by Sean Black
Lock took three steps, bent down, and yanked the phone jack from the socket. He held the reference directly in front of her face. ‘Did you even check the address on this?’
‘Of course. There’s a letter I wrote here somewhere. Don’t think I ever got a reply.’
‘You ever heard the phrase “not worth the paper it’s written on”?’ Ty asked her.
She looked at him slack-jawed. Lock felt like crumpling the damn thing up and making her eat it.
‘I’m doing my best here,’ she protested.
Lock folded up the reference, jammed it in his pocket, and walked out of the office. He called Carrie from the street. It took her less than ninety seconds to call him back — quicker than the FBI.
‘Well, it’s a real address. Real business too,’ Carrie said.
‘What kind?’
‘The world’s oldest.’
Thirty-four
‘Now this is the kind of investigation I’m down with,’ said Ty, surveying the day-glo pink frontage of the the Kittycat Club from across the street.
Before they’d headed there, Lock had gone home to change. Dressed in black cords, a white shirt, sports coat, and wearing a pair of non-prescription clear glasses, he approached the club parallel to the entrance. There were two bouncers on the door, big guys who relied on their height and steroid-induced muscle to carry out their duties. To get in the front you had to go past them.
Over the years Lock had dealt with enough of these guys to know that the key to getting past them was to appear as non-threatening and compliant as possible. They were wired to see a slight where there was none. Direct eye contact was a definite nono. The glasses, he hoped, would help, as well as give him a geeky look. Amazing how schoolyard stereotypes became hard-wired into us as adults.
He marched along the sidewalk and took a sharp left turn into the entrance, keeping his eyes down and doing his best to appear nervous. Nervous tended not to come naturally to Lock, though, and one of the men stuck a hand across his chest.
‘What’s your hurry, buddy?’ the other guy asked him.
‘Let’s see some ID,’ the bouncer with his arm out added.
The last thing Lock wanted to do was show them something with his name on.
‘Don’t have my wallet, fellas.’
What had been the firm pressure of the man’s hand turned to a light push. ‘No ID, no entry.’
Lock allowed himself to stagger back a step before regaining his balance. He reached into his left pants pocket, pulled out a money clip and peeled off two twenties. ‘Here you go, fellas.’
They took the money, pocketed it, and the hand dropped away from his chest like a drawbridge being lowered.
‘What happened to your head?’ the bouncer asked as he put his hand back in his coat pocket.
‘The wife. Found someone else’s number on the back of a cocktail napkin from the Lizard Lounge in my wallet. Hit me with the side of the iron. I was in hospital for a week,’ Lock said. He delivered the story with his eyes on their feet. It explained the absence of the wallet, his nerves and, more importantly, the four-inch scar on the top of his skull.
The two bouncers snickered. They were both thinking exactly the same thing.What a loser.
‘OK, we just gotta give you a quick pat-down.’
Lock raised both his arms to shoulder level, the loose change in his sports coat pocket heavy enough to stop it riding up and giving them a good view of his Sig. This was Ty’s signal.
‘Yo!’ Ty appeared seemingly from nowhere.
Lock smiled as Ty pimp-rolled his way across the street in long, loping strides. He lowered his arms again as the two bouncers stepped from the curb to confront him.
‘How much is the door entry?’ Ty asked them as Lock stepped past them, gun undiscovered.
The bar ran the length of one wall. Behind it, the solitary bartender was female. And topless. It certainly complicated ordering a drink. She had a motel tan and limp blonde hair pulled back tight, giving her face a Projects facelift.
‘Beer, thanks,’ Lock said.
She noticed him avoiding looking at her breasts even though they were right there at eye level. ‘It’s OK to look at my tits if you like,’ she said jauntily.
All Lock could think to say to the offer was, ‘Thanks.’ Truth be told, he wasn’t much of a breast man. Not much of a leg man either. He liked eyes. And lips. Yeah, give him a great pair of eyes, ones that showed some sparkle. And expressive lips. Maybe throw in a nose that was in proportion to the rest of the face. Which must make him a face man, he guessed.
