by Faye, Amy
"Wait." The guy's face sunk in on itself, like a junkie's face tends to do when he feels his next fix running away from him. "I know a guy."
"You know a guy?"
"I… here." pulled out a paper receipt. "You got a pen?"
She handed the one from her breast pocket and he immediately uncapped it with his teeth and wrote something down.
"This address. Go here, and ask for Spider. Tell him that Coop sent you. I can't promise he'll work with you, but he owes me thirty bucks and if you remind him…"
"And he can get me in touch with Mr. Coogan?"
The guy shrugged, but he moved too fast and the motion came off like someone jack hammering his shoulders up and down too hard and too fast to look anything but wrong.
"Look, babe, I don't know. He's my guy for, you know, stuff. So if anyone knows one of Coogan's guys, then it'll be Spider. You got me?"
He held his hand out for the pills and she slapped them into his hand, label towards his palm and started moving. If she wasn't careful, he might be able to figure out the scam before she got away, and if she wasn't away then there was going to be hell to pay for all of it.
Which was what found her on the worst side of town, standing outside a high-rise building in her shitty Toyota and trying to convince herself that there was nothing to worry about. She wasn't buying it, but there was no choice but to go on up. She pushed the button for Spider's apartment, and a moment later a man's voice answered.
"Coop sent me," she said. "He said you could help me."
A second later the door buzzed and she pulled it open, and started into the lion's den.
37
There was an image in Caroline's head, of what a drug dealer's house was supposed to look like. She wasn't entirely sure where it was formed, first, but it had taken on elements from television shows, movies, books, and every other piece of media she'd consumed along the way, and it was entirely wrong.
Well, at least, for 'Spider,' it was wrong. First, the guy didn't fit anything that she would have guessed for him. The name reminded her of a biker, either bald or with long, stringy hair that fell in an unpleasant, ratty mess. His hair was long, and it was ratty, but 'Spider' had his tied up in a bun. His fingers were long and spindly, with knuckles that seemed to come out of nowhere and dominated the rest of his hand.
His arms were suited to match, too slender. Too long. Caroline was a petite woman but she guessed that she could have fit her fingers around Spider's wrist without having to squeeze. He smiled at her when she came in, showing off a gold tooth that did nothing to make him look more impressive.
If not for his heavy slouch, he would have towered over her, but instead he was only a few inches taller, and he was waiting at the door when she came up.
"Hey, lady. You said Coop sent you?"
"He gave me the address, yeah."
"Hey, come on in. Any friend of Coop's, you know?"
Caroline wouldn't call them friends, but she wasn't about to belabor the point. Spider sat down and killed the TV, but not before she saw that he was watching a camera-rip of the same cheesy action movie she'd seen the other night. "What can I do for you?"
She smiled and hoped he wouldn't be pissed at her. From the redness that rimmed his eyes, she supposed that it wasn't likely that he would get too mad at anyone. But there was a wide world of possibility out there. Likely had nothing to do with what would actually happen.
"I need information."
"I don't usually sell that kind of thing," he joked. "Mostly it's just, you know, the stuff."
"Well, I need to know."
"What sort of information were you hoping to get?"
"I needed to get in touch with someone, and I heard you might be able to put me into contact with him."
"And who is this mystery man?"
"Coogan."
The guy's eyebrows raised. "I don't know, babe. I mean, you're hot and all, and I'm sure I could think of plenty of things I'd take as payment, for whatever else you wanted, but…" He reached onto the table and grabbed a pair of glasses, put then on, and then took them off again almost immediately. "I don't know if I can really, you know? The big guy's not the sort of person I want to be fucking with on a regular basis, you know?"
"He would never need to know it was you who told me," she offered. "I'm not going to let any of this blow back on you. You have my word."
He let out a breath, and rubbed at his nose. She could see him reach out, grab the glasses and set them back down again. "Look, I really get you. But I'm not in a position to do anything like that. You know? I just, I'm sorry, babe. I'm just. Whatever it is, leave me out of it, alright?"
She took a breath and tried to imagine what sort of thing she'd have to do to convince him to change his mind. The things that sprang into her imagination told her that she wasn't ready to go quite that far.
"Coop said you owed him," she tried.
"Yeah, and you'd still owe me. You'd owe me… I mean, big. I'm not a big fan of shitting where I eat, you feel me?"
She let out a breath and pushed herself up. "Yeah, I get you. Sorry to have wasted your time."
He let her get most of the way to the door before he responded at all. "You gotta understand, okay? I'm not trying to fuck you up, right?"
"I understand."
He let out a long breath, and Caroline drew her coat around her tightly, hoped it wouldn't be too terribly cold, and then stepped back out into the hall.
The heat in Spider's apartment worked wonderfully; the rest of the building wasn't nearly so nice. She trudged down the stairs, not even close to trusting the elevators here, if they even worked. By the time she got back to the street, she was calmed down again. She eased herself into the Toyota, rubbed her knees and thighs, and waited for the engine to heat up enough to warm the car.
