Unhinged

by Barbra Leslie

  “Are you sure, Danny?” Joanne said. She was washing her hands at the sink, and her cheeks were pink from the ribs she was steaming. That, or from trying not to deck Mama E. “Is this the right time to be going off by yourself?”

  I tried my best to smile. This kind woman had taken in all the members of my very large household, and she had been nothing but good to all of us since we’d crashed into her life nearly two years earlier. But she hadn’t gotten the memo regarding my distaste for being told what to do. Or more importantly, what not to do.

  “I’ll be fine,” I said. “Eyes in the back of my head. And I need to let off some steam, get my body back in working order.” I shot her a smile and headed for the door. I could hear Mama Estela behind me. She grabbed my wrist.

  “You’re leaving,” she said. “Not coming back.” I felt a chill up my back. It sounded like a prophecy.

  “Yes, I am,” I said. “Just not right away.” I couldn’t lie to her. There would be no point. “It’s my fight, Mama. Do you understand that? It’s me he wants. Or they want.” I would know soon enough.

  She nodded. She looked sad, which nearly broke my heart. And chilled me. Mama Estela didn’t expect to see me again. “You have your pills?” she asked. I nodded, patting my fanny pack. Yes, I had my pills. I couldn’t afford any possible mental side effects if I discontinued them abruptly. Mama pulled me closer and kissed me on both cheeks. She smelled like lavender. She smelled like my mother had, a little bit. Part of me wanted to melt into a puddle on the floor and let her take care of me, like she had when I’d been what Dr. Singh had called catatonic. The rest of me wanted to hit the pavement and leave any emotion behind me. It was the best way to keep the people I loved safe. I couldn’t afford to forget that again.

  Mama held up her hand to stop me, and pulled something from her shirt: a small canister she must have had tucked into her bra. I looked at it. Pepper spray, in a handy travel size. I grinned.

  “Thanks,” I said. I shoved it into my pocket, and walked out the front door.

  * * *

  I didn’t run for long. My body wasn’t ready for it, and even if it had been, I didn’t want to waste the energy. As I walked, I texted Darren, saying I was going off on my own for a bit, but that I was fine. He would think I was falling off the wagon, going on a crack bender. At least, that’s what I wanted him to think. I removed the SIM card from my phone and dropped it into a grate, threw my phone into the first garbage can I saw, and flagged a taxi. I directed the driver to an intersection a few blocks from where I wanted to be.

  Home. The bakery. Our supposedly safe house.

  I approached the building slowly on foot. There was police tape over the front entrance, but I couldn’t see any police. I walked around the block at an easy pace, wondering if I was being watched by anyone, by Michael Vernon Smith or any of his people. Because I knew, now, that he still had people. Cliff King had probably been one of them, though I might never know that for sure. Whoever had killed Kelly and Garrett and Ann had been working for him. It wasn’t Smith’s style to get his hands dirty.

  I kept my breathing quiet and steady, listening for footsteps behind me. This wasn’t an area with a lot of foot traffic; I’d notice anyone approaching me. It was late afternoon on a Saturday, and there weren’t any stores or restaurants on this stretch to draw any passers-by. Our neighbors were an industrial laundry, a storage facility, and an empty low-rise office building that was waiting to be razed to make way for yet another loft condo.

  My car was parked where I’d left it at the back of the bakery. I pulled my keys out, popped the trunk, and after looking around again quickly, unlocked the small gun case I had stashed under the spare tire. I loaded it as I stood there – this weapon was stored legally, unloaded – and quickly retrieved a few other things from the car. I wasn’t sure if I would get a chance to return to it.

  In the taxi on the way down, I had prepared myself mentally. I needed to be operating fully in the moment, with no sentiment. I couldn’t afford to think about anything I was possibly leaving behind, or anyone. Dave had taught me that, to think of my brain and body as a machine working together. Pretend you’re a cyborg, he used to say, only half joking. You have no emotion. You only have an objective, a mission to fulfill. Only then should you return to yourself. I had listened, but half-heartedly. There had always been so much emotion in everything I’d done. Emotion fueled my rage, and rage fueled me.

