by S. J. Rozan
I eased over the sill, gun drawn. Nothing moved. No one burst out suddenly, no one dove through the weightless dust to slam me, throw me down. My own pounding heatbeat was the only sound. Motionless, I surveyed the room: floor cushions velvety with dust; beaded lamps and beat-up chairs; a low table where a hookah sat with its mouthpiece tubes curved, perky, pathetically ready. A sagging railing on the left showed me where the stair was. Beyond it, a sofa faced the front window. If someone were hiding in this room, that would be the only place. I took wary steps that way, had my gun out straight as I drew close enough to see over the sofa’s high back.
Someone was there.
Someone was lying there, face down. A woman, in jeans and a black leather jacket. One hand over her head, fingers tangled in her short, black, Asian hair.
Blood rushing in my ears, I stepped around the sofa, knelt beside her, touched her.
Ice.
I put a hand on her shoulder and I hesitated. I didn’t want to turn her over. I didn’t want to know.
As though hypnotized, as though my hand were someone else’s, I did turn her, toward me, slowly, gently. Sunlight bouncing off the floor showed me her face. It was twisted in pain.
And it wasn’t Lydia.
My heart slammed to a stop, then started again, double-time. I sprang up, spun, gun raised, swung it left, right. He had to be here. He’d have wanted to see this. Where was he? But no. Not in the shadows, not in the slanting light. No creak of footsteps on the stairs, no searing laugh. I was alone.
Bending to the body, I took her pulse. No help for her. I looked her over. On her agonized face, blue eye shadow, dark lipstick. Beneath the leather jacket, a soft red sweater; red stitching on the jeans, and red sneakers, one on her foot, one on the floor. No purse. Who was she? I’m sorry. I’m sorry.
I stood. The bastard might be here yet, downstairs, waiting. Or maybe he’d never been here. Maybe I wasn’t here. A vertigo of unreality unsteadied me. An Asian woman, a stranger, dead where I’d expected to find Lydia, where I’d come based on paper-trash oracle bones read in a diner with help from a hacker and a girl Goth. Maybe this was a bourbon-fueled nightmare and would be over as soon as the distant sirens I was hearing got close and loud enough to wake me.
They got close, they got loud, they cut off as the squad car with its flashing lights squealed to a stop in front of Fatima’s. I wiped away window grime, saw a cop charge around to the back while another stood, gun drawn, at the padlocked front door. For a brief moment, nothing. Then a shout, the guy in the back yelling to his partner. He’d found my pile of tires, seen the open window.
The cop in front strode to the car, spoke into the radio. Then he straightened, clicked on the traffic-stop loudspeaker, looked up at the building. Straight at me, if behind the grime and the painted hookah, in the shadows, he could have seen me. “You up there! Police! Come out. Hands empty and where I can see them.”
I searched the tin ceiling. Was there a hatch, a way to the roof? I didn’t find one. And what if there was? The building next door was a floor taller. The empty lot was thirty feet down.
I heard a thump, felt a shake.
The cop in the back had leapt for the fire escape.
He shouldn’t have done that. He was supposed to wait for his backup. A growing siren told me they were on the way.
Pressed in the shadows beside the rear window I’d climbed in, I watched him do what I’d done: edge to the window, peer around the jamb. He saw the same stillness and he did the same thing: climbed over the sill, gun out. But he held his as per regs—two-handed, stiff-armed—so my Colt smashed both his wrists when I swung it down. He started to yowl. I didn’t want noise so I kicked him in the stomach, knocked his wind out. I sprinted for the window, flew down the fire escape. I didn’t bother with the ladder, just leapt over the side of the lower landing. I jarred my bones on the cracked concrete, jumped up, and had made it to the artist’s fence ready to climb when the yard filled with cops.
4
NOTHING WORKED, BUT I had no right to expect it to. I told them I was a PI. They took my gun. I told them I had no idea who the dead girl was, when or why she died. They cuffed me. I told them I had just found her, it had thrown me, and when the cop showed up, armed, I took him for the lunatic I’d been tailing. Since the cop was in his blues that was thin, and since he was standing on the fire escape, unable to climb down, holding both swollen wrists close to his chest, one of his buddies punched me for him. I pulled my head back, rode with it, but I still got the stars, would get an ache in my jaw as soon as my adrenaline cleared and let other sensations through. I braced for another but the sergeant, on the radio calling for the detectives, the ambulance, and the crime scene team, grabbed the buddy cop’s arm. He growled, “There’s windows everywhere, Collins. Just walk him to the car.” His eyes told me I was goddamn lucky about the windows.
