by Geonn Cannon
"Other than Roy Morse dying."
"Collateral damage." Lazareva looked at her and raised an eyebrow; Mallory shrugged. "I'm sorry the man is dead, but you saw the people he hung out with. They're rough characters. Probably would have ended up with a bullet in his head no matter what happened."
"So his death doesn't matter?"
"Of course it matters," Mallory said. "His death is the reason we're finally going to capture Claire Lance."
Lazareva looked back out at the road and pushed the truck up another notch. The speedometer said they were inching toward 110, and the truck was vibrating around them. Mallory pressed herself against the seat and watched the road.
Neither of them paid any attention to the plume of dust rising in the road behind them.
Chapter Eight
An orange diamond-shaped sign announced there would be roadwork for the next five miles. The congestion had already begun, and men in orange vests and hard hats were directing traffic into a single lane, creating a bottleneck that stretched back ten miles. The sky to the south was overcast and occasional rumbles of thunder reached them. Gwen was going through the glove compartment, reading the titles of cassette tapes the car's former owner had left behind. She straightened and read the name off the side of the case. "Have you ever heard of Jerky Boys?"
Lance shook her head.
Gwen shuffled the tape cases and eventually put them back in the glove box without finding one worth listening to. She fiddled with the radio knob and scanned through a sea of static, stopping every now and then only to continue searching when a car commercial came on.
"What do you want to know?"
Gwen looked away from the radio. "What?"
From the moment Gwen had seen the mug shot in the paper, Lance had considered telling her the whole story. They were on the run together, after all, and Gwen had broken a lot of confidences telling her about Roy's cohorts. The least she could do was reveal the person Gwen had trusted her life to. She gestured at the road. "It's going to take us a lot more than two hours to get to Oklahoma City now. We have time. You deserve to know who you're riding with."
Gwen thought for a second. Like a kid who had just been told she could have anything she wanted for her birthday, she was at a loss. Finally, she said, "Everything. I want to know why you were in my husband's bar; I want to know why you ran; I want to know where you came from."
Lance hesitated. Her eyes became softer and she leaned back into the seat. "Okay," she said softly. "I came from Chicago."
#
Lance was almost to the landing, her hand wrapped around the newel to go up to the next level when someone called to her from below. "Hello. Claire, Right?"
She stopped and looked down. A woman was standing in the open door of an apartment, tilting her head sideways to look up at Lance. She wore an old white dress shirt that hung down to mid-thigh, her dark hair mussed as if she had run her hands through it countless times during the day. A smear of something white was on her forehead and another marked the right leg of her pants. She was barefoot and smiling. She hooked her thumb toward the lobby and explained, "I saw your name on the buzzer. Claire Lance, right?"
"That's right," Lance said. "What can I do for you?"
The woman laughed. "Nothing. I just... Every day I hear you trudge up and down these stairs at all hours and you sound so exhausted." She bit her lip and gestured into the apartment. "I just made a fresh pot of coffee and it would be my honor to offer you a cup."
"How did you know when I'd be coming home?" Lance asked.
"I, uh...I didn't. I made a fresh pot every hour on the hour, all day."
Lance looked down at her shiny shoes with a smile. All that was waiting upstairs was a TV dinner in the freezer and maybe the last half of Wheel of Fortune. She turned and walked back down the stairs. "Well, if you went to all that trouble... Yes, thank you. A cup of coffee would be great."
The woman extended a hand as Lance reached the landing. "Nice to meet you, Claire Lance. I'm Elaine Mallory."
Lance took her hand and squeezed. "Pleasure to make your acquaintance."
Elaine stepped aside and Claire stepped into her apartment. She immediately saw what had caused the white splotches on Elaine's outfit: she was a painter. The layout of the apartment was exactly like Lance's, two floors above, only reversed. The front door opened into a small kitchen, a closet with barely enough room for the sink, stove, and fridge. The main body of the apartment was taken up by the living room. Instead of a couch, television, and chairs like Lance's apartment, Elaine's was filled with canvases in various stages of completion.
