by Shel Stone
Pushing herself off the wall, she walked over and inside the room with endless rows of lockers. On the digital screen, she booked a locker for a month, writing down the number on a piece of paper. Inside, she left her black canvas bag with the recriminating stuff, and it was like a weight coming off her when she closed the door of the locker and walked away.
Chapter 7
PALMER’S THROAT WAS painfully dry when he came to, somewhere in the place between consciousness and unconsciousness—a place where he didn’t feel any urgency. A relentless beeping marred the serenity of the place. Awkwardly, he tried to swallow, but it only made his throat hurt more.
The beeping refused to stop and he wanted to yell at someone. Brightness assaulted his eyes when he opened them and he closed them again. He couldn’t close his mouth, but it took him a moment to realize there was a tube in his throat.
“Welcome back, Mr. Dorian,” came a woman’s voice. He could feel someone arriving at his side, blinking as he tried to look at her, but again, it was too bright.
Who the fuck was she?
“Alright, let’s get that tube out, shall we?” Indian accent. The bed was being lifted up and he was being handled. “Big cough.”
He tried to comply and felt the tube tearing at his throat. Well, this was demeaning. Memories were starting to return. Being robbed and shot. The pain. He felt none of the pain now. Clearly shot up with morphine or fentanyl. Palmer actually didn’t do drugs. A good dealer didn’t get into the merch. Besides, he refused to allow himself to wallow in self-medicating for any emotional trauma in life, and he certainly didn’t lose the plot in some club. Drugs were for losers in his book.
His eyes adjusted and he could finally look. Standard hospital room. People dressed in lurid green scrubs and him in a white gown with dots on it. He lifted up his arm. It was weak and there were tubes everywhere.
“You had a close call. I’m Doctor Sharma. I took care of you.”
“Thank you,” he croaked.
“You’re in ICU, but you’re doing well. It was touch and go for a while. You’re strong, and very lucky.” With his weak arm, he lifted up the gown’s neckline and saw dressings on his chest. “Don’t move. You had surgery. One bullet went through, the other had to be removed. There will be some recovery time. Your body has taken substantial trauma.”
He wanted to tell her to leave, but recognized that she had saved his life.
“Is there anyone you wish us to call?”
“No. When can I leave?”
“As soon as we can establish there isn’t any infection, or that you aren’t going to bleed to death. Make yourself comfortable, Mr. Dorian. You will be here a couple of days.”
Palmer grumbled, feeling how weak he was as he tried to shift. As much as he wanted to rage, his body just wasn’t cooperating.
“I’ll come check on you in a few hours. Try to get some sleep.”
He’d just regained consciousness. The last thing he wanted to do was sleep. Again, his body didn’t agree and he was asleep probably before the doc got out of the room.
The creak of a shoe woke him. There was definitely more pain now. The meds had to be wearing off. Opening his eyes, he saw Carlos.
“Did you get her?” Palmer asked, his voice still rough as hell.
“No, she slipped out of town,” Carlos said and Palmer swore. He’d feel better now if she was dead. “Packed up and ran like a rat.”
“Where?”
“Don’t know. We missed her. Skipped town, but didn’t do it through the airport or bus station. Smart.”
Palmer smiled weakly. She was smart. He’d noticed that himself. It wouldn’t help in the end. It only meant this would take longer. “Find her,” he said, again feeling how weak he was.
Carlos nodded. “The cops want to speak to you.”
“Later. Do they know about her?”
“Haven’t said much about her, but yeah, they’ve seen her on the CCTV footage.”
Palmer ran his tongue over his teeth. He needed to brush, but that wasn’t perhaps the highest priority right now.
“Her name is Alicia Murray. Works at the Pink Pussy over Liberty way. Had a tiny condo over there, but she’s split.”
“Charming,” Palmer said, feeling a little disappointed in her, but perhaps he should have guessed she was a stripper, and at some pretty seedy joint from the sounds of it. How the hell had these people gotten invited to his party?
“She ain’t native. Comes from Buffalo. So she’s probably headed that way.”
Palmer didn’t think so. She was too smart to run home.
Carlos continued. “I’ve sent some guys up that way.” He paused for a while and stretched in his chair. “Conners is making some rumblings while you’re out of the picture.”
“Make him toe the line if he gets loud.”
“Alright,” Carlos said and rose. They never sat around and yakked. They weren’t friends, and that was part of the reason Palmer liked Carlos. Plus, he was good at his job and scary to those who needed to fear him.
Carlos gone, Palmer was alone again, hating how his body had been compromised by these assholes. It wasn’t a good look and it made him look weak. That couldn’t be stood for. There was no way this girl could be allowed to get away with it. People who moved against him ended up dead. There had to be something worse in store for someone who’d tried to kill him.
He still didn’t know if she’d pussied out of the plan or she had genuinely been surprised. It didn’t actually matter. She’d been there—she had to pay. “Run, rabbit, run,” he muttered. It didn’t matter where she went, he was going to find her.
Sadly, he couldn’t use the cops to help him. It was never a good idea to use cops to find someone you intended on murdering. It drew unwanted attention.