Collins vised on to my arm. He and the injured cop’s partner, the guy who’d been at the front, hustled me through the side lot. Weeds pulled at our ankles. The injured cop was still on the fire escape and the sergeant stayed in the yard to keep an eye on his man, and on the exit route of anyone inside. Both cops stayed out of the windows’ line of fire because they hadn’t searched the lower floors yet and it was possible the lunatic was still there, though they were pretty casual about it because they didn’t believe in the lunatic: they thought he was me.
I hadn’t told them about the call, the laugh, the game, Lydia. I’d have to decide what to do fast, though. The no-cops rule had been broken in a big way; I wondered if the bastard knew that, and what he planned to do about it. Whether or not he knew, while they kept me on ice—and assaulting a cop can get you on ice for a long time—the clock was ticking. Nearly two of my twelve hours gone, and I was nowhere.
There was one cop I could count on to believe me, a cop I’d have called at the beginning if I hadn’t been worried the anonymous madman might have some kind of pipeline into the department, might find out somehow: Lydia’s best friend, Mary Kee. She was a Fifth Precinct detective. I wasn’t sure she’d be able to spring me loose but I couldn’t think of anything else that might.
“I need to make a call,” I said.
“That comes a lot later, asswipe.” Collins yanked me forward.
“If you’re arresting me it comes now. If you’re not, take off the cuffs, I’m leaving.” I stopped walking, tried to tug out of his grip.
He brought his nose close to mine, exhaled tobacco breath. “Now hear this, motherfucker. Next move you make, if it’s not into the car, it’s interfering with an officer in the performance of my duties and I will break your head. You’re not being arrested. You’re being detained. Get in the fucking car.”
I knew what this was about: the longer they held me without charging me, the more pressure would build. When the detectives finally showed I could demand to be arrested or released and they’d have to do one or the other, but these guys in blue were well within procedure to shove me in the car for now. And the detectives could take as long as they wanted at the crime scene before they talked to me.
Which meant if I got in that car I could be there, caged, silenced, and useless, for hours.
“What I was doing here,” I said. “Someone’s life depends on my finishing it.”
“What about that girl? Her life depend on it, too?”
“I didn’t kill her. I—”
“You know what? Shut the fuck up.”
“Let me see the sergeant.” It wasn’t that I thought the sergeant would believe whatever I said—which, keeping in mind the no-cops rule, would be what? I didn’t know—but to cover his own ass on the off chance I was telling the truth, he’d likely pass me up the line. That would mean having the detectives talk to me as soon as they got here.
“Sergeant don’t want to see you.” Collins slipped his baton loose, pulled on my arm again. I didn’t budge. He glanced up; I could see him weighing the windows everywhere against the joy of bashing my skull. I was aware
of taking a big risk for not much reward. The best this could buy me was a talk with the sergeant. The more likely outcome was I’d get caged in the radio car anyhow, battered and bruised, and still waiting, still useless. I just couldn’t think of another way to play it.
But little miracles happen every day.
An engine roared down beyond the end of Coffey Street. At first I saw nothing; then a blur as a car raced by up Van Brunt, some testosterone-hopped kid grandstanding for his friends. Laying down rubber, the car vanished behind the buildings on the corner. Then a screech, a thud, squealing metal, tinkling glass. A horn blared, wouldn’t stop. Sirens, buzzers, and beeps exploded from impact-triggered car alarms all up and down the block. Traffic in both directions started to pile up. Drivers too far back to see what had happened or too callous to care leaned on their horns.
“Fuck!” The injured cop’s partner stared at the traffic mess. “Stay with him!” Collins nodded, tightened his grip on my arm as the other cop charged off. The sergeant swung around the corner of Fatima’s lot to see what was happening, looked at Collins, and ran off that way, too.
