the four men, and of course Jimmy's own son.
"Look... I know Carlo has had problems, and me and my wife we've tried to help him... but... you..."
"You know who I work for," Tracy said with a cool tone. "I'm offering you the chance to do it on your son's terms. Hyde will hold you and your family responsible for this theft. If he has his way, I'm gonna come back to your house with four more guys and we'll chop your entire family to pieces."
Jimmy Bags slumped forward in the seat and began to shake as he sobbed. Tracy ignored him and instead pulled a covered syringe from his coat pocket.
"This spike is loaded up with pure heroin. I don't care if your boy is goddamn Layne Staley reincarnated, this much pure H will kill him. It's either the OD or that other option I mentioned. Either give it to him or inject him tonight when he's asleep, but he does not live to see tomorrow."
Tracy slipped the syringe into Jimmy Bag's jacket while the man continued to cry. He felt a stab of remorse and something else much more powerful. Tracy realized it was envy. If Teeg Lawless would have been faced with this same dilemma, he knew Teeg would not hesitate to sacrifice his sons to save his own ass.
Jimmy Bags went back home somber and quiet. They rode in silence, the only time Jimmy acknowledge Tracy at all was a short nod to him as he got out the car and went into his house. For an old soldier like Jimmy, the nod was final acceptance to do what needed to be done. Tracy texted Stein that the job was completed. He told the lawyer to notify the Kingpin to check the papers and he'd find five deaths in Brooklyn all within the same day of each other, a quadruple homicide and one OD. The lawyer texted back his appreciation and told Tracy where to drop off the cash and drugs he had recovered. The money for the job would be waiting for him when he arrived home that night.
Tracy started up his car and headed back home. It wouldn't be long before he got another text with another job and another person who needed to be hurt. Tracy hated himself, not because he was becoming his old man, but because he had become his old man. He glanced up in the car's rearview mirror and wasn't entirely sure who it was he saw staring back at him.
Tracy Lawless was mad as hell.
He drove down the freeway in the middle of the night, checking his rearview mirror every few seconds for any new cars that may have appeared behind him. He saw the two big duffle bags in the mirror, each one stuffed to the brim with cash. Tracy wore a coat that hid the body armor strapped to his chest. Dried blood was caked on his hands. It wasn't his blood. He fumed and kept the hunk of junk he was driving at seventy. His Charger was back in the city. It was too conspicuous to be used as a getaway car today.
The radio in the car played some god awful country music. He reached over and cruised up and down the dial until he found a talk radio show giving the news.
"One man is still at large after today's daring daytime bank robbery of the 5th Avenue Chase Bank. Masked and armed with automatic weapons, the five men came in during the lunchtime hour and made off with over nine hundred thousand dollars in twenties, fifties, and hundreds. Police soon arrived on the scene and gun battle took place, killing four of the robbers before the fifth masked man took off with the money through midtown, where he lost pursuing police in a high-speed chase."
Tracy listened to the rest of the news story with half-concentration. There were no leads on his whereabouts, and so far they hadn't publically identified the rest of his crew. Everyone but him was dead, gunned down by the cops. One of them blew Jack Legs' brains out before the guy could even move. Blood had spattered Tracy's chest and arms. They showed up way too fast for Tracy's taste. They were promised more time to get the money and get out there, but they didn't get that time. He gripped the steering wheel so tightly his knuckles were white. Tommy the Cork. Goddamn Tommy the Cork had sold them out, the son of a bitch. He'd given his word they would have at least five minutes before the police arrived. The fat bastard must have gotten greedy and double-crossed them. The odds on Tommy being there at the farmhouse waiting was too unlikely. Tracy was the only one left alive and he had the money. He was too big of a loose end, and no way cops would be there for an arrest. Tommy wanted that money all to himself.
An hour later he turned off the freeway and headed down a Southern Jersey highway towards the established rendezvous point. He could just keep going. He had the money, for Christ sake. But he didn't want to do that. He wanted to pay Tommy back for what he had done, the bastard.
Tracy started to slow the junk heap down as the farmhouse got nearer. The time for the meeting was supposed to be four AM, an hour from now, but he was sure Tommy was already hiding somewhere in the dilapidated barn. Tracy pulled to the side of the road twenty miles from the farm and got out. He lugged the two duffle bags filled with cash into the woods beside the road and left them there. He got a tire iron out of the trunk and placed it in the ground beside the highway, marking the place for his return trip, and got back in the car. A half hour later he came to an old and rotting farmhouse and barn. He pulled into the driveway and slowly pulled up to the old barn.
A parked sedan was waiting beside the barn. The windows were rolled down, and Tracy could hear a golden oldies station playing Tommy James and the Shondells. Tracy reached into his jacket and got out the submachine gun he'd used at the bank. Keeping it low, he stepped out the car and approached the parked car.
"Not so fast," a voice said from behind.
