by Dan O'Shea
Days. Plural. Not good. That means the message was old. Either Brian didn’t call his uncle for a while, or the mayor convinced him not to report it right away.
“When was the last time you saw her?” I ask.
“Friday Right before she went to that party.”
“Did she go with someone?”
“Chad picked her up. She was talking about him like the whole time before she left.”
“Okay, here’s what I need,” I say, taking out my notepad and pen. “Tell me what she was wearing when she left for the party, where the party was, and Chad’s last name.”
• • • •
He’s a football player, a receiver. Started in several games since the Huskers moved to the Big 12, which means he’s damn good. The guys in his frat direct us to the beer & hot wings place where he hangs out between classes. I get the answer from a couple different guys separately, so it’s more likely I can trust it. I tell them we’ve got another person to talk to first on campus, and ask if they know which dorm Sheila lives in. They’re not sure.
We skip getting the truck since the restaurant is just two blocks away from campus. Walk quickly toward downtown.
“Why’d you ask about Sheila?” Brian asks.
“Cause right now, Chad’s buddies are texting him that some cop is looking for him. The Sheila question maybe gives us an extra minute. So he won’t run out without paying.”
When we get to the wings place, the door opens and a guy around twenty, white, a couple inches over six foot, lean, a couple pounds over two-hundred, with long arms, walks out with a backpack on his shoulder, back to us. I elbow Brian.
“Yo, Chad,” he calls.
“Got class, man,” the kid says, not looking back.
We walk up beside him, Brian on his right, me on his left. When I take his elbow, Brian takes the one on his side. We walk him into the parking lot. Stop about halfway in and turn him so his back is against the building.
“Look,” Chad says, “I don’t know what happened, okay? I mean, one minute she’s there, then she’s gone, you know?”
“Just got some questions, kid,” I say. “You’re not in trouble.”
He looks at Brian, then back at me. “Look, I don’t know what happened, I don’t know where she is. Y’all cops are kinda slow on this, huh?”
“You took her there, were you planning on taking her home?”
“Shit, yeah,” Chad says. “She’s damn fine, dude, what you think?”
“What stopped you?”
“She just up and gone.”
“Who was the last person she spoke with?” I ask.
“Um,” he takes a moment. “There at the end, what I member, there was Jim, cause he was out on the porch smoking with us. Then Amber come outside. Cindy walked off with her a minute and they started laughing. Like girl talk, you know? Then, um,” he stops for a second. Blinks. Stops breathing. “That was it. Amber was the last she talked to.”
I look over. Brian saw it too. Nods.
“I’m gonna give you another chance, Chad.” Then I say to Brian, “Hold him.”
Brian rushes in, and catches Chad’s arm when he swings. Brian twists Chad’s arm up behind the kid, and forces him face down on the concrete. He’s got the good hold on him, where your thumb presses between the bones in the back of the hand.
“God, you fucking assholes, what is this shit?” Chad yells.
“Yell again, and that tongue comes right out.”
He quits struggling, goes quiet.
I move around behind him and ask, “You right handed or left?”
“Right.”
“Then this shouldn’t affect your scholarship,” I say.
Quickly, I grab the pinky finger on his left hand and twist till it snaps out of joint.
Chad starts to scream, but I’ve got my hand over his mouth in half a second.
“What the hell?” Brian says over my shoulder.
“You got that for lying, kid,” I whisper in Chad’s ear. “Every lie you tell puts that girl’s life further in danger. Lie again, and you’ll not only lose that scholarship, you’ll likely be on disability the rest of your life. That Amber wasn’t the last person Cindy saw. So who was it?”
• • • •
He didn’t want to tell us cause they had the same dealer. Thought he might get in trouble. Brian and I sit in the cab of my truck, eating cheeseburgers, across the street from a tenement in the Core, six blocks south of the capitol building. From where we are, we can just see the polished brass dome with the nineteen foot seed-sower statue on top of 400 feet of white marble.
“I knew, cause my uncle said, you were in the dirty end of the pool,” Brian says.
