by C. S. Poe
And the mailbox door rocked open.
Inside, propped at an angle to fit in the narrow space, was a cell phone in a sealed evidence bag. With Jake’s name and signature on the first line in the chain of custody.
Grabbing the phone, he ran upstairs to call Ophelia Hayes.
CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE
Rufus considered, for a very brief moment, that it’d finally happened.
He had died.
He saw nothing, felt nothing, heard nothing.
And certainly, that’s what death was all about.
Nothing.
But it wasn’t possible. If Rufus was considering the state of his own deadness, then by that very fact, he wasn’t dead. He couldn’t be dead and conscious of the condition at the same time. At least, Rufus was pretty certain. Because what sort of shit afterlife was that otherwise, where he existed in a haze of nothing, alone but for his thoughts?
That wasn’t even Shakespearean in tragedy. It was just ridiculous.
Rufus forced his eyes open and then reality came crashing in—an assault on all his senses. He took a shaky breath and forced everything to come apart and break down into smaller pieces so he could study them one at a time and not be overwhelmed by the situation.
Rufus’s head hurt. Badly. So he’d been struck.
His vision, as he tried to take in his surroundings, doubled when he focused too hard. Not simply a whack over the head—a concussion, perhaps. Rufus tried again, carefully taking in the room around him. It wasn’t that big, and the fluorescent overheads were only on near the door, opposite of Rufus. One lightbulb flickered, and its buzzing filled the silence.
The room smelled too. Musty, like it hadn’t been opened in over a year. But more immediate than that was the distinct odor associated with an auto body shop. Metal. Motor oil. Grease. Those little pine tree air fresheners.
Rufus carefully rolled onto his side. He was lying on a sheet of moldy cardboard. He reached out to touch the floor, confirmed it was cement, because what else could be so cold and so hard underneath his bony hip and ass, then belatedly realized there was a large zip tie around his wrists.
That’s when all those individual assessments slammed back together, like the north and south poles of magnets in a science class experiment. Rufus scrambled into a sitting position. His breathing was coming quick now, which made his head pound harder. His fingers were already tingling in that telltale manner that warned life was about to get rough if Rufus didn’t get control over himself, and quick.
Don’t panic. Be smart. Don’t panic. Be smart.
Think back, through the pain and fog, Rufus told himself as he tried to recount what happened to have landed him… wherever he was. He’d left the apartment and slid down the handrails. Right, because he was going to check 9F, J. Brower. And Sam was still upstairs, still upset.
Rufus felt as if his heart actually stopped beating for a moment. Where was Sam?
He craned his neck to the left, ignored the pain that ricocheted around the back of his skull like a pinball game, and examined the room more carefully. There were stacks of boxes everywhere, old and forgotten. But no Sam. The smell of auto body persisted, and Rufus considered he was in a storage room, maybe on the second floor, above a garage. And maybe Sam was in the garage. Rufus turned toward the lit-up part of the room again and was knocked so hard upside the head that he briefly saw white stars, black spots, then red.
Red?
He was lying on the floor again, with blood dripping from the side of his head and into his eye. Rufus grunted and flopped onto his back with his tied hands in front of him. Looming over him was a big burly motherfucker with a shaved head and nose that’d been broken and set crooked. He probably had a name like Mad Max. No—Bruno.
Rufus started laughing. “Aren’t you handsome.”
Bruno snarled. He reached down, grabbed Rufus by the front of his T-shirt, and yanked him up. “Where’s the phone?”
“What?”
Bruno took an unassuming smartphone from his pocket and waved it in front of Rufus’s face. “The phone, dipshit.”
“That’s mine. You’re holding it. I don’t understand the question.”
Bruno cracked Rufus upside the head again, sending him sprawling backward.
The air was knocked from Rufus’s lungs and he choked and gasped for breath. He slowly raised his head, watching Bruno through his nonbloody eye as the sonofabitch dropped Rufus’s phone to the floor and stomped on it with the heel of his boot.
“That cost forty bucks, asshole.”
Bruno unholstered a gun from his side and pointed the barrel at Rufus. “Where’s the phone?” he repeated.
