The Single Twin

by Sean Little

  Abe took a hard, fast left without signaling. He wanted to see if the van followed. The turn rolled Duff into the door. He almost threw his phone out the window but managed to grab it at the last second. “Hey! Easy there, chief!”

  “We’ve got a tail.” Abe indicated the rearview with a lift of his eyebrows. The black van made the turn, as well.

  Duff glanced over his shoulder. “You know what would be good right now? Guns.”

  “Remind me why we don’t carry the guns we own?”

  “We don’t like them. They’re very loud and bullety.”

  “Ah, yes. I like the gun but hate the bullets. That’s right.” Abe turned left again at the end of a block and made a third left at the end of the next block to take them back to the street they were just on. It was the old loop trick. If you really needed to know if someone was following you, do a loop around the block. If they don’t pull off then you know they’re definitely following you, and they will know you know you’re being followed. The driver of the van was apparently ready for this trick. He accelerated and slammed his van into the rear of the Volvo just as Abe was approaching the stop sign at the threshold of the busy avenue.

  Abe’s tires locked up as he seized on the brake pedal, but the loose pea-gravel and sand at the end of the road did not offer enough traction. The van, with a much bigger engine and heavier body weight, not to mention all-wheel-drive, shoved The Fucking Embarrassment straight out into the oncoming traffic.

  A fast-moving F-150 pickup could not stop or swerve, so it T-boned the Volvo hard, smashing in the passenger door and slamming Duff against Abe and flipping the car on its side in a crush of steel and scrape of rubber and metal.

  A second car clipped the Volvo’s nose as it skidded into the next lane popping it hard and flipping it all the way over onto the roof. Duff, who had never bothered to fasten his seatbelt, was dropped heavily onto the roof of the car face-first. Abe, still belted, hung upside precariously from the three-point harness, his arms shielding his face from any broken glass. All the windows cracked and spiderwebbed.

  “Aw, hell.” Duff was bleeding badly from his shoulder where some metal from the door frame had dinged him, and his nose was bloody from where his face had hit the roof when the car flipped. He huffed breath through his teeth and sprayed a mist of red.

  Abe had smacked his own face off the steering wheel. A cut on the bridge of his nose was leaking blood and he had a swelling lip. “That’s why you need to wear your seatbelt.” Abe released the harness and fell onto the roof, as well.

  “This is a shitty time for a lecture, Big Shooter.” Duff groaned as he tried to orient himself toward a window. He used a leg to kick through the shattered safety glass and punch an exit for himself. He started to shimmy through the hole on his belly like a snake.

  Abe followed, easing his much slenderer frame through the crumpled passenger-side window space. “My poor car!”

  “Run now, mourn the car later.”

  “You think a senator’s wife’s brother would try to kill us in the middle of an accident scene? In public?”

  “I don’t know what he’d do. Clearly, they know their little scheme is up. Who knows who they might go after?” Duff got to his feet. Using the car as a shield he peered over the edge. The van was gone. Duff relaxed slightly. He spat blood onto the street.

  Abe was frozen. “Duff, they know who we are. They can find out where we live. Do you think they’d go after Tilda?”

  “Over my dead body they would.”

  “That might be the idea.” Abe pulled his phone from his pocket and hit the speed-dial for Katherine’s phone. Abe, not typically prone to swearing, allowed himself the rare curse word. “Dammit.” The phone was taking its own sweet time to connect to Katherine’s phone. “Duff, call Betts. Now.”

  “Do we know for certain Lafferty was in the van?”

  “No, but we need help.”

  Katherine answered the phone after a couple of rings. “Hi, Abe. What’s going on?”

  “Where’s Tilda?”

  “What do you mean? She’s out with her friends. I think they’re at the Sasha’s house.”

  “Katherine, I need you to go get her and get out of Chicago. Don’t go to any of your family’s homes. Go someplace you’ve never been before and check into a motel under a fake name. I need you to switch the license plates, too. Use the fake ones I got three years ago. They’re on the workbench in the garage, the Minnesota plates. Also, don’t take any phone calls unless you know it's me or Duff, okay? Stay silent.”

