The man remained motionless; his two dogs unnervingly still.
“What do you want?” Ian asked, his tone growing in anger.
The man said nothing.
“Seriously?” Ian yelled. “What the fuck is this?”
Slamming the container door closed, Ian moved to storm across the street and confront the man. But when he turned around again, the street was empty.
“Yeah, you better run,” he muttered under his breath.
Opening the container again, he found several boxes marked Clothing and one labeled Bathroom. He rummaged through the clothing boxes until he found enough clean items to dress himself in the morning, placed them on top of the bathroom supplies and carried the box inside.
*
After showering, Ian walked the apartment, picking up a few of the dusted knickknacks and framed photographs that attempted to stir old, forgotten memories. Apart from the photo of his sister eating ice cream, none of the objects meant anything to him. He had never known his mother’s side of the family; never met a single relative, not even at his grandfather’s funeral.
Certainly nobody had shown up to lend a hand when it was just the two of them, mother and son, after his father left.
The fridge was working but empty, while all the cans in the cupboards had labels and logos that hadn’t been seen on store shelves in years.
Ian crossed to the front window and peered outside. Standing to one side of a streetlight, half in shadow, half in light, was the tall man and his dogs.
A prickling at his neck made Ian head back downstairs to the cutting room. There, he opened the safe, retrieved the handgun and returned to the apartment.
Undressing in the dark, weariness took hold of his mind and body. The sheets needed washing, but he found the lingering, spicy-orchid scent of Rossella to be a welcome comfort.
Still wrapped in its oilcloth, the .45 would need a good cleaning and fresh ammunition, but, slipping it underneath his pillow, it gave Ian enough security to close his eyes and fall into a deep, exhausted sleep.
It was short-lived.
23
Ian snapped awake with the disturbing realization he was being watched. Rubbing his eyes to be certain he wasn’t trapped in a paranoid nightmare, he took in the looming presence that filled the doorway of his mother’s old bedroom.
The behemoth didn’t move. He didn’t need to. There was no place for Ian to run without going through him first.
“Get dressed,” said the man. “Mr. Zelig would like a word.”
“Doesn’t he own a watch?” Ian grumbled, putting on a brave front to dampen the panic in his chest.
“Don’t!” warned the man, moving deeper into the room to reveal a bandaged nose and chipped-tooth grimace. “Whatever you’re reaching for, it’s a bad idea.”
Ian removed his empty hand from underneath the pillow and swung his legs off the bed. Standing, he dressed in the clean clothes he had laid out a short time before: jeans, maroon shirt, and—
“Don’t worry about shoes,” said the goon. “We ain’t going far.”
“I hope you didn’t break anything getting in here,” said Ian as they descended the stairs. “I just had the place cleaned.”
Nose Bandage grunted, although whether with humor or impatience, Ian couldn’t tell.
In the front room, Walter Zelig sat on a folding metal chair beside the empty display cabinets. He was hunched forward, his sparse weight supported by an elegant, silver-tipped cane that resembled the head of a bear. Ian had no idea where the chair had come from.
“I remember this place,” said Zelig, his lips parting to reveal a crooked assortment of decaying brown teeth. “But I miss the aroma.” He inhaled, the effort barely expanding his sparrow-like chest. “It used to stink of blood.”
“I’ll see if I can find a candle in that scent,” said Ian.
Zelig chuckled as Nose Bandage clipped Ian around the ear.
“Show some respect.”
“It was a joke,” complained Ian, rubbing his ear. “Lighten the fuck up.”
The goon’s nostrils flared, but his leash was tugged by a simple wave of his boss’s hand.
“I don’t sleep much anymore,” said Zelig. “Not that I miss it. Even surrounded by loyal staff in a mansion bought through sweat and toil, I never enjoyed those dark hours of vulnerability. What about you?”
“People keep waking me up,” said Ian.
Zelig chuckled again as his goon slapped Ian’s other ear. The infliction of pain seemed to tickle his funny bone.
