If only she knew my intentions, he had thought. If only she could see and understand what I want.
But he knew his chance would never come. She had no interest in hearing him speak. And yet, she’d recognized him. She’d hesitated. He was not mistaken about that. And she missed.
She never missed.
The moment he wet his lips they felt dry again. His whole mouth was dry.
Someone knocked at the door, and he fired two bullets into the wall.
“What the hell! Mr. Konstantine, are you all right in there?” a man called. Another sharp bang. “Mr. Konstantine?”
Konstantine went to the door and opened it.
Julio stood in a long white T-shirt which stretched to his knees, and sagging acid-washed jeans. The American’s repulsive dress code wasn’t enough to bring the world into sharp focus. He still felt as though he wavered on the edge of hysteria. All the adrenaline left him as it did when one was in a near collision. But he had no rearview mirror from which to gain reassurance. No method for looking over his shoulder and ensuring that the danger had in fact passed and he was in the clear.
“Julio?” he rasped.
Julio’s eyebrows shot up at the gun. “You okay, boss? You look...like you need a drink.”
“What are you doing here?”
“I told you I was coming.” Julio slipped a bright yellow backpack off his shoulders. “I got information on your girl.”
Konstantine kept glancing over his shoulder.
“Is—” Julio stopped and considered his question more carefully. “Is this a bad time?”
“No,” Konstantine said, bringing his forearm up to wipe at his brow.
When Konstantine didn’t move or open the door wider, Julio asked, “Should I come in?”
He could, but Konstantine didn’t think he could stay in this suite. “Is the lobby well lit?”
“Like fucking Manhattan. Why?”
“Let’s go downstairs. We’ll order some drinks, and you can show me whatever you want to show me. I need...” Konstantine wiped his sweaty palms on his pants. “I need to get out of this room.”
Julio slipped the pack on again. “Sure.” Then his eyes fell to the gun. “But do you think you should be walking around with that hanging out? I mean, there’s a lot of security.”
“Yes, you’re right.”
Konstantine grabbed a shirt from the bed, his wallet, and his room key before rejoining Julio in the hall. His movements were rushed and jerky. But relief washed over him as he stood in the bright hallway, securing the gun under his shirt, tucked into the waistband of his pants.
If Julio had any other critiques about Konstantine’s behavior or dress code, he said nothing. He waited for Konstantine to adjust himself before he led the way to the elevators.
Julio had been right about the lobby. Despite the late hour, it was as bright as midday. The bar, however, was swathed in shadows. Konstantine took a long look at the black bar and its black stools. Then he gave Julio a hundred-dollar bill and asked him to buy him a gin and tonic. Konstantine kept himself planted on a white leather seat in the center lobby. His back was to a wall, which was fine if the early evening was any preview to his lady’s intentions.
Konstantine watched Julio go to the bar with his yellow backpack still hanging from one shoulder and order the drinks. A girl in black and white dress slacks and shirt combo came out and talked to Julio for a moment. She looked over at Konstantine when Julio pointed at the chairs along the wall and nodded. She said something too, her pouty little mouth bobbing open and closed, but Konstantine did not read lips.
It was hard not to think of anything but her.
She had come.
She had come, and he was not ready.
He thought he understood her and how she worked. She was cautious. She always surveyed her prey, stalked her prey before moving in. He had not, quite obviously, expected her to appear so late in the evening. And in the intimacy of his bedroom—like old times.
What struck him most: she seemed as surprised as he was by this encounter.
A moment of shock registered on her face, rendering her a decade younger in a single flash. One moment she was the merciless angel of death, with her sharp blade severing spines without conscience. Then their eyes met, and she’d become the girl again. Innocent and wrapped in the shadows of his bed, with the thinnest line of moonlight across a milk-white cheek. Troubled by the dreams in her dark heart.
He pushed back these thoughts as Julio crossed the lobby, bouncing the sack across his spine, adjusting its weight for better placement.
