“Yeah, the way things are going the guy’s going to think I spend all my time eating instead of looking for his daughter.”
“Is that what this is about, a missing kid? I’m Vice, remember?”
“You’re also somebody who knows something about everything that’s going down in this city. Besides, it’s three kids, not one. I’ve been thinking about the vice angle. You think these kids are just being abducted for who knows what, or you think this could be some kind of child porn or prostitution thing?”
Rain wiped his mouth. Child sex crimes really got to his old partner.
“I know the cases. Downtown is keeping a tight lid on them, but word gets around, you know. None of the kiddie porn we’ve turned up in the last year has any of these kids in it. Sex Crimes has pulled in every known perv and procurer in the area. Nobody knows nothin’ and some of ‘em would be glad to rat out a pal if it would get them a pass. But, here’s something you don’t know—-a lot of street kids are coming up missing too. This goes back two, maybe three years. Nobody paid much attention because these kids come and go. They got nobody to report ‘em gone and, mostly, nobody who cares, except maybe that babe who runs the runaway program over on third? Catherine?”
“She’s a nun, Rain, not a babe,” Bishop interjected. “Sister Catherine.”
“Yeah, well we didn’t have any nuns looked like that when I was a kid. Anyway, she’s been harassing Missing Persons about disappearing kids. Ones from the shelter. She claims they wouldn’t have just disappeared like that. Claims they were kidnapped just like the kids you’re looking for. Only these kids are older. Fourteen, fifteen, even a couple older than that. She says the older ones wouldn’t have gone quietly.”
“I guess it’s possible they were drugged,” Bishop said.
“Yeah, but then you’ve still got what? A hundred and thirty, hundred and forty, pounds of unconscious kid to deal with. Got to be more than one person involved.”
“Were all these kids’ boys?”
“Most, not all. Both sexes is kind of unusual for a serial killer. If they’re leaving the country though, it might be some kind of kid-by-mail-order thing, but seventeen-year-old boys? Naw.”
Bishop decided he’d try the Tesslovich angle. He pushed the call button for another beer. Rain didn’t drink. He said it slowed his brain down, kept him from computing the odds and he didn’t like that. Rain was a guy that needed to calculate the odds, whether it was a long shot on the ponies or the odds of solving a case, so he could kick the shit out of them. Rain needed to win.
“You know this lawyer, Tesslovich?”
Rain gave him a squint. “Everybody knows that scum sucker. Come up against him in court and you can kiss your bust good bye. Why?”
Bishop hesitated. Rain had been his friend as well as his partner. He’d trusted him then, but the man also had his own skin to look out for. The department was full of corruption and just keeping your job there meant you compromised something.
As if sensing Bishop’s hesitation, Rain said, “Hey. It’s me man. I know what you’re thinkin’, but we’re solid. You gotta believe that.”
Bishop nodded. “It’s just that this case is beginning to take on a whole load of strange.”
Rain waited.
“I was tracking down some rumors about Tesslovich and he seems to have, um, disappeared.”
“How long ago?”
“Not very.”
“Hmmm.” Bishop knew that Rain was hating not being able to say: Yeah, I knew that.
“Not on the radar, huh?”
Rain shook his head. “I’ll ask around.”
“Carefully.” Bishop warned. “Like I said, we may be into the weird and dangerous here.” He picked up the check the waiter had just discreetly inserted between the closed curtains, counted out some bills and added a generous tip--discretion wasn’t free at The Hidden City. Then he handed Rain one of his cards.
“Bishop Investigations,” Rain read out-loud. “Classy. Goes nicely with that mouse under your eye.”
“It has my cell phone number on it,” Bishop said. “Keep in touch. And I mean it about being careful.”
“Hey,” Rain said. “I’m the Rain Mann, remember? Careful is my middle name.”
- 7 -
The Raptor told Bishop that Mouser wouldn’t be at the café until after midnight. Bishop couldn’t imagine where the young hacker might hang out when he wasn’t doing a deep dive into the free-fire zone. Where did a kid like that live? Did he have the kind of parents who just didn’t care whether their kid’s bed was empty at three a.m.? Or maybe he was on his own. A runaway who’d managed to score a computer and use it to earn a few bucks.
