by M. Z. Kelly
Now, in the dark place that was her world, the sound came again, this time from somewhere above her. Christina tried to sit up and realized she was on a bed, even though she couldn’t make out any of her surroundings. Then she realized something else: there were chains on her wrists and ankles. A sudden panic overwhelmed her.
“Who’s there?” she called out.
Nothing.
She tried again. “Please! Help me!”
Silence. She turned her head, again trying to make out the sounds. Her body jumped when she heard a door open suddenly, footsteps coming from somewhere above. It gave her the impression she was in a basement.
“Please help me,” she pleaded.
There were more footsteps, but nothing else. Her arms reached out, hugging her legs, her world exploding into anxiety, when the sounds finally stopped. A silhouetted figure came down a dimly lit stairway and stopped.
She found the courage to call out again. “Please, help me.”
Several seconds passed before he asked, “Are you hungry?”
She was so surprised by the question that she didn’t know what to say. “I’m okay. I mean...no. Why am I here?”
There was a pause, then a heavy breath. “You really don’t know?”
Her thoughts coalesced as she remembered the emails she’d received over the past few days. “Does this have something to do with what happened to Billy?”
“Billy?”
“He was a boy I knew in college. He died, and someone was trying to blackmail me for what I knew about his death.”
The hooded figure took a step out of the shadows, coming closer to her. Christina shrank back, realizing this was the same man who had assaulted her in the parking garage. His face was in shadows, but his dark eyes studied her. “And what, exactly, do you know?”
She broke down. “Nothing, really. It was a long time ago.” When there was no response, her voice pitched higher. “Please, tell me what’s going on.”
He laughed. “There will be time enough for that.”
There was movement again, the man coming closer and sitting on the edge of her bed. She instantly sprang back, moving away from him.
He laughed again. “I’m going to release the chains and turn on a light when I leave. I won’t hurt you.”
He took a moment, working on the locks on her arms and legs. She was repulsed by his touch, but let him work on the locks, realizing it might eventually lead to her freedom. As he worked, she again tried to make out his features, but it was impossible.
When he was finished, he said, “I need something from you before I leave.”
A wave of fear slithered down her spine like a serpent coming out of the darkness. Her voice pitched higher. “What...what do you want?”
“Just some numbers.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I have your purse, Christina, and your bank cards. I need your PIN number for the accounts.”
Christina hesitated. Was this happening only because he wanted money? “You can have everything, I just want my freedom.”
More strange laughter. “Of course you do. Now, the PIN number, please. We’ll talk about your freedom another time.”
She resigned herself to what was happening and gave him the number attached to her bank accounts.
“Very good.” He rose. “There’s a small fridge with water and sandwiches. You’ll see it when I turn on the light. There’s also a bathroom.”
He took a few steps, then stopped and turned back to her. “Do not attempt to escape or call out. If you do, life will only become more difficult.” He moved away again, heading for the stairs.
“Wait.” The footsteps stopped. Her voice broke with emotion. “Why...? Why are you doing this?”
He didn’t answer, instead moving off again. When he was at the top of the stairs, he stopped. A bare bulb came on, illuminating her prison. The hooded figured looked down at her, but it was still impossible to make out his features.
“Why am I doing this?” he said, his voice full of anger. “Because evil takes many forms, and sometimes it is quite beautiful.”
TEN
After leaving Fort Greene Park, Max and I, along with the other rejects, officially known as B-Team members, were bused back to Precinct Blue, where we were allowed to shower and change back into our civilian clothes. As we were getting ready to leave for the day, Lieutenant Corker stopped by.
“How was your first day as members of B-Team?” he asked with a wide grin.
Max and I exchanged glances. She gave a slight shake of her head, a signal for me not to give Corker a piece of my mind, then answered. “I think we’re gonna like our new duties.”
Corker’s grin melted. “Why is that?”
“It’ll give us a chance to get back in shape, do some real police work over at Hunts Point.”
He scowled, muttering, “We’ll see about that,” as he walked away.
“I think you got under his skin,” I told Max after he was gone.
“He’s gonna get a lot worse before this is over. I’m still working on that payback.”
As I drove us home to pick up Amy so that we could go by Jake’s place and Howard’s Lounge, Max got her friend Rosie on the line. She put the call on speaker, so I could hear what she had to say about our landfill victim.
“They did get prints off the girl,” Rosie said. “Her name is Jessie Walker, age twenty-three. She’s got a couple of two thirty convictions.”
Section 230 of the state penal code was the statute that made it a crime to solicit sex for pay with another person.
“Anything else?” Max asked.
“Her last known address was an apartment over in Van Nest.” Rosie took a moment, likely reviewing reports on her computer terminal. “Looks like the autopsy was completed today. She was strangled, no sign of sexual assault. Nothing much else that’s notable.”
“What about that other issue I mentioned?” Max said.
“A work in progress. I’ll let you know.”
Max thanked her and ended the call. “Working girl ends up strangled and dumped in a landfill. What do you think?”
“I think the case is circling the drain.”
Max nodded. “Guess we’d better plan on doing some plumbing.”
“And the other issue you mentioned to Rosie?”
