Starr Sign

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  “So, how are you keeping track of the money?” I ask, partly because I’m interested and partly because I may be able to offer this information to Malone if there’s something I need to trade for it. Crypto isn’t the only kind of cashless currency.

  “There is no money,” he says, grinding the stogie out in a crystal ashtray on the bar. It smoulders there like the hellcat that ate the canary smile he wears on his face. That smile and the smoke make me just a little bit nauseous when he finally turns to look at me. “Now, let’s put you to work, shall we?”

  The guy I put in a headlock is named Bruno. He’s the same guy who answered the door when I showed up for dinner. I’ve been sent with him to do a surveillance walk-through of the second floor. He grumbles to himself as we make our way single file down the back stairs. He’s still pissed that I bested him in in my entrance kerfuffle.

  “Listen, buddy, we’re not going to have a problem here, are we?”

  “Not if you do your fucking job,” he says.

  “I always do my fucking job.”

  “Yeah, I’ve heard that about you,” he says with grudging respect. It appears that my street cred has preceded me. Which is good. It’ll help us get past our little tussle on the floor.

  He unlocks the studded door to the second floor. It opens onto a shadowy hallway lined with tightly closed doors. At the far end, I see an old-style front parlour. Table lamps draped with gypsy scarves hurl smears of washed-out colour around the room. Raunchy paintings of women either leaning back or bent over with ecstatic orgasm faces are hung at intervals on the wall. A nude sculpture of a Roman dude with a conspicuously large fig leaf stands in one corner on a pedestal. The furniture is an echo of what I saw in the foyer earlier, plush and overdone. The air smells like a mixture of cotton candy–flavoured lube and spent jism.

  “I thought the Scarpellos didn’t do prostitution?”

  “Yeah,” says Bruno. “Well, you thought wrong. Things changed when the old man got sick.” He narrows his beady eyes at me. They look like raisins embedded in his bloated dough-boy face.

  “Does Anya know that?” I ask.

  “What the Russki doesn’t know won’t hurt her,” he says. The threat in his stare implies that anyone who puts her in the know is going to lose more than a hand.

  “Where are the girls?” I ask. Usually there are a few lounging in the common areas in a cat house like this, acting as window dressing. There is nothing but silence in the hallway. If they were engaged with clients behind those closed doors, you’d hear something — faked, over-the-top orgasm shrieks, the strangled cry of a john in a ball gag getting his rocks off.

  “They’re in their rooms. They’ve got the night off, on account of the game. At least until it’s over.”

  I suppose with the high-ranking bosses on the third floor, they can’t be too careful about who they let in the house. One guy posing as a middle-aged married man looking for some tail could take out half of Detroit’s criminal elite if he wandered up the stairs to the third floor.

  Bruno presses his finger to the tiny bud he has lodged in one cauliflower ear. He walks past me to the parlour and looks out the window, mumbling into the hidden body mic. They hadn’t issued me one of these Secret Service knockoffs when I arrived. Maybe they didn’t have enough, or maybe they didn’t think I’d have anything important to say. After grunting a final reply, Bruno returns his attention to me.

  “There’s some movement on the edge of the property. Could be nothing, but I gotta cover Angus so he can go check it out. Wait here.”

  He disappears down the hall and through the parlour to use the proper stairs. Angus must be the dead-bolt freezing his ass off outside. I didn’t know they let Scots in the Italian Mafia, but they let that Irishman in, so what do I know? I lean against the wall to wait, slipping off one of my high heels to massage the instep of my foot. When I let out a sigh of relief, a tiny voice comes from behind one of the closed doors.

  “Hello?”

  I put my shoe back on and walk up to the where the voice came from.

  “Yeah?”

  “Can you open the door please? I need to use the toilet.”

  My first thought is that I don’t have a key. But I see the bathroom-style lock in the door handle. I turn the snib and step back. A young girl with sad eyes and rich ebony skin emerges, dressed in a pink kimono-style robe. She can’t be much older than Janet, although they may have her tarted up to look older. I can picture them pulling her tight extensions into pigtails on other occasions to reverse her age for the borderline pedos.

