Tommy’s Baby

by Rose, Annie J.

  “I think our boy here’s in a hurry,” the PI said.

  “I appreciate your help. I’m interested in meeting the man you located,” I said as politely as I could.

  “I understand you have questions for him.”

  “I nodded.”

  “Phones go to my office first. No GPS tracking or passive listening devices on premises. Particularly if you need to question him,” the PI said.

  It was a relief to hear him say it. To know that this wasn’t a man who intended to moralize to me about my intentions. The fact was, in one of my tours in Iraq, I’d witnessed the atrocious lengths revenge can drive a soldier to—especially when a man’s pain and fear twist into nothing but pure rage. I had liked to think at the time that I’d never be brought so low. That I was better than an animal who would stalk and toy with its prey. All that was primitive, base and vicious had played out before my eyes. The fact that I had agreed to a gag order about the incident after testifying in my commanding officer’s court-martial was the ticket to freedom that got me out of the service early with full honors and retirement. It’s not like I ever wanted to speak of what I’d seen. Most days I did well to forget it, but sometimes I remembered in full, vivid color and sound. Like right now.

  I had to force myself to be a better man than that. For the first time, I had a glimmer of understanding, a sick kinship feeling with the man I’d seen turn into a monster and slaughter innocent people in a vengeful fury. I would never kill the innocent. What I’d do the guilty, however—that was another story entirely.

  And this son of a bitch was guilty as sin. I wanted the PI to take me to the man and leave us alone for a while. I didn’t want a weapon. I wouldn’t make a threat or offer him a deal. Words weren’t going to be necessary on my end. He’d recognize me and know who I came for. He could tell me what I needed to know and make it out alive, or he could decide to get right with God pretty fast if he wanted to reconcile before the end. I used to be an altar boy, but I sure as hell wasn’t one anymore.

  After what seemed like forever, Connor and his buddy Eli finished shooting the shit in the parking lot and we loaded into a truck. He drove us to the office space he was renting as a base of operations in the city. It gave us deniability, he said, if our phones were clearly set on do not disturb at the office where we were having a meeting. Surely, we had been there with them. He had rented the place two days ago, had hacked the cameras so he controlled them with an encrypted app on his phone so our comings and goings wouldn’t be documented. He knew how to cover tracks in case we crossed over into illegal or even gray area dealings.

  “Try to quit cracking your knuckles like a fucking cartoon,” Connor said.

  “I didn’t realize I was,” I said.

  “You are,” he said, “it sets my teeth on edge.”

  “Are you already this grouchy without Brandi?” I asked.

  “Yeah, don’t remind me. You two are nothing to look at, that’s for damn sure.”

  “Then imagine how I feel with Liza missing,” I shot back.

  Connor cleared his throat. “Sick as hell, probably. Like you want to punch in everybody’s face to keep from crying on the floor. My counselor said that was common in men, especially men from a patriarchal structure like the military or professional athletics. Using anger to displace sadness or fear. I’m kinda surprised though with all your yoga and shit that you do that.”

  “Great that you worked with the counselor. I know it helped you a lot. And I do yoga no matter how much shit you all give me for it. But it doesn’t seem like yoga is gonna make this go away. Not when Liza is God knows where with some shady asshole.”

  “What if she went willingly?” Connor asked. I shot him a look.

  “No.”

  “What if she did? What if we go beat the shit out this guy and he’s just her boyfriend?”

  “If she went willingly, I’ll walk away,” I said, nearly choking on the words. “But she didn’t. I can feel it.”

  “Are you sure that isn’t just what you want to believe?” he said.

  “Are you trying to get your ass beat?” I asked. “I know her. I know how she looks at me and what we are to each other. I’ve been on missions with less reliable information than I have here.”

  “We all did, but those orders came from above.”

  “This one comes from within,” I insisted. “If you want to get all therapy-speak over it. This conviction that she isn’t safe won’t even let me sleep at night. We’re connected, Con.”

  “That’s good enough for me,” he said.

