by Rob Hart
I’m sure there’s more to it. That’s what Google is for.
I could snort it. That’s supposed to work too. Less efficient, but who fucking cares. I could do that right now rather than having to worry about going out to get a bunch of gear.
“Ash?”
“What?”
“You okay?”
No. Not even a little.
“Yeah, I’m fine.”
The third bodega is a real possibility.
The first one I walked into this morning seemed to take up the entire footprint of the bottom of the building. There were a lot of cameras and the place felt too clean. Too put together. At the second, a pair of cops were waiting for breakfast sandwiches as the owner chatted them up, like they were all best buds. It really didn’t strike me as a “keep your enemies closer” kind of thing.
The third bodega seems like someone came in and set up a fake store in an old one that had been abandoned.
A small, cramped space, despite the fact that it looked like there was plenty more room in the back to spread out. The shelves half-full and the refrigerator case keeping drinks lukewarm at best. The place needed a good dusting and mopping and for someone to run it who actually gives a shit.
The owner eyes me as I walk to the counter with my bottle of water. The sunglasses and newsboy cap pulled down tight over my face make me feel a little better—I wasn’t wearing either when I ran into Paris and Athena or the dude at Sanctuary—but still, it’s a little nerve-wracking. I keep things brief, get my water, get out.
This may not be the right one, but it feels like a good contender. I walk across the street, sit down in the bus shelter, which blocks the wind coming off the water. A bus just went by and it’s after rush hour so there won’t be one for a little while longer. That gives me a bit of time to sit here and watch and not look like I’m sitting here and watching.
Check my phone. Text from Bombay: Sorry to ask bro, but you got some cash lying around? Ordered delivery and forgot to put it on my card.
I respond: In my bag. Take what you need.
After a little while a car pulls up. It’s a blank car. The kind of inoffensive, cookie-cutter sedan that if you were looking for it in a big parking lot, you’d get lost.
A short, stout black woman climbs out. Older, hair in cornrows that wrap around into a bun on the top of her head. Long black coat. Thousand-yard stare. She glances at me and heads inside. She smells like a cop. I consider getting up and leaving but I don’t want to give up so easy. I yank the cap down a little more over my eyes.
After a few moments she comes outside. Looks around. Settles on me.
The neighborhood looks deserted. No cars. No one out in the cold. She crosses the street to me and reaches into her pocket. I get up, preparing to run.
“Excuse me, sir…”
The bus shelter has me blocked from one end and she’s looping around on the other, boxing me in. On purpose? My only good move is to run diagonally past her. I’m setting my feet and preparing to do it when she pulls a photo out of her pocket.
Even from a distance, even at an angle, it looks familiar.
When she’s within a few feet of me she holds it up.
“Sir, I was wondering if you’d seen this young man.”
The picture is of Spencer Chavez.
For a hot second I think of playing it cool, like maybe I don’t know who she’s talking about. But she’s got this thing with her eyes. The way she looks at you makes you feel like you have something to apologize for. She smirks nearly as soon as the words have left her mouth because she sees I know something.
“Who are you?” I ask.
She holds my gaze for a moment, slides the picture into a pocket on the inside of her jacket, and removes a small leather billfold from another. Holds it up so I can see it. “Turquoise Reese,” she says. “I’m a private investigator.”
“And why are you looking for Spencer?” I ask.
“Usually this works the other way around,” she says. “You are?”
“Ashley McKenna,” I tell her. “I’m uh… actually looking for Spencer myself.”
She cocks an eyebrow. “You a friend?”
“Not really.”
“Then why are you looking for him?”
“A mutual acquaintance hired me.”
She narrows her eyes. “You on the job too?”
“No. I’m more of an amateur, I guess.”
At this, she chuckles. I’m a good head taller than her, but the tone of it makes me feel six inches shorter. Like a kid, right back to Jay Gunner’s office.
“All right, all right,” she says, in a flat, even way. Her emotions on this are completely indecipherable. “You drink coffee?”
“I do.”
“How do you take it?”
“Black.”
She turns and walks toward the bodega, shoes clicking against the pavement, and she disappears inside. After a few minutes she comes out with two cardboard cups. Nods toward her car and climbs into the driver’s seat. I get into the passenger side. The inside smells like a chemical forest. She turns on the car and launches the heat full-blast, hands me one of the cups.
“Turquoise Reese,” I tell her. “I dig it. Kinda like Cleopatra Jones.”
She throws me a side-eye that says it’s not the first time she heard something like that, but she damn well wants it to be the last.
“So now I bought you a cup of coffee and in return you are going to tell me what in the world you are doing,” she says.
Part of me feels like I should hold back, like I should keep what I’ve learned to myself. But truthfully, the longer Spencer is out there, the more likely he’s going to get killed or hurt or OD, so I’m not doing him any favors by playing coy.
That, and I’m hoping she’ll be impressed.
I tell her most of it, leaving out some details. Tell her how I tracked down Brick, that it led me to Spencer, that he got away, now I’m staking out bodegas that might be drug mills, in the vague hope I’ll see someone or something useful. She listens, taking the occasional sip of her coffee, not removing her eyes from the front of the store. When I’m done she lets the silence hang for a bit.
