Nog had suggested that they not take the taxi all the way to their destination, instead making the final part of their journey on foot. In that way, they could tell whether they’d been followed from the Shining Oasis, and also avoid drawing attention to themselves when they’d gotten where they were going. Candlewood went along with the plan, but he didn’t actually see the need for the subterfuge. Overall, Nog’s efforts to find and help his holographic “friend” seemed excessive. As a diversion, experiencing a week’s holiday in a historic locale, essentially living out the plot of an old-fashioned detective novel, made sense to Candlewood, even if such a holosuite program would not have been his first recreational choice. But Nog did not treat their time in Bashir 62 as entertainment; rather, he viewed it as a life-and-death effort to preserve the programming and memory state of a computer-generated simulacrum. In some ways, it felt like struggling to save a padd or a companel.
Don’t be jealous, Candlewood told himself as they slinked through the shadows of the residential structures. It had been a long time since he had developed—and then overcome—his infatuation with Nog. They ended up becoming friends, but it felt as if the operations chief cared more about a conglomeration of computer algorithms and three-dimensional lighting displays than he did about flesh-and-blood people.
Which means I’m resentful of a hologram, Candlewood realized, and that’s even more ridiculous. He reminded himself that friendship did not come packaged as a zero-sum game. Nog could have other people in his life—whether real or virtual—and still have a strong bond with Candlewood. The science officer just needed to accept the situation, regard it as an interesting adventure, and enjoy the time with his friend.
Candlewood shook off his errant thoughts and refocused on the task at hand. When he did, he espied a small sign hanging on the end of one of the buildings. “There,” he whispered to Nog, pointing past him. “Number three.”
Nog looked toward the sign. “Good,” he whispered back. “Come on.” They made their way to the front of the building, to where an outdoor staircase led up to the second level. They mounted the steps slowly, minimizing the noise they made. They stopped at the first door they came to, on which hung the apartment number Cool Papa Owens had given them: 321.
Nog reached up to knock, but before he could, the door swung open. Owens stood there, still in the suit he’d worn at the Shining Oasis, though he’d removed his tie and unbuttoned his collar. Without saying anything, he lunged forward, took hold of Nog by the arm, and pulled him across the threshold. Candlewood hurried inside after him. When he did, Owens quickly stepped past him, peered around outside for a moment, then returned and closed the door.
“We made sure we weren’t followed,” Candlewood assured Owens.
“That’s good,” Owens said.
“Actually, somebody did tail us from the hotel,” Nog said.
“What?” Candlewood said.
To Owens, Nog said, “We took a taxi from the hotel and had the driver let us out a few blocks from here. Somebody followed us in another taxi. They passed us when we stopped and turned down another street, but the passenger got out shortly after that. Fortunately, we traveled quickly and quietly on foot, and we managed to lose ourselves in the darkness.”
“How do you know all that?” As soon as Candlewood asked the question, he realized what the answer would be.
“I heard them.” Nog assured Owens that they had lost their tail, and that nobody had seen them arrive at his apartment.
“Well, if you didn’t lose them,” Owens said, “we’ll know soon enough.”
“Who is ‘them’?” Candlewood asked.
“I don’t know exactly,” Owens said, “but we’ll get to that.” He crossed the room to an open doorway. “Get you boys a drink?” Both Candlewood and Nog demurred. “Well, I’m gonna need one for this conversation.” He disappeared into a space decorated mostly in shades of white that Candlewood took to be a kitchen. “Have a seat,” he called back.
Candlewood and Nog looked around the neat but well-worn apartment. Clearly a living space, the front room, covered in a neutral beige carpet, contained a sofa covered in dark-green velour; a low, rectangular wooden table before it; several filled bookcases; and a low console of some sort. Curtains of a lighter green covered the front windows, and a standing lamp in one corner offered the only light. A broken music stand lay on the floor against the far wall. Nog moved to the far end of the sofa and sat down, and Candlewood took a seat on the other end.
“Where you been, Nog?” Owens asked as he came back into the living room. In one hand, he carried a bottle three-quarters filled with an amber liquid, and in the other, his fingers gripped the insides of three plain, round drinking glasses. He set the bottle on the table, then made a point of holding the glasses up before also putting them down. “Just in case you change your mind,” he said. He pulled a cork from the mouth of the bottle, then splashed a measure of its contents into a glass. Block printing on the bottle’s label read GOLDSILL RYE.
“I left town a couple of years ago,” Nog said, “and I haven’t been able to get back here until now.”
Owens put the bottle down on the table and moved to one of the bookcases. There, he selected not a book, but a thin paper envelope perhaps thirty centimeters square. From it, he withdrew a black disc, which he then carried over and appeared to install in the low console opposite the sofa. A song began to play, a stringed instrument joined by a low, mournful voice.
Owens ducked back into the kitchen for a moment. He returned with a wooden chair, which he placed on the other side of the low table from Candlewood and Nog. He sat down, picked up his glass of rye, and asked, “What is it you boys need to know about Vic?”
