Back down the steps, he didn’t care about how much noise he made. The man was still sitting there, smoking a fresh cigarette and examining his dirty fingernails. He didn’t look at Izzy when he came into the room this time, either.
“I don’t suppose you know where the hell everybody went, do you?”
“They went to hell,” the man said, impassively.
“You got an address for hell, by any chance?”
The man grinned and finally raised his eyes to Izzy. They were rheumy and pale-blue.
“Satan’s soldiers rose up out of the pit and came for them,” he said. “They weren’t permitted to exist in this realm no more.”
“Do you mean police?” Izzy asked, raising an eyebrow.
The man said, “Same.” He then took a deep drag and resumed his incomprehensible muttering.
Izzy frowned and ground his back teeth together. The squatters, he assumed, had finally been rousted, and at the worst possible point in time. Some developer likely seized the property, probably most of the lots on the block, and arranged to have the vermin cleared so progress could begin. Satan’s soldiers, indeed.
From his billfold Izzy extracted a twenty, leaving only a lonely fiver, and gave it to the man in the metal chair. He accepted it with a whispered thanks, and tucked it into the pocket of his trousers. Outside the heat seemed more oppressive than it had been only ten minutes earlier. Izzy’s skin felt sticky, his clothes too small. Everything was sifting through his fingers like fine, dry sand.
“What do you know, Mags?” he said, as though she was right in front of him. “Why did you run?”
He didn’t get an answer.
On the rotting porch he stalled, uncertain of his next move. All the refuse and debris from his initial visit remained. The only trash the developers managed to take out was of the human variety.
Glancing at the flower pots, he narrowed his eyes at the small mountains of cigarette butts piled up in each of them. He walked over to the nearest one, beneath a dusty window, and crouched to get a closer look. The butts varied in length and color, some brown, some tan, some white. Some had been smoked to the very end, while others were stubbed out after only a few puffs. More to Izzy’s interest were the brand names stamped on the ends. These too were diverse, though he noted several of them were Liggetts—just like the ones he’d collected from the crime scene on Cesar Chavez.
Izzy thrust a hand into his pants pocket, where he found a clean tissue. Using it in lieu of a glove or sample bag, he pinched one of the Liggett butts, and then another. He wrapped them up in the tissue and put them back into his pocket.
The walk back to the car seemed to take forever. Once there, he phoned the APD, asked for Esperanza, and got his voicemail. He left a message, sat in the car, and sweated.
Thirty
Sergeant Esperanza returned Izzy’s call around two o’clock, nearly half an hour after he left a message with the homicide unit. He sounded harried but not impatient, despite the occasional sigh and sniff.
“Looks like you were on the money,” he told Izzy. “A couple of patrol cars, four regular officers and a watch commander rounded ‘em up and sent ‘em packing. Nobody made much of a fuss, apart from one guy’s pontificating on the rights of the indigent.”
“Probably Mike, their non-leader,” Izzy said.
“Not a thing to do with either Ramos or Twillig, to answer that question,” Esperanza said. “It’s shit like this I don’t much like, excuse my French. Real estate moguls using the department like we’re hired thugs or shock troops or something. Technically illegal, the squatting and like that, sure. But it’s the beck and call thing. Whatever. What are you going to do?”
“Tell them to blow it out their asses?” Izzy suggested.
The sergeant chuckled.
“I wish,” he said. “Fact is, they were reporting a crime, and the department responded. That’s how it is on paper, anyway.”
“Sergeant, I saw a girl at a rave last night I met at that house. When she recognized me, she ran like hell. I tried to catch up to her but I lost her. I barely spoke to her at the squat, but she had some reason to want to get away from me so fast.”
“And you surmise it has to do with the ODs on Chavez.”
“I’m sure of it,” Izzy said. “All I know is she goes by Mags. She’s maybe five-four, five-five, a hundred ten pounds on the outside margin. Bright red hair, curly.”