Well, all right. Saying a prayer for the grandstanding kid, that he was uninjured and would also win the lottery, I snapped my leg and kicked Collins in the nuts.
He made a strangled noise and folded. I kicked him in the chin for insurance and took off running in the opposite direction. When I hit the corner I spun right, pounding pavement, hoping anyone interested in anything in this neighborhood was interested in the car-crash racket a block over. At the next corner I cut right again. I was hoping Trella and Linus had stayed put, but I must have used up my miracle quota. The block was empty. Likely they were down on Van Brunt, gawking: what kid could resist screeching rubber and shattering glass?
Which left the problem of the handcuffs. Working cuffed hands from back to front when you’re my size is close to impossible. I’d tried it once when I was much younger, managed it, but almost dislocated my shoulder. I’d do that again if I had to, but maybe I didn’t have to.
I ran full-tilt down the block back to the rat-adorned studio of my artist benefactor, where I slipped into the alley between it and the house next door. I was remembering the scraps all over the roof, hoping the guy was too monomaniacally galvanized by creative energy to clean up anywhere.
Was he ever. The alley, shadowed and tight, was littered with curls, shards, squares, and strips of tin. I dropped to the ground and felt around behind me, fingering and chucking sharp scrap until I found what I needed: a thin, narrow band. Manuevering was awkward but I’m a pianist. The rest of me is getting older, stiffer, but my fingers still move. It took under a minute to slip the shim under the pawl and jack the left cuff open.
I brought my hands around, popped the other cuff. Still on the ground, I took out my cell phone to call Mary Kee, see if I could cut a way out of this.
When I turned the phone on the first thing it did was beep that I’d missed a call. There was no message. My heart pounded. I hit callback, but the number was restricted and the call didn’t go through.
Cursing, I thumbed my contact list for Mary’s number. It had just come up when a black-windowed Escalade rolled across the mouth of the alley and stopped. I froze, there in the shadows, waited for the car to drive on. It went nowhere. Instead, its door slid open and disgorged two gigantic Asian men, one with a shaved head, one with a ponytail. Moving as inexorably as fate itself, they converged on my alley.
I took off but it was all over fast. The alley ended in the neighbor’s backyard, wrapped by an incongruous plastic slat fence, too high to jump. I leapt anyway, grabbed the top, but Shaved Head tackled me, pulled me down. I had a good grip: three slats cracked, a dozen more bent.
Shaved Head must have weighed three hundred pounds, so there wasn’t much point, facedown in the crabgrass, in my struggling to shake him off. But I found I was doing it anyway, until I felt the cold barrel of Ponytail’s gun pressed to my temple. One of them duct-taped my hands behind my back; neither of them spoke a word. Hauling me to my feet, they hustled me up the alley to the SUV. Shaved Head had to turn sideways to fit.
The car door slid silently open again. The two giants tossed me onto the floor. Shaved Head climbed in with me, Ponytail swung in front beside the driver, and we were off.
I twisted, made it to one knee, trying to get up.
“Sit down.” That casual order came from someone on the seat beside Shaved Head. Next to the giant he looked like a wraith but my bet was he was a normal-size guy. Asian, thirties, handsome square face, short slick hair. Not someone I knew.
Shaved Head prodded me with a huge round boot, not hard, just translating. “Mr. Lu said sit down.” His voice rumbled like the A train. He pushed me down, pinioned me between the seat back and his boulder knees.
“What the fuck?” I said.
“What the fuck is right,” said the smaller guy. “What the fuck happened to Lei-lei?”
“Lei-lei?”
“Don’t give me innocent, you stupid shit!”
“Wait.” I was catching up with myself; maybe this did make sense. “Lei-lei? Short hair, leather jacket, jeans, red Keds?”
“That why you killed her, you didn’t like her shoes?”
“I didn’t kill her.”
“Fuck you didn’t. All I want to know, you do it for kicks because you’re some kind of sick fuck, or you’re working for someone?” Shaved Head had spoken with a Chinese accent but all I could detect in Lu was Great Lakes, Milwaukee maybe. A homegrown businessman employing immigrants: it would’ve warmed my heart if I hadn’t had other things to think about.
“I didn’t kill her. Some lunatic did, and he’s going to kill a friend of mine if I don’t find him.”
