Body Broker

by Daniel M Ford

  A sigh. “Running away to get dad’s attention? It’s not impossible, but Gabriel learned a long time ago to do without that. Don’t see what would suddenly change for him.”

  “I have another question. Does the name ‘Ladders’ mean anything to you? As a company, maybe a healthcare provider?

  “I can’t say it does. Sounds like a place the depraved rich would go for a few weeks to dry out.”

  “It does, at that.” I adjusted my seat and tried to avoid letting a heavy breath into the phone when my ribs reminded me that they had indeed been drummed upon. “Ms. Kennelly, one way or another, I’ll have a report for you on Monday.”

  “One way or another? I don’t like the sound of that.”

  “Ms. Kennelly, I’m going to find Gabriel.” Oh God damnit. I had to say that out loud, to the client, didn’t I?

  “I like your confidence, Mr. Dixon. But I don’t know if I believe it.”

  That’d make two of us. “Nothing’s shaken it so far, Ms. Kennelly.” If you’re gonna tell one lie, you might as well compound it.

  “Fine. I have to go back to work. Please keep me updated.”

  “Of course.”

  We hung up, and I tried to find a comfortable way to sit on a Cecil Transit Bus with bad ribs and a bad back and a sour stomach from not enough food and too much whiskey the night before.

  Not only could I not find a missing kid, I couldn’t find that, either.

  Chapter 25

  The rest of the day passed uneventfully. The fall of evening found me trying to choose between a plain back t-shirt that was just a bit too tight and one that had some nerd decorations just under the collar — a golden dragon on the right, a sword on the left. I decided on plain because I didn’t want to deal with Bob calling me a nerd all night.

  I stuck a small Maglite and a couple of Sharpies in the pockets of my jeans, along with a pocket knife, and wandered out into the parking lot.

  Bob pulled up in an unmarked SUV that still screamed cop, with the light panels in the front and back windows and the whipcord antenna on the top.

  I hoped the dark would hide my face, but there was no hiding the extra grunt I made as I climbed up into the car. And for all his faults, Bob was still a cop, and that meant he was observant and curious, by training if not by nature.

  “What the hell happened to your face?”

  “Occupational hazard.”

  “Making any progress finding the kid?”

  “I don’t know.” I knew he’d keep circling around to find out everything he wanted to know, so I just laid it all out as we drove. The school, the standoffish kids — excepting Liza, whom I didn’t mention by name — the doctor I didn’t like. I told him about the dad’s office and getting roughed up by the security. He stopped me there.

  “You let one of them have a face full of LEO-grade pepper spray?”

  “Mouthful, too.”

  “That may not have been super legal, Jack.”

  “Self-defense.”

  “At least you didn’t shoot him.”

  “Can’t shoot anybody if you don’t carry a gun.”

  “Don’t come at me with disarm or disband the police.”

  I held up a hand. “Come on, Bob. We both know you haven’t got another way to feed your kids, and I’ve seen how much they eat.”

  “Very funny.” He took a turn. We were on some rural highway now. I hadn’t paid too much attention. I could tell he was thinking, though, worrying at something.

  “You don’t like that school doctor for this, do you?”

  “I think he’s probably an asshole, but how many of those do we run into a day?”

  “Still. You didn’t like him. That’s a gut reaction.”

  “So is eating at McDonald’s,” I said. “Doesn’t make it material.”

  “If I were you, I’d go back into that school when they didn’t know I was coming. Say I had some follow-up questions, talk to everybody you already talked to.”

  “I’ve heard worse ideas. I can do that on Monday, I don’t get anywhere else this weekend.”

  “Hang on. I need to note the date and time.” Ostentatiously — and since we were at a stop sign, Bob pulled his phone off the console. He opened up a voice recording app.

  “Friday, September 19. Jack Dixon admits an officer of the law had a good idea.”

  “Very funny. We there yet?”