  “Abe, you’re scaring me. What did you do?”

  “I might have pissed off the wrong woman.”

  “That sounds like something Duff would do.”

  “Well, he helped to be honest. Just go. Please. Now. I’ll explain everything when I can. Get Tildy out of here.”

  Katherine knew full well when she should not ignore Abe’s pleas. This was one of those times. “I will. Please, call me soon.”

  “I will. Just go. Now!” Abe ended the call. He looked over at the darkened side-street where the van had been. “They’re gone.”

  Duff nodded. “We might be able to tag them, though. There’s a camera over there.” He pointed at a store across the street with a security camera that looked to be angled toward the street. Duff’s phone connected with Betts’s voice mail. “Betts, it’s Duff. We just had someone try to get us killed. We’re okay, but we need some boys in blue assistance A.S.A.P. if you catch my drift. Call me back.”

  There were sirens in the distance and growing closer. In the city, the cops were never too far away. Duff spat a tobacco wad-sized glob of blood and saliva on the street. “I think I got a loose tooth.”

  Abe looked at his partner. One of Duff’s eyes was already blacking nicely. He’d have a horrible shiner. Abe surveyed the damage. The Volvo would be a total loss. The rear was crushed. The roof was crumpled. The passenger side was rippled and smashed. It had given its all over the course of its life. It had been a good car. Abe saluted the old beast and whispered a silent thanks. He patted one of the tires. “Sorry, old gal. You deserved better than this.”

  A police SUV arrived on the scene seconds later, cherries blazing on the roof. A seasoned uniform was driving, a young pup of a female boot was in the passenger seat. They started blocking the scene and looking at the injured. Only Duff and Abe were actually hurt. The guy in the F150 face-planted the airbag when it the collision happened, but he was fine, save for some bag-rash on his face. The woman in the Toyota Camry that clipped the Volvo’s nose was unharmed. Her left-front bumper would need to be replaced, but otherwise the car was fine, too. She got off lucky.

  “Whose insurance covers this?” Duff peeled off a piece of the Volvo’s broken chrome. “Yours, or the senator’s wife’s brother’s?”

  The young female cop had brought out a first aid kit and was attending to the cut on Abe’s nose. Abe let her. Abe shrugged. “I don’t think the guy at State Farm is going to believe how this happened.”

  “Khaki-slacked fascist,” Duff spat. “Flo from Progressive would. Or J.K. Simmons from Farmers. We bought the wrong insurance, Abe.”

  “Just another entry on the ever-growing list of wrong things I’ve done.” The cop finished putting the bandage on Abe’s nose. Abe slumped down next to the car and held his head with his hands.

  -14-

  BETTS AND GATES were waiting for Abe and Duff at the cop shop when the blues dropped them off fresh from the accident site. They had to ride in the back of the car, and thus could not exit when it came to a stop. They had to wait for one of the uniforms to open the rear door for them.

  Betts was standing with his hands in his pockets. He rocked a little on his feet when Duff crawled out of the car. “You know, Duff. There’s something that just looks so right when you’re in the back of a unit.”

  “Honestly, Betts—I have no idea how you failed your Saturday Night Live audition with those comedy chops. You’re as funny as colon cancer.
”

  Gates reached out and grabbed Duff’s chin lightly, angling his face toward the light. His nose was stuffed with cotton and his arm was bandaged. The black eye was still deepening, but one look would tell you it would be glorious. “You got fucked up, son.”

  “Tell me something my face doesn’t already know.”

  “I got Advil.”

  “Go down to Evidence and get me something stronger.”

  “Like, what? Aleve?”

  Duff waggled a single eyebrow. “I’ve been meaning to learn more about this opioid crisis everyone’s been talking about. How about a handful of those?”

  Betts gave Duff a shove toward the station. “You need opioids like you need another hole in the head, Duff. You move any slower and you’ll cease to exist.”

  “Good point. Go get an upper, then.”

  “I got booze in my office,” said Betts.

  “That’s technically a depressant,” said Abe.