The coffee, as promised, was freshly roasted, and the air was witness to the fact that Elaine had, indeed, spent the entire day brewing and re-brewing coffee. The apartment smelled like heaven. Lance took off her hat and tucked it under one arm.
"You work long hours, huh?" Elaine asked as she filled a chipped red mug.
"It's the job," Lance said with a shrug. She took the mug and gestured at the canvases. "Thank you. I apologize if I disturb your work when I'm—"
"Oh, no, please," Elaine said as she walked into the living room. "It reminds me there are people out there, a world beyond my little corner of reality. It helps the work."
She pushed a loose wave of hair behind her ear and left a smudge of white on her cheek. Lance found herself staring at the new smudge as Elaine moved barefoot across the floor. She picked up a box off the couch and tossed it aside.
"Come in, sit down. You must be tired. Do you, ah, do you walk the beat? Is that the right expression?"
Lance took a seat on the couch, being careful of her gun, and said, "I have a patrol car, actually."
Elaine sat next to her, curling her right leg up and hooking it under the left. She gripped her right calf with both hands and pulled it toward her. "Not too shabby."
Lance smiled and tried not to pay attention to the way Elaine's body was contorted. She sipped the coffee and inadvertently groaned. She sucked her top lip and nodded. "This is phenomenal. Thank you."
"My pleasure, Officer Lance."
"Claire," Lance said without thought. Usually she hated to be called by her given name, but there was something about the way Elaine said it earlier. "Call me Claire."
Elaine smiled and her eyes dipped down. Lance was suddenly very aware of how unbecoming her uniform was. It had its perks — the shiny badge, the gun, the utility belt that seemed straight out of Batman comics. But when faced with a potential partner, Lance would prefer to be wearing almost anything else. She nodded at the paintings to take attention off of herself. "Are these real places?"
"They were," Elaine said. She pushed her hand through her hair, held onto a clump of it and tugged it back and forth with her fingers as she examined her work. "They were all developed, torn up for some building development or another."
"So you paint ghosts?"
"I paint lost things," Elaine said softly. Her eyes were locked on a canvas showing three trees at the far end of an empty lot. "That got paved over and turned into a parking lot for a megaplex movie theater. That duck pond was filled in and turned into a shopping center that's still standing empty with Ôfor lease' signs in the windows."
Lance nodded. "Well, maybe you could paint me sometime."
Elaine looked back at her. After a long examination, she said, "Are you lost, Claire?"
Lance turned and locked eyes with Elaine.
#
The traffic began to clear by the time Lance finished telling of how she met Elaine. Lance kept her eyes on the road. She hoped that if she ignored Gwen, if she just pretended she was alone in the car, reliving the story for the millionth time, maybe then it would hurt less, or she would feel less exposed. But Gwen wasn't willing to be a passive listener.
"Elaine. You mentioned her this morning."
Lance nodded slowly. "I thought you were her at first."
"And you were a cop?"
"I was a cop."
"What happened?
"
Lance swallowed hard. "Elaine and I became lovers. I posed for her. In uniform. It won an award for something. I'm not sure what exactly, but it got her a lot of attention. She said I was her muse." She ignored the tear rolling down her cheek and shifted in the seat. "We were together four years. I took the detective's exam a couple of times and finally got my shield. I was a detective assigned to Narcotics Division. My captain knew I'd throw myself a hundred percent into any case he gave me, so he decided to start me off big. We got information that could get a cop inside the ranks of a dealer who, until that point, had been all but untouchable, so I took the assignment and went in. Deep cover. Really deep.
"I spent close to a year gaining their confidence, worming my way into their inner circle. I pretended to shoot up with them, but I had to smoke pot for real. I faked everything else with the best of them." She rubbed her index finger over her top lip and blinked to clear her eyes. "It took a while before they trusted me enough to start taking me places, showing me things. Everything they told me, I gathered in a file. Photographs, contacts, places of business... I didn't think I could risk contacting my superiors, so I held off. They didn't suspect me at all, and I couldn't risk someone seeing me talking to a cop. I was so believable that they introduced me to their boss as a potential new lieutenant."