“An Irishman’s daughter,” Esperanza said. “Perfect for an Irish goodbye.”
“What’s that?”
“Just a joke, Bishop. It’s what you call it when someone leaves abruptly and doesn’t say goodbye to anyone. An Irish goodbye. I don’t know why. Probably racist. Maybe I need more sensitivity training, I don’t know.”
“Seems like that’s what Cynthia did, too. Same place, a week earlier. Disappeared from the squat, and then the rave. And ended up dead.”
“Jesus,” said the sergeant. “I’d better send a uniform ‘round that damn house again. I swear to Christ if there’s a dead redhead in there…”
“Is this finally starting to smell as bad to you as it does to me?” Izzy said.
He heard Esperanza breath noisily through his nose on the line for a moment.
“Mags, huh?” he said at length.
“That’s all I know.”
“What a time to roust that squat,” Esperanza complained.
Izzy said, “Tell me about it. If you hear or find out anything, this is my cell. I don’t expect you to deputize me or anything, but I’d appreciate a heads up.”
“I can toss out a BOLO on the redhead and have another look taken at the house by the piñata shop. This is just poking around, though. You get me, Bishop? I’m listening to you, but I don’t see any homicides in front of me right now.”
“Okay,” Izzy said.
“Okay,” Esperanza said. “I’ll be in touch.”
The sergeant clicked off and Izzy tightened his grasp on the phone, whitening his knuckles and causing the tendons in his wrist to stand out. When it buzzed in his hand, he jumped, but didn’t lessen his grip. Sweat rolled down his brow, dripping into his eyes. He squeezed his eyes shut and focused for a moment on breathing in through his mouth and out through his nose. It was a technique he sometimes recommended for patients experiencing anxiety or panic attacks to center themselves until the meds kicked in. It didn’t exactly center him now, and Izzy had no meds. But he felt sufficiently human enough to relax his hand and check the screen.
There were two texts that came in one after the other. The first was from Noah, wanting to know how it went at the squat house. The second was from Forbes, with an address on Guadalupe, way south of downtown, and Koenig.
DPS Lab. Meet me @ 9AM. I’ll introduce you. —AF
He quickly tapped off a reply to Noah first, saying only, “Nada.” Then he okayed the meet-up with Forbes.
“Something, please,” he said. “Give me something.”
Noah pinged back: Dead end?
Izzy started in on an affirmative response, got stymied by the autocorrect feature mangling his reply, and began again when yet another text buzzed in. He furrowed his brow, irritated with the sudden influx of messages from the few people he ever interacted with, when as the drop down preview at the top of the screen dissolved Izzy realized who it was from.
The text message came from Cynthia Ramos.
Izzy’s mouth dropped open and he scrambled to get to it, tapping the center button over and over to get back to the main menu before swiping over to the messaging icon and finding the text.
It originated from Cynthia’s number in Izzy’s contact list. The same number she used to set up their last meeting. The same number from which she’d messaged the hopeful invite to the party the night she died.
He opened the message with a touch of his index finger. The screen slid sideways to the ongoing conversation, piecemeal, that stopped after he told her he was too tired to join her a week ago. Now there was a new addition
to the mix.
Stop looking. Stop mourning. I am not dead. I live forever.
“God,” he said, and Izzy began to cry.
“Obviously it’s not her,” Noah said. Izzy could hear shuffling on the line, indicating he’d caught Noah when he was busy.
“Of course it isn’t,” Izzy said. “But it never occurred to me what might have happened to her phone. I don’t even know how she paid for it, though I shudder to think. Point is, it wasn’t anywhere around where her body was found. Somebody else has it, it’s still active, and that somebody messaged me.”
“To what end?” Noah asked. “They must not know you at all if they think you’ll be convinced she’s contacting you from beyond the grave.”
“No, that’s not what it’s about. It’s something this guy said to me.”
“What is? What guy?”