  She scurries down the hallway into the washroom. I listen to her pee hitting the side of bowl. It goes on for a long time. She must have been holding it in.

  After the flush, the bathroom door opens and she makes her way warily back down the hall, checking over her shoulder.

  “Thank you,” she says when she reaches me. “The other girls have toilets in their rooms, but I am new so I get the room without one.”

  “Doesn’t seem fair,” I say. Of course, nothing is fair about a girl being locked in a room, forced to piss in a wastebasket if I hadn’t come along.

  “Do not misunderstand me,” she says, looking alarmed, her deep-brown eyes widen. “They are very good to us here,” she insists. “Very good. They have doctors that take care of us. Give us shots to protect against disease.” She lifts one side of her kimono, showing me a hip still faintly swollen from a recent injection.

  “That looks fresh,” I say.

  “It takes some time for the skin to heal,” she says. “It is a big needle.” She drops the kimono back into place. We stand in the hallway together awkwardly.

  “I am from Nigeria,” she says. “Where did they bring you from?”

  She’s mistaken me for another working girl. Which I am, but of a different kind. I haven’t been brought from anywhere exotic, though.

  I’m about to set her straight when we both hear the heavy steps on the stairs. She darts around me and back into her room, closing the door with a quiet hush so Bruno won’t know she’s been out. I leave it unlocked just in case she has to go to the can again.

  I meet Bruno in the parlour.

  “False alarm,” he says, out of breath from the stairs. This guy is built for stamina, not for speed. “It was just a bum trying to set up camp behind the garden shed.”

  He checks the windows in the parlour, makes sure they’re secure.

  “We don’t have to check the windows in the bedrooms,” he says. “They’re nailed shut. A couple of the skinnier girls managed to squeeze through the bars and jump. It was a fucking mess.”

  He knocks heavily on each locked door until he gets a response, ensuring the women inside are where they’re supposed to be and not splattered on the pavement below.

  “Come on,” he says. “We’re done here.”

  We return to the back stairs. He closes the studded door and starts making his way back up the steps.

  “Aren’t you going to lock it?” I say.

  “Nah,” he says without turning around. “Believe me, those girls aren’t going fucking anywhere.”

  CHAPTER 16

  THE REST OF THE NIGHT at the poker game is fairly uneventful. The players hardly speak, working at their hands like it’s a dead-end job they’re forced to show up for. Alex has left by the time Bruno and I come back, some more pressing deal forcing him to be elsewhere. Around two in the morning, the game breaks up and the men cash out, without using cash, scanning the QR codes from their phones after they’ve been returned to them from the bin. The woman who met me at the front door comes up to escort each one down the main stairs to the brothel. I slip out discreetly to lock the door on the Nigerian girl’s room again before I leave. I don’t want to get her in trouble.

  I spend a fitful night’s sleep at Alex Scarpello’s after the driver returns me there with Bruno. They’d locked the fucking liquor cabinet, so I had nothing to lull me into my usual stupored slumber. When I wake up at dawn, Anya h
as already left for early morning Mass. I guess we all have our chosen opiates for the masses. Unfortunately, mine was locked up in the liquor cabinet last night. When I went up to bed, Bruno and his partner were still working, standing guard next to Alex and Anya’s bedroom doors. They must have been there the night before, too, after everyone went to bed. Can’t be too careful when you’ve got a contract killer in the house, I suppose.

  I make my way down to the main floor. The door is open on Alex’s study. He waves me in.

  “Did you enjoy the work last night, Candace?” he asks, sitting behind a banker’s desk the size of a barn door. Some guys compensate with their cars, and others with their office furniture, I guess.

  “Wasn’t much work to do,” I say.

  “That’s the whole point, Candace. You’re there for intimidation more than anything else.”