  We dropped off our stuff at Eli’s office and headed out to the docks where the guy we were looking for should be working at this hour. He was at a desk in a shipping office just where he was supposed to be.

  “Mr. Jackson, my friends and I would like a word with you regarding a missing person,” Eli said.

  The man from the pub, his dark hair shorn close, his alert, clever eyes taking us in. He stood up from behind his desk.

  “I’m afraid I can’t help you. No one I know is missing,” he said easily.

  Eli flipped through his photo stream and came up with the photo I’d sent him of Liza trying her first St. Martin Sizzler at the pub, her pretty face half laughing. He tipped the phone toward Jackson.

  “Look familiar?”

  “Not really. I’ve got a girlfriend, and that’s not her. I don’t spend time on other women when I have one at home.”

  “How honorable of you,” I said wryly.

  Connor nudged me, knowing I needed to stay out of the conversation. I crossed my arms and fixed my best hard-ass glare on him.

  “You were in St. Martin about a month ago, correct?”

  “Yes, I took a vacation. It was a nice place, maybe a little crowded. I’ll go back to the Bahamas next time,” he said. As if this were an ordinary discussion. As if there weren’t three hulking ex-SEALS crowding his small office.

  “I see. So how long have you been with Rocc Industries?”

  “Three years.”

  “Your girlfriend’s name is Kenzie, right? Works at the salon off Wabash?”

  “That’s right,” he said, showing signs of nervousness for the first time.

  “Pretty girl. Nice blonde hair,” Eli remarked casually. Jackson was visibly trying not to react, but his fingers were moving, tapping on the desk as he stood there across from us weighing his options.

  “She doesn’t much like being left alone when you go on your work trips like the one to St. Martin. Seems like she gets scared at night, maybe because you’ve made some enemies in your line of work,” Eli continued.

  Jackson swallowed but didn’t say anything. He was actually holding up better than I was, clearly well trained to appear unflappable. I would’ve had Eli by the throat by now demanding to know where my girlfriend was if he’d kept talking about her that way. Like he knew her and maybe had her stashed somewhere. As it was, I was twitchy and anxious to get a hold of Jackson and make him tell me what he knew. Eli knew what he was doing, and maybe if psychological pressure was working, if the implication that we had Kenzie was the right key to unlock him, then we wouldn’t have to go farther. No matter how much I kind of wanted to pound this bastard for any role he had played in her disappearance.

  “Why didn’t you take her on vacation with you?” Eli asked. “Since you say that’s all it was.”

  Jackson didn’t respond at all. He was falling back on training now. I’d had training like that, what to do if you were questioned about a mission, how to avoid reacting when you were being interrogated even with persuasive techniques. He was stonewalling, face impassive and totally silent.

  “All right, let’s go somewhere we can talk privately,” Eli said. “I’m parked a couple blocks away.

  He left with us. No struggle, no fuss. He was resigned to the inevitable—the fact that Connor and I could strong-arm him out of that office and load him in any vehicle we wanted if he didn’t cooperate. Eli had disabled the cameras on ou
r route so there wouldn’t be anything to tie us to his disappearance unless someone on a busy dock happened to look up and notice some big white dudes carrying an office worker. It didn’t come to that, though. Because he went quietly.

  Before we reached Eli’s truck, Connor nudged Jackson into an alley where we frisked him, relieving him of his two knives, his gun, and his phone. Once he’d been effectively disarmed, he was less amenable to the proceedings and tried to make a run for it. I got to him first and took him to the ground. I had him facedown on the filthy concrete, but Connor was behind me saying, “Not here.”

  He didn’t say, don’t hit him. He didn’t say, we’re not doing it that way. He said, ‘not here.’ As in, we’re going someplace else and maybe you can hit him then. It was a struggle against my baser instincts, but I got up off Jackson, only kneeling on his kidney for a second longer than necessary before Eli jerked him up by one arm. We got him into the truck, wedging him in the backseat between the two of us so he couldn’t try to dive out into traffic or some stupid crap like that. After a few minutes we pulled in to a dive motel and Eli produced a room key, letting us into number eleven. The room was dismal and small and smelled of body odor and orange air freshener. Connor took the only chair, and I stood with my back against the door while Eli started talking.

