Losers Live Longer hcc-59

by Russell Atwood

  Suicide? I didn’t buy that. Which left what? And who? Law Addison maybe? Finally disposing of a junkie ex-girlfriend? Or her husband, Ethan Ore, for the same reason and maybe one more: he might get a good movie out of it. But who else?

  I tried to put it together in my mind. I’d seen the old guy Gower entering the hotel lobby that morning as I was leaving. He must’ve been making a delivery to Michael Cassidy. If he’d known where she was, then so had whoever had tried to kill me, and long before I’d figured it out. Ahead of me the whole time. No wonder he hadn’t hunted harder for me in the park, I was no threat to him. Not as much as the kid FL!P had been or Michael Cassidy herself. They each knew his face and now they were both dead.

  The kid’s last words to me echoed in my brain.

  “That’s easy. You must—”

  I must…I must what?

  Nothing came to me. And I felt like nothing ever would. My head was swimming and my soul was afraid. I walked back to my office in a daze. I hardly even noticed my favorite sight in the city, the brilliantly lit Art Deco spire of the Chrysler Building in the distance, looking so much like the kind of rocketships we once expected our fantastic future would hold. Now it might as well have been only a scale model.

  Seated behind my desk again, I lit up a cigarette, and smoked. It didn’t help. But it didn’t hurt.

  I opened my desk drawer and found where I’d tossed my gun. I also found the sealed envelope that contained the stuff I’d grabbed out of Owl’s pockets that morning.

  Had it only been this morning? Felt like it’d all happened months ago.

  I tore open the envelope and shook its contents onto my desk.

  The receipt for George Rowell’s hotel dated 9/2/08. The broken plastic wristband from the wastebasket. The two sales leaflets for the men’s discount clothing store and the Persian rug wholesaler in Chelsea on West 21st. The pink pasteboard receipt for a parking garage.

  Parking garage?

  I looked at it like I’d never really seen it before. Maybe I hadn’t. I’d broken one of the rules—Matt would kill me—back at Metro, Matt had always tried to drum into me the golden rule: When you look, see.

  Why in the world did Owl have a parking garage receipt in his pocket? He hadn’t driven into the city, I’d found his round-trip bus ticket from New Hampshire in his briefcase. So what the hell was this?

  I looked.

  And I saw.

  It was one half of a parking garage claim check issued by E-Z Parking Garage at 446 East 10th Street. The same garage where Elena’s boyfriend Jeff worked.

  A standard parking garage receipt, it listed alphabetically all the various makes and models of cars: Acura, Audi, BMW, Buick, Cady, Chev., Chrys., Corvet, Dodge, Ford, For’gn, Honda, Hyundai, Infiniti, Jaguar, Jeep, Lexus, Lincoln, Mazda, Mercury, M-Benz, Mitsubishi, Nissan, Olds., Peugeot, Plymouth, Pontiac, Porsche, Saab, Subaru, T-Bird, Toyota, Volks., and Volvo, as well as boxes for Convert., Sta’wgn, Van, and Compact. As well as a listing of colors: Black, Blue, Brown, Gold, Gray, Green, Orange, Red, Tan, White, and Yellow. Also included were spaces for the location of the vehicle, noting floor level and parking space.

  This receipt had two holes punched in it: “Blue” and “M-Benz.”

  A blue Mercedes-Benz.

  Its location: third floor, space 17.

  I turned over the receipt. Printed on the back was the date and time the car was checked in. May 10th, 1:51 pm.

  Thinking back to the info I’d found on the web about Law Addison, it seemed to me I’d seen a mention of his driving a sky-blue Mercedes-Benz.

  Even the date rang a bell. Addison had disappeared on May 11th, the day after the date on the receipt.

  This wasn’t Owl’s parking garage receipt—it had belonged to Law Addison. Owl must’ve found it in the writing desk in Elena’s apartment. I’d seen a batch of stubs in there myself, but I’d figured they all belonged to

  Jeff—he worked at a garage, after all. But one of them could certainly have been Addison’s, if he’d been in the habit of parking his car at the garage where Jeff worked; that explained how they might have known each other, the millionaire and the grease monkey. And they must have known each other, since Jeff had somehow wound up house-sitting for him while Addison made his run for the border.