A knock sounded at the door and two civvie-dressed cops stood there. By the look of them, they couldn’t be anything other than cops. They had that harassed and hopeless look about them. The only thing that kept them going was their black humor, because they were never going to win their war. Most of them didn’t bother caring anymore, knowing they had to stand by and simply watch people like him go about their business—untouchable.
It probably amused them that someone had ripped a couple of holes in him.
“Martinez and Socha,” one of them said, walking into the room, pulling out an old-fashioned notebook. “Your head of security said there was no CCTV inside your office, but there are clearly cameras.”
“I believe they’re not operational at the moment. We’re changing security software.”
“That’s a real shame,” the taller one said, not believing a word of it. “So the two kids.”
“Tried to rob me. The blond one forced me to open the safe at gunpoint, then shot me when he had what he wanted.”
“Which was what exactly?”
“Some gold bars.”
“That’s funny. Found no gold bars on sight.”
“Had been cleared away for safekeeping.”
One of them run his tongue over his teeth. “Messing with a crime scene. Should arrest someone for that.”
“Better than having them disappear after, don’t you think?” They would definitely have disappeared somewhere on route to the evidence locker, and these two dipshits knew it—would probably have hidden them away themselves.
“How much worth?”
“About fifteen grand.”
The other cop whistled. “Just sitting around in your safe, huh? Is that from your import/export business?”
“Yeah, we import flooring material from South America. Hardwoods.” Everyone had to have a legit business, and his was hardwood flooring.
“Isn’t that illegal.”
“Sustainable sources.” And it was. Everything with the flooring business was legit, and sustainable hardwood cost a fortune, but the ecologically conscious paid for it and had the money to do so. It wasn’t a bad business, actually.
“So the cameras in the hall show the
two kids,” he flipped back some pages on his notebook, “Samuel Holt and Jasper Weir, came to your apartment with a female. Any idea who she is?”
“Nope. Just some whore. Wasn’t in the room when the robbery happened.”
“So she wasn’t part of it?”
“I think she was there as distraction. I doubt she had a clue what was going on.” Maybe that was true. Maybe ‘Nook’ had been there to distract him. Someone like her distracting him was almost comical if it wasn’t for that fact that she actually had. He’d been sniffing around her like a dog. He stopped himself from swearing.
“Don’t have a name?”
“I barely remember seeing her. And I didn’t talk to her.”
“We have a picture of her.” The cop pulled out a picture from his jacket pocket and handed it over. It was curved slightly from the guy's body heat, but there she was, wild hair and her short skirt, all attitude. A dirty, hot mess. He was going to kill her, and looking at her made his insides stir. He was still turned on by her, perhaps even more so now that the chase was on.
“Nah,” he said, looking back. “I don’t know her.”
“But you knew the two males.”
“Hadn’t met them before. An acquaintance had invited them.”
“What for exactly? Doesn’t seem like the kind of party where these two would fit in.”
“Don’t know. Maybe the acquaintance wanted to fuck one of them.”
“What acquaintance was this?”
“I don’t actually know who invited them. Sometimes people invite others.”
“So back to the robbery. Who was the second person to shoot you? Bullets show two guns. Both came in packing?”
“No, the second shot was from the gun in the safe.”
“Got a license for that?”
“Of course.”
“So you were shot with your own gun,” the tall one said with a sneer, enjoying pointing it out. It was all they had.
“How’d the kids get shot?”
“After the first shot from Samuel, I reached the gun under my chair and shot him. Then the dark one. He shot me at the same time.”
“With your own gun?” the comedian repeated.
“Yeah.”
“Got a license for the second gun under your chair.”
“Yes,” Palmer said. This questioning was wearing him out. The morphine was giving and the pain was intensifying. “Okay, you guys gotta go.”
“We’ve got more questions.”
Reaching for the call button, a male nurse ran in and Doris, the forceful black lady came after with her hands on her hips. Those two cops wouldn’t be able to withstand the force of Doris, who apparently saw herself as mother hen to her patients. Maybe he’d send her some flowers later.
Chapter 8
AS OPPOSED TO THE humidity of Miami, the air in Las Vegas was dry. It was a completely different heat. With heavy steps, she walked down the sharp steps at the front of the bus after waiting patiently in the queue to get off. She wasn’t the only one to make her way to Vegas to try their luck.
The sun was belting down, burning. It felt stronger here.
“Hey, Sugar,” a greasy guy said. “Just rolled into town. Need someone to show you around? I know a good and cheap hotel. Real clean.”
“Fuck off,” Nook said. Like she was going to go off with some dude who stood around at the bus stop, waiting for young innocents to step off the bus. Clearly a pimp.
“Now don’t be like that,” he said, stepping out to walk with her. He wore Adidas pants and gold sunglasses. He’d probably been quite good-looking once, but drugs had ravaged him. “This is a town where you need friends.”
“Got friends, and my sugar daddy wouldn’t like me talking to strangers.”
The dude bit his lip like he was trying to make his mind up about something. There was nothing to consider, because nothing would make her go off with him.