  “We know you were involved in the disappearance of this woman. You can tell us what happened to her and where to find her now or later. It’s up to you.”

  Jackson didn’t say a word. He sat down on ugly brown bedspread covering the bed that sagged in the middle like the mattress was completely blown out. He wrinkled his nose at it briefly before returning his focus to us. He wasn’t talking. He was getting comfortable. I decided maybe this was the right time to start cracking my knuckles again. Connor slid his eyes to me in silent amusement. Jackson flicked his gaze over me and went back to watching Eli. If he thought the PI was the biggest threat here, he was mistaken and he was about to find out why. Eli was playing good cop. That cast Connor as the bad cop and me as the vigilante, I suppose. The antihero who’d do anything to get back the woman he loves. It would have made for bad TV, that was certain.

  “When did you last see her?” Eli persisted.

  Again, no response.

  “Did you see her today? Yesterday?” he prompted.

  Jackson didn’t answer.

  Connor got to his feet, looking aggrieved. “Dude, I’m gonna break your arm if you don’t tell him.”

  I saw a muscle jump in Jackson’s jaw, but I gave him credit. He didn’t cave, didn’t respond. I saw Connor reach for his arm, saw Jackson foolishly take a swing at my brother. Connor caught the fist he was swinging and wrenched it. I heard the bone crack and couldn’t help but grimace in response.

  “You did that yourself. I was gonna be a nice guy and break your left arm, but you decide to try and hit me. Now talk.”

  Jackson cleared his throat, sweat coming out on his forehead, visible under the cheap fluorescent light. He was trying not to retch from the pain, was my guess. He coughed, cradling his right arm close to his chest with his left arm over it protectively. Connor took a step back.

  “I’m gonna give you a chance to gather your thoughts and answer Eli’s question before I get involved again,” Connor said, sitting back in his plastic chair awkwardly.

  “Couple—couple weeks ago, I guess,” Jackson rasped out, “What’s today? Probably a month now actually.”

  “Where was she then?”

  “St. Martin,” he said, seeming to get a little chattier after having his arm broken.

  “Who was with her and where were you?” Eli said.

  “That’s all I know,” he lied. I saw his gaze shift and knew it for a lie.

  “You know where you were, and you know who was with her. Just spit it out,” I said, disgusted. “I’m done waiting, and he,” I indicated Connor, “is the nice one.”

  “You’re the O’Sheas. I heard all about you in St. Martin. Big, military family, everybody’s got their own business except you. You’re the baby of the family. She was your girlfriend,” he smirked.

  It was his use of the past tense, the was that got me. I shot across the room and picked him up by the throat, slammed him into the wall. The ugly picture of a sunset clattered off the wall and onto the floor. I shoved him into the wall again, my fingers tightening around his worthless neck.

  “You. Fucking. Tell me. Where. She. Is,” I ground out through gritted teeth.

  He didn’t say anything. His eyes were bulging, and his face was pretty red. I eased up my grip on his neck a little and saw him take a breath. I backed up just enough to hold him to the wall and get a good gut punch in. Nothing serious, but I felt a rib crack under my fist so it was gonna hurt him to cough for a while.

  “Tommy,” Connor warned. I glanced over my shoulder at him and rammed my fist into Jackson’s stomach again. All the air went out of him and he sagged for a moment, held up only by my hand pinning his neck to the orange wall.

  “We’re trying to keep him on a leash, Jackson, but you’re not helping yourself out. Tell us where she is.”

  “Left her with a pilot,” he choked out, “that was my orders. I flew back commercial that day.”

  “Pilot? At the airport? Going where?”

  “Here. Chicago. It’s where we do business.”

  “We?”

  “By we, you mean Rocco Lucci’s organization,” Eli said. “Just to clarify.”