Max was applying a fresh coat of lipstick and smiled. “I’ll let you know about it if Rosie finds something worthwhile.”
Amy met us on the street in front of Balfour Chapel a few minutes later. She was wearing a short black dress. As I pulled away from the curb, she wasted no time telling us about her expectations for her meeting with Jake. “If the dirty pipe layer is with his sister again, keep your hands on your weapons. There’s no telling what I might do.”
After trying to calm her down, we tried to take her mind off Jake by telling her what we’d learned about Jessie Walker. I asked her if she was able to get into Christina Blaze’s office.
“Gail Walsh being a looker worked out to my advantage. She not only got me inside, she distracted Christina’s bosses while I went through everything.”
“What’d you find out?”
“Her computer had a password, so I wasn’t able to get access to her emails, but I did find a copy of a couple that she’d printed out. Somebody was definitely trying to blackmail her for half a mil and it all goes back to whatever happened to Billy Mercer. Do you guys know if it’s possible to find somebody connected to an email address?”
“It depends on a lot of factors,” Max said. “If you give me the address, I’ll ask Rosie what she can find out.”
Amy told Max she would get her a copy of one of the emails, then asked her, “Did you get an address for Mercer’s parents?”
“Shit. It slipped my mind. I’ll text Rosie first thing in the morning and let you know what she says.”
Amy went on. “I also found out that Christina has a boyfriend that I don’t think her mother knows about. His name is Robert Cox
. I’m gonna try and track him down tomorrow, see what he knows.”
Twenty minutes later, I pulled to the curb down the block from Jake Rogers’ brownstone in Brooklyn Heights. As we got out of the car, we could see there were lights on inside the apartment.
“How do you want to handle this?” I asked Amy. “We don’t want a repeat of the ball-busting incident the last time we were here.”
My friend sighed, brushed the hair off her forehead. “You’re probably right. I promise I’ll keep my cool.”
Max and I exchanged glances as Amy made her way to the front door and rang the bell. A handsome young man came to the door after a moment.
“Is Jake around?” Amy asked, trying to see over his shoulder into the apartment.
“He just ran to the store,” the man said. “He should be back in a few minutes.”
“Oh.” Amy continued peering over his shoulder, then said, “Is his sister here?”
“Not tonight.” His blue eyes narrowed on Amy. “Can I ask what this is about?”
Max spoke up, saving Amy from explaining her circumstances. “My friend, here, met Jake a few weeks back. She was just stopping by to say hi.”
The man’s gaze went from Max back to Amy. “Are you the one who came by before and caused a scene?”
“I wouldn’t exactly call it a scene,” Amy said. “I was just reacting to what I saw.”
“I see. Perhaps I should explain something to you. Jake and I are friends with benefits, if you know what I mean.”
Amy studied him for a long moment. “Are you trying to tell me Jake is gay?”
“Yes, we’re...we’re in a committed relationship.”
Amy let loose with a string of obscenities, ending with her telling the man that Jake was a lying cheat.
“Jake is neither a liar nor a cheat,” Jake’s boyfriend said. “And, just for your information, he’s taken some time to come to grips with his sexuality. He’s recently accepted that he’s gay.”
Amy threw her hands in the air as she looked at Max and me. “Do you believe this?
I took a step closer to her and lowered my voice. “I think it’s time to accept what’s happening and move on.” I looked at Jake’s boyfriend. “I’m sorry for the interruption.”
After we’d all piled back into the car, Amy held nothing back. “Do you believe this shit? I finally find a guy, and, at first, I think he’s shacking up with his sister. Now I find out he’s gay. Why me? What did I ever do to deserve this? I can’t believe my luck. My life’s like one of them Dyson vacuum cleaners—it sucks big time!”
She raved and ranted for several minutes more, before I said, “I think you just need to give it some time. You’ll eventually find a guy.”
She turned her anger on me. “Eventually, huh? I bet you think I got penis envy.”
“What?”
“You got Sam’s package waiting for you this weekend, and I got nuthin’ but a dildo with worn-out batteries. Like I said, life’s a big vacuum cleaner, then you end up with a dead vagina.”
Max and I decided there was no consoling her, so we remained quiet until we got to Herman’s Lounge. After pulling to the curb down the block from the bar, I said to Amy, “You can wait here, if you want.”
She opened the door. “I ain’t spending the rest of my rotten life in seclusion. Maybe I’ll find a guy in this joint.”
As it turned out, there were lots of guys in Herman’s Lounge and some of them were looking for women. The only problem was, they wanted to pay for the women to have sex with them. A john, admiring Amy’s outfit, made the mistake of propositioning her shortly after we walked through the front door.
My friend locked eyes with the man and demonstrated what can happen when your evening suddenly goes from bad to worse. “How much you gonna pay for this blow job you want?” she demanded.
The man smiled. “I’ve got a five, and five more if you take your time.”
“Ten bucks? You want a ten-dollar blow job? Listen up, asshole.” She cut her eyes to Max and me, then looked back at the john. “My friends, here, are cops, so, if I was you, I’d take a yoga class, learn how to do the downward dog, and suck your own dick.”