“Whatever you can tell us,” Nog said at once. “We heard he was in some sort of trouble, and we wanted to help him.”
“I really don’t know what kind of trouble he’s in,” Owens said. “I haven’t seen him in a while.”
“When was the last time you did see him?” Candlewood asked.
“Maybe bout a year or so ago,” Owens said. “But he disappeared before that.”
“When was that?” Nog asked.
“Had to be more than two years ago now,” Owens said. Nog glanced over at Candlewood, obviously taking note that Vic’s disappearance more or less coincided with the destruction of the old DS9. The science officer still didn’t see how or why the two events would be connected. “Truth be told, though, he started acting kinda strange in the months leading up to that.”
“What do you mean ‘strange’?” Nog wanted to know.
“Not strange like peculiar, but strange like different than how he usually acted,” Owens said. “He sometimes showed up late for rehearsals, and a couple times, he left early. One night, he even showed up to the Shining Oasis late for a set.”
“And he’d never done any of those things before?” Candlewood asked.
“Never,” Owens said. “Up to then, he was the most professional cat I ever met. But there were other things too. A couple times outside the casino, I saw Vic with bad guys.”
“ ‘Bad guys’?” Candlewood asked, looking for clarification of the term.
“Hoods,” Owens said. “Known criminals. Not connected guys, but petty crooks. I once saw Vic walking down the street with one, and then having lunch over at Vinny’s Desert Steakhouse with another. You know Vic usually avoided those guys like the plague. I mean, they sometimes chatted him up after a show, but that’s as far as it went.”
“Vic stayed away from the criminal element as much as he could,” Nog told Candlewood.
“There was that business with Frankie Chalmers that one time,” Owens said, “but that was just a guy he grew up with making life hard on Vic.” Candlewood recognized the character name from what Nog had told him about the jack-in-the-box subprogram.
“So when did Vic disappear?” Candl
ewood asked.
“One night—this is maybe two years ago, maybe a little longer—he never showed up for our regular gig at the Shining Oasis,” Owens said. “He didn’t call, either. The band just figured he got sick, but when Bill Coogan—that’s the manager of the lounge—went to Vic’s suite, he wasn’t there, and the place was ransacked.”
“Did anybody contact the authorities?” Nog asked.
“The cops came in, but they couldn’t find out what happened to him,” Owens said. “Vic didn’t show up the next night, either, and Coogan didn’t have any choice but to hire another singer. Me and a couple of the guys in the band convinced him to make it temporary, which he did for a week, but after that, it was obvious Vic wasn’t coming back. Coogan had to replace him for good.”
“But you saw Vic again after that,” Candlewood prompted.
“I did, but not for a while—months, at least, maybe six or more,” Owens said. “But I did ask around a bit, and from time to time, I heard things.”
“What things?” Nog asked. Despite the indeterminate description, what Owens had said still sounded ominous to Candlewood.
“I heard rumors here and there that Vic had run afoul of the hard guys.”
“Men involved in organized crime,” Nog said, part statement, part question.
“That’s right,” Owens said.
“But you said it yourself,” Nog noted. “That’s not like Vic.”
“It didn’t used to be, no,” Owens said, “but before he went missing, I did see him with hoods those couple of times I mentioned, and after he disappeared, the rumors kept up about him getting in deep with mobsters. Eventually, I know a few folks who figured that he ended up out in the desert in a shallow grave.”
“Is that what you thought too?” Nog asked.
“I didn’t know,” Owens said. “When he didn’t show up at the Shining Oasis and then got replaced, I started to think so.” The musician gazed down at his glass. He swirled around the small amount of rye left, and he seemed lost in thought. Candlewood was about to pose another question when Owens looked back up. “Of course, then I ended up seeing him again.”
“Where?” Nog asked. “Where was the last place you saw him?”
“Right here,” Owens said. He pointed to a darkened hallway that ran off to the left between the living room and the kitchen. “Well, in there, actually, in the back bedroom.”
“What was he doing here?” Candlewood asked.
Owens leaned forward in his chair. “He was running for his life.”
ix
* * *
Vernon “Cool Papa” Owens sat bolt upright on the couch, his heart pounding hard in his chest—except that the knocking he heard didn’t originate in his chest, but at the front door. It reminded him of the raids he occasionally had to endure in his days playing Chicago speakeasies back in the thirties. That had been a long time ago, in a different place; booze was legal again in the U.S. of A., and in Vegas, so was gambling.
On top of that, Owens wasn’t at the casino, but in his apartment. He must have dozed off on the couch, and the drumming on the front door had woken him. All had gone quiet, though, and so Owens listened. When the knocking came again, it didn’t sound loud after all, but more like tapping. He checked his watch and saw the lateness of the hour: just past three in the morning. He’d gotten home from a late-night set not long before, and he assumed that one of the boys in the band must have come calling for a drink—or, just possibly, Darlene had undergone a change of heart after their recent breakup.
Owens got up from the couch and ambled over to the door. He unlocked and opened it, hoping to see Darlene, but anticipating one of his fellow musicians. Instead, he saw a face he hadn’t in quite a while.