  But I couldn’t afford that now. Michael Vernon Smith knew my weaknesses. He knew how I’d felt about Ginger and the rest of my family. How I felt about innocent people like Dom back in California, and Ann here in Toronto, getting killed, horribly killed, because of me. He’d had my name written in blood, in flesh. He wanted me angry and flailing and impetuous. He wanted me to make mistakes.

  He needed me to stick close to my tribe, to my nephews and my family. He intended to pin us down so he could hold the people I loved in front of me and torture me into doing what he wanted, into giving him what he desired. I had bested him once, and his memory was long.

  Danny Cleary had to cease to exist. I could, perhaps, help to capture Smith. Perhaps I could even kill him. But I knew, now, that even then none of us would be safe. He would leave that legacy. Somehow, even if he hadn’t planned it, Michael Vernon Smith had ensured that the crazies who followed him, who reveled in these sick games, would probably compete to take everything. More than money. They wouldn’t stop until there was nothing good left for anyone in my family, or anyone who cared for us.

  My mistake had been in thinking that state-of-the-art security would keep us safe. The only thing that could keep my loved ones safe would be for me to give everything to Smith – anything I’d inherited from Jack, and any life I’d built for myself. I doubted he’d even care about killing me, as long as I was ruined. Even more ruined than I used to be, when I’d whiled away years in a haze of crack smoke.

  I was going to give him what he wanted.

  There was no sign of police tape over the back door. I scanned the ground for the remains of any yellow tape to see if it had been ripped off, but there was nothing. The building seemed normal from the back, except for the steel security shutter on the second floor.

  The biometric sensor wasn’t on. I had no idea whether it was operational, or whether it had been left off after Friday night. I let myself in manually.

  “Hello,” I called out. There could be crime scene techs here, I supposed, or a cop or two. Better safe, et cetera. If anyone else was in the building, they weren’t there legally, and there would be no point in trying to be quiet.

  No one responded, and I heard nothing.

  I climbed to the fourth floor, the floor I shared with Darren. That I had shared with Darren. I wouldn’t be living here again. I doubted any of us would, but if things went the way I planned, it might be safe for everyone else to come back here at some point, to get back to some normalcy for the boys. I just wouldn’t be here. I very probably would never see any of them again.

  But I couldn’t think about that now.

  I went to my room. From the back of my closet I grabbed an old duffel bag I’d had since before I’d met Jack. I felt around the bottom and found the spot where I’d ripped the lining, and pulled out the fifty grand in emergency cash I’d stashed there soon after we’d moved in. I pulled out a few fifties and stuffed them into my fanny pack, and left the rest in the bag. After throwing a random and messy assortment of underwear, t-shirts, jeans, and hoodies into the bag, I pushed the hangers in my closet to one side.

  We all had fireproof safes built into the backs of our closets. Darren had thought it would be a fun idea when we were planning the layout, and would give everyone that extra padding of privacy in the middle of such a chaotic shared space. The boys each had their own, even Eddie, and we had all programmed our own codes. Darren sometimes wanted to speculate what the boys put in theirs, but I didn’t. I’m a big believer in privacy. I’ve never enjoyed going through other people’s
stuff, even as a kid.

  I’d made good use of mine.

  Inside was a Canadian passport and an Ontario driver’s license, both with a picture of me, but under the name Elizabeth Jackson. A respectable, forgettable name. The name of a WASPy lecturer in humanities, or a mommy blogger. Dave had it made for me when we were in New York by the same guys who did some of his false identities. They were expensive, and I never really thought I’d need to use them. But I felt better having them. I’d wanted to have some made for Darren and the boys, too, but I hadn’t gotten around to getting their passport photos taken before Dave got shot and I left him behind.

  But I wouldn’t think about that now.