‘Kinda why I took this gig,’ the woman continued. ‘I mean, guys stare at your tits anyway, so why not cut out the whole charade? Make better tips too.’
‘Been working here long?’ Lock asked, making it sound as much like a lame pick-up as he could.
‘This your first time, sweetie?’ she shot back, teasing him.
‘First time in this place. Just got a new job down the street. Boiler room financial racket.’
She slid his beer over to him. He took out the money clip and paid, leaving her a generous tip. ‘Keep the change.’
‘Just so we’re clear, with me, a tip’s just a tip. If you’re looking to get your pipes cleaned, it’s the dancers you have to take care of.’
‘Of course.’
A few moments later, Ty sat down at the other end of the bar. Lock acknowledged his presence with a raise of the head.
A crank-thin redhead approached Lock. She introduced herself as Tiffany and he bought her a ten-dollar Coke. He was waiting for an invitation to go through to the back for a private dance, but it never came. Tiffany elected to launch into her life story instead. Lock smiled politely and did his best to listen.
For reasons only known to the young women who frequented these kinds of businesses, he seemed to give off some kind of a father confessor aura as soon as he entered. It had become a running joke with his buddies in the army. He must have been the only soldier in the history of the armed forces who ended up giving out a back rub to a hooker as she poured out her deepest, darkest secrets. He knew the narrative off by heart now: a missing or abusive father followed by a quest to rediscover him in a litany of equally vacant men.
At what felt like an appropriate break in the story — Tiffany had just lost her daughter to social services, which sent her into a tail-spin of ketamine abuse — Lock excused himself from her company and eased off his bar stool, ostensibly heading for the men’s room.
‘You want me to hold it for you?’ she said with a smile, remembering the bottom line in places like this.
‘No thanks, but I really do appreciate the offer. You’re a good kid.’
She slid down the bar to sit next to Ty.
Beyond the door marked ‘gangstas’ for the men’s room and ‘ho’s’, presumably indicating the ladies’, there lay a short stretch of dark corridor which dead-ended with three doors. One led to the men’s room, the other to the ladies’, which classily doubled as the dancers’ changing area, judging from the sound of rap emanating from behind it; the third, up a short flight of stairs, was marked ‘No Entry’. The sign made it a no-brainer.
On the way, Lock unholstered his Sig, chambered a round and then decocked it using the lever on the left of the pistol grip. Then he holstered it again. It left him ready to go. He did it every time he was about to walk through a door when he didn’t know for sure what lay on the other side and there was a chance it was something bad.
At the top of the stairs he stopped, took out his Gerber, and eased a section of painted-over wire away from the door frame. Cutting through it, he jammed the wire into his pocket before pushing open the door.
A solitary desk lamp cut an arc through the gloom. The smell was of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. An overweight elderly woman with her hair up in a bun sat behind a desk. She fumbled for the panic button.
Lock held up the sliver of wire he’d cut out from around the door frame. ‘It’s not working.’
There was a phone on the desk, but the woman made no move for it. She seemed remarkably composed, as if an armed man storming her office was an everyday occurrence. Lighting a fresh cigarette from the dying embers of the previous one, she sucked down on it, browning the filter with one drag, seemingly resigned to whatever was coming next.
‘What do you want? I’m busy.’
Lock reached inside his jacket and pulled out the picture of Natalya with her parents. He laid it on the desk in front of the woman. She glanced at it, then looked away.
‘So?’
‘You know her?’
She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘She’s dead. But before she died a little boy she was looking after was abducted. I’m trying to find him. And you’re going to help me.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He was getting nowhere fast. Sooner or later someone would realize that a customer who’d gone to the men’s room hadn’t reappeared. Then one of the gorillas would come scouting.
