Starr Sign

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  “Listen, I had a call from Malone this morning. She’s wise to me being here in Detroit, and she’s threatening to call Social Services about Janet.”

  Deep lets out a whistle from between his greased-up lips. “Shit, what did you say to her?”

  “I offered to get her some information on the Scarpellos if she held off. They’re betting some high stakes in this poker game they’ve got going, but the cops can’t figure out how they’re moving the money.”

  “You don’t strike me as an informant, Candace.”

  “That’s not informing, Deep. That’s reducing collateral damage. If I can get her even a little bit of information, like maybe the online handles of some of the lowlifes at that poker game, I could buy us some time. Besides, I don’t give a fuck about grassing on any friend of Alex Scarpello.”

  “You really don’t like him.”

  “I don’t like most people, Deep.”

  “You like me.” He smiles, and it sets me off balance for a second. I do like him, goddamn it, but I’m not about to admit it out loud.

  “The game is cashless. An old girl with a laptop is keeping track of it all. The players scan one of those QR codes to get into the game and to settle at the end of the night.”

  “Cryptocurrency?” Deep asks, making the same assumption I had.

  “Maybe,” I say. “But whatever way they’re doing it, it’s on that computer. If I got a hold of it, could you figure it out?” I have no idea how I might manage to lift the laptop and smuggle it out of the game. It’s a lot bigger than a breakfast kebab skewer.

  “I don’t need the whole laptop,” he says. “I could just give you a rubber ducky.”

  “What do I need with a bath toy, Deep?”

  “A rubber ducky is a keystroke injection tool,” he explains, using patience I could have used earlier. “It plugs into a computer just like a USB stick does. Virus checkers can’t pick it up because they think it’s just another keyboard. You can load it with thousands of lines of code, and it’ll type it into the computer in seconds. Takes a bit of time to execute, but not that long. People use it to steal passwords, even create backdoors for remote access.”

  “Malware,” I say. “I thought you only hacked for the greater good?”

  “I have to keep up on the latest attack technology to protect my clients against it, Candace,” he says, then gives a wry smile. “Plus, it’s cool.”

  “So, you could remotely access this chick’s laptop if I plug in this duck thing?”

  “I can if she’s connected to the internet. And most people leave their Wi-Fi turned on, no matter what they’re doing on their computers.”

  “Why can’t we just download the files onto a regular USB stick?”

  “That takes time, Candace. Have you ever tried to back up a computer’s hard drive?”

  “I don’t even back up my car if I can help it, Deep.” The reverse has always been a bit sticky on Charlotte’s car. Most of the time, I try to find two parking spaces nose to nose, so I can pull in through one to park in the other with the car facing frontwards.

  “The point is, Candace, it would be hard to insert a stick and download all the files you need without being detected. It can take several minutes. Do they leave the laptop unattended for that long?”

  “No.” I can’t remember the chip lady even leaving her post in front of the laptop for a pee last night. And even if she did, I’d have Bruno and the rest of security to think about. Something tells me I’d need more than a homeless guy banging garbage can lids together to get them all to clear out.

  “With the duck, you’d need only seconds, a minute tops. Just pop it in, and watch the script execute on the screen. Once it’s done, you can take it out and you’re golden. If she links to the internet later, I can come through the backdoor and look at whatever she’s got.”

  “So, breaking into Alex Scarpello’s study was too much of a risk, but this is just fine and dandy?”

  “I’ve learned by now that you’re going to do what you want in the end, Candace. I might as well help you do it right.”

  The waitress comes and takes the empty poutine plate away. Janet’s sketchbook had been tucked underneath it. On the open page is a different sort of drawing from her usual ones, a close-up of a woman’s face done in charcoal with smudges for depth and perspective. Deep must have bought her those new art supplies. The woman looks sort of like me and sort of like Janet, but older and with a sadness in her eyes that makes me turn away to study the blow-up Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer across the street. He’s fallen over onto his mutant nose and shudders in the wind at the entrance to the used car lot. It reminds me of Stacey, and that reminds me of Angela.

