“Let’s go over this Kovacs thing.” Maddy shakes her head. “I can’t believe you told a guy like that what happened to you.”
“I needed his help and I needed him to take me seriously. You wouldn’t understand.”
“You’re right about that.”
“You don’t know how real police work is done. All you know is from TV and movies.”
“I hope you realize we can’t go in there and break the guy’s nose.”
“I know that. That’s why we need to stop at a gas station before we get there.”
“What for?”
“You’ll see. Trust me for once, won’t you?”
“Yeah, sure.”
We stop at a gas station upstate, one of those that’s right off the highway. Maddy says she has to use the bathroom anyway. I wait until she’s in the ladies room to go up to the front counter. “I need a carton of Winstons,” I say.
Maddy sees the package when we get in the car. “You had me stop so you could stock up on cigarettes?”
“They’re the Worm’s favorite brand,” I say.
“Oh, I see. You’re going to bribe him.”
“Since I can’t break his nose, this will be the next best thing.”
Maddy nods to me, which I guess is the best compliment I’ll get. Then we continue to drive north.
***
I let Maddy lead the way into the prison. The way she marches in with back straight and head held high, it seems like she does this sort of thing all the time. She doesn’t even flinch when a guard pats her down to make sure she’s not smuggling any weapons in.
They make a little noise over the carton of cigarettes. “They’re a gift,” Maddy explains. “His favorite brand. I thought it’d help him feel more comfortable.”
She tells the guards I’m her research assistant. The problem comes when I have to produce some ID. All I have is Stacey’s ID card. “Oh shit,” I say. “My daughter must have switched licenses with me. Probably so her friends can buy booze. Fucking kids.”
The guard buys this. “My kid does that shit too. Like I won’t notice.”
He gives us guest passes and then lets us inside. We’re ushered through the layers of security, into the visitor’s room. Maddy looks over at me and shakes her head. “I can’t believe he bought that dumb story.”
“They aren’t exactly MENSA scholars around here.”
“Yeah, I guess so. He did cop a pretty good feel of my boobs.”
“Too bad he doesn’t realize you’re not into men.”
“I doubt that would matter to him.” Maddy takes out a notepad and flips it to a blank page. “I guess I’ll play the good cop since he’s probably going to piss himself when he sees you.”
The Worm doesn’t piss himself, but he comes close. When the guards usher him into the room, with manacles on his wrists and ankles, his face goes pale. He gets that same look Grace did when she saw me for the first time. “You? But you’re gone. You were a…a—”
“A cunt?” I finish for him.
“Yeah.”
He sits down on a chair, his body slack as a rag doll’s. I can’t hit him, but I can loom over him. “You’ve been doing some talking about that, haven’t you?” I say.
“I don’t know what you mean. I didn’t say nothing to no one.”
“Yeah, right. You’re so good about keeping your trap shut.”
Maddy takes this as her cue to intervene. “Look, Carl, I’m Madison Griffith with the District Discourse. I want to get your take on the Strangler. Mr. Fischer said you’d be able to help us.” Although Madison is a lesbian and hasn’t ever been interested in men, she does a good job to bat her eyelashes at the Worm. “You can help us, can’t you?”
“I don’t know nothing,” he says to her. “I swear.”
“Sure you don’t,” I say. “You’re as innocent as a newborn, right?” I lean in a little closer, as close as I dare without the guards coming in here. “You’re the one who sent me to Lennox, remember? You think I’d forget that?”
“I’m doing my time, man. I ain’t doing nothing wrong.”
Maddy pats his knee. “I bet it’s been tough in here for you. So alone. Never getting to feel the touch of a woman.”
“I don’t know nothing about the Strangler!” he says.
“I’m sure you don’t,” Maddy says before I can jump in. If this were at Squiggy’s I’d already have the little prick in a headlock and he’d squeal like a pig. Instead, Maddy has to bring out our trump card. She waves the cigarettes under his nose; his eyes go wide at the sight of the carton. “Here’s a little present for you.”
She yanks the cigarettes back before he can grab them. “You got to give us something first. Tell us what you know about Vollmer.”
“I can’t say nothing. Anyone finds out—”
“I’ll keep you as an anonymous source. And I always protect my sources.”
“If I tell you something, can you put a good word in for me? I’m up for parole in a couple months.”
“Yeah, sure. We’ll both put in a good word for you.”
“We sure will,” Maddy says. She strokes the inside of the Worm’s thigh. She presses the cigarettes into his hands; he clings to them like Clarita with Pinky. “What do you have?”
Like I thought, when he started to feel pressure from some of the guys he helped put away, the Worm turned to Vollmer. There wasn’t anyone more feared in the whole prison. The prison grapevine says Vollmer’s killed twenty-four inmates since he was put away. All accidents, suicides, or made to look like a gang hit, nothing the warden can pin on him. Vollmer isn’t interested in a partnership at first, not until he finds out about my connection to the Worm. Then he takes the Worm under his wing and gives him protection in exchange for the Worm’s information.
“He was really interested in that Lennox place,” the Worm says. “He went to the library to find stuff on the computers on them. He even got one of them stock things—”
“A prospectus?”