  “I suppose so.” I don’t say anything about the brothel he’s running. I’m sure it’s not the only vice he keeps from his mother. He sent me down to the second floor on purpose, though, so I could see what was going on. He knows I know, but I sense it is not a topic for discussion, just another form of silent intimidation.

  “We’re having another get-together this evening. Some associates have arrived from out of town. Usually, we only meet once a week, but ours is a unique opportunity for men who enjoy a game of chance, and I would like to accommodate them.”

  “Okay.” I’d wanted to meet with Deep and Janet today. To see if they had any more information that I could use as leverage for finding Angela, or for my own benefit. We’d planned on dinner at a greasy spoon, but I could meet them earlier for lunch, which would still leave me time to make the poker game gig. I’ll have to call Deep soon and make arrangements. I’m hoping he’s managed to hack those Russian birth records by now.

  “I’m afraid I have some other matters to attend to,” he says, getting up from the massive desk. “You’ll have to amuse yourself here until your assignment this evening. But Bruno will keep you company, won’t you Bruno?”

  It is only then that I notice Bruno filling the doorway of the study with his bulky frame. Unlike last night, he’s packing heat, not even trying to hide the shoulder holster under his suit jacket two sizes too small.

  “So, I’m on fucking house arrest?”

  “On the contrary, you may come and go as you please,” he says. “As long as where you come and go pleases me. Bruno can arrange for a driver if there is anywhere you need to be.”

  There is no way I can let a driver take me to meet with Deep and Janet. I can’t let the Scarpellos know about either of them. Besides, I hate that pervert of a driver with his metal-mouth teeth.

  “I don’t need to be babysat, Alex,” I say.

  “I’m sure you don’t, Candace. You are certainly not my baby.” He chuckles at this, and Bruno joins in. “But you are my asset. And I am protective of my assets, as I told you before.” He steps out from behind the desk, places the smooth palm of his hand on my cheek. If Bruno weren’t standing there with a .45 under his arm, I’d break it at the wrist in three places.

  “You’re family, Candace. And my mother seems fond of you. But if you work for me, I own you. Do you understand? Just like I own that girl you met last night.” Shit, how did he find out about that?

  He drops his hand, but I can still feel the slimy warmth of it on my face.

  “There is breakfast in the dining room,” he says. “Please help yourself. I want you to feel at home here.” He motions to Bruno, who steps out of the doorway. This is my cue to leave. I’m being dismissed, politely, which is the worst way.

  In the dining room, the gooey sweetness of maple syrup fills the air. Breakfast is set out buffet style, with coffee in a silver urn that looks like it should have somebody’s ashes in it. Lifting the lid off a metal chafing dish, I find French toast and sausage kebabs skewered and sweating inside. The maid told me the bangers are vegetarian as she was putting on her coat to go run an errand. But I could have guessed. I usually have a keen eye for counterfeits.

  I pile up my plate, hungry with the lack of booze in my belly, then sit down alone to eat. Suspicious of the fake meat, I go heavy on the maple syrup, but the veggie substitute ends up tasting close enough to the real thing. I can’t figure out what it’s made out of — probably tofu or some unpronounceable hippy grain. My dad worked at a butcher’s when he was a kid. He told me you could pack a ground-up old boot into a casing and with the right spices, it’d still taste pretty good.

  I’m licking the maple syrup off one of the metal skewers with the edge of my tongue when I hear the front door slam — must be Alex leaving for his more important matters. Bruno shows up on cue in the dining room to keep an eye on me, a sheepish look on his face. We’d developed a bit of a professional rapport last night, trading war stories as we watched the poker game. I told him about the time I beat a drug dealer unconscious with a toilet tank lid. He told me how he’d put a mall cop who’d welched on a bet in the hospital by running him over repeatedly with his own Segway.

  “Where’s your buddy?” I ask.

  “What buddy?”

  “Your partner,” I say. “The one I butted heads with.”

  “He left with Mr. Scarpello.”

  “Hmm.” I give the skewer one last luxurious lick.