  We were, in fact, just two turns and a long run down a gravel road away, so it was just a few minutes. The gravel road became an uneven mixture of gravel and grass as a large barn rose in the distance. It was strung on all sides with white Christmas lights. From the hayloft the glare of the lights inside was visible. Bob and I walked up together. I was a big guy, and I took up my fair share of space, but I always felt pretty small next to Corporal Sanderson.

  As we walked up, gravel crunching under our boots, Bob muttered at me. “Charles is gonna pay us well for this, so…just try and remember that.” I wasn’t sure why we were getting that warning until I heard an exaggeratedly enthusiastic “Corporal Sanderson!” from near the open cut-out door of the barn.

  Charles was my age and trying so very hard to look younger that it exhausted me almost immediately. He wore expensive jeans, cowboy boots, a designer woven belt, and a half-tucked in dress shirt striped vertically and thin in blue, yellow, red, orange, and green. He had sunglasses turned around so the lenses rested on the back of his neck, and a blue trilby with a gray band sitting back on a balding head.

  I hated every single thing about him from the moment I clapped eyes on him. This was, to be fair, not an unusual reaction for me.

  He and Bob shook hands, Chuck’s hand practically disappearing in Bob’s giant meathook. Then it was my turn.

  “You must be Jack!” I could hear the exclamation points in everything he said as he took my hand. I expected a clammy, floppy handshake and was mildly surprised to find it was neither.

  “Bob speaks highly of you,” he said. “Says you were some shit-hot wrestler, MMA training and all that.” With the back of his hand he gave me what he must’ve thought was a playful slap in the stomach.

  I tried to swallow the resulting scream and it came out as more of a strangled laugh. He made to do it again and I caught his wrist with my hand. I was mad enough from the pain in my ribs to think about turning his wrist to get him under control and then putting him on his back when Bob clapped us both on the shoulder and pulled me away from him.

  It was like getting dragged backward by some kind of horrifying industrial clamping robot.

  “Better show us where to set up, get us lights, stools, all that.”

  Charles was eager to smooth over whatever weirdness had just happened that he couldn’t parse. His braying, nasal voice haunted me all the rest of the way up the path.

  “Hundreds of folks tonight, all to have a good time. Should be no problems. No problems at all. But you know how these things are, gotta have a couple of tough guys working the door.”

  It was all pretty standard stuff and I tuned him out. I did find myself wishing for a chance to shine my Maglite in Charles’ eyes, just to see how badly dilated his pupils were.

  He got us situated on some stools. Bob produced a pair of clickers we could put in our fists.

  “Three-fifty, that’s the Fire Marshal’s limit,” Charles was saying. “So make sure you’re keeping up with that. ‘Course, we got all this outdoor space too.”

  “Bathrooms inside, or…” That was Bob, always on the details.

  Charles jerked a thumb around one side of the barn. “Bank of porta johns that way. Get you guys anything? Coffee, water?”

  I wanted a beer, but protocol dictated total sobriety. Protocol always dictated things I hated.

  “I’ll take a coffee,” Bob said.

  I held up two fingers to indicate a sec
ond, and Charles skittered away.

  Inside, I heard the DJ testing the sound system with something that combined drum machine, soulless electrified banjo, and a white guy rapping.

  “Gonna be a long night,” I murmured.

  * * *

  The first few minutes of door work are always a bit of a fumble. You search for the rhythm. Check the ID with the Maglite, take the money or ticket if you’re doing that, put the wristband on, click the attendance counter. It’s a lot of small tasks that all have to be done pretty precisely. Thankfully Bob and I weren’t managing the money, just checking IDs, strictly twenty-one and over at Charlie’s Barn Bash, or whatever this nonsense was called. Then we were taking red Sharpies and drawing a thick X on the back of the hand to show that the person could be served. We also were given white wristbands for voluntary designated drivers. No X for them, and complementary water or soft drinks all night.

  Didn’t give out a lot of white wristbands, but there were a few.

