Don’t Look Now

by Richard Montanari

  ‘Two tours in Nam. Special Ops’

  Paris was impressed. He went silent for a few moments, the realization that he had very nearly been stabbed to death in an alleyway near Sixtieth and St Clair starting to sink in. He finally asked the question, although he had a pretty good idea what the answer would be. ‘Why are you doing this?’

  Nick looked at the sky, back. ‘I know you gotta go by the book. I respect that. But the point is, I don’t, see? I mean, we find the asshole who framed Tommy, you go home, I fuck him up. Done.’

  ‘I can’t let you do it, though, Nick.’ He placed his hand on Nick’s thick shoulder. ‘Jesus, man, there isn’t anything out here for you. Let me take care of things. Go home and I’ll call you, I swear.’

  Just then Rita came around the corner with a girl who looked to be about fifteen. The girl had on very high heels and a green sequined dress that was far too tight, even for her thin, wiry frame. Her blond hair was set in pigtails. She had her arms crossed over her chest and she was shivering in the cold.

  Nick looked at Paris, raised his eyebrows, and Paris knew then that he would have to explain everything, and that Nick Raposo was going to be in this for the duration.

  ‘This is the guy I was telling you about,’ Rita said. ‘Tell him what you told me.’

  ‘Could be her,’ the girl said.

  This close, Paris could tell that the girl was a little older than he had originally thought. She looked to be around eighteen or so.

  ‘I’m not sure,’ she continued. ‘I mean, she looks like a little girl in this picture you have.’

  ‘She is a little girl,’ Paris said.

  ‘Right. Whatever.’ The girl snapped her gum twice. ‘Anyway, she was with this woman, late twenties, early thirties maybe. Weird set-up if you ask me.’

  ‘When did you see her?’ Paris asked.

  ‘Twenty minutes ago.’

  ‘Where?’

  ‘Up the street,’ the girl said, looking at Paris’s hands to see if he was going to make a move to fork over a ten or a twenty for the information. When she realized that the move was not forthcoming, she sighed and spilled it anyway. ‘Place called the Swing Set. It’s a kiddie bar. Go right on St Clair and down a block. Brick building with a black door. Door’s got a silver rose in the upper right-hand corner. The guy’s name is Sandy. Tell him Angel sent you over.’

  ‘Thanks, Angel,’ Paris said, the name of the kiddie bar immediately triggering a recollection.

  The Swing Set.

  Look in the backyard. Next to the sandbox.

  ‘You’re not cops, are you?’ Angel asked.

  ‘Not tonight,’ Paris said, and tossed her the twenty.

  Sandy was huge, standing about six six, weighing at least two-eighty; bald and black and full of attitude for middle-aged white men who like to get drunk and play with little girls. Or women who dress like little girls. Sandy knew why they all came – welders, politicians, bankers, lawyers, cooks, teachers, businessmen of all sorts. The guy who owns the Quik Print franchise up the street. The guy who drives your children around in the morning. The guy who stands around the mall, outside the Merry-Go-Round store, sunglasses casually deployed, his hands in his pockets.

  But Sandy St Cyr also knew who was in charge. He looked at Paris and Nick, then, very carefully, very thoroughly, at Rita. He smirked and shook his head, as if he’d seen the act a thousand times before. ‘Fifty dollars,’ he said. ‘Each.’

  He stared at Paris, who returned his gaze with a cool vengeance, but still reached into his pocket for the cash. Paris felt Nick idling roughly behind him, itching to get into it. He leaned back slightly and Nick got the message.

  ‘Downstairs, to the right, gentlemen,’ Sandy said, standing out of the way, placing the money in his pocket. ‘And lady.’ He reached down, lifted the ruffled edge of Rita’s dress and ran his hand over her thigh as she passed him, all the while staring Paris down, defying him to react.

  Instead, Rita reacted for both of them, swinging around in one smooth motion, positioning a small, razor sharp knife between the man’s legs. Sandy pulled his hand away very slowly. ‘Keep your fucking hands to yourself, Chewbacca,’ Rita said. ‘Unless you want to sing with the Vienna Boys’ Choir. You hear me?’

