“This is Carmen Burgess, Mr. Burgess’s widow,” I said by way of introduction. He greeted Carmen in a very comforting, clinical way, though there was nothing comforting about Rowan Crowl. She didn’t say a word to him. I kept a grip on her arm as he led us down a hallway to a private room. I’ve never been less excited about anything. The door was open and near the back wall was a closed casket sitting on a pedestal stand. There were a few flowers around it.
I could feel Carmen trembling.
“I will open the casket, then give the two of you some privacy,” Lurch, I mean Mr. Crowl, said.
I nodded OK and we watched him lumber forward and prop open the casket lid. Then he exited the room without a sound while soft music floated in from speakers hidden in the ceiling.
There was Terry, as promised.
I found it suddenly difficult to breathe. Carmen gasped and her knees buckled. I steadied her as she gradually regained her balance.
“Oh my God,” she said, and the tears began to flow. I helped her forward and she placed her hands on the lip of the casket. The casket was obviously an expensive one, made of some kind of polished hardwood and trimmed with brass. He was dressed in Armani.
Carmen’s knees splayed out to either side like a newborn deer wobbling to its feet for the first time. I kept a hand hooked under her arm to keep her from leaning forward too far and knocking the damn casket over. That would have been a nightmare.
She began sobbing. Again, for a couple that had purposely spent more time apart than together, this was quite a display of emotion. Maybe there had been more depth to their relationship than I had realized. Anything is possible, I suppose, but I still had trouble reconciling this to the couple I had known so well, but maybe she was just in shock, or maybe she was drunk or high.
After a few minutes she composed herself enough to not have to be knocked out with a taser. We stood side by side and stared at the man in the polished box.
Carmen took off the Gucci shades, eyes puffy and red.
“He looks so thin,” she commented.
I nodded. He did look thin. In fact, he looked like crap. He definitely didn’t do death very well. It wasn’t becoming of him. He looked thinner than I could remember ever seeing him. His hair had been combed and then sprayed with something to keep it in place. His eyes looked sunken and his lips swollen. A thick layer of makeup had been applied, making him look like a bit player in some kind of ghoulish teleplay scheduled for Halloween. All the personality had been drained from his body, though even in death he still had truckloads more than Rowan Crowl. Seeing his empty shell certainly made me wonder about things like spirituality and what exactly happens when your number is called and your time is up. Because Terry was gone. The lifeless thing in the box was definitely not the guy I’d known for so many years.
“He looks awful,” she managed to sputter between tears. “I can’t believe I had sex with someone so awful and cold looking. Don’t you think he looks thin and cold, Nick?”
“Very much so.”
“Terry was so masculine and charismatic, and he was great in bed. I’m getting sick at my stomach at the thought of that body lying on top of me.”
Thanks for putting that nasty image in my head, I thought.
“Are you ready?” I asked after a few more minutes.
She hesitated a beat, kissed his cool forehead, then nodded at me and we turned to leave. She didn’t shed another tear the entire drive home.
* * *
Ellen was too scared to even breathe. She was inside a supply closet, hiding in the dark. There was metal shelving against the walls loaded with various cleaning supplies and tools, and she had managed to flatten her body low enough to squeeze in beneath the bottom shelf. The light was off and her heart was thrumming inside her chest. The cement floor was filthy and she could taste dust and grime in her mouth. Lying in the dark she had lost track of time. She had ducked inside the supply closet out of desperation, with nowhere else to turn when she hadn’t immediately found an exit. Sooner or later, she was going to have to attempt to find a way out of the warehouse.
After what felt like fifteen minutes or so of quiet, she clawed her way out from beneath the shelving and crouched in the darkness behind the door. There was a narrow seam of pale white light beneath the door. She stared at the light on the cement floor and tried to shake the image of the dead woman wrapped in plastic inside the cooler. She wondered again who the woman was and how she had ended up dead inside a place like this.
She leaned against the wall beside the door and listened for activity in the hall. Then she stood and opened the door several inches. The hallway appeared clear so she poked her head out. It was quickly apparent that she wouldn’t get a better opportunity than this. She eased out from her hiding place and found a flight of stairs leading up to the next level of the warehouse. The stairs were cement with a metal handrail bolted to the wall. She could hear the rumble of machinery vibrating up through the floor. She hurried up to the next level and suddenly found herself at the outer perimeter of an open work floor. She hunkered down in the shadows to have a quick look around. There were people in work clothes hauling freight down long aisles and miles of conveyer belt moving the freight to trucks parked at a long dock running the entire side of the building. Fork trucks lifted pallets high in the air.
It was hypnotic watching the conveyer belt snake throughout the building. Ellen kept her eyes moving, on the lookout for an escape route. Then she heard someone shout. She looked across the work floor and saw a man in a hardhat pointing at her.
“Who are you?” he shouted over the noise.
At first she thought he must be talking to someone else, but then it was clear it was no mistake when he began walking toward her. He removed a walkie-talkie from his belt and spoke into it, never taking his eyes off her.