He felt a hard something in his back. A pudgy hand slapped the submachine gun from his hand and spun Tracy around. He looked into the fat and gloating face of CCPD Inspector Thomas Corcoran, head of the department's prestigious Special Robbery Unit. He was also supposed to be their inside man in the bank robbery. His job was to get them plans and details about the bank and surrounding area and provide them protection from the cops. He had done the first part well, but failed spectacularly in the second regard.
"You sold us out," Tracy said calmly.
"I just did some simple math," Corcoran said with a large grin. "This money divides up better one way than six. That is, after I give Hyde his cut."
"And you'll think he'll just abide you double-crossing us like this?"
"I'll tell him you pulled the double-cross. Tried to skip out with the money after it went sideways. I caught you in the nick of time, though, but see you fought back and I had to kill you. Damn shame. It's a stupid move, but you're a Lawless, kid. Stupid is your middle name."
Tracy felt white-hot rage at the last part. It was all he could do right now to not try to fight Corcoran, even with the gun aimed at him. Instead, Tracy kept his hands up as Corcoran backed away from him and shuffled towards the junk heap. Tracy stayed as still as he could while the fat man looked through the back of the car for the cash.
"Where is it, Lawless?!"
"In the trunk. I got the key right here."
Corcoran stared at him through the dark and started towards him. Just then, Frank Sinatra came on the radio and crooned.
"Strangers in the night exchanging glances Wondering in the night what were the chances, We'd be sharing love before the night was through?"
Corcoran began to rifle through Tracy's jacket pockets and found no keys. The cop started in through Tracy's pants pockets. He dropped the gun a few inches, focusing on getting the car keys from Tracy's jeans.
"Something in your eyes was so inviting Something in you smile was so exciting Something in my heart told me I must have you."
Snarling like a wild animal, Tracy struck and slapped at Corocran's gun. The piece went off twice, bullets snapping by Tracy's ear as they whizzed into the air. The gun fell to the ground with a dull thud. Corcoran tried to reach for it, but he was short and fat, a good six inches shorter and fifty pounds heavier than Tracy. He proved no match for Tracy's strong grip. He hit the cop upside the head with a glancing blow to the skull. Corcoran stumbled back and Tracy hit him with a right hook that knocked him to the ground. Tracy pinned him to the ground with his knees and held him close, his big hands wrapping around Tommy's fat neck.
"Strangers in the night, two lonely people We were strangers in the night. Up to the moment when we said our first hello, little did we know Love was just a glance away, a warm embracing dance away"
Tommy fought and tried to get his hands underneath Tracy's. He struggled and thrashed, tried to claw at Tracy's eyes and mouth. The more he struggled, the more oxygen he burned through and made his death that quicker. Tracy throttled Corcoran's neck for a solid ten minutes, so long that he left rub burns from twisting his big hands around the windpipe. He made sure that there was no life left in the man at all. For what the bastard had done to his crew, it was the least he could do.
"Ever since that night we've been together Lovers at first sight, in love forever It turned out so right for strangers in the night."
Tracy took Corcoran's corpse and locked it in the trunk of his car, parking the sedan inside the rotten barn before he got into his own car and drove back to where he had the money stashed. He got the two big duffle bags out the woods, took the tire iron marker, and kept going south so he could find a place to lay low for the next few weeks.
To look at Sebastian Hyde's office, you would think he was a college professor or some well to do businessman instead of the kingpin of Center City. There were books, shelves and shelves of books on the three office walls. The lone wall not loaded down with books was an entire long pane of glass that stretched across the wall in a window that gave off a pretty impressive view of Center City. The books were all random as hell. Everything from Gibbon's six part series on the history of Rome, to Danielle Steel. Tracy doubted very much that Hyde had even cracked open one of those books.in his library. The man didn't care about books, and he didn't care about his impressive view. The books and window were all a show to anyone who came into the office. It was projecting power. Look at how many nice things I have, look at the entire town that I sit above like a king. All of that boiled down to a simple message: Don't fuck with me.
"Tracy," Hyde said as he came in.
Tracy stood and wordlessly greeted the old man as he walked towards his desk. Hyde wasn't in his usual three-piece, but he still wore dark slacks and a collared shirt. Tracy remained standing until Hyde sat down behind the desk.
"It's late, let's cut the bullshit, son. Do you know Thomas Flynn?"
"Rings a bell. Does he owe you money?"
"No, unfortunately not. Flynn owns a good deal of the industrial park here in town. Supposed to be worth half a billion. He keeps his nose mostly clean, as clean as anyone worth that kind of money can be. He apparently has done something rather bad because he's being blackmailed. He wants to keep it under wraps, so he decided to come to me instead of the cops. He wants to pay me a good deal of money to make the blackmailer disappear. I'll cut you twenty percent of what he gives me and you make this asshole deader than the goddamn steak I had for dinner."