  He nodded, wincing, clutching his arm.

  “Where was she taken?” Eli asked evenly.

  He shook his head, leaning it back against the wall. I slapped him across the face, once forehand, then backhanded across the other cheek. The red marks on his face looked angry and livid against his pallor. Even his lips were pale—from fear or from the pain of the broken arm and rib.

  “Where?” I asked.

  “Factory down by the docks. It’s been shut down for a while. We use it for storage.”

  “For storing people?” Eli asked.

  “To house them and for training purposes.”

  “Training for what?”

  “The usual,” he said, “Break them down—dark and cold in the winter, dark and hot in the summer. No running water, nobody talks to them. They get cooperative after that.”

  “Sensory deprivation,” Connor muttered. It was one of the tactics we’d been trained to resist. Liza hadn’t been trained. I was imagining her in a cold, dark room, terrified, with no comfort, no light or warmth or even a human voice. Something inside me curled in on itself sickly.

  My hand clenched on Jackson’s shoulder. I wrenched it back, heard the crack and the groan that accompanied it. I twisted his arm behind his back and leaned on it.

  “What’s the usual?”

  “Moving product or turning tricks,” he choked out through gritted teeth. I pressed upward on his arm and he retched. I shoved him away from me.

  “Where will she go after the factory?”

  He was still sputtering, doubled over on the floor. I waited, annoyed. Connor bent over him and said something, and Jackson answered back. He looked over his shoulder at me.

  “Apartment building in Garfield Park,” he said.

  “Hope they have a guard dog,” Eli said grimly, “that’s a shit neighborhood.”

  “It probably feels like home to this crew,” Connor said. “Cockroaches like to hang out together, I bet.”

  “If she’s not in the factory, she’ll be there,” I said. “They may have already forced her into sex work. She wouldn’t go willingly. They’d have to—beat her up or drug her, scare her into doing it,” I said. My own legs went weak at the thought of it. Of someone hurting Liza, of what they would have to say or do to her, stubborn as she was, to get her to be compliant. I was disgusted beyond expression. I raced to the bathroom and puked in the sink.

  “Get him out of my sight,” I rasped, rinsing my mouth. I was afraid of what I might do to him if I let loose, if my fear and anger and cont
empt got control of me. Eli and Connor hauled him up between them. When they came back, they didn’t have Jackson with them.

  “We have the locations. Now you call the cops,” Connor said.

  “No way. You call whoever you want. I’m not waiting. I am moving on this and getting to her. Nothing he said suggests that they—got rid of her—so she’s somewhere waiting for me. Not waiting on me to tell a long story some damn cops. She needs me.”

  They didn’t even bother to argue with me.

  We piled into the truck and sped to the factory he’d indicated. It was empty except for the leavings of a recent prisoner. A nasty, thin mattress, stained and repulsive on the cold concrete floor, a stinking bucket, a single chair. A rough blanket like the kind you wrap furniture with for a move was folded neatly at the end of the mattress.

  Looking at that folded blanket, that itchy and dirty looking piece of crap that was probably all she had to keep her warm on nights when the temperature in that concrete cavern would have fallen into the forties or below, I twitched with fury. I wanted a table to flip, some glass to smash. Something to take this out on, just so I wouldn’t have to feel the full force of it.

  There was nothing. The place was depressingly bare and cold. I looked at Connor, feeling completely helpless for the first time.

  “She’s not here. You can trash whatever place we go to next, I promise,” he said. “Let’s move.” He was right not to waste time staring at the leavings of a hostage situation, of criminal confinement, whatever the legal term was that we’d use to lock up the bastards who did this to her.

  Connor called the cops and gave the dispatcher a rundown on what was going on and what address we were headed to. He knew this was a big catch for the police department, and if they could pin human trafficking on Lucci, he’d go away for a long time. So he gave them our names and our contact information and filled them in on the basics—who we had come to find, where we were told to find her and what the people in the Lucci syndicate and by extension Rocc Enterprises were responsible for.