by C. B. Salem
Problem was the boss was angry. This hadn’t been the way the plan was supposed to go, and they had been working on it for months. If the boss worked on a plan for months, it worked. That was how it was. Plans were made to work. You didn’t get a reputation like the boss had unless your plans worked.
They’d all been put on high-alert since this morning, when shit really began going down. Checked into the hotel and waited for word. Boss said to wait. Soon Jack-O, hired muscle Roy occasionally used for heavy jobs, knocked on the door and came in. Said he was sent by the boss. So even that was being covered for him.
He looked over at Jack-O now. Jack-O was sitting on the edge of the other bed, checking his gun to make sure it wouldn’t jam. Vid screen was hung above the dresser and switched on, but the volume was down and neither of them was watching. Its light shone off Jack-O’s shaved head in a cool, inorganic glow. A machine glow. New God, except for maybe pharms since the pharm boom.
Roy shifted nervously. “You know what it’s all about, then? The hang up? What are they waiting for?”
Jack-O shrugged without taking his eyes from his gun. He had the demeanor of someone who made a virtue out of keeping things very simple and keeping himself in the dark. “Don’t know,” he said gruffly. “Don’t think it much matters to me.”
“All seems a bit mysterious, though, doesn’t it? Keeping us in the dark like this. Heard nothing but plans and failures. Real general. Just seems strange. At the very least, I would hear a little more, in most cases.”
The bald man shrugged again. “If that’s how they want it, so long as their money’s good. Sounds to me like this is more your problem than mine.”
Roy snorted, then pressed his lips together. At least the bastard was honest. This was the problem with random hired guns without any ambition to move up in the world. They didn’t care about anyone but themselves.
He thought over the last few hours. How Tatum had gotten away, somehow, without him tailing. It was like he was a ghost. Rich bastard like that had no business being that slick. That slippery. Like an eel, he’d been. No car or anything, even. Didn’t take the same car back that he’d taken in. Just gone without a trace.
Now they’d gotten word that he’d never shown up to work this morning. Which meant he’d been properly spooked. That was probably old Roy’s fault. He’d really screwed the pooch this time. Wonder he wasn’t dead already. By the boss’s reputation, he ought to be. Put in a job on The Exchange and watch the result roll in.
The comm buzzed, just once for a message. He jumped and picked it up to read the message. The ID was from the boss.
“We’re on,” he said to Jack-O, standing up, after scanning the message very quickly. They were off to the car in minutes. He’d better not fuck up this time.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Tatum’s city penthouse was on the north side of downtown, in a building that had a view of both the park and the lake. It was an old building, with elaborate stonework that had been the style in the beginning of the last century.
As Kristina stepped out of the cab, she couldn’t imagine actually living in this neighborhood, never mind a penthouse she assumed cost ten times as much as she and her entire family would make in their lifetime. This kind of luxury didn’t even seem like real life.
Throwing her shoulders back and trying to project confidence, she walked in the building’s old-fashioned, gold-framed doors and up to the doorman’s desk.
She guessed the doorman was an older gentleman by the way he sat, but of course he just looked like another Tatum. A Tatum dressed in in a cheap white dress shirt and a black tie that Tatum wouldn’t be caught dead in, but a Tatum nonetheless.
The doorman smiled at her frigidly as she approached the desk. “Can I help you?” he asked, half through his nose.
Kristina returned the smile as she scanned the desk to see if she could guess how the DNA scan worked. She could not.
“A resident here informed me that my DNA has been added to his security system,” she said crisply, using her best professional voice. “Can you assist me with that?”
The doorman narrowed his eyes. “And which resident would that be, Ms . . .”
“Andersen. The resident’s name is Landon Tatum.”
The doorman smiled and gestured toward a minute device that had just popped up from the desk, right next to an old-fashioned silver bell. “Very well Ms. Andersen. In that case go ahead and authenticate in that device there. I should warn you, however, that the police will be automatically alerted should you fail to authenticate and you would be forced to leave the premises immediately or risk being arrested.”
“I understand.”
She held her breath and pressed her finger up against the pad. It turned green.
The doorman’s eyes opened wide and he blushed, a combination that looked silly on Tatum’s normally composed face. An elevator dinged open to her left.
“Which floor do I go to for Mr. Tatum’s unit?” she asked.
The doorman picked his jaw up and shook his head, as if shaking off the shock. “That’s his private elevator,” he said. “Just hit the top button.”
“Thank you,” she said, walking to the door. She hit the button once she was inside and watched his smiling face—like Tatum’s but eager to please instead of waiting to be pleased—as the door closed. Amazing what the right connections would get you.
The elevator was bereft of ads, something that seemed out of place. She couldn’t detect any aero pharms either. Ironic that the one place in the city you could go to be free of ads and aeros was in the residence of the man who got so rich off both.
The elevator came to the top floor and the door opened. Kristina gasped. Landon Tatum lived in sheer luxury.
She’d been expecting something modern, cold and clinical, appropriate for a man who had made a fortune on products developed in labs. Instead, she found a home as warm and full of life as she could imagine.