Hyde working for money didn't jive true to Tracy. He had more than enough money than he or his kids would ever spend. But what was left unsaid Tracy knew all too well. Flynn was asking Sebastian Hyde for a favor. All it took was for Hyde to get his foot into the door and he owned you. As bad as any blackmail could be, what Hyde could do would be ten times worse. For Hyde to get in good with a man like Flynn would give him something much more valuable than money. Flynn got your connections, contracts, businessmen, and politicians. Influence, a half a billion dollar's worth of influence Hyde could call on.
"What if I find out what he's being blackmailed for?"
The old man's eyes lit up and his eyebrows arched as he smiled.
"Go ahead and send that my way. Always good to have some insurance. Good luck, son."
Tracy nodded and stood, heading towards the door. He hated when Hyde called him son. he made a mental note that when he got his revenge on the old prick, he would hit him int he balls for every time the old man had called him son. After tonight, Tracy's count was up to 219.
Door pounding woke Sam up. The hangover pounding his temples was even worse. He reached across the bed to find a bottle that wasn't empty. No dice. He stumbled through empty bottles and crushed cans towards the front door. He still wore last night's clothes: an unknotted tie and rumpled shirt with pants that had just a hint of puke on them.
"Samuel Bennett?"
Two men at the door. Meatheads in black Armani suits and Ray-Bans. Très goon chic. Sam cut odds he could take them. Sucker's bet. Instead, he nodded and lit up a smoke.
"The same Samuel Bennett of Samuel Bennett Investigations?"
Sam blew smoke rings. "The one and the same."
"We need you to come with us, Mr. Bennett."
Sam cleaned his nails and yawned. "Why is it these things always start with two dickheads in suits wanting me to come with them?"
One of them meatheads cracked his knuckles. The other popped his neck. Flexing and posturing were punk moves. Sam knew the way to scare a man wasn't by cracking your knuckles. It was by cracking his bones. He laughed and shook his head.
"If you two gorillas can get me a stiff drink then I'll go wherever you want me to go."
--
Sam sipped Thunderbird out of a paper bag covered bottle. The T-Bird was cut-rate, but there was enough booze to stop the headache. He sat in a study filled with books. Sam thought of a book he read in school once, it had a rich guy and a big study filled with books that were never read. He stared hard at a liquor cabinet in one corner. The sight made his mouth water. Scotch, high-grade grain alcohol. The real deal. It put his T-Bird to shame.
"Mr. Bennett."
An old man shuffled in. Stooped shoulders and wrinkled skin and blue veins and white hair. Thick glasses made his eyes look huge. He wheezed and collapsed onto a chair beside Sam.
"James Doheny, at your service."
The name clicked. Doheny Oil. One of the titans of industry in the city. Nix on that, a former titan of industry. Somebody bought the old company out years ago.
"What's so urgent that you need to get me up at the crack of dawn--"
"--It's three in the afternoon, sir--"
"--And force me here to talk?"
Doheny wheezed. His face was coronary red. Sam felt heat from his body. He radiated bad health.
"You're a hard man to get in touch with, Mr. Bennett. I've been calling your number for the past three days."
Sam swigged the T-Bird and shrugged. "I've got problems with bill collectors. I don't want them to know I'm home."
"You're speaking of the ruthless looking Russians my men saw stop by your apartment building repeatedly over the past two days?"
"The people I owe money to have... aggressive debt collection tactics."
"Indeed," the old man wheezed. "Which is why you should be eager for employment opportunities."
Sam chugged the rest of the T-Bird and wiped booze from his mouth. The cut-rate warmed his chest and worked its way upward until he got that familiar fuzziness back into his brain. The buzzed state of existence he called life for the past twelve years.
"What can I do for you, Mr. Doheny, that the two pet gorillas that brought me here can't?"
"You have a reputation for finding the dark places in this city not many others can. I'm afraid my two bodyguards are only adept at making people hurt. I need someone of your affections."
"Affectations" equaled stumblebum drunk that fits in better than meatheads in designer threads.
"What's the job?"
The old man pushed his glasses up his nose with shaky hands and wheezed.
"My granddaughter. She's... she's my daughter, you might say. I raised her from a pup and now she... betrayed me. She's out there, messing with a boy she shouldn't be. She's been constantly sneaking out of the house over the months, but it's been nearly three days since I last saw her. The longest she's ever been gone. She's over the age where I can issue an amber alert, and the cops they tell me they can't intervene because she wasn't kidnaped."
The old man shook in something that seemed half sob and wheeze.
"I have all this money, but nothing I can do with it. Back in the day, I could snap my fingers and the mayor himself would be here to wipe my ass. The friends and connections I once had... and now..."
Sam inferred: "All I can rate these days is a single smokehound former cop who makes for a shit PI."