The trouble, she knew, was that she didn't have much else that she could do. There was a whole world of options out there. No doubt there were thousands, or tens of thousands, of people who knew Coogan. One of them would break.
She didn't have the time nor the resources to find out which ones those were, though. If she didn't reach him, and soon, then it wasn't going to matter one bit because whatever was hanging over Shannen's head would have already come crashing down, no doubt to disastrous effect.
Caroline closed her eyes as the air started to blow cold, and tried to think of her next move. There had to be something. Going to the cops made her skin crawl. There was going to be a reckoning for whatever he'd done, and unless Coogan was impossibly lucky, he hadn't made it to the position he was in without help from those among the Police force who had less than sterling morals.
If he did, then it wouldn't be hard to pin some or all of it on Shannen himself. The cops were an option, but they were a bad option. A last resort. A better option would be to talk to business owners around Dad's shop. If Coogan had hit one, he'd hit more than that, and one of them would have no love lost between them.
She pushed the brake pedal in, put her hand on the shifting knob, and then the car door opened and a powerful hand reached in, grabbed her jacket and pulled.
38
Caroline's head hurt, and for a moment she was too hazy to remember more than that. Then she jerked and kicked awake, and remembered. There wasn't much to remember.
Hands grabbed her, ripped her out of the chair, and then she was stood up. The cold nipped at her cheeks, and she'd thought distantly that she'd only just started to get warm. The big man's hand pulled back from her jacket and moved forward, leaving her with a split-second to wonder what in the hell she was thinking. Of course someone was going to come for her, but the turnaround was a surprise.
Then everything went black.
When she awoke her hands were zip-tied in her lap. They might have searched her for weapons, but they would have found that there was nothing to find. It wasn't like she was going to go away.
They were driving, though she didn't immediately recognize the neighborhood. If they'd tak
en one turn off the main roads, though, then she wasn't likely to know where they were even if they were only a few short miles from her house. She hoped that was the case, rather than being a million miles from nowhere.
The one thing that gave her some degree of hope, at least, was that they were surrounded by houses as they drove. It was still too cold to have anyone out in force, but there were some people, at least.
They probably weren't going to murder her in the open like this, surrounded by people and property. Right? It wouldn't make sense otherwise. She tried to repeat that in her mind. It wouldn't make sense to kill her. There would be too many witnesses.
They pulled up in front of an unremarkable little house, not much bigger than her own, and the guy in the driver's seat, short and wiry, got himself out. The guy in the passenger's seat, turning to regard her, didn't move to open his own door.
She tried to speak, and found that she couldn't move her lips. The duct tape hadn't been so bad when she was just coming out of unconsciousness, and the few intervening moments between then and now didn't offer enough time to notice it.
"You're up? Good."
The door behind her opened and Caroline started to fall before she could catch herself. She wasn't sure that she could have caught herself if she wanted to, except that she had better make sure to catch herself. Otherwise there wasn't going to be much that she could do to protect herself.
"Come on, up," said the guy behind her. He had a strange airy quality to his voice. Breathy. He had his arms under her shoulders in a second and hauled her up that way. It hurt, but it could have hurt a lot worse. She tried to help him, trying to push with her legs to keep them under her.
In turn, he tried to pull her out, backwards, head-first. She made a noise that was supposed to be 'let me,' and would have gone on from there to add that she could at least get out of the car by herself. But the duct-tape pulled at her lips painfully and she stopped before she could hurt or frustrate herself any more than necessary.
"You alright?"
The man looked at her with genuine care, but only on a professional level. The same way that Caroline herself might have looked at an unresponsive patient. Carefully taking in anything that might be causing a problem and making a mental note of it, to be dealt with when the time arrived.
She nodded dimly. Her head was still woozy, but it was clearing fast, and the cold air cleared it still faster. She wasn't thinking straight, but she already felt like she was over-sharpened, her mind overly sensitive to lights and sounds. She wanted to be inside, and hoped the rooms were dimly lit.
The guy started moving, his hand grabbing her arm firmly. Caroline let him, and followed behind, first because she had no other choice, and second because she hoped that maybe, if she were very cooperative, this wouldn't go as badly as she feared it might.
"Stand here," he said, and let go. There was a moment where she thought about running, but with her hands bound and her mouth covered, precisely what was she going to do? Hope that someone took a risk on saving her?
In the meantime, she would be chased by two men, no doubt used to people running from them, and they wouldn't have any of the hobbles that she had. They had clear minds, they weren't woozy, they had unbound hands.
It would be a slaughter. There was no way she could try to run. As if on cue, the big guy's door swung open and he was suddenly pressed in against her, his eyes on her as if he thought she might be having ideas about running.
The little guy got the door open and the bigger guy held the screen as she was pulled inside. Immediately to the right was a set of stairs leading down. He took her down slowly, walking sideways to ensure that he could keep his eyes on the stairs and on her at the same time.