“I don’t know what—” Rufus bit off the thought. He’d been right about the pickup being a burner, and Bruno the Bulldog here thought he had it, or at least knew where it was. The mailbox. Had Rufus gotten it open before being whacked over the head? No, maybe not, but it was difficult to remember. If he had, though, wouldn’t Bruno have the phone? Yes. And Rufus would have a third eye.
Maybe Sam found the phone. Rufus had told him what he’d meant to do, after all. That brought him back full circle. Where was Sam? Was he still at the apartment, safe and sound? Did he have the phone and was he giving it to Ophelia, like they’d discussed?
Rufus said, with as steady a voice as he could muster, “I don’t have it.”
“Don’t bullshit me.” Bruno forced the muzzle of his pistol against Rufus’s cheek, grinding it against his face.
“I’m not.”
“You’re a liar, Rufus O’Callaghan.”
Rufus’s eyes grew wide.
“That’s right. We all know who you are. Jake’s little snitch.”
“I don’t have the phone! I don’t know where it is,” Rufus said quickly, and while the latter comment was a lie, the panic in his voice was authentic.
“How long do you think you’ll last on Rikers?” Bruno continued. “A day, maybe two, I bet. Until you’re gutted and fucked to death. And do you know why?”
Rufus swallowed and whispered, “Because snitches get stitches.”
Bruno smiled, and it was an ugly look on an even uglier face. “That’s right.” He ground the barrel of the pistol into Rufus’s face again, only stopping when there was some distant, undetermined sound from outside the storage room. Bruno swore, let go of Rufus with a shove, put the gun in his waistband, and walked to the door. “Don’t you fucking move,” he said over his shoulder before seeing himself out.
Rufus sat up as soon as the door slammed shut. He reached down with both hands, untied his high-tops, and with a bit of awkward bending, maneuvered one lace through the tight restraints. He knotted it to the other shoe’s lace, raised his legs, and started to move them back and forth, almost like peddling a bike. It only took a few seconds before the zip tie snapped and Rufus fell backward from the momentum.
He gingerly got to his feet, muttering, “Should have used handcuffs, you dumb fuck.” Rufus patted down his jacket and jeans pockets, but they were empty of everything, even his gum.
The gum that Sam bought him.
And that was all it took to make him well and truly pissed.
Rufus moved to the nearest stack of cardboard boxes and began opening them at random, looking for anything he could use as a weapon. All he found were what looked like years and years of accounting documents, customer files, automobile manuals, even some tax returns.
“You goddamn kidding me?” Rufus snapped, shoving a box in frustration and trying yet another.
He found lots of magazines, the sort of shit found in waiting rooms: a year out-of-date and dog-eared within an inch of its life. The box below that was topped with skin magazines covered in greasy handprints. Seconds away from letting out a frustrated scream, Rufus spotted a computer on the floor. It was old as hell—deadweight from the ’90s too heavy to use in any practical way as a means of self-defense. There was a keyboard, though. As it stood, that was about as useful as the stained Playboys, but
Rufus picked it up, wrangled the attached cable to hold either end like a garrote, and walked to the door. He stood to one side and waited.
There was no sound in the building. There seemed to be no sound outside it either. And without a window to look out, Rufus had no goddamn idea if he was even in the city. He could have been in Yonkers—Poughkeepsie, even.
And if that were the case, Rufus might as well let Bruno take him out now.
The door opened again without any warning, and Bruno entered the room. He hadn’t even shut the door before Rufus shouted and slammed the board down, keys first, on the fucker’s shiny head. The plastic flexed, cracked, and snapped in two. Bruno, still standing, turned and let out a roar. He lunged at Rufus, who jumped back, dodged, and managed to get around behind Bruno.
Rufus jumped on Bruno’s back, wrapped the keyboard cord around his neck, and yanked with all his might. He pulled until Bruno made a choked, wet, gasping sound. Pulled until Bruno clawed at the cord. Rufus kept pulling, even as his hands shook and tears—maybe from fear, probably from rage—streamed down his face. And he didn’t stop until Bruno crumpled to his knees and fell flat on his face.