Izzy scratched the back of his neck and climbed out of the car. Nervously, he set into a back-and-forth pace on the street, leaving the door open. The car binged at him, complaining about the open door.
“When I went to check out that space, the old strip joint where the rave was last night.”
“Yeah?”
“This hippy guy was working with the promoters or whatever, setting the place up. I gave him a hand to see what he might say to me.”
“And what did he say?”
“The tattoo,” Izzy said, cryptically and half to himself. “The guy we found, the dead guy, Deacon. He had this tattoo on his wrist of an infinity symbol. Said it had to do with some great, failed romance—no big deal. But then the hippy had the same damn thing, and he said something different.”
Izzy trailed off, changing from neck scratching to chin stroking.
Noah said, “Don’t tell me. Let me intuit it all for myself.”
“Sorry, I’m just manic, here. He said it was infinity, and that it means ‘life forever.’ That was the exact phrase he used. Life forever.”
“Oh,” Noah said. “Well, shit.”
“Shit is right,” Izzy said. “I live forever. Noah, I had myself almost convinced the tattoo thing was just circumstantial flotsam, but…”
“…that’s way too close.”
“It’s not close. It’s exact. This is it. Whatever this is, whoever this is—this is what it’s all about. Why she died.”
He threw out one hand, mugging to nobody. He hunched his shoulders and sighed. The sun beat down on his head and neck. His skin felt warm and liquid. He felt like he could fill the silence with a long, raw scream. Instead, he pushed the door shut and started up Chicon, away from the restaurant and the squat.
“The only neighborhood in Austin without a Starbuck’s,” he groused.
“That shit doesn’t help with the sleep or the nightmares,” Noah said. Izzy heard some clinking, then the beeping of a microwave. “You might consider cutting back, at least.”
“I don’t smoke,” Izzy said. “I don’t drink. I don’t do drugs. I’ve seen all that crap destroy people like me so I’ve steered clear and kept my sanity. Without caffeine, though? Bye-bye, sanity.”
He squinted down the street at the small houses, chain-link fences, a filling station and a corner store with signs all in Spanish. No coffee. He growled in his throat.
Noah said, “Okay, I’m with you on the connection here. That’s clear. But why would this person risk contacting you like this? So far it’s looked mostly like an accidental overdose, right? Why not keep it that way and keep to the shadows?”
“You’re thinking like a run of the mill, every day murderer,” Izzy said, walking back to the car. “Somebody who kills a person and then hopes like hell nobody ever finds out about it.”
“What other kind is there?”
“The kind with an agenda,” Izzy said.
“Agenda?” Noah said, puzzled. “What agenda?”
“Exactly what it says on the label. To live forever.”
A few paces in the other direction from where he parked, he stopped at the T where Rosewood intersected with Chicon and he looked up at the squat—then across the street from it, at the tattoo parlor. The sign above the door read comet tattoos.
Izzy said, “I’ll call you back.”
Thirty-One
The sign featured an airbrushed image of a busty biker chick riding a comet like it was a motorcycle. She seemed to be laughing hysterically and waved a cowboy hat in the air, over her head, like Slim Pickens. Izzy shook his head at the sign above the tattoo parlor and made a face.
He told himself, “Don’t beat yourself up about it, for God’s sake. This puzzle has a lot of pieces. It’s easy to miss a few in the box.”
He didn’t quite buy that. It didn’t much matter now. He went inside.
A long counter ran perpendicular to the entrance, on which a row of binders rested, neatly arranged. Behind it a man sat on a stool, doodling in a sketchbook. He had short, dirty-blond hair slicked back over his head and thick, black framed glasses. His arms were completely covered with colorful, wildly contrasting tattoos. They also crept up from his shirt collar, covering his neck. He looked up from the sketch he was making of a topless woman emerging from a flaming hot rod with a skull in each hand and adjusted his glasses.
“Afternoon,” he said.
