by David Grace
“We’re not from Vice. We don’t care about your job. We just need your help about Darja.”
“Why? Are you going to arrest her? Is that what this is all about?”
“No, we’re not going to arrest her. I’m sorry to have to tell you that Ms. Novorska is dead. She—”
Fatima’s mouth opened in a little “O” then she buried her head and began to sob into the stuffed-dog’s fur. They waited a few seconds and Chris looked at Big Jim for guidance. He knew that in situations like this they were supposed to give a person a moment but he never knew how long. Big Jim just sat there until Fatima finally sniffled and looked up on her own. Big Jim pulled a tissue from his jacket pocket and handed it to her.
“Someone hurt Darja, Ms. Contal, and it’s our duty to find that person and make them pay for what they did to her. Will you help us?”
“I don’t know anything about it. What do you expect me to do?”
“Who were Darja’s friends? Who knew her? We think that whoever hurt Darja may have known her.” Chris looked up from his pad. What? The evidence pointed to some freak John, or Johnny-Boy, not some boyfriend or whatever. Obviously, Big Jim was lying in the hope that they might learn something useful. Chris wasn’t comfortable with lying. Lies weren’t single things but rather were a part of a larger story, a component in a web of facts. When you shoved a lie into that web it warped everything else, sometimes a little, sometimes a lot, and the more you lied the harder it became to hide the distortions.
Fatima tightened her stranglehold on the cloth dog and looked nervously around the room.
“Me, I was her friend, nobody else. Most of the time she worked. We have to pay our debt. The only people Darja knew were Johnny-Boy and her clients.”
Clients, Chris thought, but said nothing aloud.
“Were any of her clients giving her a hard time? Were any of them rough with her?”
“No, she didn’t go in for that. If a guy got rough she would tell Johnny-Boy and he would make them stop.”
“Take a moment and see if you can think of anyone who liked Darja too much. Maybe somebody who was obsessed with her or followed her but couldn’t afford to pay her.”
Fatima looked forlornly around the room and Chris followed her eyes. The furniture was cheap and well-worn but the apartment was clean, no dishes in the sink, no clothes on the floor. A small vase in the center of the kitchen table held three red, cloth roses on plastic stems. Fatima wore a clean, pink Hello Kitty t-shirt with short sleeves. Her arms had old track marks, like Darja’s, but nothing fresher than six months or so.
Fatima looked back at Big Jim and shook her head. “No, everybody liked Darja. She was a good person.” Chris couldn’t tell if she was lying or not.
“What about Johnny-Boy? He told us that the last time he saw Darja was around eight last night, that she was on her corner. Do you know if that’s right? Could he have seen her after that?”
Fatima blinked and for a moment seemed deep in thought, then shook her head. Jim was sure that something was off here but he couldn’t tell what.
“Did Darja have any problems with Johnny-Boy? Is there any reason that Johnny-Boy might have wanted to hurt her?”
“What happened to Darja? You said that she was in an accident. How did she die?”
Chris started to open his mouth but a quick glance from Big Jim silenced him and the words “wood chipper” died in his throat. An instant later Chris’ face reddened when he realized how stupid a response that would have been. I should stick to dealing with computers, Chris thought. They don’t have feelings.
“She was strangled,” Big Jim told Fatima in a soft voice.
“Someone choked her?”
“No. We think he used a rope or something like that.”
Fatima’s eyes lost their focus and she stared blindly past Big Jim’s head.
“It wasn’t Johnny-Boy,” she said a moment later, pursing her lips.
“Why not?”
“When Johnny-Boy wants to hurt one of us he uses a knife. He likes to cut.” Fatima pulled up the hem of her t-shirt halfway to her breasts and displayed a six-inch scar. “He said that this was because I was holding out on him and that he had to teach me a lesson.”
Big Jim stared at the scar and his face hardened. Gone were the twinkling blue eyes and merry smile, replaced in an instant with a soldier’s glare.
“It wasn’t true. That’s just what Johnny-Boy told people. He really cut me because I got Darja off the junk. I had stopped shooting up before we got together and I helped Darja get clean too. Johnny-Boy didn’t like that. Drugs are one of the ways he hangs on to us. He knew that if Darja got clean that she might get ideas about leaving.”