He and Rain had left the restaurant separately and Bishop took the opportunity to stretch his legs, work out the kinks the beating had left in his muscles, hoping the bustle on the sidewalk would distract him for an hour or so. He began to wander, looking in shop windows at displays of tourist junk, Chinese patent medicines and weird roots and even snakes, pickled in jars of sweet rice wine. He moved past produce stands with bins full of unknown vegetables, held his breath as he passed butcher shops that displayed hanging duck and pig carcasses, and crates of live fowl stacked on top of each other outside the stores.
Chinatown never slept, the stores were open at all hours. The streets always had at least a few pedestrians scurrying from place to place. Tonight, the traffic seemed mostly made up of dinner goers; couples and student types eating on the cheap, tourists, and a mix of Chinese going about their evening activities. It looked like a normal evening, but Bishop had noticed ever since he’d met the mysterious El and found out about her belief in demons, he’d started looking at the people around him in a different way. The scuttle and stride of fellow pedestrians seemed ripe with possibilities.
Who would know human from demon? And what was the threat, really? Too much for his tired brain to contemplate: It was time for that coffee.
* * *
Although it was still before midnight when Bishop walked through the door, Mouser was already sitting at the bar drinking coffee with his laptop open in front of him. The young hacker wore a faded, over-size red t-shirt with a flaking logo for some Goth band called ‘Death Knell’. His faded, ripped jeans were baggy and puddled over his sneakers like a set of casino drapes. Both wrists sported black elastic braces.
Mouser looked up, spotting Bishop. “Dude!” he grinned. “What a night! Well, a day, then night, but who’s tracking. I’ve been surfing the minefields of the information highway. It’s been wild. The off-route blog-o-sphere is rife with rumor if you can mole your way into it without getting nuked. Plus, I found a guy, who knows a guy, who knew a guy that got snatched just like one of your kids, and he wasn’t the first. We can get face time with him later. When will El get here?”
“How much coffee have you had?” Bishop asked him.
“Lost track.”
Bishop sighed. “Beer,” he said to the old bartender who was sitting on a stool on the other side of the counter reading a tattered paperback. “Actually; a beer, a shot of Jack and a double espresso.”
He steered Mouser over to a table.
“Whoa—JD.” Mouser looked impressed.
“This is a onesie, kid. To stop your head from taking off and flying around the room like an escaped balloon. The beer and coffee are for me.”
He’d just gotten the liquor into the kid when El walked in the door. She looked surprised to see him. It only confirmed Bishop’s suspicion that each one of them had been trying to get to Mouser first.
“What are you doing?” Ariel asked. “How much do you expect to get out of him if he’s drunk?”
“Drunk? He has enough caffeine in his system to run a small city for a week. I’m attempting to apply an antidote.”
“How did he afford that many espressos?”
“They seem to be on my tab, along with another disgusting pizza combo.” Bishop examined the grubby check that had arrived with the drinks. �
�Forty-eight bucks worth.”
He looked over his shoulder at the bartender. “I’m cutting him off,” he said loudly.
The bartender didn’t bother to look up.
Mouser was paging through his files. “I looked up the missing kids,” he said. “Getting into the CPD is insultingly easy for a man of my talents. The three you gave me are just the tip of the iceberg. I got eight over the last three years, all under the age of twelve when they were snatched. This is not including street kids, which we’ll get back to.”
“The M.O.’s similar. They were all taken from public places. Two from the park, one from a school yard, three from a shopping mall. One from a video arcade at the movies while mom and dad were buying popcorn. No trace. The cops are trying to keep the lid on a serial killer panic, but that lid’s about to blow. I did a comparison of victims: age, sex, where they lived, family income, credit history, parent’s professions, schools, childcare, after school activities, domestic help, nannies. This is where it gets interesting. Although only three of the kids were young enough for nannies, all their nannies were foreign--two Russians, one Serb. Different agencies, but the same general circumstances. Only one nanny actually ‘disappeared’. The other two were ‘dismissed’ when the child wasn’t found. No kids, no work. Plus, they were supposed to be keeping an eye on the young ‘uns when the abductions took place--that’s gotta go against you when it comes to job performance. Those two are also nowhere to be found. Never went back to their agencies, never left the country by any traceable route. That probably means forged identities, fake passports, bogus letters of recommendation. The usual illegal alien stuff.”
