by J. D. Barker
While operating an illicit business under the guise of a legitimate one was nothing new, Nash found the location of Carmine’s completely baffling—it was less than a block away from the Cook County Department of Corrections. A ninety-six-acre facility housing at least 6,500 prisoners, 3,900 law enforcement officials, and 7,000 civilian employees. He could see the corner of the large structure from his car. He couldn’t help but wonder how many of those pizzas went to members of Chicago’s finest every day. He’d be willing to bet they were accompanied by a secret handshake or a wink because there was no way a fuck-for-hire shop operated that far below the radar. Vice knew. DOC had to know, but nobody gave a shit. Must be damn good pizza.
Nash shut off the engine, climbed out of the Chevy, and darted across the street. He nearly slipped on a patch of ice at the edge of the sidewalk, regained his footing, and tugged open the door to Carmine’s, stepping inside.
The smell was godly.
A kid of about sixteen in a sauce-stained Carmine’s T-shirt looked up from behind the counter, a paper hat on his head. “Slice or pie?”
The kitchen was behind the counter, all open, completely visible. At least half-a-dozen ovens were in use, with five other employees toiling away—making sauce, washing dishes, kneading dough. Christ, this was making Nash hungry. He tried not to look. “Can I speak to your manager, please?”
The kid rolled his eyes and shouted over his shoulder. “Addie, got another cop out here!”
“Another cop? Do you get a lot of us?”
The kid didn’t answer, just walked away, headed toward the back of the kitchen without another word.
A moment later, a woman in her fifties came out of a door next to the sink. She was dressed in a white sweater, black yoga pants, and must have weighed three hundred pounds. Nash watched as she turned sideways to squeeze between the tables and ovens to get to the front. When she reached the counter, she looked Nash up and down and smirked. “What?”
“I’m not here for the pizza,” Nash said.
“Well, that’s bullshit. Even the cops who shake us down take the pizza. Come on.”
She turned and started back the way she’d come.
Nash followed.
She led him to a small office space cluttered with boxes and told him to close the door. When he did, she dropped into a swivel chair behind the desk and leaned back. “I told that guy Warnick everything I know. He said you’d come down here anyway. Said you might even bring the feds to try and shake me down. Waste of time, but do your damnedest if that’s what you’re here to do. Just wrap it up before the dinner rush kicks in.”
“You don’t seem very worried.”
She huffed. “What can you do to me? Nothing illegal going on. I’m a matchmaker, that’s all. What those adults do on their own time is their business, not mine. I’ve been in and out of court more times than I can count, and the charges never stick.” She leaned forward and lowered her voice. “And frankly, if you knew some of the names on my client list, you’d know there was no chance in hell of me getting in trouble. I’ve got copies of my client list with friends all over the country. Something happens to me, and things will start to slip to the press. You’ll see my Instagram account switch from cuddly cat pictures to photos of politicians dressed like Little Bo Peep sucking on a ball-gag. I could shoot you in the middle of 26th out there if I wanted to. Nobody’s touching me. So again, it’s after five. We need to hurry this up. What do you want?”
There was another chair, this one in front of the desk. Nash removed the stack of opened envelopes from the seat, placed them on the desk, and settled in. Got comfortable.
She frowned. “That’s not how we do this fast.”
“Nope.”
Sighing, she said, “Look, like I told Warnick, I sent over Latrice. Blonde hair, blue eyes, twenty-two years old, and willing to put up with the mayor’s little kinks. She’d been with him twice, knew what to expect. She’d been with me for three years, so I told her what to expect if he tried the unexpected, because those guys tend to evolve, or devolve, depending on your position. I’ve seen enough of them in my day—he’s not a surprise or an anomaly, he’s just a different checkbox on all the bullshit that is today’s man. She went in prepared, as all my girls do. She arrived within three minutes of the time I expected her to, and she left thirty-eight minutes early. No surprises, not from my end. I don’t allow for surprises. I have no idea who your brown-haired girl is—she didn’t come from me.”
“Do you have any records?”
“You seriously think I’d let you see them if I did?”
Nash shrugged.
She glanced over at the battered laptop on the corner of her desk. “Couldn’t show them to you even if I wanted to. My computer caught some kind of virus. All my files are screwed up. I’m waiting for my tech guy to come by and fix it.”
Nash loaded images of the two women they had found on Upchurch’s computer and slid his phone across the desk. “Have you ever seen these two?”
At first she didn’t look. Like if she stared at him long enough he’d rescind his request. When she did, she just shook her head. “No, they’re not mine.”
He then showed her a photograph of Porter. “What about him?”
On Sam’s picture, she paused and at first Nash thought it was because she did recognize him. Then he realized she had seen so many male faces over the years it took just a little bit longer to browse through her mental Rolodex. “He’s not a client,” she finally said, leaning back in her chair.