  “Find out the address of that retreat, Deep. I’m not sure if that’s where Angela is, but it won’t hurt to check it out. And it’ll keep the kid happy.”

  “Will do,” Deep says, smiling, a man used to doing things that make others happy.

  But for me, it’s a new thing.

  Back at the motel, it only takes Deep a minute to load the code to the duck he’d packed in his suitcase. He already had the malware script saved on his main laptop. For a guy who works only for the righteous, he sure has access to a lot of coder contraband.

  The rubber duck looks just like a run-of-the mill USB stick, except for the black cover with the little neon-yellow bird on it. When you pull the cover back, it reveals a small grouping of black-and-silver metal chips and circuits, a miniature version of the disemboweled motherboard I’d seen in Deep’s living room. I pocket it in my leather jacket before I leave the motel and start the long walk back to Indian Village. I need to clear my head, think hard on how I’m going to pull this caper off tonight. Finding an opportunity to plug the duck into the cashier’s laptop with half of the Scarpello entourage and a roomful of gangsters watching is going to be next to impossible. But impossible and I have been neighbours in the past, and I usually find a way in the door to borrow a cup of flour.

  I kick at a half-flattened beer can discarded on the sidewalk, send it skittering down an alleyway to join other abandoned things. Fucking Malone. I can’t believe I’m doing something this risky just to keep my kid sister out of foster care. But then again, if Deep can get a look-see at how the funds are flowing in that card game, perhaps I could convince him to funnel some of the proceeds into our own bank accounts. I could even use some of the loot to help out those girls on the second floor, find them a way out from behind those locked doors. I haven’t been able to get that Nigerian kid out of my head, so young and defenceless as she showed me the injection site on her skinny hip. I get that sex work is a legitimate gig and all, but something tells me that doesn’t apply to women who’d jump out a second-floor window just to get away from their own profession.

  I step around a pile of dog shit, frozen on the sidewalk, resisting the urge to kick it away like the can. I know Deep would never go in for stealing, from gangsters or from anyone else. I hate it when people have morals that get in the way of personal gain.

  Especially when it’s me.

  CHAPTER 18

  WHEN I GET BACK TO THE HOUSE in Indian Village, I’m almost as frozen as the dog crap on the sidewalk. Bruno gives me a fierce look when he opens the door.

  “Where the fuck have you been?” he asks.

  “Out to get some hooch,” I tell him. “You locked up the good stuff.”

  I run up the stairs before he can interrogate me further, take a hot shower, and crash on the bed, still with the fluffy white towel wrapped around me. I hadn’t intended to sleep, but I hadn’t got much shuteye the night before, or perhaps the cold sapped my strength, because I doze off, wake up when the penguin knocks on the bedroom door calling me to dinner. I get up and force myself back into the little black dress for tonight’s security detail. My phone’s on the bedside table, and I leave it there to charge with the cord Deep gave me back at the motel. When I join Anya in the dining room, she’s sitting alone, picking at a portobello mushroom stu
ffed with mashed potatoes.

  “I am afraid Alex will not be joining us for dinner,” she says, her tone clipped short as the chives sprinkled on top of her mash. “He said he will see you this evening at the gentlemen’s card game.”

  I think about telling her how the gentlemen were practically tripping over each other’s hard-ons to get to the second floor last night. But contrary to popular opinion, I do know when to keep my mouth shut sometimes.

  “Thanks for the message,” I say instead.

  “He’d hoped to tell you himself, but you were not at home all day, I understand.”

  “I went to check out the cathedral. You know, where they’re doing the beatification thing.” I take a seat, tucking into my own dinner, already served up and still piping hot. The mashed potatoes burn the roof of my mouth, and I have to down a glass of ice water in a cut-glass tumbler to wash it down.

  “You went to the Cathedral of the Most Blessed Sacrament?” she asks, an eyebrow raised.

