by Mark Dawson
“Self-defense on your part, then?”
“If you like.”
Beau put a hand down on the table and intervened: “John’s sorry, though––right, John?”
Milton didn’t respond. He just kept his eye on the older man.
“He don’t look sorry,” Lucchese said.
“Carlo…”
“This douche broke Salvatore’s face. Three ribs. Messed up his knee real good. And we’re talking to him? I don’t know, Tommy, I don’t, but what the goddamn fuck?”
“Take it easy,” the old man said, and Milton knew from the way that he said it that he was about to be judged. The next five minutes would determine what came after: he was either going to get the information he wanted or he was going to get shot. “These questions––you wanna tell me what are they?”
He didn’t take his eyes away from the older man. “There was a party in Pine Shore three months ago. September. I drove a girl up there.”
“You drove her?”
“I’m a taxi driver.”
Luciano laughed. “This gets better and better.”
Milton held his eye. “Something happened at the party and she freaked out. She ran and she’s never been seen since.”
“Pine Shore?”
“That’s right. Near where the two dead girls turned up.”
“I know it. And you think this girl is dead?”
“I think it’s possible.”
“And what’s any of it got to do with us?”
“Fallen Angelz. She was on the books.”
He looked at him with an amused turn to his mouth. “Fallen Angelz? That supposed to mean anything to me?”
Milton didn’t take his eyes away. “You really want to waste my time like that?”
Beau stiffened to Milton’s right but he said nothing. The younger man flexed a little. Milton stared hard at Luciano, unblinkingly hard. The old man held his glare steadily, unfazed, and then smiled. “You have a set of balls on you, my friend.”
“Aw, come on, Tommy––you can’t be serious. You said––”
“Go and do something else, Carlo. I don’t need you around for this.”
“Tommy––”
“It wasn’t a suggestion. Go on––fuck off.”
Lucchese left the table but he didn’t go far. He stopped at the bar and ordered a beer.
Milton didn’t relax, not even a little. He was very aware of the two bodyguards at the table across the room.
“Alright,” Luciano said. “So suppose I said I do know about this business. What do you want?”
“A name––who booked the girls that night.”
“Come on, Mr. Smith, you know I can’t give you that. That business only works if it’s anonymous. We got some serious players on the books. Well known people who would shit bricks if they knew I was letting people know they took advantage of the services we offer. They need to trust our discretion. I start spilling their names, there are plenty of other places who’ll take their money.”
“You need to think bigger than that, Mr. Luciano. Telling me who booked her that night is the best chance you’ve got of keeping the business.”
“That so? How you figure that?”
“One of your drivers told me that the girl was sent by the agency. You could say he’s had a crisis of conscience about it. He knows he ought to be telling the police. So far, that hasn’t been strong enough to trump the fact that he’s terrified that talking is going to bring him into the frame. That’s his worst case scenario.”
“No, Mr. Smith. His worst case scenario is that I find out who he is.”
“But you won’t find out, not from me.”
“So what’s his worry?”
“If he goes to the cops? That he gets charged with procuring prostitution.”
“So he’s not saying anything.”
“Not yet. But you know the way that guilt is. It has a way of eating at you. I’m betting that he’s feeling worse and worse about what happened every single day, and the longer the police dig away without getting anywhere, the harder it’s going to be for him to fight off going to them and telling them everything he knows. And if she turns up dead? I reckon he calls them right away. The first thing that’s going to happen after that is that Salvatore gets a visit about the murders. The second thing is that he gets arrested and charged. The police need to be seen to be doing something. They’ll go after the low-hanging fruit, and three dead prostitutes linked––rightly or wrongly––to an illegal agency like Fallen Angelz would be a perfect place to start. And, without wanting to cast aspersions, Salvatore didn’t strike me as the kind of fellow with the character to stand up to the prospect of doing time when there’s a plea bargain on the table. I don’t need to go on, do I?”
“You sure Salvatore flips? Just like that?”
“Are you sure he won’t?”
“You saying you can help me?”
“I’ve got a few days head start on the police. Maybe that’s enough time for me to find out what happened. Maybe my girl isn’t linked to the other two. Maybe something else has happened to her. And, maybe, if I can find some answers, the driver decides he doesn’t have to say anything.”
“And if this girl is dead?”
“Provided it had nothing to do with you, maybe I can find a way that leaves you out. That agency’s got to be valuable to you, right? It’s got to be worth giving me the chance to sort things out. What have you got to lose?”
Luciano looked at him shrewdly. “I could speak to the driver myself. Find out what he knows.”
“You don’t know who he is.”
“You do. You could tell me.”
He smiled thinly, suggestively.
“Forget it,” Milton said, smiling back. “I’m not frightened of you.”
“What did you do before you drove taxis, Mr. Smith?”
“I was a cook,” he said.
“A cook?”
“He was working in a restaurant when I met him,” Beau said.
“You think he’s a cook, Beau?”
“No.”
Luciano sucked his teeth.