Sam felt kinship with the geezer. Doheny was a used up, wrinkled husk that was soon to board the night train to the big adios. He looked on the outside like Slam felt on the inside. Sam cut odds he would live as long as Doheny. He gave up and set odds he could make it to fifty. Both slanted as too high odds. Instead, he tucked the empty bottle of T-Bird into his jacket and pulled out the pen and pad he kept on him.
"Tell me everything about your granddaughter that may help me find her."
--
Sam sat in his heap and cruised a booze brainwave. Hell loomed outside. Skid Row: The bottom of the barrel in this city. Considering this city, that was saying a whole hell of a lot. This was his beat back during his days in patrol. It was hard work, lots of scraping and fighting. One time he knocked a rape-o shitbird's teeth out with a nightstick when he tried to fight back. It was good work. He went home at the end of his shift feeling like he actually accomplished something. But that was a lifetime ago. Budget cuts and targeted policing meant no cop cars prowled consistently. They were too busy protecting the fine, upstanding citizens of the city who actually paid taxes.
Here homeless families squatted side by side with homeless drunks. Meth head hookers walked the streets with scabbed faces and reeking of desperation. Sam saw hookers with the Bug prowling for work, not giving a fuck if they killed the men they screwed. Sam saw junkies shooting up on the steps of a Catholic church. Sam saw a little girl way too skinny to even be malnourished. She had to have the Bug. His jaw got tight and he gulped his gin. He watched the lowest of the low sauntering around like they owned the place. Maybe they did. Maybe it was better to rule in hell here than to serve in the Burbs. Some social welfare people and nuns came by, tossing out clean needles and rubbers. Everyone whooped. A drunk slapped a volunteer's ass and asked if they had a pint of Ripple they could give them. Beleaguered nuns did the sign of the cross. Winos did the watusi. Smokehounds did the shimmy shake. Junkies did Irish jigs. Sam figured two years. At least two years until Sam was right there on Skid row cutting a rug with the junkies and doing the chorus line shtick with the hookers and drunks, five at the most.
He finished off the flask of hooch and got out the heap. He was fresh meat to them. Panhandlers panhandled, junkies made vague threats for money, hookers pawed and promised carnal delights of the sort he'd never had. He stopped in the street and lit up a smoke. He cocked a finger towards an alley and got wide-eyed
"Oh, shit! It's the cops! Everybody run!"
The roaches scattered in the light of righteous justice and beaucoup beatdowns. Sam laughed and walked unmolested towards a dilapidated building. A dirty, sagging sign above the door said The Ferguson Arms. The hotel was the last known address of Bianca Doheny, twenty-six, heiress to the Doheny Oil Fortune. Fortune should come with air quotes, thought Sam. The old man's house was just as rundown as this flophouse. Sam had two G's in his jacket pocket for the job. Good enough for him, but chickenshit pay for one of the big PI agencies in town. In Sam's world two grand may as well have been two mil. Gramps said he thought Bianca had a shack job with a guy. A tall kid with sandy blonde hair was with her the last time she breezed through the house.
He flashed his PI license at the clerk fast enough that he made him think it was an actual badge. The fat man looked up from his stroke book (XXX Girls of the Midwest 69) and squinted through thick, crust stained eyeglasses at Sam. He showed a photo of the girl. The pic was from a few years back when she graduated at SCU. Doheny said it was current enough.
"Seen her?"
He slid the clerk a C-note to get the wheels greasing. He squinted harder at the pic before nodding.
"I think that's her. Jesus, that's what she used to look like? She's checked into 2C. Long-term tenant. Haven't seen her in a few days.
"Seen her with a guy? A big, tall guy with sandy blonde hair."
"I seen guys. Lots of 'em, mister," he snickered. "Day and night they come in and out for her. I might be one of those lucky few thanks to you. Tell you what, you give me another Ben Franklin and I give you the key to her room."
Sam resisted the urge to turn his face into bloody pulp. He blew smoke before he shelled out fifty bucks and passed it across the counter.
"Ben's out for the day, but maybe you can do business with the Jackson Twins and Alexander Hamilton?"
He glommed the cash and produced a key. Sam palmed it and headed up rickety stairs. He padded down carpets stained with blood, puke, and cum. Old Man Doheny said she got a solid three grand allowance from her trust fund. Why the flop when she at least had enough money to clock a HoJo's?
2C was a dump like the rest of the hotel, like the rest of the whole goddamn neighborhood. Dirty sheets, old pizza boxes, a makeup bag with garish eyeshadows and bright lipsticks, a medicine bag with junkie works, unopened rubbers and used ones, sex toys, a mirror with traces of coke lines. Sam suddenly knew why she sprung for the cheap and rundown no-tell motel. He found something scribbled on a pizza box. VIKKI - PLASIADES DELIGHT, and then a phone number. He wrote it down in a notebook and rummaged through the filth.