  Incredibly, the moment Rita put the knife back into her purse, Sandy broke out laughing and stamping his feet, clearly enjoying this start to another Saturday night at the Swing Set.

  40

  THE VOLUME INCREASED geometrically as they descended the steps to the Swing Set. About halfway down the stairs the bass line became thunderous and the drums seemed to shake the sparsely plastered walls around them. Rita told Paris she thought she recognized the mix.

  ‘The what?’ Paris asked, shouting to be heard.

  ‘The mix,’ Rita said, yelling into his ear. ‘All the best deejays have a certain style, a certain way they mix the songs together. A lot of them sample other people’s stuff, make their own house music.’

  ‘Okay.’

  ‘I know most of the deejays around town. This sounds like it could be this guy Faustino, old friend of mine. Real twisto, though.’

  ‘What a shock.’

  ‘He’s probably not real big on cops. In fact, I would almost guarantee it, seeing as how he’s a Brazilian illegal,’ Rita said. ‘He likes me, though. If it turns out that it is him, let me handle it, okay?’

  ‘Do you think he might help us?’ Nick asked, looking more and more uncomfortable by the step.

  Rita just shrugged.

  ‘Did you turn on the two-way?’ Paris had given her a small police-issue two-way radio. Rita nodded, tapped her purse.

  Paris placed his two-way in his shirt pocket and opened the door to the Swing Set.

  And although he didn’t realize it – was simply not prepared to absorb the information – the first person he saw was Melissa.

  Jack Paris worked within the Cleveland Police Department’s vice unit a dozen years earlier. He had handled any number of cases ranging from prostitution stings to busting up child pornography distribution to going on shared duty and shutting down swingers’ clubs in the Heights. He had heard about kiddie bars – after-hours, unlicensed establishments whose main attraction was their promise of girls and women who ranged in age from eighteen to their mid-twenties but could still pass for young teenagers. Although he’d never busted one, he knew enough to know that any night of the week, if you flipped the lights on in any of these clubs, you’d find a half-dozen girls under the age of eighteen, and always one or two that were as young as twelve or thirteen.

  But when Jack Paris looked into his daughter’s face for that brief, smoke-hazed instant – her hair piled high on her head, her lips painted a deep red, her eyes lost behind a pair of huge, heart-shaped sunglasses – he hadn’t known her. He had seen her for a fleeting moment, then someone had stepped between them and blocked his view.

  Weeks later he would realize that had he been a little bit better at his job, at his duty as a father, had he recognized his own daughter at that moment, the nightmare of what happened next might have been avoided.

  * * *

  The Swing Set was a large, square room, low-ceilinged. The smoke seemed to hang halfway to the floor like a thin blue parachute. The walls were covered with a cheap paneling that boasted decor that was supposed to resemble a teenaged girl’s bedroom: hastily hung posters of teen idols and fuzzy, big-eyed kittens.

  The handful of Swing Set waitresses were all dressed like little girls too. One, a petite, athletic-looking brunette, wore a very short plaid skirt, white cardigan and saddle shoes. Another was dressed like a junior-high-school cheerleader. Yet another like a Campfire Girl.

  ‘I can’t believe that they do exactly what I do for a living,’ Rita said.

  One of the Swing Set denizens – an obese, acne-scarred kid about twenty-five or so – asked Rita to dance. She pointed to Paris and Nick, and the kid decided, at least for the time being, not to give her a hard time. Paris was relie
ved. After Blue Flannel and his pal, he was ready to shoot the first asshole who looked at him wrong.

  ‘I’m going to cruise,’ Rita said.

  ‘All right,’ Paris said. ‘Five minutes max, right here.’

  ‘You got it. If something comes up, I’ll buzz you.’ She tapped her purse and Paris gave her a quick thumbs-up, in lieu of shouting at the top of his lungs.

  Rita slid off her stool, took two steps and was immediately swallowed by the crowd.

  ‘Can I get you something, Daddy?’

  Nick and Paris turned and saw that it was a barmaid, the one in the white cardigan. This close, Paris could see that she was in her early twenties. Nick looked at Paris, then back at the waitress. ‘Let me ask you something,’ Nick said. ‘Do your parents know that you—’

  ‘We’re fine for right now,’ Paris said, clamping an iron hand on to Nick’s shoulder. ‘We’ll give you a shout if we need anything.’