“But you got her clean anyway,” Big Jim said.
Fatima nodded then, silently, began to cry.
“Was Darja going to leave Johnny-Boy?” Big Jim asked softly.
Fatima sniffled and dried her cheeks with another of Big Jim’s tissues.
“We both were,” she said at last. “Darja talked to a counselor at the Freedom Woman’s Center. We were saving up so that we could get a place together where Johnny-Boy couldn’t find us. Fay, that’s the counselor, said we could stay at the Center for two weeks while we looked for another place, that they would help us find one and get moved in and help us get regular jobs. We were almost there!” Fatima said in a sob and Big Jim handed her another tissue. “Two more weeks, only two more weeks and we would have been gone!”
“Did Johnny-Boy know you were leaving?” Big Jim asked almost in a whisper.
Fatima shook her head. “No, no one knew, just Fay.”
Big Jim looked past Chris at the tiny kitchen then through the open doorway to the primly made double bed, then back to Fatima.
“Pack your stuff,” he ordered. “You’re leaving. Right now. We’ll take you to the Woman’s Center.”
“I can’t go alone, not without Darja.”
“You have to, for your own safety.”
Fatima sat frozen on the couch, the little dog crushed against her chest.
“What time are you supposed to show up for work?”
“I’ve got to be on my corner by six, to get the guys on their way home from work.”
Big Jim looked at his watch. “It’s two-thirty. We’ve got plenty of time. Start packing.”
“I, I can’t.”
“You can and you will,” Big Jim ordered and took hold of her shoulders and pulled her to her feet. “I’m not going to have another dead girl on my hands. You’re done with Johnny-Boy! Get in there and start packing!”
Fatima slowly pulled her gaze from Big Jim’s pink face, then nodded and headed for the bedroom.
“How much money do you have?” Big Jim asked Chris.
Hunter leafed through his wallet. “One-hundred sixty-three dollars and, oh . . . .”
“Forget the change. Give me a hundred.” Big Jim pulled out his own money clip and peeled off 10 twenties.
“Do you know where this Freedom Woman’s Center is?” Chris asked.
“I wish I didn’t.”
“Why? Is it a scam or something?”
“We had a case there, my old partner Frank Pignataro and me, a counselor, Pamalee Rhoades. She had a husband and two kids. We found her naked, in a ditch, half a mile from her house, shot eight times — feet, knees, vagina, elbows, and head, in that order. Whoever did it wanted her to suffer. We could tell from the blood pools that he took his time and let her bleed out. The head shot was to make sure she was never going home. The rest he did for fun.”
“Did you get the guy?”
Big Jim shook his head. “We were sure it was some husband or pimp getting even for Pamalee helping a woman get away from him, but we could never nail it down. There were a dozen guys who looked good for it, but we couldn’t tie it to any of them. My partner, he never got over it. For him, catching that case was like getting cancer.”
At the thunk of two suitcases hitting the floor Big Jim and Chris
turned toward the bedroom. Fatima stood in the doorway dwarfed between two large bags.
“I’m taking Darja’s clothes. They won’t fit me but . . . but it doesn’t feel right to just leave them here, like she never existed.”
“Sure,” Chris said. “That’s OK. We’ll carry them.”
Big Jim stared at the huge bags and suddenly remembered the five flights of stairs. Clutching her purse and the cloth dog, Fatima followed them out.
* * *
After they parked at the Woman’s Center Chris glanced at Big Jim’s drawn face and pulled both the bags from the trunk. Jim walked Fatima to the front door.
“Here’s three hundred dollars,” he said, stuffing the bills into her hand. “And my card. I may need to talk with you again about Darja. I’m going to need you to call us before you move out of the Center so that we’ll know where you are. Will you do that?”
“Will you tell me if you find him, the man who killed her?”
“You still think it wasn’t Johnny-Boy?”
“No, he would have cut her. It gets him off. He likes to watch women bleed.”
