Vice

by Teagan Kade

  I don’t. I’ve got a father with his full faculties, not that he’s been putting them to good use. I’ve got brothers, who in turn have their own families. I’ve got support. Something tells me Grace Siddell does not.

  “You enjoy it?” I ask. “The job?”

  She turns those honey-amber eyes burn right through my chest. “Tell me, what was an average day for you like in this Wrightworth place? Honestly.”

  I sit back. “Honestly? I don’t know. Grab a cup of Joe, check in at the office. Might get a domestic or two, more than likely ol’ Bob Senior trying to slap his son silly. After that? Maybe some trouble at one of the resort bars, tank up anyone who’s had a few too many. We had some biker trouble, break-and-enter issues, but you’re right. It was petty crime in many ways.”

  “But you worked in LA, too?”

  I almost tell her about my disease, but hold off. I’ve got to keep some cards close. “Great pay, good benefits.”

  “So a shitty gig?”

  “There was a lot of the mind-over-matter principal at work.”

  “I don’t follow,” she says.

  “As in, ‘We don’t mind, because you don’t matter.’”

  Grace explodes with laughter, hammering at the wheel with the palm of her hand. “And you think this place is going to be any better? Oh, boy, are you deluded. You want to know what my day looks like?”

  “I do.”

  “Good, because you’ll be living it soon enough. I drag myself out of bed and down to the precinct, try to swim my way out of the never-ending paperwork that’s clogging up my desk. That’s followed by a bagel for breakfast and probably a murder or two, usually upper side where people actually care about such things. Might get a fraud case, straight-out theft, but the Feds usually handle that stuff. They like to leave us with the gruesome shit, which is fine by me. The more of these scumbags I can pull off the street, the fucking better.”

  “You don’t make it sound very appealing.”

  “Oh, don’t get me wrong, Beckett. It’s fucking depressing, but it’s my job and I’m damn good at it.”

  I wet my lips. “What do you do to relax, wind down?”

  She eyes me with suspicion. “You were at the bar, weren’t you?”

  “That looked like winding up, actually.”

  She laughs. “You’re funny for a hick. What do you think I do? Go home and cuddle my ten kittens while sipping Kombucha and meditating the world’s worries away? Fuck that.”

  Don’t push it, but I do. “Do you have a boyfriend?”

  She pats her gun holster. “Name’s Chewie—thirty-eight special, my father’s.”

  “He doesn’t look so friendly.”

  She glances to my waist. “He’d put that 9mm of yours to shame.”

  “I’ll take that challenge.”

  “Another time.” She nods forwards through the windshield. “We’re almost here.”

  I look around at earth-brown apartment blocks all in a line, a kid no more than ten years old smoking a joint on the sidewalk. He gives us the bird as we pass. “Charming. Where are we?”

  “Brownsville, Brooklyn, and I fucking hate Brooklyn.”

  She turns the car down a tight side street and stops at a corner where a group of men are standing around the front of an apartment building. She checks the cruiser screen. “That’s our man alright. Shall we say hello?”

  We get out, Grace with her hand on her piece and the other holding her badge up. “Police.”

  They don’t even flinch. I can pick out Doyle as we get closer, half of his face drooping like a candle that’s spent too much time in the heat. He’s picking his teeth, his tweaker friends in various poses around him all jittery eyes and hands in pockets.

  Doyle grins, his mouth full of gold. He’s wearing a worn Metallica T-shirt—‘Ride The Lightning.’ “Detectives, I presume. What brings you out to Brown Town on this fine morning?”

  Grace stands in front of him with her hands on her hips. “We’re not here to bring you in, if that’s what you’re thinking, but you are going to answer some questions.”

  He stands up to her, my hand moving to my weapon, but she waves me down. “Because you’re an upstanding citizen who wants nothing to do with the murder of Rachel Jackson. Now, isn’t that right?”

  He shrugs, shoulders loose. “What do I care about that junkie bitch?”

  I step in. “Watch your mouth.”

  Doyle looks me up and down before turning his attention back to Grace. “You brought Ken doll too, huh? Cute. What, you scared?”