“Apart from that. How do you sleep?”
Ian shrugged, unwilling to share his personal pain with a cold-blooded killer.
“Your daughter,” said Zelig as though reading his thoughts. “The way she died under your watch. That failure haunts you.”
Ian’s fists reflexively curled in anger, but he swallowed it down.
“I understand that pain better than most,” Zelig continued. “I have a daughter, too.”
Ian remained silent.
“You’ve heard,” said Zelig, reading his body language. “Good. Then you know I need to find her.”
“Is she alive?” Ian regretted the question the moment it left his lips as Nose Bandage grabbed him by the scruff of the neck and squeezed. His vice-like grip sent Ian’s muscles into spasm, firing jagged currents of pain across his entire back and spiking up his skull.
“She is alive,” said Zelig, waving his hand again to have Ian released. “Show him the gift.”
Nose Bandage reached into his jacket pocket and retrieved an inch-thick rectangular black box. At approximately nine inches in length and three in width, it was the perfect size to hold a jeweled necklace or expensive wristwatch. Apart from the shape, the packaging looked identical to the gruesome gift that had been left on the passenger seat of Ian’s van during Noah’s funeral.
“Another memento of my father?” Ian muttered, dreading what it might contain.
“No,” said Zelig. “I receive one of these every year on my birthday.” A damaged smile crossed his grayish lips. “Today is that day.”
“Congratulations?”
Zelig ignored the insincere well wishes. “The first package arrived one year after your grandfather’s death, and they have continued every year since. Open it.”
Ian untied the black ribbon and lifted the lid off the box. Inside, nestled within a soft cushion of red velvet, was a handcrafted hunting knife. The four-inch, spear-point blade was swirled with unique forge marks and anchored in a jawbone handle that, disturbingly, still contained the animal’s teeth.
“Show me,” said Zelig.
Ian tilted the box.
“That is one of the more unusual blades she has sent. Read the card.”
Ian found a small black card nestled under the blade. He opened it and read aloud, “For your heart.”
Zelig’s lips quivered slightly as he lowered his gaze. “The message is always the same.”
“And how do you know it’s from Constance?”
Zelig’s head snapped back to attention. “You know her name?”
“I needed to know what you were after.”
“She is a beauty,” said Zelig wistfully. “My beautiful, beautiful baby girl.”
“And the knives?”
“She wants me to know that I am still in her heart.”
That wasn’t the message Ian got off the card, but he decided to keep that to himself.
“I need you to find her and bring her back to me. If you don’t, you already know what I do to people who disappoint.”
“Why me?” asked Ian. “I’ve never done anything to you.”
“You inherit the debt, just as you inherit this store. Your father tried to run from that debt, but I never forgive nor forget.” Zelig rose from the chair, leaning heavily on the cane, and ran a dry tongue across papery lips. “Your family took her from me. It’s only right that you bring her back.”
*
Alone once more, Ian d
ouble-checked the useless locks on the front door before returning upstairs. In the bedroom, he emptied the pockets of his dirty jeans, crumpled on the floor with grave dirt ground into the knees, and transferred the contents — keys, phone, cash and a slim billfold — to his clean ones.
He was still tired, but knew he would have trouble returning to sleep without some assistance. And since he hadn’t been shopping yet, there wasn’t even a glass of milk in the fridge that he could heat up on the stove.
Pulling out his phone, Ian found Rossella’s number and touched the call button.
Not unexpectedly, she didn’t answer.
He left a message. “Hey, Rossella. Hope I didn’t wake you.” That was a lie. He wanted to hear her voice, unguarded and sexy in drowsy sleep; to have her rush over, excited to see him, to feel her warm skin sliding across his. “Had another visit from Zelig tonight and it got me thinking again about the taxes on this place. Somebody’s been paying them, and whoever that is may have answers to what happened to Zelig’s daughter. Have you had any luck tracking it down? Call me.”