“A lunatic? A fucking lunatic? Oh, shit! Ming, what do you think? That’s a good one, right?”
Either Shaved-Head-Ming chuckled or I was feeling an earthquake.
“Wait, I know,” Lu went on. “You’re about to say I need to let you go so you can find him! The lunatic. Am I right? I like it. I haven’t heard it before.” He leaned forward, eyes black ice. “The find-the-lunatic part. The let-me-go part, I’ve heard. Now listen, you son of a bitch. I’m pissed off but I’m not unreasonable. Lei-lei was valuable. That means she had a value. You killed her—”
“No.”
Ming’s boot thudded into my hip, sent pain stabbing from my toe to my shoulder. The bone didn’t break only because he had no room to swing that sledgehammer leg. Lu studied my reaction. He seemed satisfied, settled back on the seat. “You owe me. Now, if you’re just a weirdo who kills girls for fun, that’s one thing. She was young, she had some years left, she was a good earner, but I’ll be honest with you, she wasn’t top of the line. Net, she’d have been worth maybe another hundred thousand before I’d have had to cut her loose. What do you think, Ming? About right?”
Ming grunted assent.
Lu nodded. “If you’re flush, that’s great. Pay your debt, walk away. Otherwise, you can work it off. You like to hurt people, kill people, that’s lucky, I can find things for you to do. You can work with Strawman and Ming.”
From the front seat, without turning, Ponytail-Strawman gave a thumbs-up.
“On the other hand,” Lu leaned forward again, “if you’re working for someone and this was some kind of message, you better read it to me, because I don’t get it.”
“Look,” I said. “I know how it sounds, but I was set up. I’m a PI. My wallet’s in my jacket.”
At a nod from Lu, Ming went through my pockets. He passed my wallet to Lu.
“This lunatic grabbed my partner,” I said. “He told me I could find her at that place, that bar on Coffey Street. When I got there she wasn’t there but your girl was. Dead. I need to find him.” To sweeten the pot, I added, “When I do, you can have him.”
Lu looked up from fingering my license, gazed at me thoughtfully. Maybe I was getting through to him.
Or maybe not. “So you’re working for someon
e. Now tell me who.” He tossed my wallet to the floor, flicked my license after it. “That Italian slob, Canelli, thinks he’s Tony Soprano? Or Fatboy Cho? Ugly girls and a lot of ambition, Fatboy. Or someone else, someone new? Just tell me. And why bring her all the way out here, Red Hook or wherever the hell this is? What’s that supposed to mean to me?”
“I’m not—”
“Oh, shut the fuck up!” Lu considered me. “If you were just a sick puppy, just rough trade, got a little carried away, if that were it you’d be jumping at this chance to come on board with me and work it off, doing what you like to do anyway. But you’re sitting there whining about lunatics. So your boss, he’s someone you’re scared of. More than you are of me. Must be someone pretty impressive.” He rubbed his chin. “If you think about it, can’t really be Fatboy, then.” Ming grinned as Lu leaned past me, tapped the driver’s shoulder. “Let’s go home.” He settled back, spoke to Ming. “There’s no room here and this may take time. Though I wonder what he’s so scared of. What could his boss do to him worse than what you and Strawman can do?”
“There’s no boss,” I said.
Ming shook his head and tapped his lips with a warning finger the size of a dynamite stick.
“I didn’t kill your girl,” I said. “You can beat the crap out of me, it won’t buy you anything. Or you can—”
Ming’s backhand knocked me over. Before my sight cleared he’d materialized the duct tape and taped my mouth shut. I tried to twist, shove him off me; he just smiled and socked me. Through the ringing and the throbbing I saw him raise his fist: Again? Three hundred pounds of Ming slamming me, or not, it was my choice.
The car, which had been rolling steadily, now sped up, made a few turns, swooped downhill. I couldn’t see through the blacked-out windows but when they’d tossed me in, the Escalade had been headed west and my sense, even with the turns, was we were now going north. If that was true, the swoop was the expressway, and we were going to hit the bridge any minute. My best chance, though it wasn’t a good one, would be when we reached our destination and got out. Or when I came up with a way to make Lu believe me.
