by Gregory Colt
“So what is it then? Housekeeping? Money? He piss off all the wrong people, or sleep with the director’s daughter?” Clark asked.
“Ha-ha…yeah. Ummm, all of the above,” said Chris.
“You’re kidding. The director’s daughter? Seriously?” I asked.
“Not the current one. Guy before him. Married her. They separated two months ago and daddy’s out for blood,” Chris said.
Clark whistled. “Well hell, now I feel bad for calling him an asshole.”
“You didn’t call him an asshole,” Chris said.
“Oh, I didn’t? Well, I was thinking it,” Clark said smiling.
Have I mentioned my respect for the good sheriff?
Chris Bailey grabbed a chair by the wall and dragged it over the wooden floor to me where he sat down. “Adrian, despite having one of the thickest files I’ve ever seen, you aren’t half as bad to deal with as everyone else on our desk. Truth is I enjoy driving this far north out of the city, but you need to realize that if we blow this we’re getting reassigned. The rest of the guys aren’t as charming as we are. I’m asking you nicely, please, is there anything at all you can give us?”
Well crap. I hadn’t thought of that. The information I had already given was as thorough as I would be, but I’d held back. There were accounts I wanted to stay off the radar until I had a better chance to follow up on them, loose ends I was still looking into. And things that should never again see the light of day. I’d planned to blow off the feds indefinitely. That might have been optimistic. New guys coming in could start screwing with my own research. And Bailey was right, they could do worse. Damn it. I didn’t want Bob ruining the success streak he was shoving into the faces of everyone on his back just because of me. We weren’t exactly friends or anything, but the idea of him sticking it to someone else made me smile. Bob didn’t deserve that. But I couldn’t give them the accounts either. What I needed to do was go home and see what else I could find that didn’t connect to anything I was working on.
“Well?” Bailey asked. “Had enough time to think about it?”
“Listen, next time we meet I can have something. I’ll go back over everything and try to—”
Bailey moved faster than I thought he could, grabbing a fistful of my jacket and pulling it tight into my throat. .
“No! You listen. I gave you a chance and you gave me the run-around. Same song and dance you’ve been doing for months. Enough. You know what they’re going to do to you? Do you? Every time they have a question from now till eternity, they’ll drag your ass down to Virginia just because they can. And that’s without even mentioning what happened out on the Concordia last week.”
“We’ve covered that,” I choked out. “I was there working for the museum.”
“Did you know our superiors want you watched? Because they do now. Day and night. Your home, your car, your work, your phones, your friends. We will find out everything! You screw up once—I mean you fucking jaywalk—and they will deliver your ass back where they found you!”
Sheriff Clark jumped out of his seat, but Bailey just stormed out.
“You all right?” Clark asked.
“I’ve had worse,” I said trying not to cough. I stood and Clark got up and took the chairs back to the wall.
Well, that could have gone better. I’d learned some new things though. Bailey may be the junior agent but he knows what’s going on. Bob’s got issues at work and at home, and it looks like I’m the case going the worst for him. That continues, and I get some new agents. New agents would interfere in my research. Hell, if they were watching everything, it compromised a whole hell of a lot more than that. They’d send me back to Africa…I shuddered. I couldn’t let that happen. One more thing to take care of on an increasingly long list. Especially since that business with Mr. Wagner at the museum gala last night. Nevertheless, today would be perfect for it, if any day could be. I had nothing going on but swinging by Nick’s office to check on things and keeping some business hours for him while he was out of town. That would give me time to work out how to fix everything with Mr. Wagner over that business last night, and hopefully to come up with something for Bob and Chris. I needed to get going. It’d take at least an hour to get into the city.
“I know you’re lying to them, Adrian,” said Sheriff Clark when I reached for the door.
I turned to look at him.