Big Jim frowned and wondered if she was right about Johnny-Boy not being the murderer. Killers change their weapons all the time. The one constant is that they continue to kill.
“I’ll let you know when we find him.”
“Thank you.”
“You know not to let anyone who knows Johnny-Boy see you?”
“You’re telling me not to get high because if I do the dealers will turn me in to him.”
“Yeah, that’s what I’m telling you.”
“Don’t worry. If I did that, then all this, Darja, me, everything, would all be for nothing. I can’t let it be for nothing.” Fatima turned toward the door, then paused and turned back to Big Jim. “I didn’t tell you everything,” she whispered and looked around as if afraid someone might overhear.
“That’s all right. You can tell me now.”
“Johnny-Boy lied to you, about Darja working a corner,” Fatima said nervously. “He’s got a computer in the back of the bar, a website thing. He ran Darja’s dates from there.”
“Johnny-Boy was running some kind of an Internet escort service? Darja was a call girl?”
“She was so pretty,” Fatima whispered, on the verge of tears. “Johnny-Boy said it would be a waste to put her out on the street with the fifty-dollar whores . . . like me.”
“If I could get my hands on Johnny-Boy’s computer, would it have a list of all her . . . clients?” Big Jim asked, thinking aloud.
“You don’t have to.” Fatima pulled a small, black notebook from her purse and held it out. “She kept a list of her dates in here.” For a moment she held it tightly then, reluctantly, let go. “I was keeping it because . . . .” Fatima looked down at her empty hands.
Because you thought we were going to abandon you to Johnny-Boy’s hellish life, Big Jim realized and wondered what would have happened if he had not shown his humanity by giving her that little pile of rumpled twenties.
That trick-book, for a little while at least, would have meant Fatima’s survival without Johnny-Boy. Set up in a new apartment she could have called the men on that list and offered her body directly. She knew she wasn’t as pretty as Darja. She was no longer “fresh,” but men were men. If only half of them became regular customers, clients, she could have made enough money not to have to walk the street like a common whore. To Fatima this was not a simple address book. It was Freedom. It was priceless. And she had given it to Big Jim, trusting him to keep his promise, to use it to find Darja’s murderer. Like a passenger on a foundering ship, Fatima had handed Big Jim her life preserver and now she faced the menacing sea naked and alone.
With a sagging smile, Fatima suddenly turned and ran inside, passing Chris on his way out. Hunter gave Big Jim a questioning look.
“I ran out of Kleenex,” Big Jim said and headed for the car.
— End Of Death Never Sleeps Excerpt —
To visit the Death Never Sleeps page on David Grace’s website TAP or CLICK here.
Here is an excerpt from David Grace's crime novel, The Concrete Kiss
THE CONCRETE KISS
CHAPTER ONE
Leonard Berg and fifty other young lawyers eking out a hand-to-mouth existence on low-rent evictions and battered-wife divorces had put their names on the County’s Indigent Appeal roster. On the day that Edward James Anderson was found guilty of murder Leonard Berg’s name was at the top of the list. Through random chance or luck or fate, when Berg finished the appeal and barged into the Homicide-Squad bullpen Ned Danes was the only detective still there. Shifting the grimy banker’s box clutched to his chest, Berg made his way across the room.
“Hey, Detective,” Berg said dropping the box on the edge of Danes’ desk. “I was appointed to write the Anderson appeal.” Danes glanced briefly at the bulging cardboard box then up at Berg. “I gave it to the clerk today, so, well, I brought back my copy of the PD’s file. I’m supposed to turn it in for shredding or whatever.”
“That’s Finley’s case,” Danes said, staring at the trespassing box.
“I know, but he’s on vacation—”
“Family leave,” Danes interrupted. “His father’s got Alzheimer’s.”
“Sure, I mean, anyway he’s not here and I’m supposed to return this after I finish with the appeal. It has to go back into the system.”
Danes gave the box another glance, then shrugged.
“OK, I’ll have somebody sign it in tomorrow.”
“Thanks, detective. If you ever need something, you give me a call.” Berg held out a thin, white card: “Leonard Berg, Esq. Attorney At Law.”
