Corridor Man

by Mick James

  Chapter Seven

  I was sitting at the bar in Henry’s fifteen minutes early, nursing a root beer and waiting for Brad the Cad to show up. A few minutes before six, two guys entered through the side door, passed eight or ten open stools, sat down beside me and proceeded to work hard to ignore me. They ordered beers, Summit Extra Pale, then embarked on a forced conversation involving what could only be a fictitious office tryst. They had the look of college jocks, former college jocks. The muscle had, if not quite turned to fat, been at least downgraded from prime A category. I waited a few more minutes and at ten past six, Brad the Cad arrived, stylishly late.

  He had the former college jock look too. Maybe a little less extra weight, say ten to fifteen pounds as opposed to the twenty-five apiece the guys next to me sported. I guessed they had probably all played on the same hockey team. They had that hockey look noses broken at least once, scars along the chin three to five stitches long, skater’s thighs. Being oh so clever, they all made eye contact for a brief nanosecond as Brad walked past and stood next to me.

  “Excuse me, Devlin Haskell?”

  I was the only guy in the place wearing a black leather jacket and a St. Paul Saints baseball cap, so it wasn’t really rocket science. Brad the Cad stood about five foot eleven, short cropped blonde hair, blue eyes, nice-looking guy about thirty-three, thirty-five tops. As he held out his hand to shake mine, he smiled.

  “Brad? Thanks for coming. Hey, please call me Dev. Very nice to meet you.”

  He had a solid grip, but he wasn’t giving me the I’m a real man squeeze. He looked me in the eye, confident but not cocky.

  “Yeah, well like I said… I’m not sure I’ll be of any help.”

  “You never know. Look, I promised I’d take just five minutes of your time. Would you feel more comfortable if we got a table?” I asked.

  “No, here will be just fine.” He didn’t look at them, but he’d included the two ex-jocks in his comment, whether he knew it or not.

  “We can get a table for four if you’d prefer,” I said.

  “Huh?”

  “Your pals, not a problem with me.” I nodded in the direction of the two. The larger one slid off his stool, about six four, chin jutted out a bit. He glanced at Brad.

  “Hey, did I see you skate somewhere? Not Minnesota,” I asked, making it up as I went along.

  “Fighting Sioux,” he answered before he caught himself.

  Every once in a while I guessed blindly and it panned out.

  “Yeah, North Dakota,” his pal added almost simultaneously.

  “We all played together up there,” Brad replied. “Look, Dev, like I said I haven’t seen Nikki for almost, well, for a very long time. And, I’ll be honest, you probably already know the last time we parted it wasn’t on the best of terms.”

  “Actually, no, I know no such thing. In fact, I’ll be perfectly honest, I know absolutely nothing. Except that she’s supposedly missing and her sister wants me to find her.”

  “Her sister?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I didn’t know she had one,” Brad said.

  “You dated her, I mean Nikki, awhile back?”

  “Dated? Yeah sort of, look here’s the deal. We met her, we all did. She was the entertainment for a bachelor party we attended. I called her on a couple of occasions, maybe a month, six weeks apart. But that was before I was married,” he added hastily.

  “Me too.”

  “Me three,” the pal on the stool added with half a chuckle.

  “So this was a professional arrangement?”

  “Initially.” Brad frowned and nodded. The two friends nodded as well.

  “Any of you seen her in the past year?”

  They all shook their heads. The one who’d stood initially, reached for his beer, took a long sip, then set the beer down. We were just guys talking now.

  “So how’d you leave it with her? Did you just not call?”

  They looked from one to the other, and Brad answered.

  “That was sort of the deal breaker. See, I met her to sort of end things. She had started contacting me, and I didn’t need any trouble. She went ballistic, crying, screaming how could I do this to her? Not fun. And I purposely set our meeting up in a public place. Mears Park, about three o’clock on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I thought it would be safer. God, el wrongo! People were grabbing their kids and hustling out of the park. She was swearing. She even took a swing at me. Jesus, I’d just passed the bar exam. I was about to be engaged, not the sort of attention I wanted or needed.”