  Speaking of which…if this receipt was for Addison’s Benz, that meant Addison had never claimed his car before going on the run. Why? Because the car was too hot, too recognizable for him to flee in? Or was there some other reason?

  I got out of my chair and start pacing the office, coming back to my desk every other turn to stare down at the pink receipt.

  This meant something, I knew it. I didn’t know what, but it meant something.

  Goose-pimples rose on my arms. Excitement tingled in my nostrils.

  I took my gun out of my desk drawer and slid it into the waistband at the back of my pants.

  Suddenly I wasn’t tired anymore. I didn’t need a nap or a drink. No longer fatigued, I was electric.

  I was at the office door with one foot outside when my phone rang and yanked me back.

  I picked up the receiver. It was Sayre Rauth. She didn’t sound happy.

  “Payton, I need your help.”

  I laughed.

  “You don’t need anybody’s help. You’re too damn good.”

  “Please, listen.”

  “If it’s the rest of your files you want, you’re out of luck. They were destroyed. All that’s left are the papers you took off my desk. You’ve got it all.”

  “That’s not why I’m calling.”

  “Don’t tell me it’s to say that you love me and can’t live without me.”

  Apparently not, as she didn’t say anything for a long time. It reminded me why I hated talking on the telephone. You were never able to see the other person’s face, as if the words were all that mattered.

  “No, Payton,” she said. “It’s Elena. I’m worried about her. She left me a message that she wanted to see me. I went to her apartment. She wasn’t there, but in the hallway…I saw yellow tape, police tape, all around. Someone there told me a man was murdered this afternoon. Payton, do you know where she is?”

  I thought about it. “I might. You remember her boyfriend Jeff? The one I told you followed you from Yaffa?”

  “Sure.”

  “You know where he works?”

  “The garage, right? Over on Tenth Street? Is that where she is?”

  “If I had to make a bet,” I said, “I’d bet on her running to him, and I remember her saying he works nights. I’m headed over there right now. I’ll call and let you know what I find out. Where are you?”

  She hesitated, just a fraction, before she said, “My office. But don’t—I’ll call you. In an hour? Or I…I could come by your place?”

  I didn’t hesitate, not a fraction. I’d had all the seduction I could handle.

  “Call me in an hour.” I hung up.

  It was past three am, but scattered in the streets were still the sounds of late-night revelry, street-corner drunks hooting and laughing. Somewhere blocks away a bottle smashed, thrown forcefully to the ground. Such a tiny sound, but universal; anywhere on the planet it expressed the same demand: Know I’m here!

  The air was piss warm and, because of the orange glow of streetlamps, had a urinary hue, too. And not good piss, either, not clean piss, but that syrupy orange kind. Not even human. Cat piss. The kind you can’t get out, ever, no matter how much you scrub. Whatever’s marked by it has to be tossed out. Can’t be saved.

  Only occasionally as I walked was the humidity relieved by sharp gusts of breeze that went as soon as they came.

  Short windbursts like an engine revving, as if in the dead of morning a storm was on the way.

  Chapter Twenty: BETWEEN C & D

  The E-Z Parking garage was located on East Tenth between Avenues C and D, just across the street from a small lane called Szold Place, which ran along the side of one of the city’s outdoor pub
lic pools. All closed up for the season.

  I stopped and surveyed the parking garage from the pool side of the street. Three floors of parking with a big elevator shaft in which cars were lifted to the upper floors. Each of the partitioned levels had gaps overlooking the street with heavy black netting to keep the birds out, heavy black netting covered in starbursts of white birdshit.

  On the second level could be seen the fronts of cars facing out behind the netting. But at the third level, the spaces were all empty, no cars.

  The garage was closed, its metal roll-down gate snug to the ground. Its cave-like interior seemed to be lit by nothing but emergency exit door lights, a dim red gloom bleeding around the rounded concrete pillars. This was no way to run a business. Supposin’ I needed my car in a hurry? Just supposin’.