  Grace laughs, shaking her head and kicking at the ground. “Of a pindick pusher like you? Hardly. You’re not even big league, too busy slinging shitty brown sugar to play with the real movers. Up in my hood? Pure China white. Stuff you can’t even imagine. So fucking clean you don’t even feel that monkey on your back.”

  I have no idea what she’s talking about, but it’s turning me the hell on. If she keeps this act up, I’ll be walking back to the cruiser pitchin’ a tent in my pants.

  “Now, tell me about Rachel,” she continues, “or turn around, because either way you’re talking today.”

  I’m worried about the cronies. They’ve been slowly advancing behind him, creeping forward like a pack of wolves.

  Doyle sucks on his teeth. “Okay, baby. You want to know about Rachel and her shit-kicker of a boyfriend?”

  “I do.”

  “They’re junkies, plain and simple, some of my best customers.”

  “What were they buying?”

  “Whatever they could afford—C, H.”

  “You weren’t selling them fairy dust?”

  He draws back. “Soap chips, sugar and shit? I’m a crook, but I’m not a crook, you know?”

  Grace looks to me with a ‘This fucking guy, huh?’ expression.

  I met plenty like him in LA. They never change.

  “Okay,” says Grace, “so where were you last night, around midnight?”

  He looks to his friends.

  “Eyes on me, asshole. Where were you?”

  “At the laundromat ’round the corner.”

  “The whole night?”

  He grins, mouth gleaming. He grabs his junk. “What can I say? I’ve got a lot of dirty laundry.”

  “Can anyone back this up?”

  He looks behind himself. “My boys.”

  “Anyone else?”

  “I don’t know, bra. They got cameras and shit in there. Go ask them.”

  “We will. And you had no contact with Rachel?”

  “Not for fucking days.”

  “Her boyfriend, Chris?”

  “A day ago,” shrugs Doyle. “He came around here but didn’t have the cash. I sent him packing.”

  “Did he have anything to say about Rachel?”

  “Only that he found out she was doing tricks downtown. Was real cut up about it.”

  “You knew?”

  “Of course I fucking knew, could see it in her eyes, you know? Bitch had been taking on more dick than Annabel Chong.”

  I see Grace tense visibly. She’s struggling to hold herself back. “Where?” she blurts.

  Doyle looks confused. “Is Rachel?”

  Grace’s getting impatient. “Rachel’s on the fucking slab. No, moron, where was she doing tricks?”

  Doyle seems hesitant to speak up, but he eyes me and thinks better of it. “Extended-stay hotel, The Baxter or some shit.”

  “How do you know this? Were you one of her clients?”

  He laughs again. “I let her suck me off once. A garden hose has more suction, you know what I’m saying?”

  Poor choice of words, brother.

  “And you know where she was because what? You were checking in on her?” Grace continues.

  “Delivering flowers,” he smirks.

  “Flowers, hey? I fucking bet you were.” She whips her finger in the air. “Let’s go, Beckett.”

  We turn to leave, but Doyle hasn’t had his fill. “So, Detective,
what do I get in return?”

  Grace spins around. “What do you get? How about not spending a night with a big black cock up your ass?”

  He kisses the air, lips smacking. “How about I put my cock up your fine little ass? How about that, huh?”

  His cronies are moving, surrounding us. We’re outnumbered three to one. Neither of us has drawn yet. If we do it’s going to real ugly, real fast. The last thing we need is a shoot-out here in this shithole, not on my first day.

  One of Doyle’s men leaps forward and grabs a handful of Grace’s ass. Something inside me snaps. Before I know it, I’ve covered the five feet separating us and brought my fist into his shoulder, pinning him down into the pavement so hard he’ll be breathing concrete for weeks. I press my knee into his shoulder and lever his arm up with one hand, the other pressing the tip of my 9mm into the back of his neck. He screams, begging for release. Another inch or two and I could break his arm, but Grace’s shouting, her own gun drawn as she backs away, those hands really fidgeting away in pockets now, who knows what in there.

  “Beckett, let’s go!”