“You said you’re an amateur,” she says.
“I guess.”
“You guess?”
“Yeah,” I tell her, trying to be bold, failing. “It’s just… a thing. I help find people or find stuff or learn things about people. You know, word of mouth gets around.” The explanation is a ball of twine in my mouth.
“You understand you can’t just be a PI, right? That’s not something you pick up and do.”
“No, I got that,” I tell her. “You know Jay Gunner?”
She nods her head slowly. “He works up in St. George, right? Does a lot of business with the white shoes.” She sees my confusion. “The fancier law firms.”
“I went in there the other day trying to get an internship or apprenticeship and he chased me out the door. I know I need those things if I want to do this real. And I do. I don’t know how.”
“Why?” she asks.
Again, the words get tangled on the way out. Because it’s not enough to say it. I need it to be right.
I’m still fishing for something to say when she takes her eyes off the bodega, twisting in her seat to look at me. “Why this? Why not go into the department and get your twenty and your pension, and then come around to it? You’re young enough.”
I sit back in the seat. Sip my coffee. I can feel anger trickling up my spine. She’s pushing me, trying to get me frustrated. Testing me, I think? I take a deep breath. “Gunner said the same thing. But I don’t do well with rules. I don’t do well with authority. That’s not for me. I know I’m young and I know I have a lot to learn but I’d rather be governed by my own moral compass than someone else’s.”
She nods. Takes it in.
“Okay.”
The way she says it, she sounds a little disappointed.
My answer wasn’t g
ood enough.
After a few more uncomfortable ticks of the clock she says, “I got hired by the family. I’ve mostly been asking around law enforcement, hearing the same thing as you.” She points up to a three-story apartment building next to the bodega. “Narcotics has this place under surveillance but I know the guy running the op. He said I could come poke around a little. Because he knows I can keep it discreet.”
That last bit was a jab. She glances at me to make sure it landed.
“You know what’s not discreet?” she asks.
“Me?”
She smiles, points her finger. “Bingo.”
“So you want me to go, I guess?”
“Look,” she says. “You’ve got half a brain in your head. That much is clear. You made it this far, and without any of the tools or contacts a real, actual, legal private investigator would have access to. But you’ve been at this for, what, how many days now?”
I have to think about it. “Three.”
“Right. I started this morning. I want you to know that because I don’t want you to give yourself too much credit.”
That’s enough to make my ribs ache. “Okay.”
“Here’s what’s going to happen,” she tells me, both hands gripped around her cup of coffee, like she’s warming them. “You can consider that coffee a thank you for the work you’ve done so far. I would put work in air quotes but as you can see both of my hands are occupied. And you’re going to stop screwing around on this. All you’re going to do is get in my way. You understand me?”
I don’t answer right away, which prompts her to repeat herself, her voice cracking like a whip.
“Do you understand?”
“Thanks for the coffee,” I tell her, getting out of the car. I make sure she’s looking and I dump it, three-quarters full, into a wastebasket on the corner. It’s childish but it feels good to do anyway. It’s four miles back to Bombay’s. I start walking.
I don’t remember how old I was. Young enough I was still a sponge.
It was late. I had trouble sleeping when I was a kid. That hasn’t really changed much. When I was a kid I would stay in my room and read comics, but this night I was thirsty so I went to the kitchen for a glass of water.
I could hear my dad watching television in the living room, so I came down the stairs carefully, cut a sharp turn at the bannister to make it down the hallway and stay out of sight. My dad heard me anyway, said, “That you, kiddo?”
I poked my head out. He was sitting on the couch in sweatpants and a white t-shirt, bare feet propped up on the beaten ottoman, four drained beers next to him, though if you hadn’t seen them you wouldn’t have been able to tell he was drinking. Gray light from the TV danced across his face and the wall behind him.
“Need a glass of water.”
He nodded. “Go get it and come here.”
I grabbed one of the yellow plastic cups with the logo of his firehouse on the side—a freebie from the annual company beach picnic. The house was full of them. Got my water and went into the living room and he patted the empty cushion next to him. “Get on up here, kiddo.”
That smell. I can remember that smell, all this time later. Beer and aftershave and that vague odor of black smoke that never seemed to go away.
He was watching a black-and-white movie. A man with a sharp haircut and a sharper face, a cigarette dangling from his lip, traded pointed barbs with a beautiful woman.
“This right here,” my dad said, cracking another beer that had grown wet with condensation from sitting out. “This right here is a classic. The Maltese Falcon. One of the best movies ever made.”
I asked if the man was a cop. The way he was talking, the air of authority he carried, I thought he was a cop.
“No, he’s a private eye,” my dad said. “That’s Sam Spade. Spade gets hired by the woman, Ruth, to find her sister.”
“What’s a private eye do?” I asked.
“Private eye is like a cop,” my dad said. “Except people hire them for specific jobs. Like if someone goes missing.”
“Why not go to the cops?”