Milton clenched his fists beneath the table.
“Alright––let’s say, just for the sake of discussion, that I give you what you want. Why are you so interested? What does it have to do with you?”
“The police have me down as a suspect and it’s not in my interest for my name to come out. The sooner I can clear this up, the better.”
“Publicity is bad for you?”
“Very bad.”
Luciano shook his head, a small smile playing on his lips. “You’re a very interesting man, Mr. Smith. That’s all I need for now. I’ll speak to Beau. You can wait outside.”
Milton made his way down from the raised area and across the wide room. As he passed the bar he saw Carlo with another man. The newcomer held himself at an odd angle, his left arm clutched to his side as if he was in pain, and he had a huge, florid bruise on his cheek. There were purples and blues and greys in the bruise and the centre was pure black and perfectly rounded, as if it had been caused by a forceful impact with something spherical. The nose was obscured by a splint. Salvatore glared at Milton as he crossed in front of him, his eyes dripping with hate. Milton nodded once, a gesture he knew he probably shouldn’t have made but one that he just couldn’t resist. The injured man lost it, aggrieved at the beating that he had taken, aggrieved at seeing Milton walk out of the bowling alley with impunity, not a scratch on him, and he came in at an awkward charge, moving painfully and with difficulty, his right fist raised. Milton feinted one way and moved another. The Italian stumbled past, Milton tapped his ankles and Salvatore tripped and fell. He grimaced as he pushed himself to his feet again but by then Milton had backed off and turned around and was ready for the second go-around. Salvatore came at him again, his fist raised, lumbering like a wounded elephant. Milton ducked to one side and threw a crisp punch that landed square on his nose, crunching the bones again. S
alvatore’s legs went and he ate carpet. He stayed down this time, huffing hard.
Milton raised his hands helplessly and looked over at the VIP area, wondering whether things were going to get heated. Beau looked anxious but neither Tommy Luciano or Carlo Lucchese did anything. Milton turned to look at Luciano, then to Lucchese, then to Salvatore, then he pushed out of the door and went outside to wait for Beau in the cold, bright afternoon sun.
29
MILTON HAD GONE to a meeting that evening. It wasn’t his usual and Eva wasn’t there. He had gone out for dinner afterwards with a couple of the guys and by the time he returned to his flat it was midnight. He was reasonably confident that there would be no more issues with the Lucianos––at least for the moment––but he couldn’t completely rule out that Lucchese might ignore his boss and come at him again and so he had driven around the block twice before going inside. He saw nothing to make him anxious, and there was nothing in the blindingly bright lobby to suggest that his visitors had returned or that they intended to. He climbed to the third floor. He knew exactly where the light switch was and it was with a single blur of motion that he opened the door, flicked it on and stood in the threshold with the door open wide, scanning the room with practised eyes. Everything looked as if it was in order. He stepped forward and locked himself inside, bending down to examine one of his own black hairs which still lay undisturbed where he had left it before going out, placed carefully across the drawer of the coffee table. He had left a faint trace of talcum powder on the handle of the bedroom door and that, too, had not been disturbed. These were, he knew, extravagant measures to confirm his safety but ten years in a business as dangerous as his had hardwired him with caution. Paying heed to that creed, and to his instincts, was the reason he was still alive. The precise application of a routine like this had saved his life on several occasions. The Mafia was a blunt instrument compared to the secret services of the countries that he had infiltrated––a cudgel as to a scalpel––but that was no reason to treat them with any less respect. A cudgel was still deadly.
He propped a chair beneath the door handle, locked the window that faced the fire escape and slept with his fingers wrapped around the butt of the Smith & Wesson 9mm that he kept under the pillow.
HE ROSE EARLY the next morning. There was a lot to do. First, though, he dressed in his running gear, pulled his battered running shoes onto his feet and went downstairs. It was a crisp, bright December day, the sun’s cold rays piercing the mist that rose off the Bay. Milton ran south on Mason Street, turned onto Montgomery Street and ran until he reached The Embarcadero, the piers, the bridge to Oakland and, beyond it, the greenish-blue of the ocean. He ran north, following the road as it curved to the west, listening to the rhythmic cadence of his feet and clearing his mind. This had always been his preferred way to think. It was his meditation before he found the sanctuary of the rooms, a peaceful retreat where he had the time and the luxury to let his thoughts develop at their own speed, without even being conscious of them.
He ran onto Jefferson, turned left inside Aquatic Park and then followed Hyde to Broadway and then, finally, Mason Street and home.
He passed through the lobby and took the stairs at a jog.
There were two men waiting outside the door to his room.
He recognised them both.
“Detective Cotton. Detective Webster.”
“Mr. Smith.”
“How can I help you?”
“We’re going to need to talk to you.”
“Again? Really?”
“A few more questions.”
“I answered them before. Is there anything else?”
“I’m afraid there is. We found another body this morning.”