“You bet,” Danes said, slipping the twenty-for-a-dollar scrap of paper into his shirt pocket.
Berg smiled, took half a step, then turned back. “Oh, I almost forgot. There’s something in there that doesn’t belong. It looks like it got misfiled from another case.”
Berg pulled off the cover and, one at a time, stacked half a dozen manila folders on Danes’ desk.
“Got it,” he said, holding up a plastic box containing a single, unlabeled CD. “It’s some kind of a surveillance video.” Berg placed the disc at Danes’ right hand. “All I know is that it’s got nothing to do with my guy’s case. Maybe it’ll mean something to you.” Danes flipped the container over but the backside was as blank as the front. Berg gave Danes an awkward smile and a little wave and two seconds later was gone.
Danes stared at the disc a moment longer then slipped it into his computer. Colored static speckled the screen then resolved itself into wide-angle shot of the inside of a convenience store. An ID strip ran along the bottom of the picture. The date was November 17th, about fifteen months ago. The address line listed a store in Highland Hills just outside the city limits on the east side of town. The front door opened and a big man in a black wool coat and a wool hat entered, paused and looked nervously around. The guy stood there for a couple of seconds then turned his back to the camera and bent over the magazine rack up against the front window. Thirty seconds later he handed the clerk a rolled-up magazine. The kid flattened it out to scan the price — “All Natural Babes.” A big-breasted woman with white-blonde hair and empty eyes stared out from the cover.
“Six ninety-five,” the clerk said and the customer handed over a wrinkled bill. The kid gave him his change and, hunched over, the guy hurried out the door. The screen went black. Danes backed it up and studied the man — white, puffy face, ears flat to the skull, rounded shoulders, almost no neck. He looked familiar but Danes couldn’t remember where from. He knew that face from someplace. Danes closed his eyes but the answer hovered just out of reach. He put the CD back into the case, dropped it in his bottom drawer and headed for the door.
It was dark outside and an icy wind off the lake tore at Danes’ coat. Christmas and New Year’s were long gone and now only cold, gray weeks of snow and skies like the bottom of an old plate lay ahead. About six feet tal
l with slab-sided cheeks below a ruff of short, black hair going gray, Ned Danes would have looked at home in Warsaw, Trieste, Cologne, Turin or any of a hundred other cites anywhere from Germany through Belarus. Had some ancestor entered Ellis Island as Bogdan Dansiwitz, Dankowski, or Danestelli and exited as Bob Danes? Ned neither knew nor cared. He was only interested in the relatives he actually knew. His grandfather was Walter Danes, a master cabinetmaker, who had married Sarah Nedrick. They had had four kids, the oldest of which was Franklin Danes, his father. Ned had been named “Nedrick” after his grandmother though it was inevitable that he was going to end up being called either Ned or Rick. Ned had won.
Danes got into his Escape and slipped it into four-wheel drive mode until it cleared the iced-over lot. Some of the guys bought RAV4s and CRVs, even a few Volvos, but Ned always bought American, even when GM was making mostly crap. “We’re Americans; we buy American,” his dad always said, and that was good enough for Ned. When he turned onto Decker he noticed that the red neon “n” over Vinnie’s front window was flickering worse than ever. Ned thought about stopping and picking up a meatball sub for Jake’s lunch tomorrow, but with a little shake of his head he cruised on past.
“You don’t get stuff by wanting it, Ned,” his dad always told him. “You gotta earn it.” And Jake had been screwing up a little lately. His grade-point average was slipping down into B-minus territory and that Schomberg kid he had started hanging around with was a corner-cutter if Danes had ever seen one. He and Janis hadn’t worked this hard to raise their son right only to have him get the idea that taking the easy way out was the smart play. You did things the right way or you didn’t do them at all. Danes thanked God he had had a father who had taught him that if you did right by people that they would do right by you. He’d be damned if some punk kid was going to teach Jake the wrong lessons. His dad’s voice echoed in Ned’s ears: “When you cheat other people, Ned, you’re only cheating yourself.” Little treats for Jake could wait until he got his grades, and his choice of friends, headed in the right direction.