“Because sometimes the cops can’t help. Sometimes you need someone who’s going to bend the rules a little, you know? Someone who only has to focus on one job at a time. I’ll tell you, I almost thought about being a cop before I got into the fire department, but it just wasn’t for me.”
“Really?”
“I got some time until I retire, but when I do, I think I might hook up with some agency that does fire investigations.” He took a swig of beer, paused like he was thinking of offering me some, but ultimately didn’t. “I won’t be no Sam Spade, but it might be a good use of my time. I like it. Figuring stuff out.”
I asked him why he didn’t become a cop.
My dad shrugged. “I’m not the biggest fan of people telling me what to do. You get that in the fire department, but not as much. But PIs, they do the right thing too, but there’s a purity to it, you know?” He was drifting a little, the beer finally soaking into his head. “They do it for money, sure, but they do it because they want to, because it’s right. Not because someone told them to do it. Not because they’re working toward some arbitrary retirement date. They do it because they want to do it. They do it because they want to help.”
He put his hand on my shoulder, got this look in his eyes, the same way he got when he told me his mother, my grandma, had died, which made me a little scared at first.
“This world is a tough place,” he said. “There are good people and there are bad people. And the good people, they’ve got to stick up for each other. Because sometimes no one else will. I want you to remember that, okay kiddo?”
“I will.”
“Promise me.”
“I promise.”
He ruffled my hair. Smiled. “It’s late. Go on up to bed, okay?”
“Can I finish the movie with you?”
“It’s halfway through.”
“I don’t mind.”
He looked side to side, said, “Don’t tell your mother.”
Then he wrapped his arm around me, pulled me close, and caught me up on the plot. Even though I was finally feeling the call of sleep tugging at me, even though I didn’t totally understand what was happening, I stayed up to the end to watch it, because I knew it would make him happy.
Almost at Bombay’s. My phone buzzes. Unknown number. I don’t answer it.
Considering how long I’ve been outside, stepping into the building is like being wrapped in a warm blanket. My muscles feel tight so I opt for the stairs over the elevator. Make it up to Bombay’s floor and see a bundle of something outside his front door.
As I get closer I realize it’s my bag.
Sitting on top are the bags of heroin. Empty, rinsed clean.
I don’t need a note to tell me the message Bombay is sending.
For fuck’s sake. I let him go into my shit for cash. I should have remembered.
I bang my fist on the door. No answer.
Try the key, but the deadbolt is engaged so the door won’t open. That one takes a second key I don’t have. Bombay must have been leaving it undone for me.
I take out my phone, text him: Dude, I know this doesn’t look good, but I can explain.
Send it. Sit and wait. Get nothing back.
Call him. I don’t hear his phone inside the apartment.
Well, fuck.
Now I don’t have a place to sleep. I consider picking the lock, but that’s going to invite some odd looks and maybe the cops if someone pokes their head out the door. And anyway, I’m going to need to handle Bombay with kid’s gloves after this. Not that I can even offer to take a piss test. It’ll come up dirty. I can’t even prove I’m not actively using.
I take my bag outside and sit on the ledge over the sidewalk. Take out my phone as I’m crafting the text message in my head. Something to get the ball rolling. Before I can open up the text message app, my phone rings again. Unknown number. Probably Ginny. Fuck it. I w
atch the phone until the call goes to voicemail.
What do I do now?
My best friend thinks I’m on heroin. I kinda maybe sort of wish I was.
And now two private investigators essentially told me to fuck off.
Maybe they’re right.
Who am I to be doing this, anyway? I’m like a kid in a costume. Me and Reese may have gotten to the same point but it took me three days and nearly dying. She made it sound like a morning stroll through the park.
I run through the last year in my head. When Chell died, I lost my shit, and I picked fights with anyone who was breathing. Nearly got myself killed a couple of times. In Portland, I took a fight too far. Killed a guy who I then had to bury in the woods. In Georgia, I was nearly poisoned, nearly shot, nearly drank myself to death. And in Prague I managed to pick a fight with a former Spetsnaz hitter. I walked away. Mostly due to dumb luck, with a concussion and enough body trauma I probably have some kind of permanent damage.
That’s before my run-in with Paris and Athena.
Maybe I’m not good at this.
Maybe the mark of being good at this is to find people and solve cases without leaving so much damage in my wake. Without hurting so many people.
Without hurting myself.
What if Samson is right? Maybe I am a thug with delusions of morality.
My phone rings again. I ignore it. I don’t want to talk to Ginny right now. Because if there’s a real private investigator on this, I should back off. Let her do her job. Ginny mentioned something about paying me even if I didn’t turn anything up. Hopefully she sticks to that. At least I have the original ten grand. But that puts a big damper on my housing plans. Ten grand and I am fucked.
I make a list in my head. Stuff I can do. Bartender, waiter. Stuff I can start right now, so I can put together a little money and figure out what comes next.
I get up, sling my bag over my shoulder, and walk. Down at the bottom of the block are some run-down motels that look like a great place to score crack or get sexually assaulted. They’re not pretty, but they’re close. As I’m walking besides the parked cars running along my right, a horn blares so loud and so close I jump and yell out. Turn and find a dark SUV with tinted windows, engine softly purring.