  I confiscated two fake IDs because one was named “Giancarlo Jeter” and the kid was dumb enough to be wearing a Yankees hat. The second was an obvious fake that fell apart from the sweating hand of the kid holding it. When the picture rubbed off on his thumb as he handed it over, he just turned and legged it. I glanced over at Bob, who’d looked up only once he heard fast footsteps, lost in his own work pattern.

  “We running people down?”

  He shook his head and waved a hand dismissively. I went back to IDs. I shone the Maglite down at the card in my hand. Looked good. Something stopped me. I focused on the picture. Blonde girl. Nothing unusual. What took me out of my rhythm?

  Then I read the name a second time.

  Elizabeth Bathory de Ecsed.

  I looked up. She’d dyed her hair with light purple streaks, the kind that would wash out by Monday, and was wearing a white tank-top with some pink slogan applied to look as though it had been spray-painted on. She wore some makeup, artfully and carefully applied. For all the world, she looked twenty-one. Had she gotten in Bob’s line, she’d have already been inside partying.

  “Hi, Countess,” I said with a smile. “How’s Bratislava this time of year?”

  She’d been chatting with a friend in line with her and ignoring me up until that moment. Liza fixed her eyes on me in that dismissive, how dare this get in my way look so many teenagers have mastered. Then she registered who she was looking at.

  “Fuck.”

  She turned and bolted.

  My turn to curse, but I took off after her anyway.

  “Be right back!” I yelled to Bob as I tore off after her.

  Chapter 26

  Liza made good time in heeled boots. Honestly, I was a little impressed. She was around the corner of the building and past the porta-johns by the time I started gaining on her.

  Each step was a jolt of pain. I didn’t stop to question why I was chasing her. If just seeing me made her want to run, I probably needed to find out what that was.

  This side of the building, past the few folks milling around waiting for a bathroom, we didn’t attract too much attention. I wasn’t sure what her plan was, but I was confident I’d catch her.

  And do what, hero? Spear-tackle a seventeen-year-old girl?

  Luckily, that decision was made for me. The heel of her boot hit a hole and down she went, her bag spilling out of her hand and spreading its contents over the ground. I pulled to a stop and knelt down a couple of feet away.

  “You okay, kid?”

  “I have a name,” she said, still defiant, despite a mouthful of grass.

  “You okay, Liza?”

  “Got a bad case of the indignities, but it’ll pass.”

  I offered an arm to help her up. She waved it away and started to push to her feet. I decided to make myself useful and gather her bag. I turned my light in that direction.

  And it shone directly on a bundle of needles held together with a rubber band, their tips still sheathed in orange plastic. I bent down and snatched them up.

  Liza came up limping. I felt a tad bit less sympathetic as I held up the bundle of hypos.

  “This looks like some pretty serious gear, kid,” I said. “What’re you doing with it?”

  “I already said I have a name,” she snapped.

  “Yeah, and I’ll start using it again as soon as you tell me what these are about,” I said, waggling the bundle at her.

  She limped over to me and made a feeble snatch at the needles. I held them out of her reach. She then held out an arm to me.

  “Does it look like I use?” she sneered. “It’s Naloxone, you ass. Because there’ll be people here who do use, and someone’s gotta watch out for them.”

  “So you’re the party mom, huh? Not sure I’m buying that.”

  “Don’t give a shit if you buy it or not. Gimme that back.”

  “Liza. The other guy at the door, my friend? He’s a cop. Even if this is Naloxone and not narcotics, I don’t think it’s legal for you to have it. Pretty sure this is prescription stuff.”

  “So what’re you gonna do now?” She stepped back, balled her hands at her sides. Still defiant. I liked Liza. I felt like a shit holding her over the frying pan like this.

  “Were you ever Gabriel’s party mom? Ever need these for him?”

  She turned her head away, looked down at the ground. “No,” she said in a very small voice. “But he’s why I got them in the first place. I started to worry about him.”