After the man scurried off, we found a corner table and ordered drinks. Max and I asked Amy to try to stay out of trouble, and we made our way over to the bartender.
Rosie had texted Max a mugshot of our victim and she showed it to Al, the bartender. “The girl’s name is Jessie Walker,” she explained. “You ever seen her in here before?”
Al, who was around fifty, with short gray hair, studied the screen, then cut his dark eyes to Max. “You guys cops?”
“Yeah, but this is strictly off the books.”
He didn’t respond, instead mopping the bar with a towel. He finally said, “I don’t want any trouble.”
“There won’t be, as long as you cooperate. If you don’t, you never know. Vice might be stopping by to say hello.”
Al stopped the towel work, sighed, and met Max’s eyes. “Yeah, she came in here sometimes after work.”
“Where did she work?”
“I think she was a nurse somewhere, maybe over at Mercy.”
“When did you last see her?”
“Probably a week or so, not sure. Why you asking about her?”
“She was found strangled, dumped in a landfill.”
His gaze drifted off, and he didn’t react.
I wasn’t happy with the pace of the conversation. “Was she ever with anybody when she came in here?”
A shrug. “Dunno. Maybe there was a guy, now and then. I don’t really...”
The bartender’s words were cut off because Amy was shouting. We turned in time to see her throwing her beer in a man’s face.
“I oughta give you a fist full of Jersey justice,” she shouted at the man. “Take your limp little dick and hit the road.”
After Max and I got Amy to the car and we headed for home, Amy unloaded again. “What is it with me? Do I got a big sign on my forehead that says JERSEY SHORE WHORE?”
I tried to be sympathetic. “Of course not. You’re just have a string of bad luck.”
My attempt at compassion backfired, as Amy broke her personal record by dropping a half-dozen F-bombs in a single sentence without taking a breath. I knew my best friend in the world better than anyone. Amy Ross was desperate. I decided I had to make it my personal mission to find her guy—and soon.
ELEVEN
The next day, finding Amy a guy took a back seat to Max, Della, Mavis, and me starting our new assignment in Hunts Point. The 41st Precinct, called Fort Apache at one time because of the crime and violence in the area, had been immortalized in a movie by the same name back in the 1980s, starring Paul Newman. In recent years, the crime rate had improved, but the area still had more than its fair share of drugs and prostitution.
We got to the precinct late in the day because we were told we were going to work the night shift. After waiting around a reception area for a half hour, the four of us were led into a damp, squalid back office where we met Ray Costello, the assigned lieutenant for our temporary assignment.
“I don’t got a lot of time to spend with the likes of you,” Costello said, pacing in front of us. He was a tubby guy in his fifties, with short gray hair and a smile that brought to mind a fox sizing up a bunch of chickens. “You all will be working the Longwood area, doing what our esteemed commish refers to as ‘community policing’. Your official duties are prostitution and drug enforcement. Unofficially, you got just two things to do: stop and arrest any hookers, johns, and drug users in the alleys, and clean up the streets.”
Max spoke up. “So, you expect the four of us to single-handedly clean up the streets in Longwood?”
The fox’s smile grew wider. “Exactly. You’ll be given trash bags and gloves. You’ll find that the girls and the johns leave a lot of ‘souvenirs’ behind after a busy night. Your jobs are to take the trash off the streets. In more ways than one.”
The
four of us were given a van to take to the Longwood area of Hunts Point. It was freezing as we got our gloves, trash bags, and “gophers” out of the back of the car. Max worked the trigger on her gopher, demonstrating the claw on the long pole device for picking up trash.
“Instead of the shooting range, I guess we should have spent our time on the gopher range,” she said to us.
“Message delivered,” Della said, eyeballing her gopher, before clipping her blonde hair into a ponytail. “B-Team should be called T-Team, for Trash.”
Mavis glanced around the neighborhood, which consisted of apartment buildings and public housing, all tagged with graffiti. “I say we stick together. I doubt there’s a whole lotta respect for cops out here on patrol, carrying gophers.”
As we walked up the street, Max and I exchanged some small talk with Della and Mavis, telling them about our background and that we lived at Funk’s Fields.
“You really live in that graveyard?” Mavis said, chuckling. “I heard some bad shit goes down there.”
She was referring to a girl who had been dressed up as an angel and had recently been murdered in the cemetery by a group of religious zealots.
“It’s not as bad as it sounds,” I said, sharing her laughter. “Except for the bank of bodies in our apartment.”
“You’re kidding,” Della said.
I shook my head. “Thorndike—he’s the mortician there—is waiting for the ground to thaw before planting them this spring.”
Mavis grimaced. “That gives me the spooks, just thinking ‘bout it.”
We worked the street for the next couple hours, picking up everything from condoms to used syringes littered on the sidewalks and in the gutters. The task was pointless, since we knew that, in a day or two, the streets would be covered with the same filth again. It disgusted us to think about the children living in the area.
It was just after midnight when we saw a girl talking to someone in a beat-up car parked at the curb down the block from us. When she opened the passenger door and got inside, Max said to Della and Mavis, “Looks like we’ve got some action. Me and Mads got the driver’s side, if you two wanna take the sidewalk.”