#
Lance sat on a box and smashed her third cigarette with the toe of her boot. She leaned forward, elbows on her knees, and looked at the big garage door across the room. Monty, a thin Irishman with a dead eye, paced a few feet away. He wore black jeans and a dress shirt that was baggy on his skeletal frame. He pinched a joint between his thumb and index finger as he turned on his heel and walked back toward her.
"You sure he told you the right place?" Lance asked when he drew close again. "Maybe he just sent you to wait here because he doesn't like you."
He nodded his head. "Mr. Madrid will be here. He's just late sometimes, that's all." Monty grinned, and his voice was light, but there was real fear behind his eyes. Everyone feared falling out of Mr. Madrid's good graces. They all knew what he could do to people he didn't like.
They were in one of Madrid's many warehouses, surrounded by the trucks he used to move drugs from one part of the city to another. The entire space was lit by big floodlights mounted near the locked rooms at the far end of the space. Lance reached into her jacket pocket for another cigarette when the garage door began to rumble up.
"Fuckin' finally," Monty muttered with relief in his voice.
Lance got up and followed Monty to the front of the garage. Mr. Madrid's brand new sedan idled outside and the back door swung open as they approached. He unfolded his six-foot-four frame from the backseat, buttoned his jacket, and fixed Monty with a bright smile. "Mr. Montgomery," he said. He extended his hand and slapped it against Monty's palm. "I hope I didn't keep you waiting too long. I had information I needed to confirm before I came here."
"Not at all, Mr. Madrid."
Madrid focused on Lance and smiled. "Ahh. And you must be the new prospect. Laura Lake, right?"
"That's me," Lance said. "It's an honor to meet you, sir."
"Yes, it is," Madrid said. He released Monty's hand and shook hers. "I've heard we're supposed to do business together."
Lance nodded. "I would like that very much, sir."
He looked Lance over, her tailored slacks and the crisp white shirt. She wore a loose blazer over the shirt, but he could still tell she had the right curves in the right places. She accepted the once-over as she had from all his lieutenants and drivers. "You certainly don't look like much of a bruiser."
Monty scoffed, "Tell that to the guy who tried to cop a feel back when we first started thinking about hiring her. Broke the fucker's arm."
"He had it coming," Lance said. In reality, the guy in question was in one piece and still working the case from a distance. He was Claire's partner, and had followed her despite her request that he stay behind. So she had contrived to back into his hand and put on a good show for those she hoped would be her employers. Since then, there hadn't been another cop on her tail the entire time she'd been undercover.
"Hopefully I can oblige you," he said. "Of course, you'd have to give up your other job if you wanted to come to work for me full time."
Lance fought every muscle in her body as it tried to tense. She merely frowned and lifted her shoulders in a confused shrug. "Other job?"
"Well, look at you," Madrid said. "You've got to be a supermodel in your spare time, right?"
Lance laughed. "Hardly, Mr. Madrid."
He winked at her and released her hand as he turned to Monty. "What do you think, Mr. Montgomery? Doesn't she look like a supermodel?"
"Hell, yeah," Monty said. "She's a looker, all right."
Madrid reached into his jacket pocket and withdrew a flyer. "I got this a few weeks ago, in the mail. I never throw anything out. Bad habit, I know, but one of my employees was visiting the house and caught a glimpse of it. He thumbed through — you know, idle curiosity — and he pointed something out to me."
He handed the flyer to Lance. She turned it over and went cold. The flyer was for Slap/dash, a tiny gallery in the Old Towne neighborhood. She opened it, already knowing what she would find.