A relief settled over him before Nash realized a small part of his mind thought she might actually recognize Sam, and that worried him, because that singular thought came from the detective buried deep in his subconscious. Some people called it insight, others called it intuition. Porter had once told him to trust that voice. He said the subconscious had a way of piecing things together at a slightly faster pace than the conscious mind, and once he learned to trust that voice, listen to it, he’d become a better detective. Nash had told him he needed to stop listening to all the voices in his head. Maybe he needed to heed his own advice.
He changed the subject. “When did your computer get the virus?”
She frowned at the laptop. “About a week ago. It was like it went senile and started forgetting shit. All the dates scrambled, that’s the worst part—every file I’ve looked at, even within files, like spreadsheets and Word docs—every single date changed to some random other date. I’m still not sure how it even happened. I’m not one of those people who clicks on links in e-mails or random websites. My IT guy said it’s not even possible with the software he has running on here. He’s clearly a fucking tool.”
“I’ve got someone who could probably fix it. Want me to run it by him?”
For the first time since he got there, she smiled. “That might be the funniest shit I’ve heard all week.” She grinned. “Sure, Mr. Copper. Take my laptop and make it all good again, just don’t peek at nothin’, I can trust you, right? Fuck you.” The chair groaned under her weight. “I think we’re done here.”
“One more thing.” Nash scrolled through the images on his phone and found the one he wanted. It was the back of one of the Polaroids from the box in the mayor’s suite at the Langham Hotel. He pinched the image and enlarged the handwritten text—203. WF15 3k. LM—and slid the phone back to her. “Does this mean anything to you?”
She leaned forward again, turned the phone so she could read the words. She didn’t say anything, not at first. She didn’t need to. The color left her face, and her mouth fell open for a short second before she regained her composure and slid the phone back to him. “Nope.”
“Now is not the time to start lying to me.”
“Talk to Warnick. I’m not getting in the middle of that.”
“Warnick knows what this is?”
“You need to leave.” She stood and started for the door. Reached for the knob.
“Is it related to Charleston?”
This gave her pause. “Charleston? No…I’m not sure what you…just talk to Warnick.”
“How about the Guyon?”
She quickly shook her head, flustered, trying to regroup her thoughts.
Someone knocked on the door, and Addie pulled it open. A girl of about nineteen was standing there in a gray cocktail dress and red heels. She frowned when she saw Nash. “I’m sorry, I didn’t realize you were in a meeting.” She looked back at the other woman. “I need a ride.”
Addie frowned. “Michael will drive you. Unless Detective Nash here wants to give you a lift. He’s leaving.”
At the mention of the word detective, the girl’s eyes widened.
Nash stood. “How about I take you to a shelter?”
“How about you leave,” Addie said, opening the door wider.
Nash smiled at the girl, tried to look reassuring, and felt a sneeze tickling the inside of his nose. The girl took a step backward, away from him. He walked out of the office, past them both.
From behind him, the woman said, “This ain’t nothing new, Detective. None of it. It’s been going on since the first time Eve told Adam, ‘you want me to do that, you best give me an apple.’ All I’m doing is keeping things organized and safe. You should be grateful. Better those girls work for me than run around on the street on their own. We both know how that story ends.”
Nash did.
He grabbed two slices of pizza fresh out of the oven, and he left. Not because he wanted to, but because this wasn’t his fight. At least, not today.
58
Diary
I’d grown fairly used to the detectives driving me around town. They took me to and from my meetings with Dr. Oglesby twice each week, and I’d seen them drive the others more times than I could count. I knew it was odd for police detectives to do such a thing, but I never asked why they did. All people had reasons for their actions, and I was sure their particular reasons would present themselves soon enough.
For the most part, we all settled into our usual roles in the car—Welderman at the wheel, Stocks in the passenger seat doing his best to stink up the vehicle with the stale cigarette smoke that always seemed to loft off his clothes, and me in the rear, watching the backs of their heads, wondering if my seat belt would hold if I were to shove an ice pick into Welderman’s neck and he lost control of the car. For the record, I didn’t have an ice pick. I didn’t even know where I could find one, but such a thing didn’t keep a boy from wondering.
Normally, we didn’t speak, but today was proving to be anything but normal. Welderman said, “Did your father die in the fire, Anson?”
“Yes,” I replied, perhaps a little too quickly.
Welderman’s eyes remained on the road. “Of the three men found inside your old house, two have been identified as working for a man named Arthur Talbot. Does that name mean anything to you?”
I saw the vans outside my house, the ones with Talbot Enterprises written on the sides, but I wasn’t about to tell him that. I didn’t say anything.
“That only leaves one unidentified body, but here’s the thing—we pulled some clothing out of your old house. There wasn’t much left, mind you. The fire was fairly thorough, but one of the pairs of pants we found held up pretty good. Dress slacks with an inseam of thirty-four inches. They were found inside what was left of a dresser in your parents’ room, so we can reasonably assume they belonged to your father since who else would store their pants there, right? A thirty-four-inch inseam would fit a man between five-eleven and six-one or two, a fairly tall man. Was your father a ‘fairly tall man,’ Anson?”