“Something like that. I don’t know if he was going to buy stock or what.”
“Does he have money?”
“Oh yeah, man. He was living large in here. Him and the guards had an arrangement. His girl would slip them some cash and they’d give him whatever he wanted: steaks, a fancy pillow, a TV. Whatever he wanted. The guy was loaded.”
“Wait, who’s this girl of his?” I ask.
“I forget her name.”
Maddy leans closer to him; her lips just about touch his ear. “I’m sure you can remember,” she says. “Think hard.”
She slides one hand down to his crotch with that last word. Something gets hard all right. “It was Suzanne…Little. Suzanne Little, that was her name.”
“Thank you,” Maddy says. She scribbles the name down. She pulls her hand away and gets to her feet. “You’ve been a lot of help, Carl.”
“And you ain’t going to tell no one?”
“Of course not.”
I lean close to the Worm to say my goodbye to him. “Good seeing you again, Worm. But you know what’s going to happen if I see you outside this place, don’t you? Your face is going to look like a jigsaw puzzle with a couple pieces missing.”
He swallows hard at that. “I get it,” he says. “I’m goin’ straight this time. I swear.”
“I’ll believe that when I see it,” I grumble.
Back in the car, Maddy shakes her head. “Men,” she says. “So fucking predictable.”
Chapter 29
When we get back to Clarita’s apartment, we find her asleep on the couch, a blanket draped over her. She looks different, her face thinner and hair a bit more golden. She doesn’t stir as Maddy and I enter, probably exhausted after another change.
It’s not much of a surprise to find Grace at the kitchen counter with a glass of wine. Maddy runs over to her and wraps her in a hug. “Are you all right, hon?”
“I’m fine. It’s Clarita I’m worried about.”
“She grew a
little?” I ask.
Grace nods. “It was weird. One minute we were playing dolls in her room and the next she starts rolling around in pain. It was like one of those movies, The Wolfman or something, where she started changing. She was getting taller right as I watched. That shouldn’t even be possible.”
“That’s what I used to think,” I say. “She looks OK now.”
“Yeah, but she was freaking out. She kept calling for you. Nothing I did seemed to help. I tried to give her some aspirin—just baby ones—and she batted them right out of my hand.”
“We try to avoid drug interaction,” I say.
“That makes sense,” Grace says and then finishes off her drink.
“Hey, it’s all right now,” Maddy says. She leans close enough that her forehead touches Grace’s. “We’re here now.”
They kiss, a passionate lover’s kiss like the kind Mac and I used to share. I turn away; my stomach gets queasy as I think about all those kisses I’ll never get to share again, thanks to Vollmer. That’s a good reason to track the bastard down and give her what she deserves.
Once I hear a stool creak, I turn around. Maddy sits next to her fiancée and holds her hand. “Thank you for doing this, Grace. It was a big help.”
“Did you guys find what you were looking for?”
“Yeah, we found it,” I say. More or less. I still have to track down this Suzanne Little and see what she knows.
“I did most of the work,” Maddy says. “You should have seen me flirting with this guy. He thought I was so into him.”
“What were you two doing?”
“Just talking to an old friend of Steve’s,” Maddy says. She uses my first name to show she’s still pissed at me. “He had some information we needed.”
“You didn’t do anything to him, did you?”
“God no, just touched his leg and stuff. He probably hadn’t gotten laid in ten years, so he was swooning over me.”
“You did a good job,” I say. “But now you’re out of the detective business.”
“The hell I am. You’re going to need my help to find that lady.”
“I can find her. All I need is a phone book.”
“Yeah, right. How you going to make her talk? You can’t beat up a girl.”
“I’ve done it before,” I say. “I was a cop before you were born, remember?”
“I’m just saying it’d be better to have a woman along. She’ll be a lot more open to me, especially when she sees the kind of jerk I have to hang around with.”
“Madison—”
“You know what would make it even better? If I could make it look like I have a black eye. You could act all pissy, like my abusive husband. That’ll get her to talk to me.”
“This isn’t a game, Maddy.”
“You just don’t want to admit you might need me.”
“I don’t need you.”
“You never did, did you?”
“That’s not what I meant. I don’t need you for this. I just need you to look after Clarita.”
“Clarita will be fine. Tess can watch her.”
Grace, who’s become an observer in this conversation, says, “I can watch her. I like her. She’s cute.”
“If she has another episode—”
“I’ll know what to expect now,” Grace says. “I can handle it.”
Maddy gives Grace a playful shove. “I thought you didn’t like kids.”
“We’ll talk about that later,” Grace says. Her voice takes on the same tone as Mac’s when she says, “I think it’s important for you two to spend some time together. You’ve been estranged for so long that you need some time to bond.”
“This isn’t much of a way to bond,” I say. “It’s dangerous. I couldn’t live with myself if anything happened to Maddy on my watch.”
“Nothing’s going to happen,” Maddy says.
“With the Strangler around, you never know.”
Grace’s eyes widen at this and her face pales. “You guys are going after the Strangler?”
“I’m going after her,” I say. “Maddy is staying here with Clarita.”
“The hell I am! That bitch Vollmer thinks she’s all tough, but she’s just a kid now. I can take her.”