SLaP/DaSH Gallery
is pleased to host the artwork of
ELAINE MALLORY,
emergent local artist, in a show entitled
LOST THINGS
Centered above the title was a black-and-white photograph of a painting. It was a cop in full uniform, the badge reflecting an unseen light source to highlight the officer's face. She was slumped forward with her elbows on her knees and her hands dangling. The painting was as realistic as a photograph, enough so that the model could be identified as the woman Madrid knew as Laura Lake.
Lance dropped the flyer and reached into her jacket with one smooth movement. She brought the gun out and leveled it at Madrid's head. He froze, but Monty and the sedan driver were both much quicker. In half a heartbeat, Lance had two guns leveled at her. Lance's finger tensed on the trigger and Madrid gave her a placatory smile. He held his hands up and calmly said, "Now, Detective, let's talk about this."
Lance knew she could drop him. Pull the trigger, move back, and duck. The other two shooters would be too shocked to react immediately and she would have a chance. She would take out Monty first, since the driver's range of motion was obscured by the open car door he was taking cover behind. One squeeze of the trigger was all it would take.
She hesitated.
Monty lowered his gun and closed the distance between them. He clocked Lance on the side of the head with the butt of his gun and she went down. The driver disarmed her and both men knelt down to pin her arms under their weight. She struggled against them as Madrid stepped forward. For a man who just had a gun pointed at his head, he was surprisingly calm. He bent down to pick up the flyer, folded it carefully, and tucked it back into his jacket pocket. "Gee, I thought you would like to know about that."
Lance growled, "Back-up is on the way."
"No, it isn't. My people have never seen you wearing a wire, they never saw you slip away to make a phone call. Believe me, they keep their eyes open for that sort of thing. Even if you did happen to have a wire on today, this warehouse is a dead zone. No cell phones and no radio frequencies." He knelt down next to her. "How much have you told your people about my operation?"
Lance stared her hatred at him.
"How many reports have you filed?"
"Go to hell."
"That's not a number, Miss Lake. Or...would you rather be called Claire? I like that name better, I think. And we're far past the point where we need to fool each other. Now, Claire, you're going to tell me how many reports you've filed, or you're going to be very, very sorry."
Lance scoffed, "How many times can you kill me, right?"
"I'm not going to kill you," Madrid said. "You know what happens to people who kill cops? You're safe in that regard."
Lance's mind raced with thoughts of what he would be willing to do to a cop.
Madrid put his hands on his thighs and pushed himself up. He sighed and gestured at the back of the building. "Take her to the back room."
The two men hoisted her up and dragged her back across the garage. Lance kicked and twisted, but their grips were too strong. Madrid followed, strolling casually in their wake with one hand in his pocket. They reached the back of the room and Monty unlocked one of the doors. He and the driver tossed Lance inside like a bag of dirty clothes.
Lance stumbled and tripped over her own feet. She hit the ground, rolled, stood up and lunged at the door just as Madrid stepped into the room. She lashed out with her right hand and caught him across the chin. Madrid grabbed her wrist and brought his foot up. He kicked the back of her knee and she went down, dangling from his hand like a caught fish. She took advantage of her position and grabbed a handful of his crotch. Madrid howled and shoved her away.
Lance spun around and aimed a kick for his head. He grabbed her leg and swung her around. She slammed into the wall, the air shoved from her lungs as he released her and she collapsed in a heap. She coughed as the wall sent a shower of white dust down on her. As she coughed, Madrid stepped forward and boxed her ears. Lance grabbed his throat, but he buried his fist in her stomach and she doubled over. It felt like her torso had become paper thin. There was no oxygen anywhere in her body, and she was drowning in a sea of drywall dust.
Madrid grabbed a handful of her hair and jerked her painfully to her feet. "Fucking cop." He grabbed a handful of her shirt and hurled her toward the far wall. To her surprise, she landed on something soft. She sat up, gasping for breath, and realized she had landed on a mattress. It was ancient, it stank of urine and shit, and had been smashed almost flat by the weight of countless bodies.