  A copy of my will was underneath the paperwork, and after a moment’s thought I took it out and put it in the drawer of my nightstand. I grabbed my Danielle Cleary passport and the new, unused burner phone, still in its box, that I’d hoped I’d never need. Finally I grabbed the tiny SIG Sauer P238, a gun so small I was actually a bit uncomfortable with how light it was, which Dave had given me for Christmas last year. I put it in my bag, along with ammo.

  I was calm. I was practicing being calm. I was in my own home. I had a legal right to be there; I hadn’t broken police tape to enter, and I hadn’t been specifically told by a police officer not to enter. The place had already been searched, to whatever extent it was going to be.

  I went back to the safe, and took out the eight-ball of powdered cocaine that I had stashed there recently, in case of emergency. The kitchen guys at Helen of Troy had been remarkably forthcoming with their connections. I obviously wasn’t the first woman working there who’d asked if she could score some blow.

  I hadn’t touched it yet. There were moments, in these past days, where I’d almost forgotten it was there.

  I sat cross-legged on my bed and activated my burner phone, and put the wrappings into my bag. I didn’t want anyone to be able to trace me by any serial number on the packaging. I held the phone in one hand and the baggie of coke in the other, weighing them, clearing my mind, trying to abstain from thought. Then I scooped out a bump of coke on a key and snorted it. I tasted it at the back of my throat, the beautiful numbing.

  Yes.

  I dialed the number. It was burned into my brain now. I didn’t have to check the tattoo on my thigh.

  “Tell him I’m going to the club,” I said to the voice who answered. “Just me. I’ll be there.”

  I snorted one more little bump and checked myself in the mirror, watching my pupils dilate. Then I collected myself and left. I didn’t look back.

  I was pretty sure that Dave would show up. I just wondered if he’d show up alone.

  TWENTY-NINE

  Helen of Troy was dark. There was no sign on the front saying it was closed temporarily or anything. It was just dark and deserted.

  I walked back through the alley where I’d been hogtied with duct tape, and thought of the man with the dog who’d rescued me. I wish I’d gotten his name, and made a mental note to try to track it down, if I managed to live through this. I bet he wouldn’t be letting his dog off-leash anytime soon. Broken glass crunched under my feet. This time, I was wearing my steel-toed boots, and I feared no dirty needles or rat bites.

  The coke might have helped with that too, the lack of fear. I hadn’t had anything stronger than the occasional brandy or glass of wine since rehab. It was medicinal, a way to make my mental and physical reflexes stronger. If I didn’t overdo it, the cocaine would also help me overcome my emotions. In the next hours or days, I would need to forget any softness or humanity. And after that, if I was still alive, I would be Elizabeth Jackson, and I would be gone. Elizabeth Jackson didn’t have any loved ones. She could go to Bali and learn to surf, or rent a dive apartment in Amsterdam and start shooting heroin until her heart exploded or her fifty grand ran out. Elizabeth Jackson would be free. Though to quote the great Kris Kristofferson, freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.

  “Fuck Kris Kristofferson,” I said out loud. When I came to the alley door, the one that Ann had led me out of that night, I pulled the handle and it opened. I stepped inside.

  * * *

  It was dark in the dressing room, and I lit my way with my phone. I carried the Sig lightly in my left hand, but I didn’t expect to need it, at least not yet. Whoever would show up here – and someone would, most probably more than one – wouldn’t kill me outright. There would be talking, especially if Michael Vernon Smith was involved. The man loved the sound of his own voice. And once he – they – heard what I had to say, it would be in no one’s best interests to kill me. Not right away, at any rate.

  I found the light switch, and turned it on.

  Without the din of the dancers flitting around and the bass thump of the music in the bar, the room looked sad and dingy. It was obvious that most of the girls hadn’t picked up their things; there were hairbands and makeup and towels strewn all over, just the way I remembered it. I looked at the lockers, wondering which one had been Ann’s, but they weren’t marked. Besides, I’d gotten the impression that the girls just grabbed whatever locker was empty on a given night and stuck their own lock on it. Or not. They’d been a pretty trusting group, despite the peripatetic nature of their work.