The only thing Sam couldn't find was definitive proof of a guy shacked up with her. The geezer said she bolted with a boy. The clerk said she had lots of men coming in and out. Bianca was hooking? Why? Had her drug habit gotten bad enough that three grand a month couldn't support it? Or was it just part of the aesthetic of the neighborhood? A rich girl slumming and playing street walker. Buy a room in a flop, sell your body, and shoot up morning til night. Très Slum Chic. All the bored rich kids were doing it.
Sam pulled the photo of her out of his jacket. Young, big smile and lots of pretty white teeth. Dark hair and a cute little nose. Full of promise with just a glint in one of those eyes Sam knew all too well was hope.
The Clerk: Jesus, that's what she used to look like?
If she'd changed at all, Sam knew that glint in her eyes was long gone. Somewhere between college and the Ferguson Arms it had been snuffed out and ground to powder in that cruel and ignoble way only life is capable of. His cell phone buzzed. He didn't recognize the number but answered it anyway.
"Mr. Bennett, it' s James Doheny. A note just arrived at the house. It seems to be a ransom note. I need you here as soon as possible, sir."
--
Sam 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 rejects her grandad and does blow, Bianca shoots horse, Bianca turns tricks on the streets. Bianca has a trust-fund. Sam inferred: The hooking is pure thrill seeking. A middle finger in the face of the old man. Now the plot thickened an hour ago when a ransom note showed up at the Doheny house.
He got his .38 snub out of a locked drawer. If the kidnapping was on the level, things might get rough and he'd need the piece. Sam 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. Sam asked the old man for the dope.
Doheny: "She ran away some years ago and never came back."
The answer didn't jake with Sam. His response was too quick and dismissive. He pressed for more details and got the short shrift. Doheny said, "Do your job and find this one." He 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 Gazette. A lifetime ago, Agee was on the cop beat hungry for copy and Sam was a young Homicide detective looking for press. A match made in heaven that came to an abrupt end when Sam got the boot from the PD.
"Artie, it's Sam Bennett."
"Sam?! 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 country Jews in Baston Beach.
"I'm fine, Artie. Making ends meet."
"I heard you were a private dick now. Meet any sexy femme fatales yet?"
Sam 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."
Sam 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, Sammy. What do you need?"
"James Doheny, you know him?"
"Yeah, rich oil guy back when this city still had oil. Owns all those rusty oil derricks south of town. That's why they still call that part of town Crude City."
"Could you 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, Sammy. I'll hold you to that. What number can I reach you at?"
"I'm on my cell, let me give you the number."
Sam 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.
--
Sam walked into the big house. The two heavies from before stood in the hallway, all big muscles and hard stares. They eyeballed him with attitude. He winked and made kissy faces. They full on fumed. He passed on by and went into the study. Doheny sat in a chair facing the door. His pasty was face coronary red edging on purple. The old man shook a piece of paper at Sam 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."
Sam cut his eyes. "You keep talking like that I'm apt to leave and let you deal with this on your own."
Doheny scowled and tossed Sam 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!
Sam passed it back before lighting up a smoke. Doheny scowled again and waved smoke from his face. He took the hint. He 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."
Sam 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. A scent was coming from this whole job. It was the whiff of bullshit.
"Mr. Doheny, sir."
One of the gorillas sauntered in with a cordless telephone.
"I think it's them."
Doheny snapped for the phone. Sam 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 Sam. 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. Someone watched too many movies. They thought fiction was real-life.
"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. The old man gasped. He went on the verge of weeping.
"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. Sam read the caller ID. BLOCKED. No surprise there. He went back into the study. Doheny wheezed loudly. He was teared up and gasping for breath.
"Can you get the money by tomorrow night?" Sam asked.
"I can-- I can have it by tonight if necessary."
"Get it ready for the time stipulated. I'm going to spend tonight chasing leads and I'll be back first thing in the morning."
Doheny protested, but Sam 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. He blew smoke and plotted steps. Sam pulled a battered notepad from his jacket and flipped through the pages of personal information and access codes. Jake Holstead? No. he was too high profile to use. Baxter Miller? No. Miller would have changed his passcode by now, the paranoid bastard. Nevermind that Sam was about to justify his paranoia. Cris Aiken? No. He was probably a captain by now with a different badge. Jackie Fields? Yes. A hump who kept his passcode his kids' birthday, no way he'd change jobs or codes. Sam flicked his cigarette butt out the window and dialed City Tel.
"City 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 the Dutch Hill neighborhood. I also need a location on an unlisted phone line."
"Yessir. I need your name, rank, badge number, and police access code."
"Sure," Sam said, flipping to Jackie Fields' page.
"John Fields, detective second class, badge number 01257, and my access code is 840221505."
Key strokes. A few seconds silence and then, "... Okay, Detective Fields. What was the first number?"