“What does that mean to you, then?”
“Nothing to me. Just that you,” he hesitates, “you don’t follow every law like you’re supposed to.”
“And what else?” I ask.
“That you know some really bad people. That you work with them, sometimes.”
“He say who?”
“People involved with drugs. Said sometimes you look the other way. Sometimes you help them get what they want. Said that you figure it helps keep things peaceable. Said that’s how your dad ran things, and you’re cut from the same cloth.”
“He said a lot.”
“Also said it was cause of the people you know, that you might be able to find her quicker than the Feds. You can talk to folks that won’t cooperate with them.”
“We’ll see.”
“And you don’t have the same constraints as the Feds.”
“Well, that’s true.”
“And just so you know, that’s how come I ain’t reporting what you did. It was to get a name to help find her. I’d report it otherwise.”
“I understand, kid.”
“Just so you know.”
It’s convincing, this Dudley Do-Right bit. But then why’d he wait to tell anybody about his sister’s message?
• • • •
When I’m done eating, I take my soda and leave Brian sitting in the truck and walk around the block toward the tenement where Cindy’s dealer lives. I stop once I’m out of view of the truck. Walk around to the alley. Drink the soda and wait. After a few minutes, I call Eddie’s cell.
“He call like we figured?” I ask.
“First thing. Called his uncle and told the whole bit.”
“Can you see what he’s doing, now?”
“Fiddling with the radio knobs.”
“Not still on the phone?”
“Not no more.”
Eddie’s been following my truck around today. Listening to us, too, from the tiny microphone I put up inside the dashboard.
“Any idea what Uncle told him to do?” I ask.
“Fore we get to that, there’s this,.” He waits a second. “My wife called. Said she went by the library book sale over lunch. Mentioned that she talked with Sally Karnes, who was working there, helping out the charity. I asked how Sally was doing, and she said she was just fine. Perky and talkative as ever.”
“Mayor Karnes’s wife doesn’t know about it after all. Why’d he lie, then?”
“I checked on it. He’s got a niece. Her name isn’t Cindy. And she attends Doane, not UNL. Also, he doesn’t have a nephew named Brian.”
I close my eyes and pinch the bridge of my nose.
“Okay. Well, why don’t you call Mikey, see if he knows this feller I’m gonna go see. Find out if he’s home. If he is, tell Mikey to have the guy answer the door.”
“You can’t call Mikey?”
“Better right now if it don’t come from me.”
After a few minutes, Eddie calls back.
• • • •
“Buncha of fucking cocksuckers, man!” Mel yells into his cell. He’s wandering around his apartment, looking for the keys to his car. Thinks some kids that were here earlier hid them as a joke. Yells again into the phone, “Well shit, they ain’t here. Check again at your place just to be sure
!” Clicks off his phone and shoves it in his pocket. Usually, Mel’s a pretty calm guy. Today, he looks to be wound up a few cranks too tight. “Fucking kids, man.”
“Sure,” I say. I’ve been sitting on his couch, watching him pace around in his underwear and yell at his girlfriend over the phone. He’s been waving a dead cigarette around with the hand that’s not turning over cushions and opening drawers and cabinets. “Sit down, Mel,” I say.
“I gotta find them keys, Junior,” he yells from the kitchen, freezer door open with his head inside.
“Ain’t going nowhere, buddy-boy. Sit down fore you have a heart attack.”
“And somebody said they seen a fucking cop sitting out there in a truck a block down! Fucking watching me or some shit! How’d you like that, huh?”
“I brought him, Mel. He’s helping me out, today, so it’s no trouble.”
“You brought him?”
“That’s how come he’s out there in the truck and not in here. And didn’t see which door I came in. So don’t worry about him.”
Mel starts pulling the burners off the stove top.
“Tell me about Cindy the other night,” I say. “You talked with her at that party on Friday, right? What’d you talk about?”
