Low End of Nowhere

by Michael Stone

  She took the paper between two fingers like Corky had just gone to the bathroom on it. “Who? What do they mean?”

  Streeter again thought about his friend Detective Carey’s warning on Cooper. “Maybe Doug’s lawyer is sending you a message. Is there anything else you’re doing that someone might want you to stop?”

  “This is crazy.” She dropped the note and walked slowly around the car, carrying her dog, who wiggled with excitement without knowing why. “They could have killed Corky. Is Cooper really that nuts?”

  “Who knows? It’s unlikely that he would pull something like this right after he sets up that meeting for Wednesday, but who the hell knows? Is there anyone else who might know about Doug and what we’re doing?”

  “It’s hard to say.” She was regaining her composure. “Doug knew so many people. So many nut cases. He probably dealt drugs with a lot of weirdos. Could be one of them found out about what we’re up to.”

  “Well, it was either Cooper or someone else.”

  She stopped and looked right at him for the first time since they got to the car. “Now, that was profound, Streeter.”

  They inspected the damage for a minute and then she turned to him again. “Is there anything we can do before I call the police to make out a report?”

  “Let’s knock on a few doors across the alley and ask if anyone saw anything.”

  They talked to several neighbors. People in the first two houses noticed nothing, but at the third backyard from the entrance to the alley, they saw a man go into the back door. Streeter hurried up and knocked. A balding man maybe ten years younger than the bounty hunter answered. He was wearing just a pair of shorts and sandals and carried a half-empty quart bottle of Budweiser. Presumably, no one with such a swollen white stomach would leave his yard without a shirt.

  “Excuse me,” Streeter said. “My friend’s car got vandalized sometime over the last hour and a half. It was parked in the lot of that office building.” He nodded toward the end of the alley. “You didn’t happen to see anything over there, did you?”

  The man frowned in wild confusion as he listened, but when he answered he sounded basically lucid. “I thought I saw someone coming out of there about twenty minutes ago. I didn’t get much of a look, but he left his car sitting still idling in the alley while he got out for a while and headed to the parking lot. Then he got in his car again and backed out and drove off. I couldn’t see much of anything from my backyard and I didn’t know what he was up to but I’ll tell you this, he looked really pissed off. Major pissed off. I got a decent look at his license plate and I caught the three letters and the first number. B-J-J-3 something or other.”

  “That’ll help. Thanks a lot.” He walked back to Story and told her. They tried a few more neighbors, but no one else saw anything, so they went back to the car.

  “I’ll call the police,” she told him when they got together again.

  “Now, that’s profound,” Streeter said.

  As they waited for the police, Streeter realized there was something familiar about the partial plate number, but he couldn’t quite place it.

  NINE

  Soyko was all of eleven years old when his stepfather started kicking the hell out of him regularly. The old man, a bitter ex-professional middleweight, called each beating a “boxing lesson.” They lived next to their junkyard on Chicago’s near North Side, a couple of grimy miles from the city’s Loop. Soyko, who seldom used his first name of Leo because he hated it, absorbed the beatings until he was big enough to fight back.

  And finally, one day shortly after his seventeenth birthday, in the back lot of the junkyard, he put an end to it. Business at the yard had been going south lately, and the old man was in a particularly toxic mood. It was cold out, midwestern bitter-damp, with the sky so low you could scrape it with a pool cue, when the old man wanted to administer another lesson.

  The fight was as short and violent as it was one-sided. Soyko got in the first punch and never really gave the old man a chance. He delivered the final blows with a ball-peen hammer. The coroner’s report later said that the old man suffered massive internal bleeding and had seven cracked ribs, a splintered vertebra, four broken fingers, and several smashed facial bones. The kid even managed to break both bones in the elder Soyko’s left forearm. When it was over, Leo went back into the house, grabbed a few clothes, and left Chicago forever. Incredibly, the old man hung on for five days and then died without coming out of a deep coma. In the years that followed, Soyko often wondered if he’d actually meant to kill his stepfather. But he never wondered about his reaction to it. He was glad it happened.