“Madison, stop it. You don’t even know how to fight.”
“I know enough to kick some teenager’s ass.”
“A teenager who’s killed probably a hundred people.”
Grace joins my side. She squeezes Maddy’s hand. “Maybe he’s right. The Strangler is really dangerous. I don’t want anything happening to you.”
“Nothing is going to happen to me,” Maddy says. “We don’t even know where the Strangler is right now. We’re just going to find some old girlfriend of hers.”
“The Strangler is a lesbian?”
“No, she’s someone like Stacey: a girl on the outside, man on the inside.”
“Oh. What makes you think this girlfriend will know anything?”
“She might not know where Vollmer is now, but she might have something we can use,” I say. “That’s how this business works.”
“You’re not a cop anymore,” Maddy snaps.
“That’s all I was ever good at, wasn’t it?” I say. “So that’s what I’m going to do.”
I stop in the living room to kiss Clarita on the forehead before I stomp out of the apartment. Maddy doesn’t come after me; Grace is probably trying to talk some sense into her. But I know how stubborn Maddy is; she won’t let this go easily.
***
I take a cab to the south side. Amos Glendale’s pawn shop is still open. I haven’t been here in five years, not since I bought some guns to help me take down Artie Luther’s thugs. I also bought the diamond earrings Maddy gave to me on my wedding day from here.
Amos is older, balder, and fatter, but I know he won’t be any cleaner than last time. Before I can continue to search for Vollmer, I need a weapon, something that can’t be traced afterwards. Amos is the guy to see about that.
He looks up from the counter when I enter. Like Rosie he studies my face, to figure out where he’s seen me before. I walk up to the counter and then say, “Hi Amos. I need a gun.”
“Do I know you?”
“You knew my twin brother, Steve Fischer. Remember him?”
“Yeah, I remember him. Don’t remember him having a brother.”
“He didn’t like talking about me.”
“Are you a cop too?”
“I’m more in the private security racket. Need something for protection. Something reliable. And discreet.”
“I don’t know what Steve told you, but all I got is in this case here. You’ll have to wait seven days—”
I can’t seduce him like last time, so I do what Steve is much better suited to: I grab him by the collar and then pull him off the stool. “Listen, asshole, I’m not playing around. Show me what you got in the back right fucking now.”
“All right, all right!” he squeals. I let him drop back onto his stool. He hops off it and moves around the counter. He could try to reach for an alarm or a weapon, but he’s too chicken shit for that. “This way.”
He takes me into what’s ostensibly the janitor’s closet so he can show me his wares. There are still assault rifles and grenade launchers in here, but I’m not interested in those, not to kill one teenage girl. I point to a .45, the kind of gun I used to carry. “Let me see that one.”
He hands the weapon to me. I bounce it in my hands a couple of times, to get used to the weight of it. It’s been a while since I carried something like this. I get it into a shooting grip and then aim it at Amos’s head. He starts to sweat despite that the gun isn’t loaded. “Seems pretty good,” I say. “Let’s go into the alley and shoot a couple of rounds.”
“Are you nuts? I can’t let you shoot a loaded gun. Not without paying first.”
“Fine.” I hand over Mac’s credit card. I hope he hasn’t canceled it yet. He’ll be in for a surprise when he sees this charge on his
statement. “Give me a box of bullets. And a shoulder holster if you got one.”
“I think I got one in back,” he says. “Anything else I can do for you, Mr. Macintosh?”
“Yeah, you can keep quiet if anyone comes looking for me, capiche?”
“I get it. I won’t tell a soul.”
“Good.” I grab him by the front of the shirt again. “But if this gun turns out to be shit, I’m going to come back and beat your head in with it. Got it?”
“I got it.”
I take my new weapon and get out of there. I’m sure Amos won’t tell the cops anything; then he would have to admit he sells illegal weapons without documentation. Maybe there’s not honor among thieves, but you can at least trust them not to rat themselves out.
Chapter 30
I’m on the train when my phone rings. Maddy’s voice comes on the line. “I know where Suzanne Little is,” she says.
“Where?”
“Why should I tell you?”
“Goddamnit, Maddy, don’t act like a child.”
“I’m not the one who stormed out of here like a little bitch.”
“Listen—”
“No, you listen. I’m a journalist. This is the biggest story in twenty-five years. Maybe the biggest story ever. You think I’m going to sit this out?”
“You can’t print this in the newspaper, even that little rag of yours.”
“Like I told that little creep, I protect my sources. I won’t use your name.”
“How are you going to explain the rest of it? About Lennox?”
“I’ll call them XYZ Company or something.”
“No deal. If you found her this quick then it won’t be hard for me.”
“Yeah, right. You could barely use the Internet when you were a teenager.”
“I know more than you think.”
“Sure. If we were playing Angry Birds maybe you could beat me.”
“Damn it, Maddy—”
“You should be proud. I’m being just like you, putting my job above everything.”
“I never wanted you to be like me.”
“You’d rather I took after Mom? Some bimbo looking around for another man to glom onto until she milks him dry?”
Chances Are Omnibus (Gender Swap Fiction) Page 81