Behind him, two stations were immediately evident, only one of which was in use. A heavyset man in his fifties sat in the chair, naked to the waist, dozing off while an artist leaned in close to his shoulder and ran the buzzing needle over his skin. In the back was another station, this one with a curtain around it like a bay in the ER. It was empty.
“Hi, there,” Izzy said, sidling up to the counter. “Hoping you can help me out with something.”
“Depends what it is. Only really do the one thing here, and you’re lookin’ at it.”
He gestured at the tattooist behind him and raised his eyebrows.
“I’m trying to figure something out,” Izzy said. The guy at the counter looked skeptical. “Seems there’s a certain number of people running around town with an infinity symbol tattooed on their right wrists, right here. Not embellished or particularly artsy—just a plain, black infinity. Sideways, about so big.”
He estimated the size with his forefinger and thumb against the inside of his wrist.
“Cheap,” the man said. “Quick.”
“So you’ve done ones like that?”
“Didn’t say that. All I said was solid color, small like that, beginner sorta thing. Not too much commitment, no big expense. Nothing you can’t hide with long sleeves or a big watchband when Grandma comes to town on Thanksgiving.”
He smiled.
“Right,” Izzy said. “But have you done ones like that? Maybe on a guy called Deacon—bald-headed, big ring in his nose? Used to squat at that place right across the street there. Or a kind of hippy guy with long, curly brown hair, sometimes wears round sunglasses? Does that ring any bells?”
“Shit, man,” the man said, showing his teeth in a wide, anxious grin. “What is this?”
“You know a red-haired girl called Mags?”
The guy backed away from the counter a little, sizing him up. Izzy leaned on the counter, pushing one of the binders out of the way.
“I don’t do swastikas or any hate shit or cult shit,” the man said. “Anybody creeps up with something like that under the radar I don’t know about, I don’t know about it. Maybe I done some like that over the years, yeah. But I don’t know any of those people and if there’s a trend, or a group, or a new damn religion, I haven’t noticed.”
He shrugged dramatically and brought his hands back together at his abdomen with a loud clap. Izzy smiled a little. He’d agitated the guy.
“Would it help,” Izzy said, “if I told you people are dying because of this, and I’m trying to put a stop to it?”
“Dying? Whoa—tattoos don’t make people crazy, dude.”
“I mean I need help identifying these people and bringing that information to the police. There’s been two people alr
eady.”
“Two people what? Dead?”
“Possibly murdered. That’s my opinion, at any rate.”
“But you aren’t with the cops.”
“I’m a friend,” Izzy said. “Please, if you can help.”
The counter man set his jaw and thought a moment. Then he said over his shoulder to the tattooist in back, “Hey, Angus. Come over here when you get a sec.”
Angus got a sec about ten minutes later. He sauntered over, rolling his head around to knock out the kinks from the awkward position he’d been in. He gave a cursory glance to Izzy, then turned to the counter man.
He said, “What’s up?”
“You or Bilbo do any simple solid black work lately, little infinity what’s-its on the inner wrist?”
“Define lately,” Angus said. “A couple three of ‘em, four, five months back, I think. Stupid shit. Little white girls getting their first ink together, all oohing and ahhing about the whole thing like they was getting new tits. Pain in the ass.”
Izzy said, “What do you mean, little girls?”
“I don’t mean they was kids, just young and dumb, you know? I dunno, nineteen, twenty. I dunno.”
“Don’t you check IDs?”
“This is a safe, by the book sorta place,” the counter man insisted.
“Okay,” Izzy said. “What about records?”
Angus smirked, and Izzy felt the déjà vu from Partytown. Tattoos weren’t any more trackable than helium balloon tanks. The counter man shook his head.
“College girls,” Angus said then. “Country money, I’d bet you. West Texas accents, maybe Abilene or Lubbock, Amarillo. My mom’s from Abilene. Sounded like her.”
The Irish Goodbye (Izzy Bishop Book 1) Page 16