Immaculately preserved old hardwood floors stretched out before her as she exited the elevator, hovered over by a ceiling at least eleven feet high. The elevator opened into a gorgeous foyer with a marble statue of the Greek god Hermes sitting atop a wooden table that appeared to be carved from a single piece of oak.
She turned past the foyer, already self-conscious, and entered the great room. A mezzanine with black metal bars surrounded three sides of the room, with dueling stairs on the side opposite where she’d entered. A dark, tufted leather couch took along with similar arm chairs provided ample seating, and a vantage point for an enormous vid screen on the wall immediately to her right. An enormous, colorful, highly intricate Turkish rug held the space together.
Above, on the mezzanine level, hung a trio of large abstract paintings. The bright colors provided a break from the dark walls and curtains. She was pretty sure the paintings were from the early part of the last century, just based on her trips to the Art Institute.
The other break from the dark curtains came from the stunning floor to ceiling windows, which provided gorgeous light. She walked up to one and looked out. The view of the lake and the beach made her feel like she was in the nicest hotel she’d ever stayed at. In her own city.
She shook her head and continued on, trying to keep her head in the right place and remember what she was there for.
From the great room she made her way to the kitchen. It was spotless. She opened the fridge and found milk, eggs, juice—all the containers varying degrees of empty. Not the fridge of someone who knew they were about to skip town and was preparing for it, in any case.
With nothing else of note in the kitchen, she continued to wander. Eventually, she found what she believed to be Tatum’s bedroom. After telling herself this was purely for her investigation, she walked in.
The bedroom occupied a corner of the building and had floor to ceiling windows with the dark brown curtains half-drawn. She looked out on the lake on one side and the city sprawling south on the other. She could see Tatum had maximized the
effect of his view every morning.
The bed, with its charcoal comforter and bright, crisp white sheets, was made without a wrinkle. Either a house keeper had come in this morning, or Tatum had never made it home last night.
There was nothing but an alarm clock and a control for the vid screen on the black nightstand. It matched the rest of the house—practically spotless. Perfect for coming home to. Awful for investigating.
From the bedroom she made her way to Tatum’s walk-in closet, complete with a glowing shelf for his fine leather dress shoes and a wide array of suits and dress shirts. Still no clues. From there she searched his master bathroom—again, spotless—which, apart from some brief fantasies about a truly amazing glass-walled shower complete with multiple showerheads and a floor-to-ceiling window out to the city, was fruitless.
Frustrated, she exited the master suite and explored some more, until she pushed a heavy, intricately carved door open to a room with bookshelves on all sides and a massive oak desk in the middle. Papers were scattered everywhere.
This must be his home office, the only room in the house that was completely untouched. Bingo. She walked forward, eager to get started.
A comm rang out. She jumped, not realizing until that instant how quiet it had been in the empty unit.
She tapped her pocket repeatedly, trying to fish her comm out for several seconds. Then she froze.
The comm in her pocket wasn’t vibrating. The ringing wasn’t her. Someone was calling a comm that had been left behind in the unit.
She searched frantically for the source of the noise and quickly realized it was coming from the desk. As it continued to ring out, she shifted papers around, searching for it.
Her own comm buzzed in her pocket. She froze again. This was definitely her.
Heart pounding, she fished her comm out of her pocket answered. “This is Kristina Andersen.”
“Kristina, thank god!”
She blinked twice before placing the voice. “Kevin?”
“Kris, where are you?”
The buzzing from the first comm had stopped. She sighed and turned away from the desk, her heart still pounding. Definitely Kevin. “I’m investigating a case, why?”
“Tatum?”
“How did you hear about that? Did you talk to Tom?”
“Listen, where are you?” He was breathing hard.
“I’m at Tatum’s penthouse, actually. Kevin, what’s going on?”
“Shit. You need to get out of there Kris. Now. Right now. Is there a back way out? They might be watching the building.”
“What?” She peeked her head out of the office’s doorway and scanned the hallway quickly. “I don’t know. Who’s watching the building?”
“Get out of there Kris. Right now. This minute. Meet me at The Velvet. I’m driving there. Did you drive?”
“Took a cab.”
“Good. Get another one. Right now. We need to talk to Teddy to figure out what the fuck is going on here.”
Her heart thumped like it was trying to escape. She’d only heard her brother like this once before. “Kevin, you’re scaring me.”
“Good. Get over to The Velvet. Please. There’s some bad shit going on, Kris.”
She took a deep breath to steady herself. Adrenaline surged through her and she turned the corner slightly, feeling a bit more in control. “Okay,” she said. “I’m leaving now.”
With one last longing look at the possible treasure trove that was Landon Tatum’s home office, she left. Whatever was there would have to wait.
CHAPTER EIGHT
Rose practically wanted to skip to work. Even a day later, she couldn’t believe her luck. She mused on it as she walked to work from the train station. How much easier could fifty grand be than that?
All they’d wanted her to do was drop off a little physical drive to Tatum. Give it to him and make sure nobody saw. That was it. One little move and she got fifty grand. Get the drive from her locker, find a way to get it to Tatum discretely. Easy.
With the fifty grand that had just shown up in her bank account earlier that day, she could pay off all her credit lines and even put some money away. Hell, depending on how things went, she might be able to stop stripping and go to school after this year. So long as she stayed away from heavy pharms.