“The girl will bring our drinks,” Julio said. He sat in the chair opposite Konstantine’s, so close their knees touched. “I left the bill as a tab, is—”
“That’s fine,” Konstantine interrupted. The muscles in his back twitched. It didn’t seem to matter how soft the chairs were designed, how much they encouraged lingering near the bar and consuming one’s fill. He was uneasy. “What do you have for me?”
“I’ve been looking for your girl,” he said, yanking his computer and a notebook out of his bag. For a common American thug, Konstantine thought he was rather organized. If not for the black teardrop tattoo on his face, and the ink up and down his arms, most of which was representative of the unskilled lines of prison art, he could be mistaken for a school boy. A nontraditional student returned to get a degree. In nursing, maybe. Or computer programming. “I started with the father like you said. Got her name.”
Konstantine’s heart hitched. He imagined what name she might have. Alessandra. Vivianne. Something unmistakably feminine but also feline. But less European he suspected. Emily perhaps.
“Louie Abigail Thorne.”
“Louie?” Konstantine’s heart flopped. “Louie?”
The sing-song word was too sweet. The hardest edge he could find when he turned the name over in his mind was a cowboy quality like Louis L’Amour.
“Louie?” he asked again. “Really?”
Julio shrugged. “Americans name their kids all kinds of weird shit. They name them after fruits and colors too.”
Konstantine opened his hand to accept the paper Julio thrust at him. A copy of a birth announcement. Newsprint photocopied.
Julio recited the information from memory while Konstantine read. “Born to Jacob and Courtney Thorne on June 17, 1992.”
More papers were passed over. Transcripts. More scraps pilfered from public records.
“She didn’t do so good in school. Lots of her teachers made notes about her being ‘distracted’ and ‘withdrawn.’” Julio snorted. “Like that’s so bad. Teachers are the dumbest people I know. Too educated. Drop them in the desert, and they’d be dead tomorrow.”
Konstantine was looking at a yellow sheet with the words counselor evaluation printed on the top. Psychosis-neg. Depression-neg. Then printed in a meticulous blocky script below, in a box marked additional comments, someone had written: Displays anti-social behavior. Intelligence exemplary. Placement test suggested. Perhaps bored with coursework and children her own age.
“Her aunt put her in one of those schools for gifted kids,” Julio said, offering Konstantine more paper. “She did better in the gifted school.”
Konstantine frowned at him. “Her aunt?”
“Yeah. Thorne had a sister. She took custody of your girl when her parents died.”
“And after school?” he asked. He felt as if he could not get enough information on her. He wanted to know everything. He slid back a sheet and saw the photocopy of her driver’s license. Sixteen years old. Eyes brown. Hair brown. Weight 130 pounds. Height 5’7.
What a bland description of such a magnificent creature he thought, taking something and rendering it to measurements and scientific specifications stripped the leaves from the tree. He realized Julio hadn’t answered.
He looked up. The barmaid was putting their drinks on the table on top of two cardboard coasters with the hotel’s logo. She gave him a grin and wink when she placed
his gin and tonic on the coaster. “Will there be anything else?” she purred. When she leaned forward, her breasts filled his vision, giving them a swollen appearance.
He instinctually pulled the photocopies close to his chest, shielding them. “No thank you.”
Her smile faltered.
“Thanks,” Julio said, poking the lime slice down into the neck of his beer bottle with a stab of his finger.
The girl wandered off looking more than a little dejected.
“After school?” Konstantine asked again.
Julio pulled back his teeth in a hiss, either from the sour lime or the question. “That’s it.”
Konstantine’s heart dropped an inch in his chest. “Nothing else?”
Julio shook his head, his lips pressed into a thin line. “After high school, she goes dark.”
Konstantine wet his lips with the gin and tonic, drawing a steady breath. To be given so much and so little was infuriating. When he felt he could trust himself to speak, he said, “Nothing.”
Julio wiped a hand across his brow. “I think she let her license lapse. Or she legally changed her name. So, she’s not registered in the system. She doesn’t have any bills in her name. No phone. No utilities. She’s got a bank account and some money, but it’s managed by a financial advisor. Her address is a P.O. box in Detroit.”