Rufus stood and hesitantly patted Bruno’s pockets until he recovered a handful of zip ties—the sort cops carried nowadays. They were cheaper, lighter, and more efficient than doling out a pair of cuffs for every Tom, Dick, and Jane on the force. He also found a ring with keys—pocketed that—twenty bucks—took that too—then looked around for a place to secure Bruno. A big guy like him, if he regained consciousness anytime soon, might have the raw strength to snap the ties. But that’d be far more difficult if he was zipped to—
Rufus spotted an old water radiator in the corner. Warily, he tied one of Bruno’s wrists with a zip tie, then dragged the probably unconscious, hopefully not dead man across the floor. Rufus heaved the big body close enough to the radiator that he could zip a second tie around the first and the heater’s turn nozzle. Rufus tugged the pistol free from Bruno’s waistband next, holding it pinched between his thumb and forefinger like it was a used tissue. He brought it to the box full of fake tits and slipped it between the pages of a retro Penthouse.
Rufus left the room after that. He shut the door behind him, eyed a second door across the hall and to the left, a staircase at his right, and opted to rush downstairs as fast as humanly possible. Sure enough, Rufus entered an empty auto body shop at the bottom of the stairs. Some tools and machinery appeared to have been abandoned by whoever’s business had since left the premises. Rufus could almost imagine a For Sale sign posted somewhere outside, but judging by the looks of the place, no one had been interested for some time. There was a small window overhead and to the right that sickly colored sunlight filtered through. Rufus would have to find a way up there. He could break the glass and shimmy out—he was skinny enough—and then what, scale the side of the building? It was better than being stuck in here with Bruno just a floor away. Rufus drew closer, and his heart sank when he saw there were bars on the window.
All right. Fuck the window. Obviously there had to be a door to this garage. Rufus backtracked and found a rolled down metal gate at the far end of the room. He bent, grabbed the handle near the floor, and gave it a tug, but the gate didn’t budge. He got on his knees to inspect the floor in the near-dark, and his hands found a padlock. Rufus quickly dug out the keys he’d stolen from Bruno, but none of them matched.
Why bring Rufus to a place as secure as fucking Fort Knox? It didn’t make sense—he wasn’t worth the trouble. Keep him alive, sure, until they found out where the pickup was, but all this? Rufus looked over his shoulder at the staircase, then raised his gaze to the ceiling. There was that second door…. So maybe it wasn’t about Rufus? Maybe it was simply convenient to drop him off here, where they were already keeping someone else more important.
Rufus left the garage area and, on the balls of his feet so as not to make any noise, hiked the stairs again. Each step up, Rufus could only think, Sam must be in that room. Because Sam came to New York looking for trouble from the start. He’d known Jake, his home address, information about his police investigations, had Juliana’s name—and even Rufus hadn’t known she was a CI. In that sense Sam had had more information than Rufus ever did. He was most definitely a threat to this disgusting enterprise.
Rufus stopped outside the second door, withdrew the keyring again, and tried the lock. This time there was success. He pushed the door open, and in the grimy light, he saw not Sam, but at least a dozen teenagers and young adults—boys and girls—all races, looking back at him with a particular sort of terror, a familiar terror, that made Rufus’s heart break.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Sam had the gun in his hand when the knock came at the door. Pressing himself against the studio’s wall, he drew a bead, visualizing a point chest-high on an average man. Then he called out, “Who is it?”
“Hayes” came Ophelia’s voice, slightly muffled.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes. Open the damn door,” she growled.
“I’ve got a gun in my hand. Door’s unlocked, but be really smart when you walk in.”
A moment, a full moment by Sam’s count, had passed before the knob turned and the door was pushed open. Ophelia stood to one side, arm extended to hold the door, and angled to keep her body out of the firing zone. She glanced inside and tapped the holster on her own hip. “Please don’t make me shoot you.”
Sam let the Beretta drop ten degrees. “Close the door.” And then, because he couldn’t keep it inside any longer: “They took Rufus.”