“Take a breath, kid.” Bishop pushed the remains of his beer in Mouser’s direction. “What about Tesslovich?”
“Patience, Bish, I ran your Nicolai Tesslovich, Esq. through the sieve, and guess what? Russian immigrant. Supposedly came here with his mom from Soviet Georgia when he was seventeen. High School GED, college, then law school. He has transcripts but no history in the places he went to school. He’s not in dorm records, didn’t have a cafeteria card, no driver’s licenses, checking accounts or earnings tied to his social security number until twelve years ago, when he turned up as a full-fledged member of the bar, and soon to be practicing attorney.”
“So Tesslovich and the nannies all had fake identities?”
“Right. Also, no word on Tesslovich being missing. Although, how long can that last? He’s on the court calendar for Thursday. Tongues will wag if he doesn’t show up.”
Ariel had signaled the bartender for her own coffee and was lacing it with packets of sugar as Mouser wound down.
“Makes sense,” she said. “Set yourself up as a refugee from hard times in another country. Easier to get away with ‘lost’ records, and an undocumentable past. If you look a little strange, you’re just a foreigner who’s come to the US seeking a better life.”
“What about the blogs you were talking about?” Bishop asked. His double espresso was circling his brain like a runaway jet ski. He had a new respect for Mouser’s metabolism.
Mouser grinned. “Last night I managed to peel my way through a few layers of heavy security and get down to some way underground blog sites. These people are into some heavy conspiracy stuff and they’ve caught on to the demon-thing. Not only that, they’re trying to map them.”
“Map them?”
“Yeah, like identify /who/where/what. Names, places, connections, species. It was gold, dude. I got some links for Tesslovich. Not just clients who’re probably demons, but some heavy hitters around town.”
Bishop pulled a small notebook out of his jacket. “Now we’re talking. You have some names?”
Mouser grinned. “How about Chief of Police E. Wayne Frankle (the “E” is for Elmore, by the way), and Yamazaki Kiriyenko?”
“Who?”
“Yamazaki Kiriyenko. Better known as Zaki. Japanese mother, Russian father. Currently reviled as the Anti-Christ of the tech industry.”
“I thought that was Bill Gates,” Bishop said.
“Dude, Bill Gates is an Eagle Scout compared to this guy. Zaki doesn’t just crush his competitors, he folds, spindles and mutilates them.”
“Then why don’t we hear about him, like we do Gates? As far as that goes, if he’s a competition killer why hasn’t he gone after Microsoft or Apple?”
“Zaki’s ruthless, but he’s also low-profile. Stealth competition. Cutting edge development. Niche marketing. The Blogs say he’s into nano-technology now. A robot in every brain or something. He lives here, just outside the city.”
“And he has something to do with missing kids?”
“No, man,” Mouser gave a long-suffering sigh. “He’s a link to Tesslovich. Apparently, they very pally. And he’s probably a demon, per the blogs. He’s a big sports nut—owns a soccer team, likes ice-hockey, and—-get this—-pro-wrestling. That steroid case on TV that’s always tossing his opponents out of the ring, Dimitri “The Demon” Diminovich? Guy’s under contract to Zaki.”
It was Bishop’s turn to sigh.
“Do you have his address Mouser?” Ariel asked.
“Do girls have feathers?” Mouser copied an address from his screen onto a napkin, then stabbed a button on his keyboard. Pages started to slide into the tray on a nearby printer.
“Just what do you have in mind?” Bishop asked Ariel.
“I thought I’d do a fly-over,” she told him, folding the napkin into her pocket before Bishop could see it.