  “We’ll divide this up,” Soyko instructed Jacky in their search for Doug’s money. “I’ll take the strip joints and you check out the pool halls. The bars, places like that. I’ll see if he had any girlfriends and you just try and get a handle on anyone at all who knew the guy.”

  He didn’t want to let Jacky get too near women. Soyko was bad enough in that department, but Jacky was pretty much out of control. Neither man appeared to really like women, and they never had girlfriends. But Jacky seemed to genuinely hate the gender. Women knew it, too. The only ones he was ever with sexually were hookers, and even then he had to pay a premium for his bent desires. Not that Soyko was much better. His idea of romance consisted of a drunken, doggy-style roll on the couch with some dim-witted trailer-park bimbo. He’d usually keep his shirt and socks on, and he never spent the night. But at least he could talk to a woman without scaring the hell out of her.

  He also wanted to work the strip joints because he sensed that Doug Shelton would have leaned toward that kind of thing. To a good-looking, fancy coke dealer, strip clubs would be a natural turf. Soyko started with the upscale strip bars, like the Diamond Cabaret and the Mile Hi Saloon. They were more like bizarre, X-rated aerobics classes with bars and restaurants attached. Horny professionals and free-spending construction workers couldn’t seem to get enough of those places. Soyko talked to most of the dancers and waitresses at both bars and found nothing. He then went to the mid-range strip joints, like P.T.’s and Shotgun Willie’s. Less flashy but still attracting a somewhat sane crowd. Again, no one remembered Doug Shelton, or at least admitted it.

  But Soyko was not the type to get discouraged. He figured the further down the skin ladder he went the more he could relate to the dead realtor. And the bottom rung was a ragged joint near the city’s Performing Arts Complex, appropriately named Art’s Performing Complex. The dancers were mainly sad, sagging biker chicks with a blank toughness in their eyes. Their bodies were freckled with tattoos and laced with stretch marks. But the lighting was low enough and the show raunchy enough for the place to bring in a good buck. Art’s was so murky that it didn’t appear to have actual interior walls, but, rather, it was surrounded by a muddy darkness from which people drifted in and out.

  Soyko hit paydirt when he talked to an off-duty waitress who said she’d “sort of dated” Shelton over the past couple of years. She told him her name was Chantel. She had naturally blond hair but her breasts stood at attention just a shade too well to be original equipment. Her face had broad, country-girl features, pretty if not overly distinctive.

  “I’m not from here,” she said. “Originally, I mean. I was born in Marshfield. That’s a little-bitty town way up in the middle of Wisconsin.” She was chewing gum, smoking, and drinking, all with a determined ferocity that let Soyko know she was pretty coked up. “It’s the string-cheese capital of the world, you know,” she added with a childish pride.

  Of course, he thought. Who the hell doesn’t know that? “That’s really something. Lotta women up there named Chantel, are there?”

  She stopped chewing for a minute and studied his face. Then she must have decided he was genuinely curious, because she started chewing again. “That’s not my real name, actually. It’s sort of a stage name I hung on to from when I danced here. It’s not good to let these creeps know your real name.”

  “Ca
n’t be too careful, huh?”

  “Boy, you said a mouthful right there.” Her eyes widened. “You would not believe the maniacs we get in here sometimes. Bikers, molesters, all sorts of weird ones. You look safe, though. I can always tell.”

  Soyko decided she must be a lot younger than she looked. “How’d you meet my buddy Doug? He a regular here?”

  Chantel frowned. “You really friends with Doug? He never mentioned you.”

  He stared hard at her. “We ain’t blood brothers or nothing, but we hang out together. I buy product from him, sometimes.”

  At that, her face lit up. A girl can never know enough men with cocaine. She looked around the room. “It’s so noisy in here. You think you might be interested in maybe going somewhere to party a little?”

  “Like where?”

  “I could get us a room. There’s a place I know out on Colfax that gives good rates.”

  “How much this party gonna cost me?”

  “Well, you catch the room. Maybe thirty for that. Then”—she smiled and tried to twitch her shoulders like a little girl—“I’m thinking some nose candy for me would be a nice idea, too.”