  “Yeah, and being around you two losers depresses the fuck outta me, so come have a drink and tell me what you know.” Betts led the way to his office. Once everyone had a red Solo cup tumbler with two fingers of something brown in it, Betts reclined in his chair. He took a sip and grimaced as the burn hit. “What do you jokers know?”

  “Kimberly Stevens was the one behind the adoption. Her older brother, Uriah Lafferty, and Ron Tasker, the Stevens campaign manager, were the ones who took the baby. And, we think Lafferty and Tasker were the ones in the van who pushed us into traffic, but we’re not certain.”

  “So, where’s the evidence?” Betts said. “I don’t see any.”

  Abe fumbled for words. “Well, we don’t have evidence, at least not in the traditional sense of the word, but she did this thing with her face when Duff asked if Marcus was the Senator’s real son.”

  Betts’s head slumped forward and bounced off the stack of papers on his desk. “Christ, Abe. You’re killing me.” His head popped back up. “If I go to a judge and try to get a warrant with ‘she did this thing with her face,’ I’m going to lose my badge.”

  “Where could you even get evidence?” asked Gates.

  “Larsen’s Supply on South Cottage Grove Ave. They had a camera facing the street which might have the van pushing us into the traffic,” said Duff. “Might be able to get faces off of that.”

  “You’d need a warrant to get their tape, though,” said Abe, “unless the proprietor would be willing to cough it up by asking politely.”

  “That’s not in our jurisdiction. You’d have to go to one of the more southern precincts. The Two-Two, probably.”

  Duff polished off his cup of booze and held it out for a refill. “Well, we’re privates. We can’t get any jurisdiction. Can’t you call and arrange it? It’s a traffic case that could get pushed up to attempted murder if there was a halfway intelligent lawyer and footage of the van sending us into the cross-traffic.”

  “Maybe,” said Gates. “I mean, I could call down there. Friend of mine is still a patrol officer down there.”

  “Serving and protecting. Nice.” Duff polished off the refill. “Get on the horn, then.”

  “I don’t take orders from you, dumbass.”

  “Well, I don’t give orders. I give common-sense suggestions.”

  “I don’t take those from you, either.”

  Betts held up a hand and nodded toward the door. “Give her a call. Let’s see what we can do.”

  “Aye-aye, boss.” Gates backed out of Betts’s office and headed to her desk to make the call.

  Betts surveyed the investigators. “You guys alright? You look like rented mules.”

  “We’ll live. My car’s totaled, though.” Abe finished his drink. He did not like drinking but if any night called for it, it was this night. The whiskey burned in his chest like a banked lump of coal.

  “Good,” said Betts. “You’ve needed new wheels since you bought that scrap-pile.”

  “You buying, Betts? Cars are expensive.”

  “So’s taking the bus everywhere. Eats up time and sanity. The cost of a car is worth the price to be able to avoid public transportation.”

  Gates walked back into the office. “Rachel says she’ll head over there right now. If the owner gives her the tape, she says she’ll email us a link within the hour. If not, she’ll have to get someone with more hash on the sleeve to press a judge in the morning.”

  “So, we got that going for us,” said Duff. “Gentlemen—and I’m including you on this, Gates—we are at an impasse.”

  “You got no evidence.” Betts polished off his own drink. One was enough for him. He tossed the cup and popped the bottle back into the desk.

  “I doubt we’ll actually get any evidence on the baby deal. However, we have a very good suspect for the murder of Montrell Davies.”

  “How are we going to pin that murder on Lafferty?”

  “We know what Lafferty was likely driving, right? A big-ass black van. We need to go back to the security footage you got from around the crime scene and see if we can find any big-ass black vans going into that alley or even lurking around the building at any point.”

  Betts shrugged and woke his computer from sleep. A few mouse clicks later and the four of them in the office were watching a black-and-white video feed of the front of Mindy Jefferson’s apartment building. The homeless woman with the orange Home Depot cart was sitting on the sidewalk at the bottom right corner of the frame.

  Betts sped up the video. It was not filmed with a high-res camera, but it was clear enough to see nothing goes in front of the building until Abe entered the apartment. A few minutes later, the Davies kid runs out and that’s the last time he’s seen alive.