  But as my eyes became adjusted, I saw there was another light inside as well, on the ground floor. A pale light showing in a small glass-enclosed office just to the right of a closed metal door with a punch clock beside it.

  I rattled the cage wall of the gate, producing a ripple.

  A shadow crossed the light in the office and a black silhouette faced me, like those ghosts in Japanese horror flicks.

  The ghost went away and a few seconds later I heard a noise far off to my left. A door had opened. I went over to it. Elena was holding it open.

  Her eyes widened when she recognized me and she tried to shut the door again. But too late, I was inside. I closed the door behind me. The small areaway was lit by only a single bare 60 watt bulb dangling overhead from a cord.

  I asked, “What are you so afraid of?”

  “I…nothing, I thought—”

  “That I was someone else? Who are you expecting?”

  “I don’t expect, it’s just I no want trouble—”

  “What sort of trouble are you afraid of?”

  “Nothing. No one.”

  “Is it Sayre Rauth? Because you’ve got nothing to be frightened of there. I’ve talked with her. She isn’t after you.”

  Elena backed up a step, keeping me at arm’s length. Her expression was wary and more than a bit sad. “She get to you, this woman, and you believe her lies. Like all men.”

  “She told me she wants to help you.”

  “She help me before, when we’re in Ukraine. I know her help, I don’t want it.”

  “Well, she’s not here now, I can tell you that. And I certainly won’t hurt you.”

  She shook her head. “Go, please. I don’t want you here.”

  “Sorry, Elena. I’m not going anywhere till I get some answers.”

  “Then at least come to office, I need to be near phone.”

  “Okay, I can do that.” I followed her, keeping my hand lightly on the gun butt in my waistband. She led me to the glass-enclosed office where only a desk lamp was lit, illuminating a blotter with a few pens on it and several pink parking receipt tickets like the one I had in my pocket.

  Elena sat behind the desk and commenced to stare at the telephone, willing it to ring.

  I shut the door and stood with my back to it, looking out through the glass walls like a fish in a tank, staring into the darkened vacant parking garage and its patches of red gloom.

  I said, “Tell me something. What happened after I left your apartment this afternoon? I went back a few minutes later and you were gone.”

  “I wake up in bathroom,” she said. “I hear loud crash outside, feel floor shake. I wait a minute, go out into hallway to look. Nothing. Then I look down in basement, and I see you, you and super, at bottom of stairs. You look like you are dead, both of you. So I run—I pack quick, a few things, and I run.”

  “Yeh, well, I’m not dead. Luis is—but so is the guy who killed him. You don’t have to worry about him.”

  She shook her head. “I will never go back to that apartment.”

  “No, probably not,” I said, thinking of Sayre’s description of the building wrapped in crime-scene tape. Thinking, too, that if Addison was in town again he might want his pied à terre back. “Did you know the man you’re house-sitting for is a wanted fugitive?”

  “What?” Her eyes shot up from the cradled phone receiver to my face.

  “The police,” I said, “they want to arrest this man, along with anyone who’s been helping him. By house-sitting, say.”

  “We don’t help him,” Elena said. “We don’t even house-sit for him—we sit, yes, but it is for Jeff’s boss, he give us the keys, say go live there free, just pick up mail, pay phone, electric, nobody will know. So we do. But we never once see Mr. Andrew. We don’t help him any. I don’t think he even know we are living there.”

  “Jeff’s boss gave you the keys?”

  “His new boss, yes. The man who buy parking garage, he give them to Jeff and tell him move in, watch over apartment, keep it safe.”

  “When did this new boss buy the garage? Just recently?”

  She nodded. “June. He come in, he fire all the workers, everyone but Jeff. So now Jeff works like dog, seven days, all day. I never see him. I don’t think it’s worth it, even with the extra money.”

  “What extra money?”

  She tilted her chin down and didn’t say anything.

  “Look, Elena, honest, I’m trying to help you. But I can’t unless you answer my questions. What money?”

  She peered at me from under her brows.

