Will had learned a long time ago that the only thing he could control in any given situation was himself. He wasn’t a victim. He wasn’t prisoner to his temper. He could choose to be a good person. Sara had said as much. She had made it seem so easy.
And then he had forced that weird moment when they were together on the couch, staring at her like he was an ax murderer.
“Idiot.” He rubbed his eyes, wishing he could rub away the memory. There was no use thinking about Sara Linton. In the end, it would lead to nothing.
Will saw a group of women loitering on the sidewalk ahead. They were all dressed in various shades of fantasy: schoolgirls, strippers, a transsexual who looked a lot like the mother from Leave It to Beaver. Will rolled down his window and they all did a silent negotiation, deciding who to send over. He drove a Porsche 911 he had rebuilt from the ground up. The car had taken him almost a decade to restore. It seemed to take a decade for the prostitutes to decide who to send.
Finally, one of the schoolgirls sauntered over. She leaned into the car, then backed out just as quickly. “Nuh-uh,” she said. “No way. I ain’t fuckin’ no dog.”
Will held out a twenty-dollar bill. “I’m looking for Lola.”
Her lip twisted, and she snatched away the cash so quickly Will felt the paper burn his fingertips. “Yeah, that bitch’ll fuck your dog. She on Eighteenth. Strolling by the old post office.”
“Thank you.”
The girl was already sashaying back to her group.
Will rolled up the window and took a U-turn. He saw the girls in his rearview mirror. The schoolgirl had passed the twenty on to her minder, who would in turn pass it on to the pimp. Will knew from Angie that the girls seldom got to keep any cash. The pimps took care of their living quarters, their food, their clothes. All the girls had to do was risk their lives and health every night by tricking whatever john pulled up with the right amount of cash. It was modern slavery, which was ironic, considering most if not all of the pimps were black.
Will turned onto Eighteenth Street and slowed the car to a crawl, coming up on a parked sedan under a streetlight. The driver was behind the wheel, his head back. Will gave it a few minutes and a head popped up from the man’s lap. The door opened and the woman tried to get out, but the man reached over and grabbed her by the hair.
“Crap,” Will mumbled, jumping out of his car. He locked the door with the remote on his keys as he jogged toward the sedan and yanked open the door.
“What the fuck?” the man yelled, still holding the woman by the hair.
“Hey, baby,” Lola said, reaching her hand out to Will. He grabbed it without thinking, and she got out of the car, her wig staying in the man’s hand. He cursed and threw it onto the street, pulling away from the curb so fast that the car door slammed shut.
Will told Lola, “We need to talk.”
She bent over to get her wig, and courtesy of the streetlight, he saw straight up to her tonsils. “I’m running a business here.”
Will tried, “Next time you need help—”
“Angie helped me, not you.” She tugged at her skirt. “You watch the news? Cops found enough coke in that penthouse to teach the world to sing. I’m a fucking hero.”
“Balthazar’s going to be okay. The baby.”
“Baltha-what?” She wrinkled her face. “Christ, kid barely had a chance.”
“You took care of him. He meant something to you.”
“Yeah, well.” She put the wig on her head, trying to get it straight. “I got two kids, you know? Had them while I was locked up. Got to spend some time with them before the state took them away.” Her arms were bone-thin, and Will was again reminded of the thinspo videos they had found on Pauline’s computer. Those girls were starving themselves because they wanted to be thin. Lola was starving because she couldn’t afford food.
“Here,” he said, tugging the wig straight for her.
“Thanks.” She started walking down the street back toward her group. There was the usual mixture of schoolgirls and tramps, but they were older, harder women. The streets usually got tougher the higher the numbers. Pretty soon, Lola and her gang would be on Twenty-first, a street so hopeless that dispatch at the local police station routinely sent out ambulances to pick up women who had died during the night.
He tried, “I could arrest you for obstructing a crime.”
She kept walking. “Might be nice in jail. Getting kind of cold out here tonight.”
“Did Angie know about the baby?”
She stopped.
“Just tell me, Lola.”
Slowly, she turned around. Her eyes searched his, not looking for the right answer, but looking for the answer that he wanted to hear. “No.”
“You’re lying.”
Her face remained emotionless. “He really okay? The baby, I mean.”
“He’s with his mom now. I think he’ll be okay.”
She dug around in her purse, finding a pack of cigarettes and some matches. He waited for her to light up, take a drag. “I was at a party. This guy I know, he said there was this pad in some fancy apartment building. The doorman’s easy. Lets people in and out. Mostly, it was high-class stuff. You know, people who needed a nice place for a couple of hours, no questions asked. They come in and party, the maid comes the next day. The rich people who own the different apartments get back from Palm Beach or wherever and have no idea.” She picked a stray piece of tobacco off her tongue. “Something happened this time, though. Simkov, the doorman, pissed off somebody in the building. They gave him a two-week notice. He started letting in the lower clientele.”
“Like you?”
She lifted her chin.
“What’d he charge?”
“Have to talk to the boys about that. I just show up and fuck.”
“What boys?”
She exhaled a long plume of smoke.