“Don’t know why what with everything else you’ve already given them. Maybe you got a good reason. Maybe you don’t. I’ve never given you any trouble over staying in my town. Man’s past is his own business. But sometimes it can affect everyone around him. I don’t want that here. Neither do you. I can play dumb hick local cop for the feds, but I know all kinds of things they don’t. Like Djimon Adeyemo. Like that Stratford House Ms. Summerfield runs for you. Oh, don’t look at me like that. Your name may not be anywhere near it, but I know you own it. I haven’t said a word to anyone and I won’t either. No reason to bring them into this. Actually, if not for Stratford, I would have run you off last year,” he said.
Marion Clark had become a dangerous man. To me anyway. Maybe to himself as well, but he didn’t have to tell me. What was he getting at?
“You telling me not to make you regret it?” I asked.
“Maybe a little, but no. What I mean is it isn’t just you versus them. You got others to think about. So do I. I can appreciate you stalling and not wanting to be any more involved. Maybe that used to be best, but things are changing. My point is you got something you can do about this you do it, son. You understand?” he said.
He had gotten it all right without knowing a thing about the situation. Yeah, Marion Clark was a dangerous man. A man that would see the right thing done even if it meant crossing the FBI and the man with the thickest file on Bailey’s desk to do it. Good for him.
“Yes sir.”
Chapter Three
Two hours later I turned onto a side street in lower Manhattan and into an entirely different world. After a mile of big, beautiful buildings in steel and glass, one right turn rolled back the clock a few decades. Nick’s office was in a short line of much older brick and mortar buildings that clashed with the wealth not a thousand yards behind. The street was nearly devoid of businesses, and the few that remained were under the constant bombardment of people after the properties, who all seemed to be in need of new parking garages.
I pulled my ‘70 Chevelle to the curb outside his office building and went inside without bothering to lock the car. I didn’t have to here. For one, the driver’s side door didn’t lock; also, nobody would touch a car parked outside Nick’s place. Nick Roarke had worked here for years before I came back and had quite a reputation. He stayed involved in the neighborhood, volunteered, and took on pro bono work. It led to the decent folks standing by him and having more backbone. And the other folks, well, they gave him a wide berth. A couple of city blocks wide.
I opened the double glass doors, went into the lobby, and stopped to check the mail. I grabbed the stack inside and flipped through them on my way upstairs. Water bill, electric bill, phone bill, rent notice, and all the bulk rate ads the box could hold.
The building had an elevator but no one ever used it. The girls who worked the phone banks on the second floor said Abner, the old doorman, told them once that it fell and the previous owners couldn’t afford to fix it. Sometimes one of the new girls would get dared to push the buttons and everyone would freak out listening to the old metal casket rise to take them back down below. It was a hazard and one day it was going to—I heard a shuffling noise coming from the fourth floor hall above me before I reached the top of the stairs.
Somebody was there waiting. I set the mail on the stairs and drew my gun, a custom built 10mm. Maybe they were here for Nick. Maybe for me. There were no other offices or storage, or anything else up here. No other reason to be on the fourth floor. And there’s no way they didn’t hear me coming up. Paranoid? Maybe. But time and again I’ve found paranoia to
be just good sense. Which I’m sure says all kinds of things about my life.
I ran mental calculations as fast as I could, reconstructing the hallway from memory. About how far down did the sound originate; which doors were open and which were locked? There was no reason to delay unless someone had set a trap, but the only other option was turning around, and I really didn’t like the idea of someone on the stairs above and behind me.
I knelt down and braced my shoulder against the thick wooden pillar where the stairs met the hallway. I moved fast, rolling my shoulder around the corner, and taking aim down the hallway. In my line of fire were the widest eyes I’d ever seen. They belonged to a boy, maybe fourteen or fifteen, dressed in athletic shorts, a wife-beater and jacket, sitting with his back against the wall outside Nick’s office. For seconds neither of us moved. Maybe he was scared, maybe shocked, maybe he was playing it safe and waiting on me. I don’t know what his particular reasons were for inaction, but I knew mine. Am I a horrible person for keeping a teen boy’s head in my sights? Maybe. But I’d seen kids half his age used for purposes that never need be spoken aloud.