  “When I heard that, shit, I just never called her again,” this from the pal still sitting.

  “Me neither. She was fun, but who needs it? Plus, the whole hooker thing. I mean I got a kid.” The pal standing took another sip, a long one.

  “She phoned me about a week later,” Brad said. “And she threatened to post pictures on the Internet, tell my girlfriend, all sorts of threats. She wanted ten grand. I mean, she was blackmailing me, or trying to. I just let her rant and then told her I’d taped the call.”

  “Did you?”

  “No, but she’d left a message on my phone earlier that day a couple of minutes of her screaming about the same sort of shit, you know, posting pictures, but she never mentioned any money in the message. Anyway, I told her I taped the call and I’d send her a sample. I sent her the phone message she’d left, and that was the last I heard from her, ever. So anyway that’s why Barry and Greg are here, I or we thought maybe this was a setup too, you know? Blackmail me or us, again.”

  When Brad mentioned their names, Barry and Greg nodded, like they were just being introduced over a casual beer instead of being fingered as call girl’s customers and potential blackmail targets.

  I reached into my pocket and pulled out the photo of Nikki and the smaller Asian woman, both naked with tan lines. There were two guys standing alongside and behind them on a beach, maybe a lake, maybe the ocean, hard to tell. The Asian woman had a sunburst or something tattooed around a pierced navel.

  “Is this Nikki?”

  “Yeah.” Brad nodded, but looked deadly serious. Barry and Greg passed the photo back and forth. They nodded as well. No one joked.

  “You know either of those guys in the photo? Or maybe where it was taken?”

  Barry looked at the photo again, shaking his head ‘no’ as he stared.

  “Any of you happen to know who the other woman is?”

  Head shakes all around.

  “Did you ever meet at Nikki’s?” I asked hoping to get a line on what was up with the place. They all shook their head ‘no’ again.

  “I always met her in a bar. Then, well… I’d have a room lined up somewhere and we’d go there,” Barry said.

  “To tell you the truth I was always a little leery about getting bushwhacked,” Greg smiled at the term. “You know, some guy hiding in a closet with a baseball bat or the cops come knocking on the door and it was a set up and now I’m really screwed. I, well, I paid her and then just took her back to where her car was once we were finished. We never spent the night together or anything.”

  I couldn’t help but think, ‘oh well, since you didn’t spend the night together I guess that makes it okay’, you idiot.

  “Did you know where she lived?”

  All three shook their heads.

  “What kind of a car did she drive?”

  Three completely blank looks from one to the other.

  “What did she charge?”

  “Usually about two…”

  “Don’t answer that,” Brad interrupted, cutting Greg off.

  “Okay,” I said.

  “Look, Dev, like I said before. I don’t think we can be of much help. None of us have seen her for quite a long time. We’ve no idea where she could be or even who would know.” Greg and Barry nodded in agreement.

  I asked Brad, “What about the pictures of you she threatened to post on the Internet?”

  “That was the screwiest part,
or one of them. She never took a photo of me, not even with her phone. The places we got together, I arranged them so it’s not like she could have had them bugged. She never knew where we would end up. I don’t ever recall so much as holding her hand in public. It was strictly business, very private and yeah, believe me, I know it was really stupid, on a number of levels.”

  I had to agree.

  “Sorry, wish I could help you more but that photo you passed around, that’s the first time I’ve even seen Nikki in almost a year and a half, God’s honest truth. After the blackmail threat, I purged all my records of anything to do with her. I wouldn’t know how to contact her if I wanted to, which I don’t. Look, we’re expecting. My wife, Linda and I. The last thing I need, or any of us needs right now is Nikki coming back and holding us up. God, I’d go right to the cops.”

  More nods of agreement.

  I left shortly after that. Nice enough guys who’d been really stupid and instead of giving me any answers just left me with more unanswered questions. I shook hands all around, threw a twenty on the bar and told them the next round was on me.