Will let it go, knowing not to push her too hard. “Did you know the woman whose apartment you were in?”
“Never met her, never seen her, never heard of her.”
“So, you get there, Simkov lets you up, and then what?”
“At first it’s nice. Usually, we’ve been in one of the lower apartments. This was the penthouse. Lots of your better consumers. Good stash. Coke, some H. The crack showed up a couple of days later. Then the meth. Went downhill from there.”
Will remembered the trashed state of the apartment. “That happened fast.”
“Yeah, well. Drug addicts aren’t exactly known for their restraint.” She chuckled at a memory. “Couple of fights broke out. Some bitches got into it. Then the trannies went to town and—” She shrugged, like What do you expect?
“What about the baby?”
“Kid was in the nursery first time I got there. You got kids?”
He shook his head.
“Smart choice. Angie’s not exactly the mothering type.”
Will didn’t bother to agree with her, because they both knew that was the God’s honest truth. He asked, “What did you do when you found the baby?”
“The apartment wasn’t a good place for him. I could see what was coming. The wrong kind of people were showing up. Simkov was letting anybody in. I moved the kid down the hall.”
“To the trash room.”
She grinned. “Ain’t nobody worried about throwing away the trash at that party.”
“Did you feed him?”
“Yeah,” she said. “I fed him what was in the cabinets, changed his diaper. I did that with my own kids, you know? Like I said, they let you keep them for a while before they’re turned over. I learned all about feeding and that kind of shit. I took pretty good care of him.”
“Why did you leave him?” Will asked. “You were arrested on the street.”
“My pimp didn’t know about this—I was off the books, just having a good time. He tracked me down and told me to get back to work, so I did.”
“How did you get back upstairs to take care of the baby?”
; She jerked her hand up and down. “I tossed off Simkov. He’s all right.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when you called that first night that there was a baby involved?”
“I figured I’d take care of him when I got out,” she admitted. “I was doing a good job, right? I mean, I was doing good by him, keeping him fed and changing his little diapers. He’s a sweet little boy. You seen him, right? You know he’s sweet.”
That sweet little boy was dehydrated and hours from dying when Will had seen him. “How did you know Simkov?”
She shrugged. “Otik’s a longtime customer, you know?” She gestured toward the street. “Met him here on Millionaire’s Row.”
“I wouldn’t exactly call him a stand-up guy.”
“He did me a favor letting me go up there. I made some good cash. I kept the kid safe. What else you want from me?”
“Did Angie know about the baby?”
She coughed, the sound coming from deep in her chest. When she spit onto the sidewalk, Will felt his stomach roll. “You’re gonna have to ask her about that.”
Lola swung her purse over her shoulder and headed back toward her group.
Will took out his cell phone as he walked toward his car. The thing was on its last legs, but it still managed to make the call.
“Hello?” Faith said.
Will didn’t want to talk about what had happened this afternoon, so he didn’t give her an opening. “I talked to Lola.” He ran down what the prostitute had told him. “Simkov called her in to help her make some extra cash. I’m sure he took his share off the top.”
“Maybe that’s something we can use,” Faith answered. “Amanda wants me to talk to Simkov tomorrow. We’ll see if his story matches up.”
“What did you find on him?”
“Not much. He lives in the apartment building on the bottom floor. He’s supposed to be on the desk from eight until six, but there’s been problems with that lately.”
“I guess that’s why they gave him his two-week notice.”
“His criminal report came up clean. His bank account’s all right, considering he gets free rent.” Faith paused, and he could hear her turning the pages in her notebook. “We found some porn in his apartment, but nothing young or kinky. His phone’s clean.”
“Sounded to me like he’d let anybody into the building for the right amount of cash. Did Anna Lindsey give you anything?”
She told him about her fruitless conversation with the woman. “I don’t know why she won’t talk. Maybe she’s scared.”
“Maybe she thinks if she puts it out of her mind, doesn’t talk about it, then it’ll go away.”
“I suppose that works if you’ve got the emotional maturity of a six-year-old.”
Will tried not to take her words personally.
Faith told him, “We looked at the front-door logs from the apartment building. There was a cable guy and a couple of delivery people. I talked to all of them as well as the building maintenance guy. They’re checking out. Clean records, solid alibis.”
Will got into his car. “What about neighbors?”
“No one seems to know anything, and these people are too rich to talk to the police.”
Will had met the type before. They didn’t want to get involved and they didn’t want their names in the papers. “Did any of them know Anna?”
“Same as with the others—anyone who knew her didn’t like her.”
“What about forensics?”
“Should be back in the morning.”
“What about the computers?”
“Nothing, and the warrants aren’t in for the bank yet, so we don’t have access to Olivia Tanner’s cell phone, BlackBerry, or her computer at work.”
“Our bad guy is smarter at this than we are.”
“I know,” she admitted. “Everything is starting to feel like a dead end.”
There was a lull in the conversation. Will searched for something to fill it, but Faith beat him to the punch.
“So, Amanda and I are going to interview the doorman at eight in the morning, then I’ve got an appointment I need to go to. It’s out in Snellville.”