After hanging up, another thought entered his mind.
Pulling on his shoes, Ian grabbed a large kitchen knife from a wooden block on the counter and descended to the main floor. Entering the back room, he grabbed the hook and chain, secured it to the top of the safe, and re-opened the secret chamber.
With the butcher’s knife tucked dangerously into his belt, Ian climbed down.
*
Trying to ignore the locked steel door and what lay behind it, Ian moved with purpose to the antique roll-top desk. Removing the knife from his belt, he slid the tip of its blade underneath the small lock at the center of its curved cocoon and applied pressure.
It only took a few seconds for the brittle wood to snap and the lock to break. The louvered shell rolled up and away, exposing an ancient Underwood No.5 typewriter surrounded on all sides by a myriad of tiny wooden drawers. It was the perfect setup for someone with obsessive compulsive disorder; a place to put everything, and for everything a place.
Ian began opening the drawers and dumping their contents onto the desk. He found several small keys that fit the locks of larger drawers. Inside those drawers, he found several unopened boxes of over-the-counter hair dye, a simple Canon camera, boxed canisters of Kodak black-and-white 35mm film, letter-sized sheets of transparent plastic, slender art knives with blades as sharp as a scalpel, and several blank documents. The documents included a half-dozen Oregon driver’s licenses and three American passports.
Ian glanced over at the empty metal cot, taking in the room with fresh understanding.
It wasn’t a cell, he realized. It was a waiting station for people planning to change their identity. This hidden bunker was a perfect place to lay low, safe and out of sight, while new documents were prepared.
He thought of the women who had been seen entering the butcher shop, and then never seen again.
But why?
Why was his grandfather involved in such a set-up?
Ian rummaged through the rest of the drawers, finding little else apart from an orphan steel key that was too large to fit any of the desk’s locks. A paper tag was attached to the hole in its bow. Scrawled on the tag in thick pencil was the letter D.
After returning most of the items to their proper place, Ian slipped the steel key into his front pocket, and the incriminating blank documents into his back pocket.
There were some secrets, he reasoned, that were best kept that way.
*
With no cellphone reception in the hole, Ian climbed the ladder to the cutting floor before tapping the photo icon of his friend. He had snapped the mugshot backstage one night after Jersey finished a near riotous set with The Rotten Johnnys.
Jersey hated the photo as he had been sweating like a burst faucet and his stage makeup streaked down his face in a mockery of Alice Cooper. But he didn’t see what Ian did: the pure, unadulterated joy radiating from every pore. The photo always made Ian smile.
Jersey answered on the fifth ring.
“Seriously?” he grumbled. “Whatthefuck?”
“I have four dead bodies,” said Ian.
“And you couldn’t call nine eleven?”
“They’ve been dead awhile.”
“What’s a while?
“Couple decades.”
“That could’ve waited ’til morning.”
“I was excited to share. Besides, if you and Sally are getting serious, you may have kids one day. This is good practice for Christmas morning.”
“There are some things you don’t need to practice.”
“Says the perpetual bachelor.”
Jersey sighed. “Where are the bodies?”
“In my basement.”
“What! Your basement?”
“The basement of my new digs. I’ve moved into my grandfather’s old butcher’s shop.”
“Are you sure they’re human?”
“Unless Augustus dressed his pigs in suits and ties, then, yeah, I’m pretty sure. Remember that cop in the bar today? He mentioned Zelig sent four heavies over to have a chat with my grandfather. I don’t think Augustus liked the conversation. Either that or they asked to buy on credit. He took a dim view on credit.”
“Jesus!”
“Oh, and if you’re coming over, can you pick up coffee? I haven’t had a chance to go shopping yet and could murder a cup.”
Jersey ended the call with a brief crackle of profanity.
24
Jersey handed Ian a large takeout mug of coffee along with a greasy paper bag containing a lukewarm breakfast sandwich of plastic bacon, rubber egg and a goopy substance pretending to be cheese.