  “What about other angles?” Duff asked. “Got any of the street from a wider angle?”

  “Not really,” said Betts. “This was all they had for the street.”

  “What good is living in an Orwellian nightmare of constant surveillance if we can’t surveil the one single thing we want to surveil?”

  “At least we’ve learned to make friends with our bugging devices, now,” said Abe. “Alexa, play Rockwell’s ‘Somebody’s Watching Me.’”

  “So, you’re back to square one,” said Gates.

  “I guess we are,” said Duff. “Might as well get out of here for the night. Go home. Get some rest. The usual.”

  “That’s the spirit, Duffy. If you actually come up with something concrete, call me.” Betts stood, hands on hips. “I trust you boys know the way.”

  “Thanks for the booze, Betts. If you figure out how to track the van that smacked us into traffic, let me know.” Abe put a hand on Duff’s shoulder and guided him out of the district offices.

  Duff called back over his shoulder. “If I were you, I’d be all over the camera footage from down by the accident scene.”

  They walked out into the parking lot. The humidity was relentless. The whole world felt sticky, even this late at night. Duff checked his phone. “It’s after midnight.”

  “What’s the plan?”

  “We need to see if anyone saw the big-ass van at Mindy’s place.”

  “And how do we do that?”

  “We’ll go ask Mindy.”

  THE UBER DRIVER was glad to get rid of Abe and Duff. Between Abe backseat driving and doing full-body brake-stand miming and Duff prattling on about the Cubs and the Brewers, the poor Pakistani man was both confused and insulted. Until Abe could get a replacement for The Fucking Embarrassment, they’d have to become social media app users or rely on public transportation, both things neither of them particularly enjoyed.

  Abe tipped the man well. He felt guilty about making the man deal with Duff. The Uber driver seemed happy about the extra cash. “Please remember to give me a five-star rating!” The man gave Abe a gap-toothed smile and peeled away from the curb heading for his next fare.

  Duff spat on the sidewalk. His eye was practically swollen shut. “I miss real taxis. I miss cabbies who would just as soon punch you in t
he throat as wish you a good day. That’s what makes taxi rides great. That’s what Chicago was about. These Uber guys always have sticks of gum and bottles of water and they kiss your ass. That’s not how any of this should go.”

  “I kind of like it,” said Abe. “It’s nice.”

  “Taxis were not meant to be nice. They’re meant to be hellscapes filled with Israeli rap songs that the driver, who smells like rotting gyros and tomato paste, is playing at an ear-splitting volume and refuses to turn down. They’re meant to be so unpleasant it encourages you to walk the six or eight blocks instead of calling for some schmuck in a yellow Crown Victoria.”

  Duff was wearing a zip-up sweatshirt despite the heat. He left it hanging open. They had gone back to the apartment office to change clothes and get their guns. Abe had his snub-nosed Smith & Wesson .38 in a pancake holster at the small of his back hiding under his untucked shirt. Abe had chosen his gun because it was simple, easy to shoot, and practical.

  Duff was a little more elegant, going with a nylon tactical shoulder holster to hold his small Walther PPK. Duff did not choose a gun because it felt good in his hand, or because it intimidated someone, or because it had good stopping power; Duff chose his gun based on what James Bond would carry, and he could not be dissuaded from it. The gun was carried beneath his left arm and two spare clips of ammo were in pouches beneath his right. He needed the sweatshirt to cover the weapon. Concealed carry was legal for a P.I. with the proper licensure and police giving them the okay; open carry was not.

  Abe did not like carrying the gun. It was conspicuously heavy. It made him uncomfortable. It made him feel like the weight of the gun was going to drag his pants down at an inconvenient time.

  Duff was also against carrying a gun. He was a firm believer in the idea that carrying a gun exponentially increased the odds of using it, and that was something he was not wont to do. However, he also knew guns were the sort of language that was universal and if the proverbial shit was hitting the proverbial fan, Duff wanted something with the ability to bridge communication barriers quickly. A gun was a pretty good translator.