“Uuuhhhh,” the boy mouthed words without saying anything. I raised my eyebrows and lowered my pistol encouraging him to spit it out.
“Ar-are you Mr. Roarke?” he asked.
“No,” I said standing. “I guess you could say I’m something of a business partner. Why are you looking for Roarke?”
The boy stood and took turns shaking his legs out, I assume from sitting so long. “I—I was told if there was ever trouble, if something needed doing, I should come here and find Mr. Roarke. Jess was real sure whatever it was he could take care of it. Said—”
“Hold on,” I interrupted him. “Who’s Jess?”
“Jessica Hayes. A friend of my sister’s. Her only friend. Says she knows this guy Roarke real well.”
That tracked. I’d heard Nick mention the name once or twice. Something about some stalker creep. Yeah that was it. Jessica was a prostitute. What was it he’d said? A couple of years back some guy, a drifter working freelance, came around offering money to do a photo shoot. Although, after the first day or two, he’d wanted more than that, having developed a distinct attachment to Jessica. Nick had talked him out of it.
I relaxed and holstered my gun.
“Here,” I said, motioning towards the mail I’d set on the floor. “Grab this will you? I’ll open the office and we can talk.”
He got the mail without a word as I opened the door and flipped on the lights to the old office. And old it was, with just a few simple filing cabinets, a bookshelf, a few papers pinned to the wall, and a desk with mismatched chairs around it. It smelled of old wood and coffee grounds, must and a hint of cigar. I liked it.
“Just toss it on the desk,” I said as he followed me in. The dust made a star pattern from the impact. One of the telltale signs Nick was out working; lots of dust and, sure enough, a couple of full cans of ground coffee on the shelf by the coffee maker. It was my fault because I’d asked for his help tracking down a guy along the coast for the museum. He wanted to help, of course, and then there was the bail money, but not enough to make up for weeks off the job. Hopefully the business out West would be more lucrative. Regardless, I promised to keep business hours. Besides, I was curious about the kid and whatever business he thought was in Nick’s—what the hell was that word? Bailiwick?
“About time I had some decent coffee. You drink, kid?” I asked, walking over to get the coffee maker ready.
“I guess. You gonna listen to me or what?” he said, still standing in the middle of the room.
Once I had it running I turned around and leaned against the desk to face the boy.
“All right, son, now what’s your name? I can’t go on thinking of you as boy.”
“Tommy. My name’s Tommy. And don’t call me son, neither.”
“I think a man should be called whatever he wants. I know better than most. But, if you dress like a boy, people will think of you as a boy. Now, I’m going to call you Thomas. Because that’s your name, and because it would make me feel better if I thought I was discussing why you might need someone like Nick Roarke, with an adult.”
“Something wrong with my clothes? You saying you ain’t gonna help me ‘cause how I look? What’s that got to do with anything?” Thomas asked.
“Honestly, not a thing. But most people see what they expect to see. You want someone to take you seriously, then you should think about raising those expectations. You handled yourself well enough in the hallway and seem to have some manners. Well, until you’re provoked, anyway. If memory serves, that business with Jessica Hayes was in the Bronx. I’m betting you walked down here. Had to have left before sunrise to make it,” I said.
Thomas nodded as I went on.
“My point is I’m beginning to think you’ve got something to say. Something that matters.” The coffee maker finished. I poured us each a cup.
“Have a seat, Thomas,” I said, taking my own advice behind the desk. He did.
“Hey, umm, where exactly is Mr. Roarke?” he asked.
“He got a case that took him out West for a while. Business in Seattle connected to a gentleman he brought in day before last. Forgery and illegal imports, among other things. You really want to hear about it?”
“No sir. Not really.”
“All right then, let’s hear it.”
Thomas swallowed a big drink and took a deep breath. “My sister is missing.”