  “And sex?”

  “I’m not a pro. The sex is free.” Then she lowered her voice, which was now anything but childlike. “But I practice safe sex and I keep skins in my purse. They’ll cost you seventy-five each.”

  Seventy-five bucks for this clod, Soyko thought in disgust. “Those prices, maybe I bring my own rubbers.”

  “Not to my party you don’t. You want me, you use my rubbers.” There was a sudden edge in her voice that she didn’t pick up in any string-cheese capital.

  “Let’s go.” He stood up.

  They drove to a dump on West Colfax Avenue with a name Soyko promptly forgot. It’s the kind of place where they try to wash away the filth with industrial-strength antiseptic cleaners. It ends up smelling like a third-world hospital and has about the same overall charm as one, too. When they got to the room, Chantel started bragging about how good she was in bed. It was supposed to turn him on, but it merely annoyed Soyko.

  “I fuck like a Michael Jordan plays basketball,” she said, “I mean, I get into some sort of hot zone and I’m a pure pleasure machine.”

  By now, Soyko was really losing his patience. Princess Condom here was getting dumber by the minute, and he had no intention of having sex with her. Not to mention that maybe she didn’t know a thing about Doug. He decided to find out. He grabbed her in the middle of her left bicep and squeezed hard. Chantel’s arm scrunched up like a water balloon. She let out a quick, shocked squeak, her eyes bulging in terror.

  “Keep it down, Miss String Cheese,” he snarled as he let go of her arm and shoved her into a chair with one hand. “I’m done listening to your bullshit and I wouldn’t fuck you if you were paying me seventy-five a pop. Now, you’re going to tell me everything you know about Dougy Shelton. If you convince me you’re on the level, you might make it out of here.”

  Chantel just stared at him. Her eyes began to tear up at the corners. He pulled the dagger out of his belt, slammed the blade point down into the wooden dresser, and let it go. It sort of quivered there for a second and then stood still.

  “Let’s talk and maybe I don’t have to use that.”

  She nodded her head so fast that she didn’t even notice when her gum shot out of her mouth and dribbled down the front of her blouse.

  “What do you want to find out?” Her voice was lifeless and hoarse.

  “Mainly everything.” He smiled back, knowing he was in complete control. “How long you known him?”

  “Not quite two years. Maybe. He sold coke and I know he got busted for it last year. I remember that he got the living shit beat out of him right afterward. He said the cops did it. Who knows? Look, I only went out with him a few times. He’d come on like this big lady-killer and flash the money around. He had the car and all the good clothes. But he was different once you got to know him.”

  “Yeah? How?”

  “Well, like he wasn’t much of a stud. The way he looked, I expected him to jungle-fuck me into a coma, but with all the blow he put up his nose he couldn’t cut it much. Half the time we went to bed, he’d get coke dick and we’d just sit around talking. Not that I was missing much anyhow. I mean, the guy was pretty small in the old pecker department. If you follow me. But it never seemed to bother him much. Sometimes I even thought he might be more into guys. Like maybe he was bi.”

  “You’re kidding?” Soyko considered that. “Why’d he keep whoring around if he liked guys and he couldn’t get his sorry little thing up?”

  She thought for a second, getting a little more composed as the conversation went on. “Lots of reasons, I guess. He thought coke dealers were supposed to be lady-killers. It was all part of this front he was putting on. I think he was mostly just sad. He was living with some woman, but she couldn’t do much for him.”

  Soyko thought about the blonde. “What was with them?”

  Chantel shrugged and looked like she was going to cry. “He told me about her once.” She shrugged again and smiled weakly. “But I was pretty wasted then, too, and I don’t remember much. She was really kind of a bitch, from what he said. Looked good but had ice in her veins.”

  Figures. “He get coke dick with her, too?”

  “How would I know? Probably. If I can’t get ’em hard, who can?” She smiled, then glanced at the knife again, and the smile disappeared. “This is the same stuff that cop asked me when he came to Art’s. He wanted to know all about Doug.”