“Vic,” he said, surprised. “I thought you was dead.”
“Not yet,” the singer said. “Can I come in, Cool Papa?” Vic looked back over first one shoulder, then the other. He seemed on the verge of panic.
“Course,” Owens said, stepping aside to let Vic enter. Owens closed the door and locked it, then eyeballed the singer. He looked disheveled, his clothes wrinkled, his hair mussed, his eyes sporting dark circles beneath them. It also appeared as though he’d lost weight. Owens had never seen Vic look so bad; quite the opposite, Vic had always been the picture of nattiness.
“I hate to impose on you, Cool Papa,” the singer said, “but I need a place to hide out for a while.”
“Who you hiding out from?” Owens asked. “You gonna get me killed?”
“I wouldn’t have come here if I thought that,” Vic said. “But you’re better off not knowing anything.”
“If somebody’s looking for you, they’d sure as hell check your friends’ places,” Owens said. “Including the guys in the band.”
“They’ve been keeping eyes on your place, and on the other guys’ too,” Vic said. “I know because I’ve been watching them look for me. Tonight’s the first time in months that nobody’s out there.”
“You think they’ll be back?” Owens asked.
“I want to tell you no,” Vic said, “but the truth is that, yes, I think they’ll probably be back. If you let me stay here, I promise to keep outta sight.” He reached into the pocket of the nondescript jacket he wore and pulled out a wad of cash. “I can pay you, Cool Papa.”
Owens beheld the twist of bills with suspicion, suspecting its provenance. “Do I wanna know where that money come from?”
“Probably not,” Vic said, “but I can tell you that it’s not stolen—at least not by me.”
“Yeah, well that’s something, I guess,” Owens said. He walked past Vic to the other side of the living room, considering what he should do. At last, he said, “You can stay, but you can keep your money. Friends do for friends.” Owens believed that, and he would have let Vic stay there regardless, but he also had self-preservation in mind in wanting to keep from tying himself to what he assumed to be the singer’s ill-gotten gains. “I got some extra sheets and blankets. I’ll get em and you can make up the couch.”
“Thanks, Cool Papa,” Vic said. “You’re a lifesaver.”
On his way into the hall, Owens stopped and looked back at Vic. “From the looks of you,” he told the singer, “I believe it.”
x
* * *
The instant he heard the crash, Owens knew what had happened. He tossed off the sheet and blanket atop him, leaped from his bed, and raced in his underwear out into the living room. Dim light spilled into the apartment through the open front door, which had been thrown wide. Pieces of wood had splintered from the jamb and lay scattered on the carpeting.
A large man stepped forward into the doorway, silhouetted against the glow of a streetlamp outside, his height and the broadness of his shoulders nearly filling the space. He entered the apartment casually, as though arriving for a friendly visit. His hand went up to the inner wall, presumably feeling for a light switch. When he didn’t find one, he stepped forward and reached for the lamp on the end table beside the couch. He turned it on and light streamed through the top of the lampshade, illuminating his face, but the glint of the gun in the man’s hand caught Owens’s attention. Then a second bruiser entered the apartment, also wielding a weapon.
“Where is he?” the first man asked. He had squarish features and a deep voice.
Owens pointed back the way he had come, into the short hall that ran between the apartment’s two bedrooms. “That way,” he said. “In the back bedroom.” He stepped out of the way as the first man sprang forward and raced past him. It startled Owens that somebody of such considerable bulk could move so quickly.
A doorknob rattled. Owens knew that Vic locked it at night. In the months he had been staying there, the singer had taken to sleeping on the floor in the back bedroom. Owens used the space during the day as a rehearsal room, where he practiced new pieces on his bass. He’d also recently t
aken up the violin.
Early on, Vic had spoken of the possibility of men coming after him. He believed that they might force their way in and make threats. Vic made Owens promise that, if that should happen, he would give up the singer immediately.
A second crash reverberated through the apartment. Owens peeked into the hall to see that the first man had kicked open the door to the back bedroom. The window in the far wall stood open, its screen gone. So was Vic.
Owens watched as the first man hurried to the window and leaned outside. The sound of running footsteps echoed up from behind the building. Owens imagined Vic climbing out the window, hanging down as far as he could, and dropping to the alley below.
Then the big man turned from the window and set his attention on Owens.
xi
* * *
“They beat me,” Owens said, and Nog winced at the idea of the older man being set upon by the two thugs. The musician lifted his glass to his lips and upended it, downing the last of his rye. “They left me with this—” He pointed to the ugly scar that crossed his temple. “—but it could’ve been worse. I told them everything I knew about Vic, but that wasn’t much. I used to think Vic kept quiet when he stayed with me in order to protect himself, but now I think it was to protect me. Those guys hit me, but they realized pretty quickly that I couldn’t help them.”
“What did you tell them?” Nog asked.
“Basically what I just told you,” Owens said. “I haven’t seen Vic or heard from him since that night, probably right around a year ago.”
The Long Mirage Page 14