  I throw the goon’s arm away and stand, gun trained on Doyle. He has his hands up, grinning. “It’s okay, boys. They’ll be back.”

  “Like fuck we will,” says Grace, backing up to the cruiser. She slides into the driver’s seat, gun out the window as she reverses out of there.

  She spins the car around and I get low, expecting bullets to fly, but they never come. I watch the side mirror as Doyle and his friends simply stand there watching us go, grinning the entire time.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  GRACE

  I pull up the e-brake. “Not exactly the Hilton, is it?”

  ‘Seedy’ doesn’t even begin to do The Baxter justice. Even the façade of the place is grimy and slick, like the building itself can’t handle the filth that has set up shop inside it.

  “I appreciate what you did back there,” I tell Hunter, “but next time I can handle myself, understood?”

  Hunter looks out the window, doesn’t seem fazed by it. “Understood.”

  “Let’s get this over with.”

  The lobby, if you can call it that, is home to three things—a passed-out hooker in her sixties, a cat that looks like it picked a fight with a set of clippers, and a guy behind the desk lit only by the glow of the television less than a foot from his face.

  He glances up at us. “Thought I smelt bacon. You two looking for a room?”

  I place my hands on the desk, ring the bell once and let it chime out before speaking. “You know what, we are.”

  “Yeah? Where’s your warrant?”

  I look around. “Where’s your fire exit?”

  The hotel manager nods. “Okay, Barbarella, what you looking for?”

  “Rachel Jackson, ran tricks here in one of your rooms.”

  “Don’t know the name.”

  I flick to a picture of her on my phone and show it to him.

  The realization sinks in. “You mean Ruby, but she don’t look so healthy there.”

  “I’d say not given she’s dead.”

  He backs up. “Ah, shit. I’m sorry. She was decent, you know? Never understood why she was working here. Just didn’t make sense.”

  “But you knew she was a junkie.”

  “They’re all junkies.”

  “Her room?”

  He reaches behind himself and takes a key off the board. “Room 202, second floor.”

  “What did the other tenants think of her?” asks Hunter.

  The hotel manager lifts a shoulder to his cheek “Eh, there were a few noise complaints, the usual bullshit, but mostly she was a dream tenant, you know. Paid on time, kept to herself.”

  I take the key and have Beckett follow me up the stairs to the second floor. There’s no fucking way I’m using the death trap of an elevator.

  I turn and key and enter the room. It’s dark as Satan’s shithole. I move to the far side and throw open the curtains, a waterfall of dust following. “Fucking. Disgusting.”

  The room is small, two mattress piled on top of one another, a dresser, and a bathroom without a door, the shower head hanging down, the wall wet. It smells of deep damp, the kind of moldy permanence nothing short of commercial acid could clear.

  “Look, here.”

  Hunter’s pointing to a series of blood spots on the top mattress.

  I come over. “What do you make of it?”

  “Could be anyone’s. Hard to say how old it is.”

  We check the dresser drawers, but they’re empty. We find a small baggie of heroin under the mattress, but that’s it.

  Zippo.

  “Dead end,” notes Hunter.

  “You know what I do when I come to a dead end?” I offer.

  He seems curious. “What?”

  “Put myself into a caffeine coma.”

  *

  Hunter almost spits his coffee over me. “Jesus that’s—”

  “Strong?” I drain my cup. “What were you expecting? The watered-down mush you hillbillies call coffee? You’re in the Big City now, my friend. Coffee is a god here and I am but a humble, very needy, servant.

  We’re at a diner in the East Village, the kind that’s slowly being swallowed up by hipster hang-outs with ten types of avocado and co-ops full of people with questionable body odor. I do like what Hunter the Man’s giving off, though, a barky, piney scent that’s more masculine than most in this city. He’s built, there’s no denying that, but I can’t see him working out in a gym. His brother’s a big football star, it seems, so maybe it’s genetics… maybe something else. I make a mental note to look into it later.

  I put my coffee down and cross my legs. “You’re learning a lot today.”

  The coffee cup looks tiny in his hand. “Most action I’ve seen in years.”