  Soyko frowned. “Cop? When? What cop?”

  “I don’t remember the name. It was just a few days ago. All of a sudden everyone’s so interested in Dougy.”

  “A uniform cop?”

  “No, a detective. An old guy. He must have been over forty. A real meany, too. A bully. He scared me. I didn’t tell him Jack shit. Course, he didn’t pull any knife on me, either.”

  Soyko filed it away. “Did Doug ever talk about money much? You know, like he had a lot?”

  She frowned. “Seems he told me a couple of times he was real rich. Sounded like more coke talk. He told me he was a good lover, too, but look what kind of shit that turned out to be.”

  Soyko pondered what she said, lit a cigarette, and didn’t say anything for a while. Chantel kept quiet. He finally broke the silence. “Did he keep much cash on him?”

  “He had it but he didn’t spread it around much. If he went out for a night on the town with three hundred in his pocket, he’d go home with two ninety-five. You know what I mean? He was good about giving away coke sometimes, but the cash he held on to pretty much.”

  There was a whiny twang to her voice now that bugged him, so he slapped his open palm down on the dresser, next to his knife. It sounded like an explosion and Chantel jumped about four inches in her chair.

  “Look,” she said, “the guy was loud and showy and deep down he was cheap and scared or something. Maybe even a queer, I don’t know. But just so he kept the coke coming, I didn’t ask questions. I’ll tell you this much. Whatever he did with his money, he didn’t let it get too far out of his sight. He watched it closer than anyone I ever saw.”

  “He move much product?”

  “Some, I guess. He could move a good amount of coke when he had to.”

  Soyko could see how scared she was. He believed her but, more to the point, he was tired of listening to her. He pulled his buckle blade out of the table and looked at it as he slowly turned it. Then he put it back in his belt.

  That made Chantel feel more comfortable. She sat up for the first time. “Mind if I have a cigarette?”

  “What do I care?”

  She took a Kool out of her purse and lit it, studying his face as she did. “You think Dougy has money for you?”

  “What do you care?”

  “Maybe I can help you with something. I know a lot of people around town. I ain’t seen Dougy in a long time, though.”

  “Ne
ither have I. You know where I can maybe find him?”

  She shrugged childishly, the string-cheese capital coming out again. “If I see him, should I let you know?”

  “You and me friends now or something?”

  “I just thought maybe I could give you a hand. And if I do you’d remember me if you got any money out of it.”

  Soyko had to smile at that. Coke whores. He shook his head. Here she is, scared for her life two minutes ago, and now she’s trying to turn a buck.

  “Just forget you ever saw me and I’ll forget I ever saw you. No yakking to this detective about me. If anyone gives me grief about our little talk here, you’ll be the one in trouble. I’ll come looking right for you. You getting all this?”

  Chantel thought about back at the bar, when she told him he looked safe. “I hear you. We’ll never see each other again. I mean that.”

  “Nothing would make me happier. Or you. That’s guaranteed. Have a nice walk home.”

  TEN

  First thing Wednesday morning, Thomas Hardy Cooper put on his sharpest power suit. It was a double-breasted, deep-navy-blue number that cost him a ton.

  “That faggot salesman at Neiman Marcus made it sound like only a blue-collar cretin would hesitate to spend eighteen hundred on a suit,” he had told Ronnie the day before. “But I have to admit, I cut a pretty impressive figure in that thing. And I want you to wear something black. Something conservative. None of those thigh slits and come-fuck-me neckline plunges tomorrow.”

  He only hoped she owned such a garment. Then he called in Dwayne Koslaski, his part-time paralegal, short on experience and ambition, “but a beefy two hundred thirty pounds of ugly Polack,” as he put it. He wanted Dwayne to attend the meeting with Story to help set the right mood. He hoped to present a united front, strong and solemn, when he hit her with a bill for unpaid for services in behalf of Douglas Shelton. He figured he’d sit at his desk with the large window behind him. He’d keep the shades wide open, so Story had to squint to see him. Cooper in his massive swivel chair, the enormous paralegal on his right, and a devoted Ronnie on his left.