Sam rattled off Doheny's phone number. A few quick keystrokes later and the operator had the phone traced to a downtown payphone. She gave Sam the address and he scribbled it down.
"And that second number, Detective?"
Sam 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. Sam 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 he knew who would be in the know.
The Mighty Thor.
--
He had blond hair and clear blue eyes. Heavyset. That line that blurred between normal and fat. The extra weight threw off the resemblance, but otherwise he was a dead ringer for the guy who played Thor. To hear him tell it the extra weight came from having to carry around that thing between his legs. He called it Mjölnir, and he said only the worthy could handle it. He ran a gigolo service out of the eastside. Old ladies, fat ladies, lonely ladies, the occasional man, 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 Mighty Thor?
"I know Palisades Delight."
Sam watched him from across the diner table. Thor was a good informant, the few ones he had left from his cop days. The only problem was he charged Sam for information like he was a john. Sam 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?"
Thor got cagey and looked at his tuna melt. Sam scowled and forked over a C-note.
"Extortion," he said without making eye contact. Whores never made eye contact when they did their work. "The rooms they use 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 Mjölnir."
Hookers and extortion. Sam 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, he went on a fantastic bender. He curled up into a bottle. He still called the bottle home.
"Thanks for the time, Thor."
Sam stood up and passed him another C-note before heading out into the night. A little under twenty-four hours before the ransom. Sam 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 Vikki was. And he was going to find out what that truth was.
--
Dreams played on a reel:
His hands covered in blood. Old Man Doheny cut donuts in a wheelchair. He flipped Sam off and said get to work, shirtbird. A mound of naked bodies, wriggling and writhing in a huge orgy. Men doing women, women doing women, men doing men. Big Band music played. Bianca Doheny doing a pirouette. She was naked. She had her face and a pornstar's stacked body. Doheny's two goons waltz hand in hand. Sam did a tap dance. He tapped in the dark. A gun barrel sighted on him. He tapped out and tried to snatch it. The gun went off.
Sam snapped awake. He was covered in sweat. Dream sweat and heat sweat. A bottle of gin in his lap. He sat in his heap downtown. A booze brownout while watching an office building. Palisades Delight sat on the office's sixth floor. Hour three of the stakeout. Straight boring, as expected. No wonder he nodded off. He took three slugs of gin to stabilize himself and got out the car. He straightened his tie, primped in the car window to look presentable. He went through the lobby and to the elevator. Up to floor six. Open on: a receptionist with a wide smile. Cute, girl next door look. She did not scream WHORE like he expected.
"Hello, sir. Welcome to Palisades Delight. What can I help you with?"
Sam said, "I'm here to see Vikki."
The receptionist's eyes flashed. He saw something he didn't like. Her smile went from natural to too wide. Call it a put-on to play it cool.
"I'll send her right out."
She grabbed a phone. She talked hush-hush on the phone. Sam caught whispers. Sam caught "Don't know who." Sam caught "Shabby." Sam caught "Cop."
A minute later a zaftig woman pranced out into the lobby. Fortyish brunette with an updo and streaks of gray through it. Pleasant face. She did not look like a hooker or ex-hooker. She jived more office worker or school marm.
She smiled at Sam and said, "Hello, sir. I'm Victoria Harper, May I see some ID please?"
He showed her his PI card. Slow this time. He did not want her thinking cop and get spooked. She looked at it, looked at him, and nodded.
"What can I help you with, Mr. Bennett?"
Sam flashed Bianca Doheny's pic. Her face stonewalled. Her eyes gave her away. They flashed recognition, only for a second but enough for Sam to catch. She acted like she was thinking before shaking her head.
"I'm sorry, I haven't seen her."
"You sure, Ms. Harper? I've been told she looks different than she does in this photo. I found your name and this place's number in her apartment. Her name is Bianca Doheny. Does that name sound familiar to you?"
"I'm afraid not. What we do here--" She gave Sam a knowing smirk. "--We have a lot of girls getting referenced for work. I can't tell you how many girls I've spoken to on the phone or talked to in person since last week."
"What about a tall, lanky guy with sandy blonde hair. Seen anybody like that hanging around here?"
Another flash in her eyes. Fright mixed with annoyance. Warm. Sam was getting there.
"Certainly not. All our employees are female, even the cleaning crew. Any man hanging around without just cause would be thrown out by either building security or the police. And, Mr. Bennett, I have answered your question so you no longer have just cause to be in this lobby."
Sam passed her his card. He did not bring up the blackmail/extortion angle Thor gave him. He played nice and thanked her for his time. He beelined to his car and got in. Sam hinked on something down the block. A black SUV. It was there behind him earlier today. Same car or just a lookalike? He shrugged it off, those cars were everywhere. He counted seconds. Seconds became minutes. Minute thirty-one: Vikki Harper hauling ass out of the office building in pumps. Sam followed in his car slooow. She hit a payphone and dialed numbers. He could not hear but he could see. She spoke frantically. Her eyes were wide. They were concerned. She scuddled to a car and got in.