“That doesn’t mean anything.” Konstantine grimaced. “She could get to any P.O. box anywhere in the world.”
Julio went on. “Yeah. If what you say is true. And her bank transactions are limited. She doesn’t have any credit cards. Either her bills are paid by the guy who manages her parents’ estate, or she pays cash. Her bank records show ATM withdrawals, but they are all over. In the last two years, which was as far back as I could go, she hasn’t made a withdrawal from the same ATM twice.”
“Which bank?” Konstantine asked. The gin and tonic balanced on his knee was starting to melt through his pants. Julio told him the name of the bank and Konstantine snorted. “They have ATMs on every corner.”
“She doesn’t vote. She doesn’t work, you know, for money.”
“And she has no family,” Konstantine said. “No way we can get to her.”
Julio smiled. “She has the aunt. There’s an Oak Park address on file. The aunt does vote and pays her taxes. And she’s got a lengthy medical record.”
Konstantine reviewed the file and considered this.
Konstantine didn’t know if he wanted to threaten the aunt. At the rate he was going, Louie—Louie—he would have to adjust to this name—would put a bullet in him quicker than he could ring the aunt’s doorbell.
And he did not think he had the element of surprise any longer. Whatever surprise he had was used up in the hotel room this night. His next move would have to be quite bold to elicit the same luck. And yet, it’d be good to have leverage should she ever return.
He had to talk to her. Reason with her. He wanted something so small from her. Surely, if he asked the right way, she would give it to him. But how to approach her? How to present himself?
Perhaps it was best to follow through with the first part of his plan. If he could expose the lies about her father’s murder, and clarify the Martinelli involvement in his death, perhaps it will get through to her better than bullying or coercion.
If he delivered the real man responsible for her father’s death, maybe she will help him.
Konstantine turned the rocks glass in his hand before lifting it and taking a sip. He met Julio’s eyes over the rim. “Let’s talk about the senator.”
24
King was on his hands and knees beside the bed, scrubbing carpet cleaner into the rug with an old, torn up St. Louis Cardinals T-shirt. He drew breaths in and out of his nose slowly. Combined with the back and forth scrubs, it was like a meditation—until the pain set in.
“I’m too old for this shit,” he groaned. He leaned back and placed a soapy hand on his low back. His knees creaked, and sharp pains shot all the way up to his hips. Pulling himself to standing, with the help of his bed frame, required a Herculean effort.
It wasn’t until he dragged a sponge across the wall to mop up his attacker’s brains, he realized Mel had never come up to check on him. And he could not recall the surprising crack-boom of a gun going off. Had Lou used a suppressor? She must have.
Who fucking cares? A voice said. You’re awake at three a.m. scrubbing blood out of the carpet and wiping brains off the wall with a kitchen sponge. Is this how you wanted to spend your retirement?
Spending time with a would-be mercenary?
Hunting for corpses in Oklahoma backcountry?
Being knocked around and threatened for information?
He was sure none of the above was healthy behavior for a man hoping to see his 70th birthday.
King ran the sponge under the tap in the bathroom again until the water ran clear. Little bits of bone hit the porcelain. Part of the skull cap. His stomach turned.
His bed thumped as it was lifted and dropped.
“What the...?” He stepped toward the dark bedroom, but before he could examine the scene, the knock on the door came.
“King, good lord, what are you doing in there?” Mel’s voice was raspy with sleep.
“Fuck.” King stuffed the carpet cleaner and the sponges under the sink and hobbled to the door, his knees still stiff from bending.
Mel pounded on the door again. “Don’t make me use my key, Mr. King.”
“I’m coming, I’m coming.” He hurried through the living room and kitchen to the door. He plastered on a smile before he pulled open the door, but smiling made his mouth hurt, and his lip split anew.
“What the hell you be doing in here?” Mel was in a purple cotton bathrobe, eyes puffy. “I’m an old woman. You can’t be hanging pictures and rocking the bed at 3:00 a.m., no siree.”