Ellen’s heart was in her throat. She had to make a move. She jumped to her feet and ran as fast as she could, careful to stay along the wall. Voices shouted behind her.
“Hey! Stop!”
“No trespassing!”
She ignored them, her legs pumping, driven forward by fear. Then she heard footsteps and realized they were coming after her. A quick glance over her shoulder and she saw them. Three men in work shirts hustling to catch up. Big men with muscles and serious faces, and directly behind them, the Mexican.
Ellen dodged between huge racks piled high with freight. She heard a loud beeping sound and a second later was nearly crushed by a green fork truck that was backing up. The fork operator never saw her and in the split second she had to react all she could do was dive out of the way. She left her feet and was momentarily airborne, then collided hard with the cement floor and rolled beneath the metal track that housed the conveyer belt. She rolled past it and jumped to her feet, noticing that her pursuers had been momentarily delayed by the same fork driver who had nearly run her over.
Ellen found a metal ladder attached to an iron horizontal support beam and began climbing. The narrow rungs were hard to hold onto. The climbing was strenuous and her arms and legs burned from the effort. She had no idea where the ladder led to, all she knew was there was no other choice but to keep climbing. Soon she was thirty feet off the ground. Then forty. Then fifty. Every time she glanced down, her stomach tightened and she felt lightheaded. One slip and she was dead.
The men were coming up the ladder behind her. They were climbing fast. Ellen couldn’t climb any faster and yet had to do something before they caught up to her.
The ladder led to a catwalk and she swung herself around and dropped to the walkway. She was certain the men would catch her in less than a minute but she didn’t slow down. The catwalk branched off in several directions and she picked one at random. Then she went up another ladder that ended at a panel in the ceiling. She turned the latch and the panel opened upward. She climbed through the opening and closed the panel. She glanced around and realized with a sickening feeling in her gut that she had reached the roof of the buildi
ng. The Manhattan skyline was visible in the distance. The roof was long and flat. She ran toward one end. Then she heard the panel bang open behind her but didn’t turn to look. She knew they were coming and that her chances of escape were running out. She reached the edge of the roof and realized there was nowhere else to run. It was at least a sixty foot drop to the ground. This was the end of the line.
Ellen turned and saw them coming. She froze with panic.
Then she swung her legs over the edge of the roof, growing dizzy at the sight of the ground so far below. It seemed obvious that if the fall didn’t killer her, the Mexican would, and she would rather take her chance with the ground. So she held her breath and jumped.
CHAPTER 27
When my cell phone rang I didn’t recognize the number. I answered anyway. I didn’t recognize the voice at first either, but I quickly put two and two together, recalling the face of my new friend Perez from the gay bar.
“He’s here,” Perez said. “The little cutie from the picture on your phone.”
I glanced at Whitney. She was riding up front with me now. We had unloaded Carmen back at the Plaza Hotel and were on our way down in the elevator. It was already dark out. The city was abuzz with headlights and the sounds of city nightlife. I plugged my left ear with a finger so I could hear what Perez was saying.
“You’re sure it’s him?” I asked.
“He’s hanging out at the bar, waiting to get picked up by a sugar daddy. That’s his style. I see it happen a million times a night.”
I nodded at Whitney. We headed for the car.
“You are a prince, Perez. I’ll see you in a few.”
Dusk was a totally different place after the sun went down. Music boomed and strobe lights pulsed. I needed a Dramamine. It all made me feel old and out of touch. Whitney kept hold of my hand as we descended the stairs from the door and snaked our way through the crowd of writhing body in the general direction of the bar where we had located Perez earlier in the day. He had his back turned to us, mixing a drink, dressed in tight leather pants, shirtless, shaking his ass to the music as he worked his magic with neon-colored alcohol.
We waited at one end of the bar. Perez served a flamboyant couple then we caught his eye. He slithered down to us and smiled at me.
“Nick, sweetheart!”
“Perez, you look like a teenage dream,” I said over the deafening blast of the techno music.
He leaned over the bar toward me. “You flirt!”
“You remember Whitney,” I said.
He didn’t acknowledge her.
“Where’s he at?” I asked.
Perez hooked a thumb over his shoulder. “Other end of the bar,” he said. “Pink shirt next to the old guy.”
My eyes swung past the faces crowded together along the mahogany counter. I had to squint to see in the erratic strobing effect of the computer-controlled lights. I was looking for a pink shirt and spotted it. I kept squinting until I picked out his face. I pulled up the pic on my cell phone and gave it another look, comparing it now to the individual Perez had pointed out. I still couldn’t see anything definitive and so decided it was time to make my way down there to get a closer look and have a chat with him.
“Sit tight,” I told Whitney.
“Make her something fruity to drink,” I told Perez.
“No thanks, I’m in recovery,” she said.
Perez shrugged. “Your loss.”