Again, I didn’t say anything. Out the window, I watched the small, narrow roads of farm country fade away behind us and make way for the wider lanes of the highway. This wasn’t our usual route. We weren’t heading toward Camden Treatment Center. We were heading toward Charleston.
“We believe he was, because the seat in his car was pushed nearly all the way back.” He drummed his fingers on the steering wheel. “Anyway, that last unidentified body from your house, he was only five-foot-nine. Not much left of his pants on account of the fire, but you know what we do know? His inseam sure as shit wasn’t thirty-four. A man like that tries to wear pants with a thirty-four-inch inseam, and he’d have to roll up the cuffs at the bottom. Doubtful he did that. We’re thinking both your parents survived that fire, not just your mother. What do you think about that?”
“I wish my father were still alive, but that doesn’t make it true. No matter how hard I wish.”
Welderman glanced at the man beside him. “Hey, you know what I don’t get?”
Stocks cleared his throat. “What’s that?”
“If that kid’s parents are still alive, how the hell do they let him roll into a night like tonight without doing anything about it? Can you imagine just standing by and watching something like that happen to your son? Your only son?”
Stocks shrugged, and I swear I saw a puff of cigarette smoke rise up off his shoulder. “If they’re alive, they’re living nice off all that money they stole with the neighbors… Maybe they care more about that than they do about him.”
“Yeah, maybe.”
I knew they were just trying to push my buttons, get me to say something I normally wouldn’t, but I wasn’t about to do that. Father had taught me all these little tricks, taught me how to watch out for them. These guys weren’t good cops, they weren’t even bad cops—they were dirty cops. I gave them something else to think about. “My father was a very patient man. If he were still alive, he’d wait until he learned everything he needed from the both of you, watch you, maybe even follow you for a while—he might even be behind us right now—then when he got everything he needed, and you were no longer useful, he’d find a nice, quiet spot in your house or your apartment or wherever you sleep at night and he’d settle into the shadows until you laid your head down to rest. You wouldn’t even know he was there until you were in some half-slumber and felt something warm around your neck. And when you woke and realized that warm-something was your own intestines, and you’d been cut from your throat to your cock, he’d grin down at you and tell you that you should have been nicer to his boy. He’s not alive, though, so I guess you don’t have to worry about that.” I fell silent for a moment, then added, “I can’t imagine what Mother would do. She wasn’t so patient. Not like Father.”
Welderman glanced at me in the rearview mirror but didn’t say anything, Stocks didn’t, either. They both turned their attention back to the road.
I’d been making mental notes of each road sign, exit, and turn, and I was grateful for the quiet so I could concentrate. After we left the highway, Welderman pulled into the parking lot of a rundown motel painted yellow with lime-green trim. He parked next to a white panel van. A man in a navy blue trench coat got out.
59
Clair
Day 5 • 5:03 PM
Not Sam.
It couldn’t be Sam.
At least, she couldn’t be sure.
The face on the other side of the glass wore a black ski mask with a pair of sunglasses beneath to hide his eyes, and for a moment, Clair was grateful for that. Something about seeing eyes, recognizing eyes, would have been too much for her.
This wasn’t Sam. Because Sam wouldn’t do this.
She didn’t feel well.
She had a fever. Her thoughts weren’t quite her own.
The face on the other side of the glass tilted back in the opposite direction, righted itself.
Clair couldn’t see his mouth. The mask had no mouth hole.
Smooth.
Empty.
Blank.
She told herself she couldn’t be sure this was even a man. She stood on her toes, tried to get a better look—shoulders, chest, something—but the face leaned in closer, blocked her already limited view.
“What the hell do you want, you crazy fuck?”
The face tilted again, and she could almost feel a smile from the other side of that
material. Brown teeth and rancid breath—that’s the kind of smile she’d find if she could reach out and pull the mask away, she was sure of that. Maybe pointed teeth like a snarling dog, not human at all.
Get your shit together, Clair. This isn’t only a man, this is a weak man. The kind of man who had to drug and lock you away because—
Because, why?
There was a reason. There had to be a reason. Had she somehow gotten too close to something and not even realized it?
Two missing officers. Two people dead. Maybe this guy didn’t wait for you to stumble into anything. Maybe you were just next on the list.
“How about you grow a pair and open this door?” She took a step back. “I’ll even count to three and give you a chance to run before I come out there and beat the living shit out of you!”
He only stared.
Glossy black bug eyes behind a mask.
She reached for the doorknob and pulled at it. “I’m sick. You can’t leave me in here! I need medicine! Christ, I don’t even have water in here!”
There was an audible click, and the lights went out again.
The door vanished.
The small window.
The man.
There was nothing but darkness.
Clair cursed herself for not taking a moment to look around the room when she had the chance. She had no idea where she was. No idea if there was anything she could use to get out.
She shivered.
The cold tickled across her flesh, reached under her clothing and caressed, felt along the nape of her neck and chilled every inch of her. She might as well be standing in a freezer, she was so cold.
Things couldn’t get worse. Couldn’t possibly.
Then she heard a scream. A man’s voice, in horrible pain. He sounded as if he were no more than five feet away in that murky dark.