  ‘There’s a two-drink minimum, you know,’ she said. ‘Drinks are ten bucks each.’

  Paris reached into his pocket and pulled out his dwindling roll. He dropped three twenties on to the barmaid’s tray. ‘That should cover the three of us, right?’

  The girl looked at her tray, then back at Paris, with eyes like a lost fawn. It was easy to see how, in that outfit and with those baby browns, she’d clean up. Paris looked at the right side of her neck and saw that she had a small rose tattoo there.

  He dropped another twenty on the tray and the barmaid smiled at him.

  ‘Name’s Gwen,’ she said. ‘Call me when you need me. Daddy.’

  She turned and walked the length of the bar as the word ‘daddy’ dropped another rock into Paris’s roiling stomach.

  41

  SAILA HAD SEEN Jack Paris immediately. Melissa had not.

  Saila knew that she couldn’t take the chance of bringing Melissa into the Swing Set in any type of restraint – a girl Melissa’s age was going to draw all the attention in the place anyway – so she had simply informed the young lady that her father would suffer a most horrible death if she didn’t do precisely as she was told.

  So far, she had.

  The second she saw Paris, Saila grabbed Melissa by the wrist and said, ‘We’re going to the bathroom, little lady. Spruce you up some. Let’s go.’

  She stood Melissa up, took her by the arm and wove their way to the rest room.

  The door was marked with a paper cut-out of Dorothy in The Wizard of Oz.

  42

  RITA, HAVING BEEN all but mobbed by every man in the bar, had walked quickly, purposefully, across the room, seeking some sort of refuge.

  Within minutes, she found the ladies’ room.

  Dorothy in Oz, she thought with amusement as she pushed open the door. Yeah, this place is over the friggin’ rainbow all right.

  The bathroom was filthy and dank, scarred with graffiti, but it had three stalls and three large mirrors with lightbulbs arranged around them.

  Surprisingly, the room was empty.

  Rita – relieved to be alone, at least for the moment – ran her fingers through her hair, reached into her purse and retrieved what was, to her dismay, her last cigarette. She lit it and turned around, resting up against the sink, drawing deeply.

  She thought she had seen it all in her day but this place definitely took it. She had absolutely no idea that there were clubs like this in Cleveland. Were some of the girls out there really as young as Jack’s daughter? She decided that she would finish her cigarette, find the deejay booth, talk to Faustino. Then she would get back to the bar as fast as her five-foot-two, frame could carry her. She would—

  She was not alone in the bathroom after all.

  There was someone in the last stall on the right.

  Someone whispering.

  Someone crying?

  Rita cocked her head to the sound, then quickly stepped into the middle stall and latched the door. She could tell that it was a woman talking in the next stall, but the voice was muffled. Rita glanced down and saw that whoever it was in the next stall was in a crouched position, one black high-heeled shoe curling under the partition that separated them. The woman also wore a thin ankle bracelet from which dangled a tiny pendant: a small silver cat with a solitary emerald eye.

  Rita reached into her purse, fingered the edge of the two-way radio. Paris had shown her the basics of the two-way on the way into town, and having always been a quick study on virtually everything, she remembered to turn it off before walking into the ladies’ room. The crackle of an incoming transmission would have been loud as hell in the confines of the bathroom.

  She took a deep breath, opened the stall door and stepped up to the mirrors. Moments later, the door to the last stall opened. The woman who sidled up next to Rita Weisinger was absolutely stunning. Perfect skin, high cheekbones. A beauty mark. Rita would have killed for the woman’s lower lip and half her lashes.

  ‘Hi,’ Rita said, looking at the woman in the mirror.

  The woman met her gaze. ‘Hi,’ she said. ‘You look very nice. Like a little girl.’

  ‘Thanks.’

  ‘How old are you really? If you don’t mind my asking, that is.’

  Rita Weisinger, already accustomed to creative accounting when it came to calculating her age, even at twenty-four, said: ‘I’m nineteen.’

  ‘You look even younger.’