  God. Dammit.

  “Where’d you get the Naloxone? You can’t just buy this shit at a pharmacy.”

  She looked up at me. Her eyes were getting wet in the corners, and it wasn’t an act. I felt half an inch tall. She muttered something I couldn’t hear.

  “Where?”

  She muttered again, but this time I heard it.

  “Dr. Thalheim.”

  God. Dammit.

  “Stay here,” I said.

  “Gimme my stuff back.”

  I turned and glared at her. “If I do that, you’re gonna take off. Right?”

  She shrugged.

  “I’m not that stupid, Liza.” I tucked the rubber-banded pack of needles into a back pocket and went back around to the front.

  Quite a line had built up, and even Bob’s wall-like equanimity was starting to flag as he dealt with it. I went to the door.

  “Told you we weren’t chasing people,” he said as he scanned IDs.

  “It…was relevant. To my job.”

  Bob looked up at me. In the shadows of his Maglite and the glare of the lights from inside the barn, I could see the lifted eyebrow and the question.

  “Yeah. That job. I’ll need a few.”

  He nodded. One thing I like about Bob Sanderson, if he puts me on to a job, it’s because he trusts me to do it, and he doesn’t try to look over my shoulder or manage me. He just lets me go. He knows I’ll try to toe the line, but maybe also that there’s parts of what I’ll do that it’s better he doesn’t know about. Bob was as straight as any cop who’d ever existed. He could come upon three dead men in a hotel room with no next of kin and no way to identify them, each with a briefcase full of cash, pockets full of diamonds, and suitcases full of drugs, and every single item, to the penny, would go straight into evidence.

  I stopped pondering silly hypotheticals and went back around the side of the building. I found Liza leaning against the side of the building, her shoulders heaving. She had the ankle she’d twisted stuck out awkwardly in front of her.

  “Hey, kid.”

  “I told you I have a name. I mean goddamn, did it not bother you back in the dark ages when everybody called you champ or tiger or pal or probably ‘big guy’?” She looked up at me, and there were still tears in her eyes.

  “There you are,” I said. “I don’t know you all that well, Liza,” I wen
t on, emphasizing her name, “but you don’t seem like a crier. So talk to me. You got the Naloxone from Thalheim?”

  She nodded. “I haven’t seen a friend die, yet. But the first time I came to one of these, last year, some kid I didn’t know, just ODed right there on the dance floor. Everybody stood around like idiots, or ran, because they were afraid of it coming back on them if they did anything.”

  “What’d you do?”

  “I ran. But not far. And then I called 911, and told them what happened and where to go.”

  “Good. And so you looked around for Naloxone. How’d you get them from Thalheim?”

  Another sigh. But the tears had stopped. “Word around campus is he’ll…do that sorta thing.”

  “What, provide medication?”

  She nodded. “You know, nothing recreational. Not only recreational. But maybe Adderall. Maybe you get migraines, maybe you’re afraid of watching your friends fall asleep and die.”

  “I get it. He likes to help.” Maybe that’s how she saw it. What I saw was a drug dealer in a position of power over children. With access to medically privileged information. I was also seeing a little darkness at the edge of my vision. But I didn’t need to lay that on her just now.

  “Yeah. So I asked him if he could get that.”

  “What’d he say?”

  “He said it wouldn’t take long. And he gave me one the next week. Said he admired the impulse.”

  “What’d they cost?”

  She shrugged. “Pocket money.”

  “For you or for him?”

  She snorted. “I don’t think Dr. Thalheim is hurting for money. He drives a Porsche.”

  Of course he does.

  She turned to me then. Once again, she was herself. Angry, maybe a little scared, but worried about her friend. I think the distance she’d shown me in her interview back in the school had been a defense mechanism, and I’d bought it.

  This girl clearly cared deeply about her friends. Enough that she’d lie and spend money and risk herself and maybe commit a crime to try to save their lives. Or the lives of strangers, if it came down to it.