Seconds passed. She pulled out and hauled down the parkway. Sam followed a minute later and weaved through traffic, staying four car lengths back and keeping the tail tight. Down the parkway to the southside.
Skyscrapers disappeared. Buildings thinned and yards started to appear. Vikki's car kept pushing to the outskirts of the city and into county territory. Oil derricks. Doheny Oil Derricks. Crude City. Sam slackened the tail and followed from afar. Vikki's car pulled into a ranch style house a half mile from the derricks. He kept going and parked a block away. His cell rang before he could get out.
"Hello?
Artie Agee said, "Sammy, I got what you wanted and boy is it something. This family is Fucked up with a capital F. Back in the nineties we ran a piece on Old Man Doheny's daughter Sarah in the society pages. She was engaged to marry a regular joe schmo named James Fullbright. Tragedy ensues and Fullbright is killed in a robbery gone bad. There was a big write-up on it in the paper. Nine months later, the family posts the birth announcement of a daughter Sarah gave birth to. Bianca. Her kid with Fullbright. Ten years ago tragedy struck again. Sarah Doheny goes missing and is found two days later, a hypo in her arm and a half-dissolved hotshot in her system."
Doheny's words: "She ran away some years ago and never came back."
Sam lit up a cigarette. "Anything else, Artie?"
"No, nix, nein, nyet even. For a bunch of rich people they keep it on the QT. No society pages stuff out of that."
"Thanks, Artie. I owe you big."
"Damn right you do, boychick. Whatever this is, I either want copy or I want to know the whole story."
Sam promised Artie the full dish and hung up. He smoked and thought the new info out. Tragedy accrued over the years. Grief on top of grief. No parents and living in that rotting house with the old fart could make a girl chafe. He tossed his butt out the car and snuck down the block towards the house Vikki pulled into. He pulled his piece and peeped a front window.
THERE: Vikki talking to a tall man with sandy blonde hair. No voices coming through the window but he could see worried looks. He ducked and scampered around the back. The back door was locked. He bent and shouldered the jam. It popped. He pushed slow and crept through the room. He heard two voices. He made Vikki's voice. A deeper one had to be the man. A third one just added to the din.
Sam came through a kitchen and into the living room. His gun out. Vikki looked shocked. The guy's mouth dropped. On the couch Bianca Doheny screamed.
--
Sam kept his gun trained on the guy. He was the most likely to come at him. He motioned with the gun towards the couch where Bianca sat.
"All three of you, sit. We're gonna have a nice chat."
They sat. Sam found a chair and sat in front of them. The gun still out and trained for any sudden movements. He looked at Bianca. The clerk at the motel was right. She had bleached blond hair and makeup caked. Her eyes scared Sam shitless. That spark of life was gone and then some. All he saw was vacuum. Not the cute college co-ed from the picture, but a hardened streetwalker. She wouldn't make eye contact with Sam
Sam said, "First things first, what the ever loving hell is going on?"
Looks exchanged between the three. Sam saw entire conversations play out with body language and facial expressions. Vikki started to speak. She got cut short. The front door shook. The front door buckled. The front door flew off its hinges. The door crashed on the floor. Doheny's heavies came rushing through, guns out. Sam pivoted and aimed. He popped off a shot. The lead gorilla took a slug in the shoulder and spun. He flew back against the wall and dropped his gun. Sam aimed for the second thug. The meathead opened fire at Vikki. The tall guy pushed her out the way, made a human shield. Two shots hit the guy in the back. He screamed. Vikki screamed. Blood sprayed.
Sam drew down on the man. The meathead drew down. He had the drop on Sam. Sam winced and braced to get shot. Shots rang out, the thug took three bullets to the chest. He flopped to the ground and bled out. Sam turned. Bianca Doheny with a .22 in her hands. She ran out the house. Sam called after her and ran. He stepped over the dying lug and gave chase. A black SUV in the driveway blocking Vikki's car. The one he made downtown as following him. Bianca got in the SUV and peeled rubber. Sam cursed and ran to his own heap. He was wheezing for breath by the time he got in and sped after her.
He kept his foot on the pedal. The heap groaned and shook. He redlined it and kept pushing. Ten minutes later he caught up with the SUV on the parkway. She was hauling. She flew through downtown. He knew where she was going: the Doheny house. Sam tried to outrun her. His heap gasped for air. He kept pushing. His heap shook violently. Smoke started to pour. The clunker clunked out a quarter mile from the mansion. Bianca kept zooming as he pulled to the side of the road. He got out and footed it to the house. Halfway down the block to the place he heard shots. He ran double time.