“That what this is about? That fucking cooze, man. Acts like she owns the fucking world. She just wanted to get a little more white on credit, you know? Acts like she don’t owe me nothing. Course that’s Mikey’s fault. Lets her get away with anything long as she keeps dancing in his club. So she just runs up the debt, and Mikey says to me, ‘Don’t worry about it.’ How’d you like that, huh?”
“He compensates you,” I say.
“It’s about the fucking respect, man. Walks round like she’s fucking God-damn royalty, you know? Not some fucking whore on a pole.”
He drops the burners on the kitchen floor. Shakes his head. Yanks open the kitchen drawers next to the fridge.
“Weren’t for Mikey, I’d fucking collect, man. And how.”
“Be careful who you say that to.”
“Why?”
“She’s missing.”
Mel looks up at me from digging through the drawers in his kitchen. He brings up his right hand, tries to point at me, but can’t control the shaking.
“Fuck me, man. I mean, fuck me. I’s just talking to her the other night.”
“What did you talk about?”
“Christ, I don’t know. Just like I said. The usual. She wanted more credit. More white for her and her friends. Said Mikey’d told her it was okay.”
“Then what?”
“Then nothing. She left. When I got back from the car, with them baggies in my pocket, she’d just taken off. Weird as fuck.”
“Why’d she leave? That football player brought her, and suddenly she ditches him. Roommate said she was talking about him all day. You didn’t say shit to her? She wanted the white from you, so why’d she leave like that?”
“Fuck if I know, man. Hell, ask Mikey, he drove her home.”
• • • •
“I’m not staying in the truck this time,” Brian says. “It’s a legal establishment. There’s no reason I can’t go in. You said he’s the guy who drove her home. I’m going in.”
“Alright, kid,” I say as we get out of the truck, “but you’re waiting at the bar while we talk. You can watch him. But I don’t want you involved anymore than need be for this.”
“Bullshit. I’m gonna walk right up to that son of a bitch…”
I grab him by the elbow before we walk up to knock on the back door. I know he’s posturing. So I’ll give it back.
“Brian,” I say, “this is a different game from rounding up drunk vagrants or frat boys. You can get dead from this without even trying. Wait at the bar for me to introduce you, or I swear to God, I’ll break your fucking leg just to put you in the hospital where you’ll be safe.”
• • • •
Brian sits at the bar, trying not to look at the dancer on stage, and drinks his 7-up. I wait for Mikey to come down from his office. When the stairway door opens, I stand up from the barstool. Nudge Brian as I walk past. He turns to look, then looks back down at his soda.
Mikey walks out, sees me, and gets a big grin on his face.
“Thought you didn’t like coming here,” he says to me.
“I don’t.”
He’s my size, and even though he’s five years younger, he’s a little heavier cause his only exercise is banging girls in his club. We have the same black hair and gray eyes. Same jaw line.
Also, we have the same father.
• • • •
My back is to the security camera over the back door to the club. Mikey’s smoking a Lil’ Capone mini-cigar, shaking his head as I tell him about Cindy’s disappearance.
“No, man she ain’t missing,” he says. “She’s just staying with this guy I know up in Omaha. He does some scouting for me sometimes. Finds new girls, you know?”
“You introduce them?”
“Sorta.”
“What’s that mean?”
“This guy…”
“His name?”
“Cecil. Anyway, I owed him a favor, and he got himself a crush on that Cindy, and who could blame him, right? So I traded her to him for the weekend.”
“Traded her.”
“Yeah. I pick up her tab for the coke, so she dances a few nights a week, and does little favors like this. It’s a fair deal.”
“You also got her hooked on it, though. Like you do with the other girls.”
“Your point, bro?”
“Nothing. I need Cecil’s address.”
“I can’t do that. You go barging in there, and it’s gonna be a fucking embarrassment.”
“Okay,” I say. I take out the digital recorder the mayor gave me this morning.
Mikey’s face goes pale when the screaming starts. It’s only about five seconds long. Begins quiet, a whisper, ‘Brian, please, you gotta come and get me. This guy’s going crazy and he won’t…” and then it’s just her screaming.
