Concrete Underground

by Moxie Mezcal

  I poked around in her files but found just the expected work papers you'd see in any flack's office – mostly spec sheets and collateral about various Abrasax products and services, old invoices of ad buys, and clippings from past publicity campaigns.

  I tried booting up her computer but couldn't guess her password. I gave up after a few attempts, but then happened to catch sight of something reflective flashing inside an the air vent in the ceiling. Remembering the box hidden in Cobb's room, I grabbed one of the visitor's chairs from Lily's desk and stepped up on it to look inside. I didn't find any key, but I did instead find a small surveillance camera.

  The pristine, undisturbed state of the office made sense. There was no need to search it because if Lily had hidden anything significant here, Max would have already known.

  I took some white out from Lily's desk and painted over the camera lens – honestly, just to be a dick.

  On my way out of the office, I heard a cell phone start ringing and realized it wasn't mine. I looked around to figure out where it was coming from and tracked it down to the row of coat hangers mounted on the wall in the far corner of the room. She had a couple coats hanging, and I rifled through the pockets until I found her BlackBerry. By that time, the call had already gone to voicemail, but I browsed around and found her phone book, appointment calendar, call logs, and e-mails going back for six months stored in it.

  Not wanting to walk away empty handed, I slipped the phone into my pocket.

  Once outside Lily's office, I ran into three men – two dressed in security uniforms, one I recognized as the surveillance-nut from the party, the one with the birthmark whom Max had called Ben Garza.

  "What were you doing in there?" one of the guards asked.

  I flashed the red keycard badge that Max had given me. "I work here. I was looking into something for Mr. Maxwell."

  The guard turned to consult in hushed tones with his partner and Garza. "You shouldn't have interfered with the surveillance equipment," he finally said as he turned back.

  "Fuck off," I said, sensing an opportunity to press my advantage. "If you have a problem with the way I'm doing my job, go ahead and call up Max himself. I'm working directly on his orders, not some creepy peeping tom or a couple rent-a-cops."

  I stared down the guard, who I could tell was salivating over the thought of taking his nightstick to the side of my head, but he just stood there bristling.

  "Then get out of my way," I scoffed and walked past them. Garza glared at me disdainfully, so I threw him a quick shoulder check on my way out. "Punk bitch."

  * * *

  16. Dirty Business

  I took the elevator down to the fourth level of the underground garage and found space 423, which matched up with the tag on the keys Max gave me. A black Porsche Boxster was parked in the space.

  I hopped in and fired it up, then gave Columbine a call as I drove out of the garage. I asked if could come pick her up, and she gave me her address.

  On the way there, I made a quick stop at the civic center to see Nick.

  I parked the Porsche in the red zone, left the Abrasax badge hanging from the rearview like a parking placard, and ran up the steps to the police headquarters. I asked the desk officer to see Nick, and when she asked if I had an appointment, I started ranting incoherently and flailing around like a mad man with Tourrette's who thinks he's on fire.

  Usually this type of behavior is frowned-upon in police stations, and I was about to be politely escorted into an interrogation cell by several large cops with nightsticks when Nick, who luckily had been passing by close enough to hear his name, intervened.

  He hurried me into his office and locked the door. "This better be good."

  I pulled out the three blue envelopes from my bag and dropped them on his desk. "What's all that?" he asked. "The love letters you've been writing me all these years but have been too shy to send?"

  I threw my head back and held my gut, silently miming laughter. "These were sent to me anonymously. I need you to do cop stuff to them. Check for fingerprints, DNA, whatever crazy CSI shit you can come up with."

  He had picked up the envelopes and started inspecting them, but then abruptly dropped them when he heard my request. "You could have told me you needed prints before I started handling them, you know."

  I shrugged at him like he was speaking in tongues.

  "Meet me at the Casbah after work," he groaned in resignation.

  Just then an attractive Indian sergeant poked her head in and told Nick, "Hey there's a Porsche parked out in front in the fire lane. At the desk, they told me I should ask you about it."

  I gave Nick a couple quick pats on the back. "I gotta go."

  ---

  Twenty minutes later I pulled up to a small one-story duplex in a mostly run-down neighborhood on the east side. As I got out of the Porsche and approached the door, I could hear the Dresden Dolls' "Dirty Business" blaring from inside. I knocked.

  When the door opened, I was surprised to see it was Violet who answered. She was dressed casually in a white boy-beater and a pair of cotton pajama pants, and she still looked unbelievable. Her hair was tied back in a black bandanna, and she was splattered with different shades of paint.

  "Come on in," she said with a smile. "Col's expecting you."

  She led me into her living room, which looked exactly the way I would have guessed it should look. The furniture was color-coordinated in dark shades of browns, creams, and burgundies. There was no television to serve as the focal point; instead, the couches and chairs were all arranged to face each other and facilitate conversation. The only visible piece of technology was the small MP3 player dock that was currently blaring out Amanda Palmer's aggressive piano work. An entire wall was covered with jam-packed bookcases. A handful of modern art pieces were dotted around the room as accents. At the far end, a hallway split off leading to bedrooms on one side and a short flight of stairs on the other, which led into a lowered room that obviously served as her art studio.