  Chapter Eight

  Aaron LaZelle’s call woke me up at 8:45 the next morning. Okay, I was awake but I was in the lounging mode, still in bed staring at the ceiling.

  “You dipshit, don’t tell me you’re still in bed!”

  “Mom, is that you?”

  “Look, dopey, I’m about four blocks from that flophouse you live in. Meet me at the Donut Hole for lattes and French donuts. I’ll start without you. Oh and you’re buying!”

  “Give me twenty minutes.”

  “Make it ten, I don’t have that much time,” Aaron replied and hung up.

  I levitated out of bed, threw on a semi-clean golf shirt, last night’s jeans, and a sport coat from a few nights back, that I hadn’t hung up yet. Just to be nice, I tossed four or five Tic Tacs in my mouth and chewed them up as I stuffed the Nikki beach photo in my pocket and walked down the block to the Donut Hole. It was barely past nine in the morning and the cloudless sky held the promise of becoming beastly hot.

  The Donut Hole occupies the corner of a five-story red stone building built as a hotel in 1889. The building sat derelict for most of the 1970s before getting revamped into designer condos in the ‘80s. The place, the Donut Hole that is, has excellent latte’s, fantastic high-cholesterol pastries, and a pleasant female staff more tattooed than not. Aaron had just finished ordering when I walked in.

  “Make it a double latte, and two of those French donuts. He’ll pay.” He nodded in my direction.

  I nodded back to the girl at the counter. She was pretty without makeup, and might have been prettier had it not been for the sky blue hair, a five-pointed star tattooed on either side of her neck, and what looked like a bouquet of a dozen roses covering her chest.

  “Another double latte and one French donut,” I said.

  “On a diet?” Aaron asked.

  “You must be working undercover this morning. You’re dressed so nicely. Or, are you appearing in front of Internal Affairs again?”

  “Jesus, don’t even joke about those guys.”

  I’d known Aaron since we were kids. He’d been working vice for the past three or four years. One of those cops on the way up, destined for bigger things. He made lieutenant a year ago.

  “You called yesterday,” he said once we sat down. The donut in his hand fluttered close to his mouth, and he inhaled almost half of it before I had a chance to answer.

  I nodded, my own mouth full.

  “These things are great,” Aaron said, spitting crumbs.

  “Yeah. Hey, I’m looking for someone. A woman, but…”

  “You giving up on dating guys?”

  I ignored his comment and continued.

  “But it’s gotten screwier. I have that funny feeling I’m not being told the whole story.”

  “This professional or personal?”

  “You think I’d call you on a personal deal?”

  “Never stopped you before.” He stuffed the last half into his mouth, then picked up the second donut.

  “Yeah, true, but this is professional. Maybe in more ways than one. Looking for someone’s sister, supposedly.” I wiped my hands off on a napkin, pulled Nikki’s photo out of my sport coat pocket, and handed it to Aaron. I felt something else in my pocket, reached in, and pulled out the corner of a green thong. Kerri. Small world.

  “Nice tan lines on the boobs. You know these people?” Aaron commented as he studied the photo.

  “The redhead’s name is Nikki Mathias. Her sister hired me to find her. Supposedly been missing for a couple of months. According to her sister anyway. But things aren’t adding up. Maybe a bit of professional working girl, here. I don’t know anyone else in the shot.”

  “That’s why you called me?”

  “Not at first. I called you for this.” I opened my wallet, took out the dry cleaning receipt with Kerri’s car description and license number written on the back, then handed it across the table.

  “I suppose you want to know who this is? Not caring that I would jeopardize my career were I to give you this sort of information.”

  “Something like that. Actually, it’s my client, Kerri the sister. That’s her car, or at least the car she was driving. I just wondered who it was registered to that’s all.”

  “And you think it’s not hers?”

  “I don’t know. Like I said something’s just not adding up.”

  “Nice set of wheels. When did you become a car buff?” he asked, reading my note.