  “Did you narc on me about letting that girl out of her room?” I figure it must have been him. I thought he hadn’t seen her when he’d come up the stairs, but I guess I was wrong.

  “No,” he says. “They saw it on the closed circuit.” Damn. I thought the fig leaf on that Roman statue looked fucking suspicious.

  I stand up from the table, wipe my sticky hands on a cloth napkin.

  “I’m going to the can. You’re not going to follow me in there, are you?”

  “No, I’m not.”

  “Good.”

  In the upstairs washroom, I wave to the homeless guy lurking behind the low wall across the street, giving him the signal. Bruno thought he’d chased him away last night, but I discovered him hiding in an overgrown boxwood shrub when I did a final walk of the perimeter before the game broke up. I’d promised him a hundred bucks to help me out, and, like most guys with nothing to lose, he hasn’t let me down.

  Strolling around the curve of the stairs a few minutes later, I see Bruno run over to the front window, attracted there by the racket on the front lawn.

  “What the fuck?”

  I walk up and stand beside him at the window. The homeless dude is marching up and down in front of a forsythia bush by the driveway, smashing together two metal garbage can lids like they’re cymbals and he’s part of the band. He’s hung a matted Christmas wreath around his skinny neck for a festive touch.

  “Jesus,” I say, taking in a maple syrup–infused breath. “You better check that out.”

  Bruno does his own marching to the front door. When he yells out of it, the homeless guy just bangs on his cymbals louder. He takes off down the front steps, but the guy is fast. Bruno, with his over-muscled frame, can’t keep up with the smaller man’s wiry amphetamine hustle. He chases him around the bush like a lumbering bear after a jacked-up mouse.

  I slip the skewer from the breakfast kebabs out from inside my leather jacket and hightail it to Alex’s study. It only takes a couple of jimmies of the lock on the door to get inside. Running over to the desk I try all the drawers, but only one of them is locked. I’m not sure what I’m looking for, but if there’s something to be found, I figure that’s where it’ll be. I insert the skewer and with a few leveraged twists the lock pops as easily as the one on the door did. They really need to invest in mechanisms that can withstand something stronger than cutlery.

  Inside the desk is a Glock 9mm, which I leave, because it’ll be missed. But other than that, the drawer is stuffed with medication. Injectables, pills, the works. Most of them don’t have any labels on them. I hadn’t pegged Alex for an addict, but this has to be his stash. There’s one bottle that’s labelled. Ativan. It’s t
hree-quarters full, so I pour out a dozen or so in my hand and pocket them. You never know when a good solid tranquilizer might be of use. I rifle through the rest of the drawer for documents that might help me prove Alex Scarpello is not who everyone thinks he is, but there are none, only a bulk package of syringes shoved at the back.

  A prolonged hoot sounds from the front yard, followed by some Sicilian swear words in response from Bruno. I glide the drawer closed again and press in the lock, leaving the way I came. The door is the kind that secures automatically when you close it, so I don’t have to use my trusty skewer again.

  Looking out the window, I can see that my hired distraction has climbed a tree at the end of the driveway. He’s stripping off his clothes and throwing them down on Bruno, who shakes his fist when a grey sock that might once have been white hits him full-on in the face. He gestures at his gun, but I know he won’t shoot the guy. It wouldn’t go over well in this neighbourhood, picking off a half-naked vagrant in a cherry tree.

  I ditch the skewer in the dining room, then slip out the sliding doors to the backyard. Hopping the fence, I can still hear Bruno shouting at the guy in the tree, who is now making monkey sounds. That boy’s really earning the cash I promised him.

  Skulking through the neighbours’ backyards, I emerge on a parallel street and call Deep, arranging to meet him and Janet for lunch. They’ve got a place in mind. He’ll text me the address.

  “We’ll see you there at noon,” Deep says.

  “Okay,” I say. “And Deep?”

  “Yeah?”

  “If a homeless guy comes to the door, give him a hundred bucks.”