  I headed into the club, past the empty DJ booth. The place hadn’t been cleaned since the night Ann was taken, since the night I was left in the alley for the rats. The tables still had dirty glasses and plates on them, and the chairs were pulled out like everyone was about to come back any second. In the glow of the neon exit signs, the place looked like something from The Shining. I guess with the police storming in and undoubtedly interviewing everyone who was here that night, none of the staff felt much like doing a regular close-down. And that was the last night the place had seen any business.

  I wanted to take a look at Garrett’s office to see if I could find anything. Anything about the Kinder Group, anything to indicate that Michael Vernon Smith might have had a hand in this place. But even if such evidence existed – and I doubted it did – the police would have carted everything off by now. Whether it was purely due to Garrett Jones’s mismanagement or not, this place had been every shade of wrong. And Garrett wasn’t alive to shed any light on things. At the end of the day, I knew he would end up a scapegoat in some way, despite his murder. If there were any corporate malfeasance, the Kinder Group would probably sail through it unscathed, as corporations were wont to do.

  As I made my way through the tables, I could see there was a light on in the bar. There was a clink of bottles. And music. Over the beating of my heart I could hear Gershwin’s “Rhapsody in Blue” playing very quietly.

  I tightened my grip on the Sig in my hand, and, as quietly as I could, stowed my bag, with my other gun stashed inside, under a table. For half a second I debated sneaking backstage again for a quick bump of coke, but I settled for breathing. My mind reached out for Ginger as though I was reaching for her hand, and I headed for the bar.

  Patrick. Bartender Patrick, loading bottles from behind the bar into a plastic moving bin. He was smoking a cigarette and had a glass of wine in front of him. He looked fully comfortable and relaxed, until he saw me standing there. With a gun at my side.

  “Hello,” I said, and watched his face as he registered first surprise, and then when he saw the gun, wariness. Not fear, though, I didn’t think. Interesting.

  “Yeah,” he said. “Hi.” He looked like he didn’t know what to do with his hands, so he took a swig of his wine.

  “Keep your hands above the bar, please,” I said. I walked over. “Actually, pour me a glass of that.”

  He moved slowly as he grabbed a glass, and maintained eye contact. Smart, when a semi-stranger with a gun wanders into the bar you’re robbing.

  “Do you remember me?” I said.

  “You’re the girl who busted up those frat morons,” he said. “And yes, I know Garrett hired you.” He looked at me. “I can’t remember your name, though. Well, at least not at g
unpoint. Ha.”

  “Danny,” I said. I put the gun on the bar out of his reach, and shook his hand. The color was starting to return to his face.

  “Patrick,” he said, shaking my hand quickly. He looked relieved, and who could blame him. Nobody likes to be confronted while getting their booze-stealing on by a girl with a gun. “I don’t mind telling you, you just scared the living shit out of me.”

  “You hid it pretty well,” I said. “We never got a chance to work together. Of course, I only did the two shifts before somebody hogtied me and left me in the alley.”

  “Yeah, and took that dancer girl,” Patrick said. “I don’t know if I ever met her, but Jesus. It’s fucked up.” He gestured at the bottles and the bin he’d been loading, as if to ask if I minded if he continued.

  “Go for it,” I said. I settled more comfortably onto my bar stool. Patrick looked as though he’d been at it for a while, judging by the very full ashtray on the bar. “Did you ever get your last paycheck?”

  “Fuck no,” he said. “And I still had the keys. I can’t believe they didn’t change the locks.” He topped up our wine. “I’m just doing a little Robin Hood thing. I’m going to give most of this out to some of the girls. We all got screwed over. A bunch of us have called down to Kinder, you know, the company that owns this place? They say that since Garrett didn’t keep proper books or payroll, they don’t know what we’re owed. They have their legal department working on what to do with us. Or so they say.”

  “Poor Garrett,” I said.

  “He was a really good guy,” Patrick said. “And how could he not have kept proper records? I mean, we all got paid for the correct hours. Well, until all this happened. Anyway, the police took all that away.” He held out a bottle of rye he was about to put into the bin. “You want? Help yourself, man.”