  "She's getting dressed," Violet said while turning down the music with a remote. "Go ahead and have a seat while you wait."

  We sat down together on a couch. She picked up one of her clove cigarettes, and I lit it for her.

  As she smoked, she laid back and put her feet up on my lap. She had small, delicate toes, and her nails were painted a metallic purple that matched her hair. I watched her silently, mesmerized by the fluidity and gracefulness of even her simplest movements. She looked elegant, like an old black-and-white move starlet, even while lounging around in PJs.

  I took one of her bare feet in my hands and started massaging it. She smiled and let out a small, satisfied sigh.

  "So what, are you and Columbine roommates?" I asked.

  "Pretty much. We let her stay in our spare room after she and her father had a big falling out. It was supposed to just be 'til they patched things up. That was three years ago."

  "I see," I said. "'Us' being you and your husband."

  She smiled silently. Then, as if on cue, the front door opened. I looked over my shoulder and saw Saint Anthony walking in, dressed in a charcoal gray suit caked with mud. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me on the couch with Violet's foot in my hands.

  "Hi babe," she said, standing up and walking around the couch to greet him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and they kissed deeply while Anthony's hands reached down and cupped her ass, causing her to let out a playful giggle.

  I fought back the urge to wretch.

  Anthony and Violet finally broke off their embrace, then both turned to look at me. "I'll go remind Col that you're waiting," Violet said sheepishly and headed down the hallway.

  In the meantime Anthony pulled off his suit jacket, revealing a white shirt underneath splattered with dried blood. I felt a knot in my stomach and prayed that it wasn't Lily's.

  "I heard Max brought you on board the team," he said and stripped off the bloody shirt, acting perfectly nonchalant. I saw that he had a larg
e sacred heart tattooed right in the middle his perfectly-chiseled chest. He opened a coat closet next to the front door and took out a hooded sweater.

  "Word travels fast," I responded as he zipped up the sweater over his tattoo. I realized that I had been staring and that he noticed it, too. I caught his narrow, menacing gaze and suddenly felt unsettlingly like an albino mouse dropped into a python's cage.

  Mercifully, Columbine came bouncing into the room only seconds later, her ebullience instantly cutting through the tension. She was pulling off a rockabilly look in tight blue jeans with short cuffed legs, a red checkered halter top, big hoop earrings, and her hair tied back in a handkerchief. Big cat's-eye sunglasses and cherry red lipstick provided the finishing touches.

  "Let's blow this joint, daddy-o," she said.

  "Well come on, little mama," I replied, grateful for the bailout, and led her outside to the Porsche.

  "Nice ride, where'd you get it?"

  "Max," I said, plugging my phone into into the deck and switching it to MP3 mode. "He put me on the payroll."

  From the speakers, the late great Lux Interior wailed: Well come on, little mama, let's tear this damn place up.

  ---

  I drove us back to Lily's and brought Columbine up to speed on the blackmail plot, Lily's disappearance, and Max's job offer.

  "So you sold your soul to the devil. Nice," she teased as we got out of the car. "So much for being all hardcore independent, anti-corporate, punk-as-fuck journalist."

  "It's only selling out if I back down and don't publish whatever dirt I find on Max in the process," I countered.

  "Just keep telling yourself that," she said in a playfully mocking way as she typed in the code to open Lily's gate.

  "It's still so strange to think that Lily is mixed up in all this," she continued as we walked upstairs. "I mean, she's certainly got reason to hate Max, but she's not really the blackmail and conspiracy type. She's my friend and all, but frankly she just doesn't have enough imagination."

  "Hold on, what did you mean about having reason to hate Max?" I asked.

  She replied, "Well they had a pretty messy break-up. I don't think she ever really got over him."

  "What? I didn't even know they dated."

  "Dated? They were engaged," she squealed. "How did you not know that?"

  I shrugged. "So what happened?"

  "He was a beast to her. I'm not even sure why he proposed to her in the first place, other than just to torment her. The way I understand it is they had a fling, she got clingy, and he retaliated by stringing her along and slowly breaking her spirit. The amazing thing was that she was willing to put up with his abuse and his cheating, and in the end he still had to be the one to call it off. I was there when it happened. We were at a party, and someone asked if they had set a date for the wedding yet. He just shook his head and said, 'No, I don't think that's happening any more. Marriage just isn't my style.' Lily was standing right next to him; her jaw dropped."

  "Fuck that's harsh," I marveled, shaking my head.

  Once we got upstairs, we saw that the front door was hanging open with the wood around the knob splintered as if it had been kicked in.

  We went inside and saw that the condo had literally been torn apart from top to bottom, the furniture overturned and disassembled, shelves emptied, and even the couch cushions had been hollowed out.

  We found more of the same as we made our way through the rest of the rooms. Every kitchen cabinet and drawer had been tossed, every closet emptied. In the bathroom, they had emptied out all the bottles of shampoo, lotion, and all those millions of other unfathomable bottles women have. Inside her bedroom, the mattress had been ripped open and turned inside out. They even tore apart the stitching in her clothes to make sure nothing had been hidden inside the lining.