  Rita smiled, opened her purse, retrieved her brush, being careful not to reveal the black and chrome edge of the two-way radio. She glanced over her shoulder briefly, but the door to the stall from which the woman had emerged was closed. She could not see inside and there were no feet visible under the door.

  ‘You’re not here by yourself, certainly,’ the woman said as she began to gloss her lips.

  ‘Actually I am. I’m waiting for a friend.’

  ‘Is that right? Sandy doesn’t generally let in unescorted ladies.’

  ‘Sandy and I go way back, though,’ Rita said. ‘Way back.’

  The woman turned to face Rita. ‘Way back to where?’ She stepped closer. ‘And I mean exactly where.’

  ‘Well I—’

  ‘Don’t lie to me. If you lie to me, I’ll hurt you.’

  Rita took a step backward, but remained silent.

  ‘Because I know who you are,’ the woman said. ‘You’re the little bitch from the Radisson. The barmaid with the big fucking mouth.’

  Rita’s heart sank. She could feel the moment slipping away. She reached quickly for her purse but, in her haste, knocked it over, spilling everything into the sink.

  Paris barely heard the crackle of the two-way radio that signified that someone was on the channel. He ducked into a hallway and put the speaker to his ear, but Faustino Nava’s music was still deafening.

  He signaled to Nick Raposo and the two of them bulled their way to the front of the club and up the steps. Sandy, who was speaking to a petite Asian woman, didn’t give them a second look. They stepped into the night. ‘Rita,’ Paris said, whispering into the radio.

  Paris heard the channel open and close. Then, nothing.

  ‘Rita.’

  A short blast of static. Then: ‘Jag.’

  Paris looked at Nick. ‘Say again?’

  ‘… yov goneer …’

  ‘Where are you?’ Paris asked.

  Another burst of static.

  The radio went silent, save for a thin veneer of electronic noise.

  Paris began to pace. Come on, come on, come on,’ he said, tapping the abbreviated antenna against his thigh. Nick leaned against the building, his hands in his pockets, his eyes on the sidewalk, waiting.

  Then it came. A loud whisper. Clear as a bell.

  ‘Meet me out front. I have Melissa. I’ve got her. Everything’s okay.’

  Paris hit the button and positioned his mouth an inch from the radio. ‘You’ve got her?’

  ‘I’ve got her. She’s fine.’ The words were whispered now. ‘Meet me out front of the Swing Set.’

  Ni
ck and Paris exchanged a quick high five, then walked over to the entrance. Paris put the radio into his pocket and stepped back into the vestibule, freezing Big Sandy to his stool with a flash of his eyes. He waited for Rita and Melissa to come around the corner at the bottom of the stairs.

  Nick stood out front.

  Minutes later, as Paris ran down St Clair Avenue at full speed, toward the alley next to the Good Egg, two thoughts came to him like a crystal bullet between the eyes.

  One: There hadn’t been any music in the background. Whoever had talked to him on the radio could not possibly have been inside the Swing Set.

  Two: Saila was Alias backward. It had been there the whole time, taunting him, a rookie’s ruse dressed up like a clue.

  Saila. Only one type of person would be that fucking bold.

  Nick Raposo, lagging well behind Paris, went left, up East Sixtieth Street. He turned the corner and cut across the vacant lot, where he found a dark alcove set into the building that overlooked the alley, a perfect vantage point from which he could see the parking-lot and the BMW. He caught his breath and hunkered down in the darkness.

  Moments later, the darkness put the barrel of a 9-mm handgun to his head.

  43

  RITA WEISINGER HAD always prided herself on her ability to adapt to any situation. You date a country boy, you wear your Levi’s and chambray shirts. You date a doctor, it’s Calvin Klein and pearls. Easy. Snow tires, reversible belts, wet-dry vacuum cleaners, she was good at it.

  And she had a mouth. She could talk. Hers was one of the highest-grossing hotel bars in the city for one reason and one reason only. Rita Weisinger could schmooze the gilt off a gold card.

  But when the woman in the ladies’ room saw the cop-issue two-way radio lying in the sink, next to the Buck knife, all of Rita’s systems shut down. She found herself trapped with a monster and there was nothing she could do or say.