He pulled out the letter of reference, placed that on the desk alongside the photograph and pointed to the signature. ‘This is you, isn’t it? You’re Jerry.’ He could see that right now she’d deny being in the same room as him, so he kept going. ‘Now, you can either answer my questions or I can turn this over to the FBI.’
‘It’s my name, but I didn’t sign it. My name’s spelled with an i not a y.’ She picked up the letter and took her time studying it. ‘She worked here. Until, maybe. .’ She paused, making an effort to recall. ‘Five months ago. Then she left.’
There was a knock at the door. Then, a man’s voice. One of the bouncers. ‘Hey, Jerri, we need you downstairs.’
‘Answer him,’ Lock whispered.
‘Give me five.’
They listened as the man clumped back down the stairs. Then they heard him push open the door to the ladies’ room and bark something to one of the dancers.
Jerri dragged on her cigarette as Lock rifled through the files on her desk.
‘Listen, if I treated Natalya so bad, why did she come looking for her old job back?’
Lock looked up from the filing cabinet. ‘What?’
‘Didn’t know that, did you?’ Jerri said, a smirk passing across her face.
‘When was this?’
‘Let me think. A month, six weeks ago.’
‘Did she give a reason?’
Jerri blew a smoke ring and shrugged. ‘She didn’t say. But it’ll have been a man. Always is.’
‘She mention anyone in particular?’
‘Some guy called Brody, I think.’
‘Could it have been Cody?’
‘Yeah, might have been.’
‘Cody Parker?’
‘She just called him Cody.’
Shit. Lock had been wrong. The guy wasn’t innocent, merely cool under pressure.
‘Did she say anything about animal rights?’
‘Animal what?’
Lock took that as a no.
‘You ever meet him?’
‘He might have picked her up once or twice.’
‘Was he older? Younger?’
‘Than her? Older. Listen, our five minutes is up. They’ll be coming back up here and there’ll be trouble.’
Right on cue there was another knock at the door. This one more insistent.
‘Jerri?’
Before she had a chance to respond the door opened and one of the bouncers got a face full of gun.
‘Relax,’ said Lock, ‘I was just leaving.’
The bouncer blanched. ‘OK, man. I ain’t gonna try and stop you.’
Lock pushed past him and headed down the stairs, taking them two at a time. In the bar, Tiffany was perched on Ty’s lap.
‘I gotta go,’ Ty told her.
She threw her arms around Ty’s neck. ‘Will you call me?’
‘Sure.’
Ty fell into step with Lock. Behind them they could hear the bouncer screaming into his cell phone as he careered down the stairs. ‘Yeah, he’s got a gun. I need someone here now!’
In the office, Jerri lit a fresh cigarette and cradled the phone against her shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, blowing a perfect smoke ring and watching it slowly dissolve in front of her face. ‘But if I were you, I’d start closing this thing down fast.’
Thirty-five
‘So we had him and we let him go,’ said Ty, pacing to the window of Lock’s living room and faking a punch at his own reflection. ‘If they’ve harmed that kid. .’
Lock sat on the couch, his head in his hands, the tips of his right fingers worrying at his scar. ‘It might not be Cody, y’know.’
‘Ah, come on, Ryan. He knew Natalya, then magically she pops up as Josh Hulme’s nanny.’
‘Au pair,’ Lock corrected him.
‘Whatever.’
‘I guess we should call Frisk. Hand this back over to the Feds. People might not have wanted to cough up Parker when he was the Che Guevara of furry animals everywhere, but this might change his image.’
Lock pulled out his cell from the pouch on his belt. It buzzed in his hand. The prefix was for the Federal Plaza. ‘Speak of the devil.’ He flipped to answer.
‘What the hell are you playing at?’ The voice was unmistakeably that of Frisk.
‘Just the man I wanted to speak to.’
‘The hell with you, Lock.’
‘We know who has Josh Hulme.’
‘That’s great. You know who has his father too?’
‘What?’
Ty read Lock’s face. ‘Wassup?’