* * *
PART THREE
The Suspect
* * *
#3
MILEY VAN DYKEN
MILEY VAN DYKEN had been having second thoughts about how she had chosen to live her life. She’d told friends about them, how she was thinking about getting out. She knew that turning tricks could be a dangerous business but it seemed to her that there had been more stories of psychos preying on working girls recently. There had been all those poor girls down on the beach in New Jersey, for one, and the police still had no idea who was responsible for their deaths. There were plenty of benefits that came from doing what she did––they money, obviously, but the freedom of working to your own schedule was another that other girls often overlooked––but it had been getting to the stage that her doubts and fears were starting to get so bad that she couldn’t ignore them. She had nightmares and premonitions about running into a murderous john and she had suffered with a really bad one the night before. She had recorded it on her Facebook page, telling her friends in vague terms (since not many of them knew what she did) that she was having serial killer dreams that were more and more vivid each time they came around.
The john had hired a room in The Tuscan on North Point Street in North Beach, five minutes from Pier 39. Miley usually preferred to sort the room herself, charging a little extra as expenses so that she still cleared her two hundred per hour, but the guy had apologised that he couldn’t very easily leave the hotel and, when he had sensed her reluctance, had offered to pay a further fifty bucks on top to “make up for her inconvenience.” He sounded nice enough kind, speaking with a lilting southern accent that put her in mind of that guy Kevin Spacey played in the Netflix thing, and even though she had initially turned him down and hung up she stewed on it for fifteen minutes and changed her mind. She didn’t have another job booked, he had been polite on the phone and, most importantly, she needed the money. Craigslist had started charging $5 per advert and that had made it difficult to stay at the top of the list. Miley had used a JavaScript program that kept posting and reposting her ad so it was always on the first page but the new charges meant that that wasn’t an option any more. The cost of advertising was higher and the competition was tougher. She worried about all of that as she rode the bus. The driver smiled at her as she disembarked outside the hotel.
He was the last person to see her alive.
It was a small hotel that catered to travelling business people. It was a two-storey building surrounded by a parking lot. It didn’t appear to be very busy; the lot was almost empty, save for a couple of rentals and a beaten-up Cadillac Eldorado. She went around the car on the way to the lobby when the driver’s side door opened and a man got out. He was tall and skinny, dressed in a white t-shirt, jeans and a pair of cowboy boots. He said her name. She recognised his voice.
30
COTTON AND WEBSTER didn’t sit and so neither did Milton. Webster wandered absently to the window and looked down onto the street below. Cotton took a book from the shelf––it was The Unbearable Lightness of Being––made a desultory show of flicking through the pages and then put it back again. He looked around, his face marked by a lazy sneer.
“Nice place you got here,” he said.
“It suits me very well.”
“I don’t know, Mr. Smith. We get called out to places like this all the time. Don’t you find it a bit tawdry?”
“You didn’t come here to critique my accommodation.”
“No.”
“And I have things to do. What do you want? If you’ve got questions, ask them.”
The cop took out his phone and selected a picture. He slid it across the table. Milton looked at it: it was a picture of a woman, white, slender with a short cropped Elfin hairstyle. Very pretty. “Recognise her?”
Milton looked at the picture. “No.”
“You sure about that? Scroll right for the next one.”
Milton did as he was told. It was the same girl, this time in some sort of prom dress. She looked young. “No,” he said. “I’ve never seen her before. Who is she?”
“Her name is Miley Van Dyken.”
“I don’t know her, detective.”
“Where were you three weeks ago last Wednesday?”
“I’d have to check.”
“Like I say, it’s a Wednesday. Think.”
Milton sighed exasperatedly. “I would’ve gone to work in the afternoon and driven my car at night.”
“We can check the afternoon. What about the night––can anyone prove you were driving?”
“If my calls were from the agency, then maybe. If they came straight through to me, then no, probably not.” He slid the phone back across the table to him. “Who is she? Number three?”
“That’s right, Mr. Smith. We found her this morning. Same place as the other two.”
“There’s only so many times I can say it––I’ve got nothing to do with this.”
“Can I ask you something else?”
“Please do.”
“You own any firearms?”
Milton felt his skin prickle. “No,” he said.
“So if we looked around, we wouldn’t find anything?”
“Help yourself. I don’t have anything to hide.”
“Reason I’m asking, that guard at the party you put on the ground, he said you took his gun from him. Smith & Wesson. The Pro Series, 9mm––very nice gun. Then, yesterday, we found a couple of shell casings outside the gate for Pine Shores. Looks like the electricity was shot out. You wouldn’t know anything about that, would you?”
Milton concentrated on projecting a calm exterior. He had left the gun under the bed. It wasn’t even well hidden: all they would need to do would be to duck down and look. “No,” he said. “I don’t know anything about it. I don’t own a gun. To be honest, I doubt I’d even know what to do with one.”
“Alright, then.”
“Is that it?”
“No,” Webster said from the window. “There is one more thing you can help us with.”
“Please.”
“When we spoke to you before you said you came across the border from Mexico. Six months ago. July. That’s right, isn’t it?”