“I’m sorry,” King said and wiped his damp hands on his pajama pants. “I didn’t mean to wake you. I—” He was already searching the Rolodex of his mind for a lie that would suit this occasion. But all he could think was I need to move the fucking bed so mine isn’t flush with Mel’s. You can probably hear everything through the thin plaster.
“Oh my god, what happened to your face?” Mel elbowed herself into the apartment, staring up at him with wide eyes. “Somebody beat your ass?”
King knew what lie he’d have to use then. There was only one for his predicament. “I was having a nightmare. I rolled out of bed and smashed my face on the nightstand.” He made a face, palm gesture with his hand, and followed it with his best little boy shrug of disappointment. He thought it was excellent acting.
“No, you got your ass beat,” she said. “I know an ass beating when I see one. And I’m not stupid, so don’t try to fool me. Were you in the bar tonight?”
King groaned. “Come on, Mel. Not everyone is a goddamn alcoholic. Plenty of teetotalers get beat up. They fall out of bed and bash in their faces too.”
Mel poked at his bruises with relentless fingers. He hissed and squirmed until she let go.
She sniffed. “What’s that smell?”
“I don’t smell anything,” King said. And he didn’t, but that didn’t stop him from running a furious checklist of possible smells. Gunpowder. Blood. Brains.
Mel turned on the kitchen light, which revealed nothing more than the clean, unused kitchen. So, she turned on the living room light.
“I didn’t know random inspections were part of our agreement,” King said. His voice was an octave too high. “Do I need to say I don’t consent to a search?”
She gave him a hard look, pulling her robe tight around her. “I heard a crazy sound. Sounds, and I smell something funky. Are you hiding something in here? Oh Lord, did you kill somebody up in my house?”
“No,” King said, and he felt a muscle in his face begin to twitch even though it was the truth. He hadn’t killed anyone.
But Mel didn’t look convinced. And she was going into the bedroom.
“He
y!” King called out as she stepped into the room. “Stay out of there. I—”
His bed was in disarray. His sheets were crumpled and tossed about in a way that made one think of a pterodactyl trapped and thrashing with its great wings. The bed was also at an oblique angle. The footboard pointed toward the bathroom about ten more degrees than it did before King had answered the door. The nightstand too had been pulled away from the wall, its corner edge pointing into the room.
The rug was gone. Entirely gone.
Lou must have come back and yanked aside the furniture and taken the whole goddamn rug. There was a wet spot on the wall still drying, but there was no sign of blood or brain there. He knew if forensic scientists ever decided to come in and black light his walls, he would fail their test miserably, but he doubted Mel would even recognize the slight reflection on the wall as moisture, or imagine what sort of matter had been stuck there thirty minutes before.
King knew he’d never see his rug again.
“One hell of a nightmare,” Mel said, her eyebrows arched, yet somehow more relaxed now.
“Oh you’re not mad,” he said with a huff. “Now that I’m not a drunk with a bed full of young, beautiful women.”
“Let’s clean you up,” Mel said and went toward the bathroom.
“That’s all right,” King tried to say, and his voice hitched. The first aid kit was under the sink with the sponge and carpet cleaner.
Nosebleed, he decided. He would tell her he’d bled on the rug and had tried to clean it up with the cleaner. When it hadn’t worked, he’d given up and thrown out the rug.
That was pretty good.
Mel stood in his bathroom, pointing at the closed toilet seat. “Sit.”
“No, really, Mel. It’s so late. I don’t want to keep you up, babying me.”
“Sit. Down.” She gave him a look that made his testicles recede inside himself.
He turned off the bedroom light and then squeezed past her and took a seat on the closed toilet lid. His knees were forced against his chest, effectively pinning him between the tub and wall, with Mel blocking the exit.
She gave him a smile. “You already woke me up. You got me up here and your face looks like shit. I happen to know how to clean a face. So sit there and keep your mouth shut.”
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