  “Yeah, that’s the one.” I hadn’t actually gone there, but I’d looked it up online — initially confusing it with Solomon’s Cathedral, which I discovered wasn’t even Catholic and had little to do with that guy with the mine.

  “Alex and I will be attending the ceremony tomorrow night there. The archbishop will lead the Mass celebrating Father Murphy and read the decree from the Pope. I would ask you to join us, but the Mass has been limited to ticketholders only. I don’t believe you have a ticket?”

  “I thought I’d just stand outside and watch it in on the jumbotron.” I’m pleased with myself, remembering this tidbit of information provided by the lady behind the desk at the motel.

  “The temperature is to drop even further this weekend, Candace.” She tilts her head at me, forcing a tight smile. “I suggest you stay here and watch on the television.” We both know this is not a suggestion and has fuck all to do with the weather report.

  My absence today has aroused suspicion, something I can’t afford until Deep strikes some pay dirt in his research into Alex’s birth. Until then, the whole Scarpello clan will be closing ranks to keep a closer watch on me. I don’t bear up well under scrutiny at the best of times. Even less when I’ve got a rubber ducky hidden in the inner pocket of my leather jacket, burning a hole there worse than the steaming hot potatoes in my mouth.

  Bruno takes the place of the usual driver to bring me to the location of tonight’s game. The Zip had to go for emergency root canal surgery. Couldn’t have happened to a better guy, in my opinion. I hope he gets fucking lockjaw.

  The game’s being held in a different neighbourhood, but the house is much the same — a sprawling throw-back mansion, piece of crap on the outside, shabby chic on the inside. This time, the girls are housed on the main floor, which has a front parlour done up in the dark red-and-yellow velvet wallpaper favoured by opium dens and old-school Chinese restaurants. There are servant stairs and there are regular ones. I don’t even have to ask Bruno which ones we’re meant to use as he leads me through a maze of murky rooms and corridors. The place is like a labyrinth. I keep expecting a minotaur to jump out from behind one of the credenzas.

  The game room is on the second floor, set up in a converted porch off the back of the house. There’s a couple of spot heaters running full blast to keep the chill out. Anya wasn’t kidding when she said the weather was changing. Metal shutters that roll down like garage doors block the bank of windows that would normally look out over the flat roof of the garage. After handing Bruno my phone, I trip the metal detector when I stroll through it in my high heels.

  “It’s the shoes,” I say to him, pointing at my shiny sharp stilettos. He pats me down just the same, but the duck is slim, and so am I. If he notices anything, he probably figures it’s one of my pointy ribs. I’ve broken a few over the years, and those things never set properly after they’ve been busted.

  When Alex arrives, he’s too busy with his out-of-town players to give me more than a cursory glance. Tonight, the guests are all Micks from the Irish Mob, members of rival gangs run out of Boston. They’re meeting here not only to play cards but to discuss a drug war looming between the two organizations. Alex is providing them with a neutral zone to get together and work out their differences over a few rounds of Texas Hold ’em. In exchange for this, he pockets a criminally large percentage of the night’s winnings — but then again, he is a criminal. Bruno briefed me on all this on the way over in the car. He’s stationed me in a corner by the shuttered windows with the guy I head-butted at the first game. I ask him his name, but he ignores me. I guess he still has a headache.

  This time, the girls aren’t in lockdown. Or at least a handful of them aren’t. They file in from the service stairs that lead directly into the action. Four girls are soon working the room, chatting up the players one at a time, bringing them drinks. A couple are as young as the girl I ran into last night; others maybe just kissing their twenties. The youngest one by far wears a short baby-doll nightdress with matching peach stockings that cut high on her pale thighs. She has ice-blonde hair like Janet, but it’s a dye job. From my height, I can see the dark brown strip of roots running along her middle part.