Lock waved him away. ‘Richard Hulme is with your guys, isn’t he?’
‘He was until about an hour ago.’
‘What happened?’
‘He left his apartment and now we can’t find him.’
Thirty-six
Stafford Van Straten took some papers from an eight-hundred-dollar leather attaché case and laid them out on the back seat of the Hummer. ‘I spent most of the day negotiating with our insurance company,’ he said.
Richard looked down at the documents, a glazed expression on his face.
‘I managed to convince them that because there’s only been a short window between your terminating your employment and your decision to rejoin the company, they won’t void the policy which covers you in relation to kidnap for ransom. In other words, you’ll still be covered.’
Stafford smiled to himself. He would have made a great door-to-door salesman.
‘It wasn’t an easy negotiation under the circumstances. They’re placing a limit on any ransom of two million dollars. Usually they’d go to five. But I think we were lucky to get them to extend their cover at all, don’t you?’
Again, Richard said nothing.
‘In the event that any ransom that’s paid exceeds two million dollars, Meditech have agreed to cover the excess beyond two to the usual ceiling of five. We can write it off against tax, in any case.’
Finally, Richard looked up at him. ‘This is my son’s life you’re putting a figure on.’
Stafford loosened his tie, undid the top button of his shirt. ‘I’m sorry, Richard. I don’t mean it to sound so clinical. I’m not really the best guy when it comes to dealing with emotions. I tend to suppress things, you know. It’s easier for me to try to fix things than worry about why they went wrong in the first place. I understand that you’d give anything to get him back.’ He eased a contract across the seat with the fingertips of his right hand.
Richard looked down at the thick sheaf of laser-printed heavy bond paper. ‘What’s this?’
‘Well, in order for this to work you have to be in our employ for at least the next twelve months. Any less and the insurance company would void the policy again. Along with the cover for other employees. Which in turn would make it near impossible for us to be insured with anyone else. And that would present major difficulties, especially for our overseas operations. Major difficult
ies for you too, as you’d be liable for any ransom. And I’m guessing if you had a spare few million lying around we wouldn’t be here now. You do see what I’m saying here, Richard, don’t you?’
Richard hesitated, then reached out for the contract. He began to flip through it, looking for where his signature was required.
‘It’s all fairly standard stuff,’ Stafford said quickly, handing him a Mont Blanc. ‘All the usual caveats, in particular with regard to the commercial sensitivity of your work.’
Richard stopped flipping. ‘I won’t go back to using animals.’
‘And neither will we. Our word is our bond on that issue.’
Richard flicked to the last page and signed his name. Stafford handed him the copy. He signed that as well.
‘You’re talking about a ransom,’ Richard said, ‘but there hasn’t been any demand yet.’
‘That’s not entirely true.’
‘What do you mean?’
‘We had to resolve some other issues first. Before we told you.’
For a moment Stafford thought Richard was going to stab him through the throat with the pen.
‘The kidnappers have contacted you?’
‘They were obviously confused about your status with the company. Didn’t you think it was strange when you didn’t receive any demand?’
‘Why didn’t you tell me?’ Richard sounded disbelieving.
‘If we had, you’d have told the FBI, and where would that have gotten us? Listen, Richard, you’ve been a bit of a loose cannon for the company. Even prior to all this. All your objections to the animal testing didn’t go down well with senior management.’
‘It’s bad science. The genetic structure of a primate isn’t close enough for something of this nature. Fine if you want to come up with something to treat, say, diabetes, but there’s no margin of error with these agents.’
Stafford cut him off. It was tough love time. ‘Well, while you were busy baring your soul on national TV, I was hard at work trying to get the company to sort out this damn mess. The people who have your son have made it plain they don’t want news of any ransom demand getting to the FBI. Nor do we. How many kids of our employees would be snatched if this were made public? Millions of dollars involved. Every scumbag loser in the country would be looking to repeat the trick. Every child whose parents were employed by a major corporation would be a target. Do you want that?’