  "Jesus, what happened to this place?" Columbine asked.

  "Someone was in here looking for something," I replied.

  "It must have been something tiny, like a needle in a haystack. Look," she said, holding up a Zippo lighter that had been siting beside an incense holder. It was taken apart, as if something might have been hidden inside.

  "I doubt we'll find any clues as to where she's gone here," I grumbled. "But we might as well give it a shot. You check up here, I'll go look around in the back."

  "What, you mean snoop around?" Columbine asked, and I remembered that this must be harder for her since Lily was her friend.

  "Look, she could be in danger. We can't pass up any clues that would help us track her down before something bad happens." As soon as I said that, my mind involuntarily flashed to the image of Saint Anthony drenched in blood.

  We split up, and I started giving Lily's bedroom a cursory search but wasn't really sure what I was looking for. The most interesting thing I found was her lingerie drawer, which had been yanked out of the dresser and dumped upside-down on the floor. I had to satisfy my male curiosity; she actually had some pretty hot stuff. I picked up a red lace corset, and underneath I found a framed photo of Max and a vibrator. I picked up the latter and opened the battery compartment, but there was no Ariadne Key in there.

  "Eww, way too pervo," I heard Columbine say behind me.

  I stood up, chuckling. "I'm just trying to be thorough."

  She rolled her eyes distastefully. "Well if you're done, I've got something to show you that might actually be important."

  She led me out the the bathroom and pointed out a puddle of shampoo on the floor. Someone had stepped in it, leaving a man's footprint with a Burberry imprint stamped from the sole of the shoe.

  "Well that's definitely not Lily's," I said, holding my own foot up to the print to compare. "It's a little smaller than mine, so I'd guess a size nine or nine-and-a-half."

  We were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. We ran back out to the living room and found a middle aged man in a cheap suit standing just inside the doorway.

  "What are you doing here?" he demanded.

  "Fuck you, what are you doing here?" I shot back.

  He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a police badge. "Detective Isaac Axelrod."

  "Oops," Columbine mumbled behind me.

  I took Axelrod by the arm and led him outside to the hallway. "Look, we were looking for our friend who lives here," I explained. She didn't show up to work, and she's not answering her phone. The door was busted in when we got here, so we came inside and found all this."

  Axelrod nodded, but I got the distinct impression he hadn't listened to a word I said. "You don't know anything about any disturbance here last night, do you?"

  I shook my head. "What kind of disturbance?"

  "Not too sure. We got some reports from neighbors about some screams, excited voices, that kind of thing. Were you here last night?"

  "No," I said.

  Axelrod took down my contact information and told us we'd better clear out. I ran back inside to tell Columbine we were going. On my way out I made a detour to the restroom, intending to take a picture of the footprint with my phone. However, when I got there the shampoo puddle had been smeared, erasing the print.

  ---

  As we got back into the Porsche, Lily's phone started ringing again. I looked down at the caller ID and saw it was the same number that tried to call earlier when I first found it.

  I tossed the phone to Columbine. "Answer it."

  She put it on speaker. "Hello?"

  "Is Lily there?" a gruff male voice asked.

  She looked at me questioningly. I toyed with the idea of having her impersonate Lily, but Lily had a very distinctive voice, high-pitched and shrill, that would be nearly impossible to duplicate. So instead, I shook my head.

  "No, she's indisposed at the moment, but can I take a message?" Columbine chirped cheerfully while flashing me a what-the-hell look.

  "Just tell her to call me back when she gets a chance," the man replied. "Jeff from the art department. Give her this number that I called from." Then he abruptly hu
ng up.

  Columbine handed me back the phone. "What was that about?"

  "It's Lily's," I explained. "I found it in her office this morning. Look through her recent calls and see if anything jumps out at you."

  "This seems like an invasion of privacy," she protested weakly, but scrolled through the numbers anyways. I watched her from the corner of my eye and noticed her stop scrolling abruptly, a flash of surprise in her eyes. It was gone in an instant, though, and she said, "I don't see anything really; they all look just like work related calls. She didn't exactly have a thriving social life."

  I shrugged. "Was worth a shot. So, can I ask you a question?"

  "Shoot," she replied with a smile.

  "Why did you destroy the footprint?" She deflated visibly, sinking into the seat and turning away from me. I continued, "You know whose shoe that was, don't you?"

  "I know someone who wears Burberry shoes in a size nine," she said. "That doesn't necessarily mean anything."

  "Who?" I pressed.

  "My father," she said.

  "Oh," I muttered, practically able to taste the salty rank sweat of my foot in my mouth. "It's a fairly common shoe size, could be a coincidence."

  Columbine tried to smile, but the shape her lips ended up in just looked spiteful and sour. She held up the phone for me to see and tapped the screen. "See this number? That's my father's house. She had a dozen calls from there in the past two weeks. You think that's a coincidence?"

  A brief but uncomfortable silence passed between us, which Columbine finally broke by saying, "I'm going to go talk to him, ask him what's going on."

  "You don't have to do that," I objected.