  “I was at the dealership yesterday. By the way, sixty-one G’s and some change worth of nice wheels. Just wondering if it’s hers. What about the photo? Recognize anyone?”

  “Where’d you get this?”

  “From my client. Like I said, I’m supposed to find the redhead.”

  “And this is the only picture she had of her sister?”

  “Makes you sort of wonder, doesn’t it?”

  “Cash in advance?”

  “Well, a retainer, and then she…”

  “I don’t want to know,” Aaron shook his head.

  “You recognize the other woman?” I indicated the photo with my chin.

  “The Asian gal?”

  “No, the other woman you can’t see. Yes, the Asian gal, the only other woman in there.”

  “Oh sorry, I hadn’t looked at her face yet.” Aaron reappraised the photo.

  “Jesus.”

  “Actually, I do recognize the two guys.”

  “Really? Great, maybe they can point me in the right direction. Any direction would help.”

  “Well, not unless you’re clairvoyant. They’re both dead,” Aaron said glancing up at me from the photo.

  “Dead?”

  “This guy, in the back, he’s Dennis Dundee.” Aaron pointed to the heavier of the two men in the photo.

  “Should that mean something to me?”

  “Kind of a player, heavy into girls, some drugs, but always a step or two away from the action if you get me. Then, remember the meth lab that blew up, maybe late February?”

  “Vaguely.”

  “Well, it blew the front of the place halfway across the street. Burned down what was left of the house. Luckily no one was killed. At least that’s what we thought. Turns out your boy Dennis was in there. Only, the postmortem suggests he was dead prior to the explosion. It’s inconclusive because there wasn’t a piece of the guy big enough to properly examine.”

  “Great, and the other award winner?”

  “Humph, Leo ‘Pugsley’ Tate. Man! A real sweetheart, with an alleged appetite for underage little girls. He was never too far away from whatever the latest bit of sleaze was rolling into town. Your girl here can sure pick ‘em.”

  “You said he’s dead, too?”

  “Yeah, assisted suicide.”

  “Assisted suicide?”

  “Back in maybe late March, early April of this year. He apparently blew his brains out wi
th a colt .45, then put a second round in what was left of his skull just to be sure. The .45 still in his hand, an unsigned, typewritten note stuffed in his pocket.”

  “That said?”

  “That said some bullshit about seeing the error of his ways, a life of sin, asking forgiveness. If I recall it was about three sentences long.” Aaron licked donut crumbs from the tips of his fingers.

  “And you’re not buying it?”

  “Well, for starters, all the words were spelled correctly and it wasn’t written with a color crayon.”

  “So, what do you think?”

  “I think the guy intended to keep the hot date he’d arranged for the following weekend with sixteen-year-old twins and the .45 slugs ruined his plans.”

  “For real, the date I mean?”

  “Yeah, they were regulars. He’d paid their druggy mother in advance.”

  “God. Suspects?”

  “You kidding? We’d have to rent the Xcel Center just to hold ‘em all. Both of these guys aren’t exactly missed by anyone. Like I said, your lady friend here could set the bar a little higher when it comes to guys she wants to stand around with when she’s naked. These guys were mid-range players in the whole Internet escort-service thing. They were killed before we got a chance to nail them. You find this girl, you’ll be lucky if she isn’t really messed up.” He handed the photo back to me.

  “Huh?”

  “If she’s involved with these two clowns or anyone like them, be lucky if she’s not dead from an overdose in twenty-four to thirty-six months. That’s the upside. These creeps, they’d look at gals like this, just fresh meat as far as they’re concerned. They’d want to get them out there hustling just as fast as possible.”

  “Charming.”

  “That’s why I love my job. Every once in a while we nail one of these bastards.”

  Chapter Nine

  Sitting at The Spot I decided it might be time for a little Come-to-Jesus chat with my client, Kerri Mathias. I didn’t necessarily mind looking into things that were on the far side of the law, but it would be nice to know what I was getting into before I got into it. I didn’t like surprises in my business.