  “He give Jeff special bonus, for all the extra work he gonna have to do. Seventy thousand dollars. Too much money, I think, like back home when they pay us extra for modeling because they need us also keep our mouth shut. But Jeff explain to me that things is different here, they sometimes pay you seventy thousand dollar to work in a garage. I don’t know. It’s not sound right to me, but he say, so…” Her English, never great, was getting worse as she became more agitated. I had to strain to make sense of what she was saying.

  “This money,” I said. “The seventy thousand dollars. That’s what got Sayre worried. She discovered how much money the two of you had in the bank, and figured you had to be doing something illegal.”

  “No, nothing illegal, we done nothing!”

  Maybe you haven’t, I thought, but what about your boyfriend. I asked, “Where is Jeff?”

  I could see it pained her to answer. “He was here, but he leave more than an hour ago.” She glanced over at a clock on the wall. “Hour twenty-five minutes.”

  “Did he say where he was going?”

  She shook her head.

  “No, just said he need to see his boss. He said he’d just be couple minutes, or will call me if it’s longer. They talk on phone, Jeff and boss. He was shouting, so I hear.”

  “What were they talking about?”

  “Money. Always money. Jeff say seventy thousand not enough if he got to work all the time, seven days, every week, on and on. He say just close down garage, be better. I think. I didn’t understand. He was shouting and… something about closed-off top floor of the garage. Jeff say boss tell him he pick him up out front and they drive somewhere to talk.”

  The closed-off top floor. I thought about the pink ticket in my pocket. Addison’s car had been parked up there.

  I told her, “Wait here.”

  “Where you go?”

  “The top level,” I said. “I want to check something out.”

  She said, “You need take stairs—Jeff say he turned off elevator for night.”

  “Good.”

  I found the stairs by following the red lights of the exit signs. Beyond the door the stairwell was lit by fluorescent fixtures, which made my climb brighter but no more cheerful.

  I opened the door at three and came out in a vast, empty space. I couldn’t see a single car. Just concrete walls, concrete floor, concrete ceiling; I was surrounded by giant slabs of it as if in a tomb.

  My footsteps echoed in the chamber as I walked along toward the far end. About ten feet in, I found a bend in a dividing wall and on it a junction box with four light switches. The first I tried lit u
p a quadrant behind me to the left. Empty. I switched it off and tried another. This one lit up an area on the other side of the dividing wall. I went around to look.

  In the far corner, a single vehicle was entirely enclosed under a cloth cover pulled down to its wheels, snug as a hood on a kidnap victim’s head.

  I circled it until I found a bungee cord release, then loosened the cover and dragged it off the car.

  It was a sky-blue Mercedes-Benz.

  All the windows were open a crack. I lifted the handle of the driver’s door and it was unlocked.

  Both the front and back seats were empty. There was a strong smell of gasoline fumes. I looked down and saw a strip of oily rag on each of the floor mats. Just one strip, deliberately placed on each of the four mats.

  I opened the glove compartment. As usual, no gloves—but strangely, nothing else either. No car registration or owner’s manual, not even a pair of sunglasses or a peppermint. I swung it shut.

  I sat in the driver’s seat, let my hands hover over the steering wheel without touching it. My feet could barely touch the pedals. The man who drove the car was a good three inches taller than me, making him something over six feet.

  I reached under the steering wheel and found the lever that unlatched the trunk.

  I watched it rise in the rear view, smooth and inexorable as the coffin lid in a vampire flick.

  I walked around to the back of the car and looked in.

  “Shit—” I jumped and did a little sissy-pants jig. “Shit.”

  I’d been expecting something like it, but my imagination didn’t do the sight justice. I couldn’t look directly at him at first, had to build up resolve, casting glances first at the periphery, the thickness of the layers of plastic he was cocooned in, the negative space around his body. In the corners at the bottom of the trunk, beside his head and his feet, were several open cans of Raid and other insecticides.

  Finally I got myself under control and looked straight at him. Like all horrors, it wasn’t worse than I imagined, just different, more specific, alive with details my mind never could’ve conceived.

  I had to unwrap him. It wasn’t the right thing to do, it wasn’t the smart thing to do, and it sure wasn’t the tasteful thing. But I had to unwrap him and know for sure.