Mikey looks at me for a moment after the recording stops.
“What do you need, bro?”
“His address. And for you to make another call.”
• • • •
The drive to Omaha is quiet. I told Brian we’d be meeting someone there. Another reason I had Eddie follow me around today is the little bag I told him to put together. When we get to the gas station I designated, I introduce Brian to Eddie. Brian looks at Eddie’s prosthetic for a moment, then doesn’t look at it again.
“Mikey said he’d be waiting for us,” I say.
“We don’t know how many are in there,” Eddie says, “so we wear vests.”
“That’s gonna stick out,” I say. “Unless I answer the door without one, and you two stand behind me.”
“That’ll put you in more danger,” Brian says.
“I’ll put it on soon as he opens the door,” I say. “When’s he expecting us?”
“Little over an hour,” Eddie says.
“If we show up early, he’ll bolt. Or just won’t let us in. Can’t just kick the door in when it’s in full view of the neighborhood. Not a hit and run, we got other business in there.”
• • • •
Twenty-twos are the way to go. Standard .22 Long cartridges are already subsonic. Fit the gun, a Ruger, with a good silencer, and it’s no louder than snapping your fingers. Folks make a big deal about the size of the round, stopping power and all that. But when you’re trying for headshots, the .22 round bounces around inside the skull, tears up the brain. One shot becomes like three-plus. That’s what puts them down. No greater stopping power than a bullet jumping around inside your skull.
As we walk up through the small back yard, I drop a backpack by the steps. The guard lets us in the back, and I don’t waste time. He tells us to wait in the kitchen while he pats us down. He starts on Eddie, and while he’s giving that prosthetic a good once over, I take the silen
ced Ruger out from behind my back. Point right above his ear and pull the trigger. The mechanism of the gun is louder than the report. Just a click, the shell casing rolling across the countertop, then the body collapsing on the tile floor. I head back out the door while Eddie and Brian take out their .22s. I unzip the bag, take out the vest, put it on, then head back into the house. They have their ski masks on. I take mine out and put it on, too.
“Remember,” I say as we walk out of the kitchen, “ten rounds, then reload. Keep count. Say the number to yourself as you pull the trigger.” Brian’s the one I’m worried about. Sooner or later, he’ll get behind me.
We clear the house room by room. Some thug is sitting on the couch, watching Andy Griffith Show reruns, eating a bowl of Lucky Charms. I nod to Brian, he nods back, breathes deep. Puts the suppressor’s muzzle six inches from the back of the guy’s Omaha Royals cap. Clicks the trigger, and the guy shakes and slumps over. The cereal milk spills all over the rug. Someone comes down the stairs right behind me. I turn, and point at the head. There’s a quarter-note of a scream from her as I say “two,” and pull the trigger.
It’s one of Cecil’s whores. Late teens, maybe. Strung out on something. Hasn’t washed in a while. She’s lying back on the stairs, now. Body’s spasming, like she’s going to throw up. Eyes on me, blinking. I put another round in her forehead, an inch from the other. Spasms stop.
“Three,” I say.
“You wanna check upstairs, or should I?” Brian asks. I nod and head to the stairs. That’s where I find what we need. Cecil, on the toilet, reading the newspaper.
First, I shoot him in the kneecap.
He shrieks and reaches for the gun on the counter next to him. I shoot him again, this time in the stomach. The paper shivers from the round, falls to the floor a few pages at a time.
“Tell me where Cindy is, or I let you die,” I say.
Cecil touches his stomach, looks at the blood on his hand. Starts shaking like I opened a window in an ice storm. I grab him by the hair, yank him onto the floor. He doesn’t want to cooperate, so I step on his wounded knee. Have to drag him down the hallway. Roll him down the stairs. Brian and Eddie are back in the living room.
“There was only one other,” Eddie says. “Wasn’t a problem. But the basement’s locked. Woulda shot the lock off, but didn’t wanna set of no alarms, or traps if he’s got them rigged.”