Ophelia’s step faltered. “They who took Rufus?” She entered the apartment and shut the door. “What the hell is going on with you two?”
“Whoever was holding those kids in that house in Queens. Whoever’s bringing them into the city and making them work. Heckler. Christ, whoever else is involved. And if I had a fucking idea where Rufus was, do you think I’d be sitting here with my dick in my hand?”
Ophelia put both hands up. “Hold up for half a second. First, who lives here?”
“Take a wild guess.”
Ophelia puffed out her cheeks while letting out an exasperated little sigh. “Detective Brower? Rufus is tied to him, isn’t he? That’s why Lampo let him slide yesterday.” She frowned and put her hands on her hips. “How do you know Rufus didn’t… I mean, he does that, sometimes. For as long as I’ve known him, anyway—up and vanishes whenever he wants.”
“And he leaves a pair of lockpicks on the ground like fucking breadcrumbs? He’s been gone, Christ, I don’t know. Three hours? I didn’t even realize something was wrong until he’d been gone half an hour. Minimum. And then you took your sweet time getting here. We need to find him. They want something, and they think he has it, and they’re not playing patty-cake while they wait for him to cough it up.”
“Hey, first off, buddy, you need to chill out. I can’t just drop my duties because a petty thief went out for a pack of smokes on his new boy toy, got it?”
“Take a look at this,” Sam said, holding up the phone in its evidence bag, turning it so Jake’s scrawl faced her. “And tell me to chill again.”
Ophelia narrowed her eyes, snatched the bag, and studied the scrawl. “Where’d you get this?” she finally asked, voice dropping low.
“Jake left it for Rufus. Because he couldn’t trust anybody else with it. You know what that is? That’s your arrest. That’s your conviction. That’s Heckler and the Wall Street assholes who are paying big bucks for the kids getting trafficked through here. That’s Jake’s fucking blood, right there in your hands, and if you don’t get on board real fucking fast, you’re going to be up to your elbows in Rufus’s blood too.” He was panting when he finished.
Ophelia looked at Sam, her expression like stone. “Rufus is a CI?”
“Yes.”
She shook the bag a little. “Yesterday… was this… what Detective Lampo wanted me to find on you two?”
“I think so. This
is what Jake wanted to give Rufus. I found it stashed in the mailbox. Hidden in a place only Rufus would look, because he’s got a goddamn fetish for those things, at an apartment only Jake and Rufus knew about. You know what? What a fucking waste of time. I’m going to find him myself.”
But Ophelia immediately sidestepped and blocked the door. “No, you won’t. If Detective Brower trusted Rufus to help him with these exploited children, that’s good enough for me. Let’s find the little punk together.”
“Great,” Sam said. “How?”
Ophelia lowered her arm, letting the evidence bag dangle. “Their safe house was Flushing, and Juliana didn’t say anything about other locations. I’m thinking they panicked, the evidence in the basement spoke pretty loud and clear.” She tapped her chin with her free hand. “They could have left the city completely, but I’m not sure if they’d chance that with so many kids. Toll roads have speed cameras. A routine pull-over on the highway is how creeps like this end up getting busted. If I was tits-deep in this shit, I’d stick to Queens.”
After a moment, Sam nodded. “They brought them in easily enough, and normally, I’d say they’d take them out the same way. But they’re running scared. They’re scrambling. They don’t have the time or the flexibility to do it the way they want. So let’s say they stayed in Queens.” Sam paused. “How big is Queens?”
“Something like two million residents. But if they’re considering going back where they originated, somewhere north to regroup maybe, I’d imagine they’d be lying low near parkways. If they took the Grand Central Parkway, that’d be an easy route out.”
“They used a residence before,” Sam said. “A single-family structure. That might be what they’re comfortable with. Are there houses near the Parkway? Would they try to throw us off with a false start? Maybe they follow the Parkway a little bit out of the city to get some breathing room?”
Ophelia’s hand moved from her chin to her mouth, chewing absently on her thumbnail. She winced after a moment, studied the torn-up nail, then said, “It’s tough to say.”