  I lean back and let the tip of my tongue snake out over my upper lip. “Strapping guy like you, I find that hard to believe.

  He clears his throat, changing the subject. “You say you knew the victim?”

  I start tapping the laminate on the tabletop with a nail. “We went to high school in Jersey together. I wouldn’t say we were best friends. We got together a lot for sleepovers, birthday parties—the usual girly bullshit you get up to in high school.”

  “What was she like?”

  “She was quiet, studied hard, and didn’t attract attention. Well, at least until she grew a set of tits. After that it all started to slide downhill.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, boys discovered her and vice versa. Thing is, she always seemed to attract the worst of the worst, the real sleazebags. She started getting a reputation, her parents found out, and that was it. They moved. I bumped into her a few years later. She looked the same, but she was hanging off the arm of this guy I knew was trouble. You can just tell. Something about the eyes.”

  “It didn’t work out?”

  “He sent her to the ER twice before the authorities got involved. It was a nurse who called it in. But Rachel never had the balls to leave. It’s shitty. Really shitty it went this way for her. She was a nice kid when I knew her.”

  I decide to deflect the conversation. “And what about you, Mountain Man? You got a girl back home, three toddlers?”

  Hunter’s eyes pop at that. He thumbs the light stubble on his chin. “Afraid not. There was a girl, but…”

  “But what?” I push, my investigative powers taking hold. “She ended up with another guy, didn’t she?”

  He speaks, but he’s distant. “That’s right.”

  “You didn’t fight to the death or something over her?”

  “In a way, but he won out in the end. I guess he was more exciting, had more tattoos or some shit.”

  “And you don’t? No eagle of patriotism branded into your left ass cheek?”

  He raises an eyebrow. “Do I look like the kind of guy who has an eagle on their ass?”

  I tilt my head sideways as if I can X-ray right th
rough his clothing. “Yeah, you kind of do. You probably hang a flag out the window every night.”

  “My background’s not military if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  I let myself explore the lines of his body, contemplate what they’d be like to touch, or taste. Given the bulge in his pants earlier, I’ve got no doubt he’s packing plenty in that department too. “No, so why the Force then?”

  “To make a difference.”

  I burst out laughing. “Don’t give me the recruitment banner, Beckett. Why, really? You wanted some action? The kind of excitement a warm hand and tub of coconut oil can’t provide?”

  His features harden. “Yes, as a matter of fact.” I see him calculating whether he should provide anything further. He places his coffee down. “I was pretty hot shit in college, all of us were, heading for the NFL. Who knows? My brother Cayden made it, my little brother Colton on his way, but I had to give it up.”

  “Injury?”

  “Illness,” he responds, but there’s no elaboration this time.

  I start to piece it together. “And so you thought, ‘Hell, I don’t need a shoulder pads and a fitted bra to tackle guys.’”

  A wry smile follows. “I’m lucky to be alive. I didn’t want to waste this second chance. I didn’t want to be...”

  “Meaningless,” I fill.

  He nods solemnly.

  “So what did you do in LA?”

  “Narcotics.”

  “You see much activity?”

  He grows distant again. “We had our share.”

  “I salute you. I really do, but I’ve worked with narcs before. They were like you—model cops on the outside,” I point to my chest, “but in here,” and head, “and here? A fucking mess. That shit will screw with even the most hardened of us. That you? Because I’ve got to know you’re dependable. I can’t have you seizing up like my last partner because they suddenly thought they were back in some Compton crack house.”

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Don’t be. It was their mistake, and they paid the price. That’s how this gig goes. You’ve got to stay sharp. That’s how Pop made it so long. He kept his wits about him, used his fucking head. You’ve got to be smarter than them. It’s the only way to survive.”

  “Doesn’t seem so hard given your friend Doyle.”

  “Doyle? He’s a single sperm in a sea of millions, a bottom-dweller. It’s the guys swimming at the top of the pond you’ve got to worry about, and don’t think this city isn’t above corruption. Wherever there’s money, there’s corruption, and there’s a fuck-load of money in NYC.”