“Don’t make me call him,” she said sweetly and that seemed to tip the scale and he backed off, giving her that ‘fuck you, bitch. I’d hurt you if I could get away with it’ look. But he couldn’t and he knew it. She could probably take him anyway. Still, she had to watch her back. It wasn’t guaranteed he wouldn’t follow her. Pimps could be relentless when they thought they had their hook into some poor bitch. But this wasn’t her first rodeo, and some slimy dude wasn’t going to clip her ticket.
In Houston, she’d spent some hours in an internet café, searching hotels online. She knew where she wanted to go, and it wasn’t somewhere the tourists stayed. It was cheap, though, and they didn’t ask for a credit card. The big hotels always did and turned people away if they paid in cash. But it was cash from now on, at least until she had a new identity she could use.
This was all shit she’d never had to do before, and she wasn’t entirely sure how to, but she would muddle through, paying cash all the way—of which she didn’t have a lot. It wasn’t as if she’d planned on running for her life. That was a lesson learnt. In the future, she would have an absconding kit, filled with the things she needed. A new cell phone, cash, maybe even a whole identity lined up and ready.
To save cash, she took the bus. Less of a trail anyway. It took a while to get to where she wanted to go. The bus system wasn’t planned out for efficiency, but eventually she walked into the hotel. It looked nicer in the pictures than it did in real life, but it had a pool. Probably built in the sixties, and hadn’t really been refurbished since. The sunbeds were plastic and a couple were broken.
A few of the doors were open, people coming in and out. It was a busy hotel, which was good, because she’d be less noticed.
The room smelled moldy, but looked alright. Again, the décor was from the sixties. Putting her duffle bag on the ancient suitcase holder, she sat down on the springy bed.
So this was Las Vegas. She’d never been before, but it was one of the places where it was good to get lost. Lots of work, lots of people who came from somewhere they didn’t want to say.
Taking her jacket off, she threw it over the chair. She felt gross, hadn’t changed in days. Hadn’t had a shower in days. She’d traveled nonstop since leaving, hitching a ride with some college kids out of New Orleans. They’d tried hitting on her, but she wasn’t having any of it. They were too clean to rape her, although they hoped she’d screw all of them in her gratitude for the ride. Yeah, gratitude wasn’t something she prescribed to. It was their decision to give her a ride. She never agreed to reward them for it.
They kicked her out when they reached Lafayette, but she didn’t mind. The trace had been broken so there was no one who could possibly make out how she left New Orleans, or what direction she was heading in. It had served its purpose.
Putting the chain on the door, she walked into the bathroom and stepped into the avocado green bathtub to have a shower. The coolish water washed away the grime and dust, and her old life. With wet hands, she undid the thin plastic wrapper on a heavily perfumed small square of soap. The little bottles of shampoo were probably detergent. Her hair felt like straw after using it.
After a sleep, she would go buy some of the things she needed, then probably start hitting the bars for a job. Unfortunately, she needed a place that didn’t really care too much about practicalities like social security numbers and tax slips, which meant the seedier joints. After she had somehow managed to score herself an identity, she could maybe work somewhere better, like one of the bars in the big hotels, wearing a uniform and stuff.
If things didn’t work here, she’d keep going to LA, but she wanted this to be a new start, and to put all the crap behind her. It was easier said than done. Her eyes still scanned suspiciously when she left her room. Also, she didn’t know what the security was like in this hotel. All her stuff could be gone when she got back, but she had little of value. Don’t have stuff, and no one can steal stuff from you.
There was a convenience store across the road where she could buy snacks and toiletries. A better shampoo to start with. It occu
rred to her that she had totally forgotten to bring her hair dryer. There was probably a million things she would discover she’d forgotten over the next few weeks, but there was no point crying over spilled milk. She had her life and that’s what mattered.
Buying a new SIM card, she put it in her phone and called her mom. Down the line, she could hear her mother was drunk, taking deep and heavy drags from her smoke and wheezing slightly. It was the best ever advertisement for not smoking—not that it worked. A pack of Marlboros was sitting in her pocket.
“Hey, mom.”
“Hey, Nook. How’s it going down there in Miami? Is it hot?”
“Always is. Hey, I lost my phone and got a new number.”
“I noticed your name didn’t come up when you called.”
“This is my new number so you need to delete the old one, okay?” That was never going to happen. Technology was as foreign to her mother as aliens from outer space. Her mother was emotionally and psychologically stuck in the nineties. Still smoking and drinking like she was a teenager, except everyone around her, including her, was starting to look rougher every year.
“Alright, I’ll call you in a week or so.”
“Okay, honey,” her mother said, talking to someone as she failed to hang up on the call. She was only forty, but hard living had made her age before her time. One of the reasons Nook didn’t get too heavily into the partying. She knew where that led.
There was no point telling her mother she wasn’t in Miami anymore. It made no difference and it was safer for everyone involved that she didn’t actually know there had been a change in cities.
Sitting on a concrete bench, Nook pulled out her pack of cigarettes and lit one, well aware she was doing something that had gotten her mom to the place she was—ie. nowhere. But right now, she needed the soothing crutch. She’d just abandoned her life and run across most of the country. She had no money coming in, and only enough to stay at the hotel until the end of the week. Things were shit, but they weren’t impossible—and she wasn’t dead.