Through the doors and inside the house. Sobs and the smell of something else down the hall. He caught whiffs of blood and cordite. Sam pulled his piece as he walked. Inside Doheny's study, the old man laying on his back with a gutshot. Doheny clamped two hands on his gutshot. He huffed and puffed and looked pale. Bianca sat in a chair and watched the old man dying with glee. She looked up at Sam, the .22 still in her hand. Sam held his hands up, palms flat and out. He dropped the .38 to show his surrender.
Doheny tried to say something. Groans and babble came out. Bianca smiled. Intuition and theory melded in Sam's mind. Hunches coalesced into a working theory that bordered on truth. He walked towards the other chair slow. He sat opposite Bianca. He looked into her eyes and almost fell in.
"Your mom and her fiancee, how much of that was the old man behind?"
Bianca said, "All of it. He had James Fullbright killed and it was made to look like a robbery. He used his powerful friends to rig it up. Politicians leaned on police lieutenants who leaned on criminals. Fullbright had to die. That... thing could not handle someone taking mother away from him."
Doheny moaned again. Sam smelled shit as he lost control of his bowels. Sam played a hunch. He asked, "Was Fullbright your father?"
"No. They put him as my father on my birth certificate, but it was a lie. I did not know the truth until I was twelve."
"Is your dad who I think it is?"
Tears welled in Bianca's eyes. Those emotionless eyes leaking tears. Spooky looking. She nodded at Doheny. The old man coughed up blood.
"He is my father, that thing down there. My father and my grandfather. He kept my mother prisoner in this house for years. The things he did to her, the things he made her do... the things he made me do. Mother could not take it. She tried to get help. She called the police, social services, anyone who might help her. He bought everyone off and hushed it up. It wore her down to the nub. She ran away and sought out oblivion in the form of heroin. She overdosed and finally found comfort in the arms of infinite oblivion."
Doheny shook his head. Blood frothed on his lips. He looked dead pale.
Sam said, "Running away from home and the kidnapping, give on that."
Bianca said, "With my father getting older and sicker, I took jaunts from home and indulged my wild side. I took drugs and prostituted my body to enrage him. I soiled my body to make it less desirable to him. It made him mad. He was too feeble to beat me so he had his bodyguards do it. Another hooker I knew put me in touch with Vikki. I was originally going to work for her until she found out my secret. She has a habit of collecting dark secrets. The fake kidnapping was her idea. She and Jason, the man who got shot back there, facilitated it. Jason does security for Vikki's call-girl service. Or did. I think he died. They wanted money. I wanted to make him acknowledge what he did to me."
"You saw the ransom as a victory for you?"
"As close to one as I will ever get... or so I thought until I shot him. When those men came through the door... I just.. snapped. I could not handle them taking me back and putting me in this godforsaken house. The things they did to me, the things he did to me."
They lapsed into silence. Doheny's death rattles the only noise in the room. Sam's body ached for a drink. He longed for a drunk stupor to forget all this shit. His own form of oblivion.
Bianca said, "Are you going to turn me in? Vikki said you were a private investigator hired by him to find me."
Sam looked at the thing on the floor. He did not feel hate. The animal dying there was a parasite. It was beneath contempt. Hating it would require an effort that it did not deserve.
"He hired me to find you. I found you. Case closed as far as I'm concerned."
Sam stood. He reached into his jacket and pulled out what cash he had left. The two grand Doheny fronted him at the start of all this shit. That felt like a lifetime ago.
He handed the cash to Binaca and said, "Get out of here while you still can. This cash won't get you too far, but far enough away to start over."
Bianca nodded. She stood and walked towards the liquor cabinet. She tore rags and searched for a light. Sam stepped over Doheny's still body. He'd died during their convo. Good fucking riddance. He strolled out the house and down the street. Start over. It was a bullshit concept. You never start over. You are who you are. Somebody once said there are no second acts in life. Sam believed that thoroughly. Killing the old man wouldn't change what he did to Bianca. She could gutshot him a hundred times, none of them would take back all the times wrinkled, liver-spotted hands groped her and made her do horrible things. No amount of running could make her outrun herself and her past. She could change her looks, change her name, change everything about her. But come morning that face staring at her in the mirror would be the same girl: A product of incest who was a monster's plaything for over ten years.
Sam walked to his heap down the block. He drained his bottle of gin and pulled out his phone. He'd have to report it, he had to. At least two people were dead, one of them maybe died by his own hands. He'd sort-shrift the cops. He'd say his car crapped out chasing Bianca and he couldn't get to the house in time. He'd withhold the truth. It was a lie, but so what?. It'd be just the latest lie at the top of the heap of lies he'd uncovered. Sam smelled smoke. He saw flames coming from the Doheny home. A blaze burning quick time fast. He saw a small figure scamper out the house and run into the dark. Bianca. Sam made a silent prayer to... whatever existed out there that she would get away and find some kind of peace.
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