Will couldn’t think what anyone would be doing in Snellville.
“I figure it’ll take an hour or so. Hopefully, we’ll have an ID on Jake Berman by then. We need to talk to Rick Sigler, too. I keep letting him slip through the cracks.”
“He’s white, early forties.”
“Amanda made the same point. She sent someone around to talk to Sigler earlier today. He was at home with his wife.”
Will groaned. “Did he deny even being at the scene?”
“Apparently, he tried to. He wouldn’t even acknowledge he was with Jake Berman, which makes it seem more and more like a hookup.” Faith sighed. “Amanda’s got a tail on Sigler, but his background is clean. No aliases, no multiple addresses, born and raised in Georgia. He’s got K-through-twelve school records in Conyers. There’s no indication that he’s ever been to Michigan, let alone lived there.”
“We’re only stuck on this brother thing because Pauline McGhee told her son to watch out for his uncle.”
“True, but what else do we have to follow? If we hit any more brick walls, we’re both going to start getting concussions.”
Will waited a few seconds. “What kind of appointment?”
“It’s a personal thing.”
“All right.”
Neither of them seemed to have anything to say after that. Why was it so easy for Will to spill his guts to Sara Linton, but he could barely manage to have a normal conversation with any other women in his life—especially his partner?
Faith offered, “I’ll talk about my thing if you’ll talk about yours.”
He laughed. “I think we need to start from the beginning. With the case, I mean.”
She agreed. “The best way to see if you’ve missed something is to retrace your steps.”
“When you get back from your appointment. We’ll go to the Coldfields’, talk to Rick Sigler at his work so he’s not freaking out in front of his wife, then go over all the witnesses—anybody who’s even remotely connected to this thing. Fellow employees, maintenance men who’ve been to the house, tech support, anybody they’ve had contact with.”
“Couldn’t hurt,” she agreed. There was another lull. Again she filled it. “Are you all right?”
Will had pulled up in front of his house. He put the car in park, wishing that a bolt of lightning would just come down from the sky and kill him dead.
Angie’s car was blocking the driveway.
“Will?”
“Yeah,” he managed. “I’ll see you in the morning.”
He ended the call and tucked the phone into his pocket. The lights were on in the front room, but Angie hadn’t bothered to turn on the porch light. He had cash in his pocket, credit cards. He could stay in a hotel tonight. There had to be a place that wouldn’t mind dogs, or maybe he could sneak Betty in under his jacket.
Betty stood and stretched on the seat. The front porch light came on.
Will mumbled under his breath as he scooped up the dog. He got out of his car and locked it, then headed up the driveway. He opened the gate to the backyard and set Betty on the grass, then he stood outside his own house a few minutes, debating, then decided he was being stupid and made himself go in.
Angie was on the couch with her feet curled up under her. Her long dark hair was down the way he liked it, and she was wearing a tight black dress that hugged every curve. Sara had looked beautiful, but Angie looked sexy. Her makeup was dark, her lips a blood red. He wondered if she had made an effort. Probably. She always sensed when Will was pulling away. She was like a shark smelling blood in the water.
She greeted him the same way the prostitute did. “Hey, baby.”
“Hey.”
Angie stood up from the couch, stretching like a cat as she walked over to him. “Good day?” she asked, putting her arms around his neck. Will turned his head, and she
turned it back, kissing him on the lips.
He said, “Don’t do that.”
She kissed him again because she had never liked being told what to do.
Will kept himself as impassive as he could, and she finally dropped her arms.
“What happened to your hand?”
“I beat someone.”
She laughed, like he was joking. “Really?”
“Yeah.” He leaned his hand on the back of the couch. One of the Band-Aids was peeling up.
“You beat someone.” She was taking him seriously now. “Any witnesses?”
“None that are talking.”
“Good for you, baby.” She was close to him, right behind him. “I bet Faith wet her pants.” Her hand traced down his arm, rested on the back of his wrist. Her tone changed. “Where’s your ring?”
“In my pocket.” Will had taken it off before he’d gone up to Sara’s apartment. At the time, he’d fooled himself into thinking he’d done it because his fingers were swelling and the ring was getting tight.
Angie’s hand went to his pants pocket. Will closed his eyes, feeling the day catch up with him. Not just the day, but the last eight months. Angie was the only woman he had ever been with, and his body had been lonely, almost aching for the feel of her.
Her fingers touched him through the thin material of his pocket. His reaction was immediate, and when she breathed into his ear, he gripped the couch so that he could still stand.
She took his ear between her teeth. “You miss me?”
He swallowed, unable to speak as she pressed her breasts, her body, into his back. He leaned his head back and she kissed his neck, but it wasn’t Angie he was thinking about when her fingers wrapped around him. It was Sara, her long, thin fingers working on his hand as they both sat on the couch. The way her hair had smelled, because he had let himself bend down just for a moment and inhaled as quietly as he could. She smelled of goodness and mercy and kindness. She smelled of everything that he had ever wanted—everything that he could never have.
“Hey.” Angie had stopped. “Where’d you go?”
The Will Trent Series 5-Book Bundle Page 115