“You’re not going without me,” Bishop grabbed the pages out of the printer and shoved them into the inside pocket of his jacket. “It’s going to be a drive-by, and I’m doing the driving.”
Mouser yawned. Closed the lid of his laptop and kept on yawning, like once started, he couldn’t stop. Ariel patted him on the shoulder and motioned to Bishop that they should get going.
As they left the Caf’ Bishop asked, “Is the kid going to be all right? Maybe we should drop him off somewhere.” He looked over his shoulder. Mouser’s head was already on the table.
“Don’t worry,” Ariel told him. “Ez will look after him.”
“Is that a good thing?” Bishop couldn’t imagine the stolid bartender taking an interest in much of anything, let alone Mouser.
“Ez has hidden talents. Mouser will be fine.”
“Do I want to know what hidden talents?”
“Probably not.”
Bishop nodded. “Ignorance is bliss.”
- 8 -
Ariel had reluctantly agreed to let Bishop drive to the expensive lakeside community where Zaki’s compound was located. She could have flown there and been back in half the time, but it was either go along, or let him galump around on his own, calling attention to himself and messing up any element of surprise they might need in the future.
If Zaki was a demon, he’d have more than normal security, some of it undetectable to human senses. He might already know about Bishop and Tesslovich. Hell, he might even know about her and Tesslovich, although she hadn’t exactly taken the stairs or left any witnesses.
She kept her eyes fixed on the window as the highway slid by, illuminated only by their headlights and a wan quarter moon. She was mad at herself. She’d been late getting to Mouser and now Bishop had all the information she did. This whole breach of secrecy wasn’t her fault, exactly, but there weren’t any excuses either. And Bishop wasn’t the only problem. She was exceeding the instructions she’d been given on this job. There would be consequences.
“ . . . Zaki guy on your radar?”
“What?”
“Zaki. Is he a demon?”
“Never heard of him,” Ariel confessed. “But anything is possible. Today’s demons have moved beyond human possession and bubbling vats of body parts into the mainstream. These days, most of them look just like you and me.”
Bishop raised an eyebrow.
“Okay,” Ariel conceded. “Like you. I doubt we’ll be able to get anywhere near him, anyway. Guys
like that have heavy security, dogs, guns, spells.
“Spells?”
“If he’s a demon, I mean. There’ll be wards to protect him. They’re kind of like silent alarms connected to booby traps. Hopefully they don’t extend beyond his property line. Anyway, they’re better at protecting the inside of buildings because they tend to deteriorate after too much time out in the open.”
“Like how much time?” Bishop sounded hopeful.
“Oh, in this climate,” Ariel estimated, “They’d only last about five years or so without being recharged.”
Bishop took the exit ramp to Lakeshore Dunes Estates. “Swell,” he said. “Somebody else who’s just dying to tell me the odds.”
At the top of the ramp, a yellow, hyphenated line divided a narrow blacktop into two lanes that disappeared into the darkness in both directions.
“Which way?” Bishop asked.
Ariel dug the napkin out of her coat pocket.
“Right,” she said. “Then first left. About three miles down that road we start looking for addresses, or names. His property is called Gates of Eden.”
“Not too pretentious. Seems a little out-in-the-middle-of-nowhere though.”
Ariel shrugged. “The ultra-rich don’t need to run to out to the 7-Eleven for a quart of milk and a box of pampers, they have people to do that. What they want is distance from the herd. I bet Zaki has a helicopter pad and his own pilot just so his limo doesn’t have to fight the traffic on the way to his office.”
Once they’d made the second turn the woods seemed to be the only thing on either side of the road. No driveways, mailboxes or visible lights from dwellings of any sort.
Then the wall started. Set back about twenty feet from the shoulder, it had been built on a low berm, which made it seem even taller than its regulation ten feet. It appeared to be made of solid concrete covered in a layer of decorative stone. Topped with a discrete spiral of razor wire set at an outward angle, its square cap was designed to further discourage the ambitious trespasser. Small metal plaques set every 30 feet warned that the wire was electrified.
Raptor: Urban Fantasy Noir Page 3