The music and the lights were jacking with my equilibrium in a serious way. This wasn’t my kind of scene. I felt like my eardrums might start bleeding any minute. I squeezed in at the bar between the kid in the pink shirt and some guy with a shaved head and skin tight polo shirt. If I’d ever felt more out of place at any time in my life, I couldn’t think of one. It was like being on another planet and I didn’t speak the language or understand how to properly conduct myself. The kid in the pink shirt offered me a quick glance, then returned his attention to the gentleman to his left. The kid was pale skinned with traces of eyeshadow. The pink V-neck T-shirt was at least a size too small and exposed most of his muscleless arms. His neck seemed barely as big around as his biceps. He didn’t appear to consume enough calories to keep himself alive, but the senior gentleman he was entertaining seemed plenty pleased with everything about him.
I took a hundred dollar bill from my wallet and folded it. Then I placed it under the kid’s drink on the bar. The kid took quick notice of the cash, and suddenly I had his attention again.
“I’m Chandler,” he said.
“Hi, Chandler. I’m Nick.”
“I’ve never seen you here before.”
“That makes sense,” I said. “My first visit.”
He placed a hand on the hundred dollar bill, watching for a reaction.
“How about you?” I asked, “Do you spend much time here?”
“That depends on if there is anything interesting going on elsewhere.”
“I have a friend who tells me this is a good place to come if I’m feeling lonely.” I was making myself nauseous. “Would you say that’s true?”
He pivoted his attention toward me, his eyes drinking me in.
“Depends on what you are looking for,” he said as he palmed the cash.
His companion didn’t look pleased at all and spoke up.
“Don’t you know it’s rude to interrupt a private conversation?” He was the spitting image of John Water plus fifty pounds. I ignored him.
“In fact, you look exactly like someone my friend described meeting here the other night.”
“Well, Nick, I meet a lot of men here. That’s the whole point of being here, right? What’s your friend’s name?”
“Terry.”
Chandler rolled the name through his brain then shook his head.
“Not ring-a-dinging any bells for me, Nicky.”
“No,” I said, “I’m pretty sure it was you.”
“I’m very good with names, Nick. I think I would remember a guy named Terry.”
I shrugged, looking down the bar past Chandler toward Whitney. This was one of the few bars in the world where she wouldn’t have to worry about unwanted attention. She was a very sexy woman and not a single man in the building seemed to even notice her. She appeared content to be ignored.
“Describe him for me?” Chandler said, though I now highly doubted that was his real name.
“Lose the old man and let me buy you a drink,” I said.
The John Waters look-alike took quick offense and started to protest, but he had clearly lost Chandler’s interest and turned away from the bar.
“That was rude,” Chandler said. “Besides, I already have a drink.”
“Let me show you a picture of Terry.”
“Why?”
“Because it’s important to me.”
“What exactly did this friend of yours have to say about me?”
“He said he took you home.”
“Nothing unusual about that,” he said with a wicked grin.
I found a pic of Terry on my iPhone and flashed it at him.
The wicked grin disappeared. His eyes locked onto the pic. Then he stared hard at me.
“Who are you?” he asked.
“Do you recognize him?”
His eyes drifted back to Terry and he started to squirm.
“Leave me alone,” he said, leaning away from the bar.
“Let me buy you another drink.”
“Get the hell away from me.”
“What’s wrong?”
Then he shoved me away with both hands against my chest and I felt myself going over backward and falling. It happened in a flash, me crashing to the floor and Chandler fleeing through the crowd on the dance floor as the techno pulsed and the strobes turned the room into a crazy fantasy world. I didn’t have a chance to get my hands down. I hit the ground hard. My head hit first and my vision filled with a cascade of white sparks. Then I blacked out.
* * *
Somewhere in the distance I he
ard a woman’s voice.
“Well, at least you are alive,” she said.
I wasn’t sure I believed this information because I couldn’t open my eyes and my world was still black.
“I have Tylenol,” she said.
I tried to speak but the signals from my brain to my tongue seemed to have gotten detoured. My tongue felt thick and useless and my eyes seemed glued shut.
“Your little friend took off on us. He’s gone.”
I had no idea what she was talking about. For that matter, I had no idea who she was because I couldn’t place her voice, but I managed to pry one eye open and it bounced around until I recognized Whitney Greene’s face smiling down at me. We were outside on the sidewalk. I was lying on my back.
“How did I get here?” I asked.
“Perez and a few of his friends carried you.”
The pain in my head was intense. It felt like my skull had shattered and been reconstructed using hobby paste.
“I would bet the Tylenol isn’t going to do the job,” I said.
“Better than nothing.”
“Not by much, I’d guess.”
She had a paper cup with water in it. She opened her hand and dropped three white tablets into my palm, then offered the water. I washed the tablets down as I propped myself up on one elbow. Then I sat up, arriving at the immediate realization that my skull wasn’t the only part of my body that had been affected by my tumble to the floor.
“How long was I out?”
“Not long. Ten minutes.”
I got to my feet but didn’t feel much like walking.
“Don’t get in any hurry,” she told me.
I nodded. “I didn’t see that coming.”
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