“I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said, looking around the dusty back room: stainless steel cutting tables, disturbingly large floor drains, dangling hooks, chains and pulleys. “Serial killer chic?”
“It’s a work in progress,” said Ian, biting into the sandwich. Unsurprisingly, it tasted as bland as it looked.
“At least it’s in a bad neighborhood,” said Jersey.
“With corpses in the basement,” added Ian.
Jersey grinned. “Who did you piss off to inherit this?”
Ian shrugged. “Last man standing.”
“Show me the bodies.”
Ian led Jersey over to the hole beneath the safe and down the ladder to the secret chamber. Jersey remained quiet as he took in the concrete cell, his eyes studying every detail.
“Cozy,” he said.
“I think it was designed as a safe room rather than a cell,” said Ian.
“Safe from who?”
“From whoever those women who disappeared were running from. People saw them enter, but nobody saw them leave. I think my grandfather helped them escape whatever trouble they were in.”
“Why?”
Ian shrugged again. “I haven’t figured that out.”
“So he could have just as easily been killing them, chopping them up and stuffing their remains in his sausage?”
Ian winced. “I prefer to think not.”
“Course you do. Who wants to admit they’re the spawn of a serial killer? But it doesn’t make it any less of an assumption. Where are the bodies?”
Ian unlocked the steel door and flicked on the lights. Jersey followed him inside.
“You disturbed six graves,” he said, taking in the scene.
“I needed to be sure—”
“That none of them contained women,” Jersey finished.
Ian nodded.
“Two are empty.”
“How I found them. I’m guessing Augustus hoped Zelig would fill one of them.”
Jersey moved closer and crouched down to study the faces of the dead before glancing over at the tools in the corner.
“Quicklime,” explained Ian. “Kept the smell down but preserved the bodies. Burned most of the clothing away though.”
“That’s the trouble with the Internet today,” said Jer
sey. “Back in the day people believed what they saw on TV, now they can Google to find out if it’s bullshit or not.”
“Unless Augustus actually wanted them to be identified at some point,” said Ian. “That’s possible, too.”
“True. I’ve got a feeling these mugs won’t be too difficult to track down, especially gold tooth there. They look the sort that coined the phrase ‘known to police.’”
“So what’s next?”
Jersey stood again and moved to the steel door. “I’ll get forensics down here to remove the bodies and make sure we’re not missing anything. You never know, it might give somebody somewhere some closure.”
“Should I expect any blowback?”
Jersey scratched the stubble on his chin. “If these are the hired goons Jim mentioned, nobody will give a shit. However, if we find other evidence that connects to missing women, then, yeah, there’ll be blowback. I also can’t promise that some asshole won’t leak it to the press. Your name already has chew marks on it that a reporter would love to slobber over, but I’ll do my best to keep it discrete.”
“Thanks.”
Jersey looked at the graves again and grinned. “Your grandfather must have been one tough son of a bitch.”
“Until he met someone tougher.”
“Yeah,” Jersey agreed. “There’s always that.”
*
The forensics crew consisted of a prune-faced woman in an unflattering, disposable plastic onesie and matching baby blue hairnet, plus two overly excited twenty-somethings — one of each gender.
The woman looked down the hole in the floor at the rear of the butcher’s shop, sniffed loudly, and declared, “I need a cigarette.”
With a nicotine-stained finger, she pointed at her two eager companions. “Guard the hole. Nobody in or out until I’m ready.”
The young man with an unfortunate haircut and scurrilous shadow on his upper lip that made him resemble a young Adolf Hitler dared to ask, “Out?”
Prune Face snarled. “I’m expecting four bodies. If one’s missing, I’m blaming you.”
Turning her back to the assistants, a mischievous smile crept across deeply wrinkled lips, the corrugated flesh a hallmark of someone who discovered her addiction at an early age and embraced it with vigor. She caught Ian watching and winked.
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