The heat sweltered as the office faded from my vision. In its place wound a rancid creek through a small village. My senses were overwhelmed with the tainted water, the salt residue from a week’s worth of sweat staining my clothes, flies covering the heaps of filth everywhere that used to be men, and through it all, I saw that sparkle down by the water’s edge. Bloody diamonds everywhere, and in the middle, long beautiful brunette hair, shining as the sun reflected off the thick strands of gold remaining from her youth.
“Hey mister, you okay?” Thomas asked.
“Yes. Sorry. Please continue,” I said as the office snapped back into view. A full-blown hallucination hadn’t happened in a long while, but a few deep breaths of musty old wood and coffee brought me back. I had to admire the kid. Here he was in a top floor office, in a nearly abandoned building, three feet away from a man who introduced himself by pointing a gun at his head and was looking unstable before he even fully explained his situation. Kid had stones. Or no other choice. My money was on both.
Thomas continued. “She’s missing and no one’s seen her. Not M&M and not Mr. Sawyer neither. And they’d know. Brandon, that’s her boyfriend, blew up all furious when I asked about her. He didn’t know she was gone.”
“How come you haven’t gone to the police about this? Missing persons is a police matter and despite some of their reputation, they’re pretty good at what they do.”
“Cops won’t do nothing, anything, until someone’s been missing for a day or two. Wouldn’t even listen to me if I told them she didn’t come home last night. Wouldn’t matter if it’d been a week,” he said, getting glassy eyed.
“What makes you say that?” I asked.
“Cause she’s a… She works…,” he tried.
“She’s in Jessica’s line of work?” I finished.
“Yeah,” he nodded.
“And you think no one cares if a prostitute goes missing for the night?” I asked.
“No. I know no one cares. Except me. I’m her brother,” he said. The way he looked at me when he said, “I’m her brother,” required me to suppress more memories threatening to take control again. I’d seen the same look a hundred times in the mirror; the look my own brother, Michael, had worn perpetually those last couple of years.
“I understand, Thomas, but I do have to ask. How do you know she’s missing?”
He closed his eyes and sighed. “Because she always comes home. I know it doesn’t make sense, but I’m telling you. She always comes home and last nigh
t she didn’t. She met Brandon for dinner but something must have happened because M&M said she ran off all upset after talking with Brandon. That’s the last time anyone saw her. Before dark, over around the diner.”
“And you are certain she wasn’t working? Or maybe went somewhere to blow off some steam? Maybe went to Jessica’s? Did you check there?”
“No. I mean Jess’s place is in our building but she’s not home. She does that sometimes. Gone for days. Ruby’s never missed a night.”
“Never?” I asked.
“Not once,” he said.
I opened the top drawer and grabbed a big notepad and pen, and slid the mail off the desktop into it before shutting it. “Okay Thomas, let’s go over this again and make sure I have it all.”
He nodded and gave me rough directions to their place from some diner called The Box.
“And yesterday evening she was planning on going to dinner with her boyfriend, Brandon. What’s his last name?”
“I don’t know. Everyone knows Brandon. I never thought to ask before.”
“It’s okay. So, they’re supposed to go out but something happens. They have an argument, and she runs off upset and this guy, M&M, sees the whole thing.”
“Yes sir. At least that’s what M&M says happened.”
“But you believe him?”
“Yes sir.”
“Who is this M&M?”
“He’s a pimp. Name’s Morris or something.”
“Ruby work for him?”
Thomas nodded.
“This guy Brandon, he ever hurt her? Ever get violent? Maybe involved with some people he shouldn’t be?”
“Nah, not Brandon. He’s rough, I guess, but it isn’t like that. He treats us real good. I can’t even imagine them fighting over anything. He was real mad though when I tried to talk to him. Especially when I said she hadn’t come home last night. I’ve never seen him so worked up. Seemed like a great time to head down here and look for Mr. Roarke.”