She smiled. Dad gone, mom on the bottle, dickwad boyfriend who’d pumped all their money away into his arm—it was about time she caught a break. That was how life was supposed to work, right?
***
It took her about twenty minutes in a cab to get to The Velvet. Kristina used the time to run everything through her head. Over and over, from every angle she could think of.
Kevin could be paranoid—it was his job as a private security provider—but he sounded even more panicked than normal. This wasn’t just professional concern. He was genuinely scared for her.
That meant she was looking over her shoulder and out the window constantly. The inability to distinguish faces made this harder, but she could still look out for cars. So that was what she did.
By the time her cab pulled up in front of the seedy strip club, she had been suspicious and relieved a half-dozen times. It looked like she hadn’t been followed.
She paid and walked inside, expecting it to be quiet. But no, even at two-thirty on a Wednesday, she could hear the low bass of music blaring like it was two in the morning. Catcalling whistles came from the patrons for the performers on stage. Without a bit of outside light getting through the doors, time seemed to basically stop here.
She walked down the dimly lit hallway, surprised there were no bouncers, and emerged into the main area. There she looked up at the stage and saw a woman she didn’t recognize performing under blue stage lights. The spotlights swirled around as the woman took off her top to reveal silicone enhanced, perfectly round breasts and a tattoo down the middle of her cleavage.
Definitely not Ms. Pink, nor the brunette with Fordelli. A half-dozen men who looked like Tatum but mostly definitely were not him splayed themselves around the room, mostly sitting alone at small cocktail tables and dressed in baggy clothes that looked optimized for comfort. A few of them sent her some catcalls. Kristina felt a surge of pity. Even the back room she had been in the night before was a far cry from this sorry display.
From the performing area her eyes drifted to the side wall where the bar was. There she saw two men seemingly arguing, standing in front of the bar. One of them was wearing her brother’s trademark blood-red long-sleeve shirt and dark jeans. He’d made it the uniform of his company.
“Teddy, just please tell me you’re not hiding anything,” he said. His upright posture betrayed his military past. “This is my sister I’m talking about. You know if I had any option I wouldn’t care about playing ball, but this is different.”
That was definitely Kevin.
Teddy wore Tatum’s skin too, but other than that he was just as Kristina had remembered him. His body blended with Tatum made him a bit on the squatter side, as Tatum clones went, and he walked with a strut that looked like he practiced it in the mirror. His outfit—black cotton shirt, black slacks with a sheen, a white tie and cheap white faux leather shoes—completed the effect.
“Kev, I know nothing, okay?” Teddy wrung his hands together. “Nothing. I’m a businessman and I hosted a birthday party last night for clients who paid on time and didn’t cause any trouble. The girls were all happy and they made plenty of money. What do you want from me?”
Kevin opened his mouth to respond but then seemed to catch a glimpse of Kristina and rushed over. “You’re okay!” he exclaimed. His big arms squeezed her in a tight hug. “Some bad rumblings out there, Kris. I was just talking to Teddy about it.”
“More like keeping me from operating my business,” Teddy grumbled over Kevin’s shoulder. “Do you have anything you want from me or can I go back to work?”
Kevin squared to the slightly shorter man. “I do, actually. What was she wearing last night?”
&
nbsp; Teddy opened his eyes wide in confusion. “Kristina? I mean, do you want me to describe it for you?”
“No,” Kevin said. “I mean where did it come from?”
She looked between the two men and Kevin’s question clicked. He was thinking of ways she could have been drugged, and sabotaging a uniform would be a great way to do it. A little pin would be all you needed. Just a scratch.
Teddy looked between the two of them and wrung his hands together. “Same place as all the other girls,” he said. “There was a generous donation from a patron. A gift, really.”
She looked at her brother then back at Teddy. “So those were all new?” she asked.
Teddy smiled smarmily, a shifty expression that seemed to morph from one thing to another quickly. “Patrons do this kind of thing all the time, especially for a big event. Want to get gifts for the girls, I mean. You know how it is. In this case it was new drink-girl uniforms.”
Kevin took a step toward him. “But you don’t know who did it?” he asked. “Sent them in?”
Teddy shook his head. “I don’t exactly do background checks on my patrons when they offer gifts,” he said. “In this case I came in, one of the girls told me they’d had these uniforms laid out in the locker room. I inspected her outfit quickly, decided they were nice, and that was that. I have a lot of stuff going on, you know. Especially for a big event.”
“Which girl was it?” Kristina asked. “And where are the uniforms now?”
“Uniforms are at the wash. And the girl was Rose. You might remember her. She had a pink wig on last night. Always wears one.”
Kristina’s face lit up. “Oh, perfect! That’s just who I was meaning to talk to anyway.”
Teddy nodded rapidly, seemingly satisfied this was finally starting to turn. “Very good! See, Kev, this is all getting squared away.”
Kristina ignored her brother’s skeptical expression. “When can I talk to her? Or where. I’ll go and visit her at home if it’s possible.”
“Rose should be coming in shortly, actually. She’s scheduled to be on stage at three.”