The basement was finished comfortably, and from what she could see, it was surprisingly large. The carpeted floor led down a hallway that couldn't have been any shorter than the length of the house itself. At the end was a room, also carpeted. The light inside seemed to come from a single overhead light, and she could see the edge of the halo of light that was coming from it, blocked by the shade.
That was the room that Caroline was led into. In the middle of the room was a chair, wooden and upholstered in leather. She was sat down, and the big guy who had followed them down pressed down on one shoulder with a meaty hand as the little guy cut the zip-tie with a wicked looking knife.
Then the little guy pulled the duct tape off her mouth with a perfunctory tug, and they were out of the room, the door closing behind them again. Like repair men who were behind schedule that day. Caroline looked around. The room was large. Perhaps twenty feet square.
There was, as she'd thought, one overhead light. The shade over it prevented the light from reaching the edge of the room, and though it was not pitch dark, the light that practically shone directly in her eyes made it seem as if there wasn't much outside that halo of light.
A man's voice spoke, then, from outside that light. He had a voice like old leather, rubbed smooth, warm and familiar.
"I hear you've been asking questions about me," he said, and then the old man stepped into view and Caroline came face to face with Sean Coogan.
39
"What did you do with him?" Caroline hoped to heaven that she was going to be able keep herself under control, because at the moment she wasn't feeling she could keep doing it.
"I'm not sure what you mean," the old man said. He pulled up a chair and straddled it, leaning on the back.
He had a strange look to him, not at all what she'd expected. His boys, to a man, had the look of people who had been in more than their fair share of fist fights. They were tough, rough, and more than that they were built for dishing out violence.
Coogan wasn't like that at all, she saw. He was thin, with a pointed, severe face and a sour expression that never seemed to quite make it all the way off. His lips pinched together in a way that seemed to fit him as if it were the most natural thing in the world.
At the same time, for all the trouble that they'd apparently gone through getting her there, or all of the violence that the man inspired, he didn't seem to be upset in the slightest. He was just waiting for her to say her piece, before he said his own.
It set her on edge.
Caroline's eyes closed and opened again. "Shannen. I want to know what you did with him."
"Your boyfriend is indisposed at the moment," he said, and the expression on his face was so plain that she thought for a moment that he might not have known if something was happening to him. Maybe they all had Coogan wrong.
The very fact that he'd known exactly who she meant all along, though, that he'd known their relationship, and that he'd just apparently chosen to feign ignorance, told her otherwise.
"Why are you doing this?"
"Doing what?" He took a deep breath and rapped at the wooden chair's back. She was surprised to note that his seat, unlike hers, lacked any upholstery of any kind. It was plain and well-worn.
"All of this. You took him, didn't you?"
"No," he said, but his dismissive shrug told her a very different answer.
"I know you did. Don't lie to me. I just want to talk."
"I know you want to talk. I don't want to talk to you. If I did, then I would have come to find you."
"You could at least tell me what I want to know."
He shrugged again. "I could do that, if I wanted to, certainly. But I don't think that you're really appreciating my position here."
"I appreciate everything about it, but…"
"But you think you know better than me what my business is?"
"No, sir," she said. Her heart thumped in her chest. "I just…"
"You just, what? Speak up, girl. I'm not deaf but I'm very old, and I'm liable to die soon waiting for you to tell me what precisely you're asking me for."
She took a deep breath, and then let it out slowly. "I want you to let him go."
Coogan snorted. "I can't do that, darling."
"Why not?"
"He stood up to me. Not only that, he embarrassed me, my organization, my men. I'd have a riot on my hands if I let him go without taking my pound of flesh. You have to understand my perspective in this."
She did understand. That was part of the problem.
"Can you at least let me see him?"
Coogan's lips, pinched by default, neared to puckering at that question. "I don't know that I can."
She took a deep breath. "I need to see him. You can't keep me here."
"I didn't intend to," he answered. "You'll go home. And you'll forget about all of this. I can make sure of that much, at least."
"No, I won't," she assured him. "I'll make your life hard, so help me God, if you don't let me see him."
"Why do you care so much, anyways?" He let out a long breath and looked down at her. "I don't understand what you're losing your temper over, young lady. He's a big boy, he made his bed, and now he's going to lie in it."
"Would you let it go if one of your men went missing? If someone took Harry?"
"So you're saying Shannen was working for you after all?"
"He's an idiot," she answered simply. "But he was only trying to help me."
"Then you should have discouraged him from pissing me off," Coogan answered. His expression never changed, though.
He looked at her like he was perfectly willing to sit here the whole day until she saw things from his perspective. As if, in the end, he was convinced that she would see things from his perspective. It was only a matter of time, and he was willing to take the time.
"I did."
"And he didn't listen to you?"
Caroline decided to risk a joke. "You've had him, what, two days? Has he listened to you?"
Coogan snorted, and a hint of a smile crossed that pinched expression of his, but it was gone in a moment. "Fine. I'll let you see him. You get two minutes."
"Not good enough," she answered, hoping she could push that laugh into something like compliance. "But I do understand you. You want him to play nice? You've got the tools to make that happen."