  Most of the players keep their cool around the girls, but one asshole with a mop of ruddy red hair pulls the youngest one onto his lap and shoves a rough hand up the short skirt of her baby doll, laughing when she cries out. I’ve had some bad experiences with gingers in the past, at least one in particular. I go to stand behind him, using my own special brand of intimidation. He looks up at me, then releases the girl with a smirk. She runs behind the bar to fix him a Bloody Mary with shaking hands.

  Once they all have their drinks, the men line up for the buy-in as they did the night before. The cashier issuing the chips wears the same conservative outfit. Her translation services aren’t required this evening, so she just greets each player formally from behind her laptop, instructing them to scan their phones before confiscating them like a killjoy high-school teacher.

  Alex walks right past me and whispers something to Bruno, who nods. Before leaving the room, he points to his eyes with V’d fingers and then aims those offending digits directly at me. Then he disappears down the hall that leads to the main staircase.

  I cross the room to Bruno where he stands next to the metal detector.

  “What the fuck was that about?”

  “I think you know, Candace.”

  “Where’s he going now?”

  “Out,” he says, sharply, staring straight ahead.

  “Listen, Bruno, I know I gave you the slip this morning, but you don’t have to be such an asshole about it.” His head swivels on his thick neck to face me.

  “Do you know how much shit I got into on account of you?”

  “A girl has to have her freedom, Bruno.”

  “I don’t like getting in shit,” he says, bitching like a big baby. I can’t believe this guy once picked pieces of mall cop out of the wheels of a Segway. He’s such a whiner.

  I’m trying to think of some way to smooth it over with Bruno. With all this suspicion brewing, I’ve got to work on distilling my allies. I’m about to compliment him on his physique, a ploy that usually works with guys heavier on the brawn than brain, when I see a flash of white in the hand of the asshole ginger. People who’ve been to prison like me have a sixth sense for the sharp and pointy. Shivs don’t have to be made of metal. I once got jumped by a broad in the joint who’d made a hardened papier-mâché shank out of toilet paper and cornstarch glue. The ginger stumbles into the guy at the front of the line, making out like he’s drunk.

  “Knife!” I shout, but it’s too late. The bone-white dagger vanishes between the shoulder blades of the man at the front of the line. He drops the phone in his hand and clutches at the centre of his chest, where the tip of the weapon sticks out after running his heart through. He falls forward onto the desk. The cashier screams and stumbles away when his cheekbone hits the scanner with a loud crack.

  The ginge
r takes off down the hallway toward the main stairs. All hell breaks loose between the players. They trample some of the girls as they rush the back stairs to get out. The security guy I’d been stationed with earlier takes off after the assassin, as does Bruno, but not before he turns to me with a snarl.

  “You stay here.”

  They really don’t trust me. I’d be offended if it weren’t for the fact that this lethal fiasco has effectively cleared the room. The chip lady has abandoned her post, leaving the laptop unattended. I can see blood splattered up the back of the screen. This is my chance.

  I move toward the computer, fishing the duck out of my inner pocket as I go. But as I pass the card table, I hear a wet sniffle coming from beneath the green-felted card table. Bending down to look, I see the girl in the baby-doll nightdress, all curled up and sobbing into pale peach chiffon.

  “Get out,” I tell her roughly. I don’t have the time to be gentle. She crawls out from underneath the table obediently, no stranger to barked commands.

  “You need to get out of here,” I say. But she shakes her head.

  “I’m afraid,” she says, through hitched sobs. “I want to stay here with you.” I sympathize with her predicament, but I’ve got to get rid of her.

  “I need you to go get some towels,” I say. “To staunch the bleeding, okay?” I indicate the corpse slumped on the desk, who is long past the need of first aid. But she doesn’t know that. “Get some hot water, too.” I add this request so it’ll take her longer before she comes back. It sounds like something off of Call the Midwife. Charlotte loves that fucking show.

  When the kid still stands there trembling, I shout at her, “Now!”

  That gets her moving. She runs off down the back stairs.

  I step up to the laptop. One lifeless hand decked in fat rings blocks the USB port. When I knock it out of the way the dead guy slips off the desk and hits the wood-plank floor with a thud.