by Dan Ames
I locked up the Sunbird, thinking that only a moron would steal it. But I didn’t want to have to walk home just because I’d run up against a thief with no sense of style.
The door was heavy, wooden, and painted red. I pulled it open, worried about the germs that probably coated the handle, having been grasped by a group of men who would buy ten-dollar, watered-down beers for the chance to watch a naked teenager dance. Occupational hazard, I told myself, trying not to think what these guys do with their hands.
Inside was a beautiful marble foyer with a long mahogany bar and waiters in tuxedoes. Kidding, of course. It was actually just what you’d expect. A stage running down the middle of the place with a bar at one end and a curtain at the other. Small groups of tables surrounded the runway, with some chairs right up against it for those fifty-yard-line kind of spots. For the guys who liked to get right in on the action.
There was a girl dancing on the stage. She had on a fishnet body stocking, or what was left of it, anyway. Her breasts poked out of two holes and sat unnaturally high. Judging by the three or four guys who sat watching her, they probably didn’t care if they were looking at a plastic surgeon’s handiwork. I moved to the end of the room where the bar was and ordered a beer in a bottle. Six bucks. Ah, that good ol’ naked-girl surcharge.
When you got right down to it, there were only so many ways to get information from a place like this. You could stake it out over the course of a few days, or even a couple weeks, and try to learn something that way. Or you could have an idea of who your target was ahead of time and watch for him or her. Or you could walk in blindly and start asking questions. You could probably guess which path made sense to me. I didn’t have time for a two-week stakeout. And even though I knew who I was after, I didn’t think Grasso would be so stupid as to just hang out somewhere in the open.
The dancer was really working her stuff on the stage to the incongruous tune of Olivia Newton-John’s “Let’s Get Physical.” As I watched the fish-netted youngster on stage bend over and grab her ankles, I figured the Australian singer didn’t exactly have this kind of imagery in mind when she performed the feisty little ditty.
I hadn’t touched my beer and understood immediately that I wouldn’t be putting my mouth on anything in this bar, unlike the four-hundred-pound guy waving a dollar bill at the dancer hovering over him.
Before I’d left the police station, I’d made a copy of Grasso’s mug shot. I’d had to do it without Ellen noticing, but old habits die hard, and it’d been easy to go around behind her back.
The bartender was a goofy-looking guy. He reminded me of guys I’d gone to high school with that were easygoing and fun, but you knew would never really do much with their lives. I waved him over and showed him the computer printout of Laurence Grasso’s mug shot.
“I’m trying to track down a buddy of mine. Larry Grasso. Do you know him?”
Without looking at the picture, he said, “You a cop?”
I shook my head. “Flunked out of the Academy,” I said.
He barely glanced at the picture, and I knew what the answer would be. “Never seen him,” he said.
“Is there anyone else here I can show the picture to?”
“Why you lookin’ for him?”
“I’m a PI,” I said. “His sister hired me to find him. Their mother died, and they need to settle the estate. It’s not much, but they can’t do it until Larry’s contacted.”
The bartender shrugged his shoulders and walked away. Clearly, I was on my own.
I pushed my beer back and walked around the bar to a door marked with the single word: Office. The bartender watched me and started to say something, but I knocked on the door quickly and when I heard a voice say “Fuck off!” I went right in.
There was a woman behind the desk with big blond hair. I couldn’t see her face because it was buried in the crotch of a thin black girl sitting spread eagled on top of the desk.
“Oops,” I said.
The black girl scrambled off the desk. The blonde wiped her mouth off on her forearm and stood up. She was a big gal.
I pulled out the picture of Grasso and said, “I’m looking for Larry Grasso. Do you recognize him?”
“Get out,” the woman said, and her eyes flickered over my shoulder. I sensed movement behind me and ducked. Something crashed into the door and I pivoted, then reached up and caught the baseball bat under my arm. I swept my left hand up, slamming it into the bartender’s elbow, and I heard a satisfying pop. He let go of the bat, yelped a little, and I flipped it around so it was in my hand. I rested it over my shoulder and winked at him. He glared at me, and I used the bat like a cattle prod to herd him into the office, where I could keep an eye on all three of them. I closed the door behind me.
“Boy, you guys have got a real customer service problem,” I said.
“Fuck you,” the blonde said. The black girl hadn’t moved.
I nodded to the black girl, “Employee of the Month, I assume?”
“Very funny,” the blonde said. “What do you want?”
“Larry Grasso.”
“Never heard of him.”
“Wanna think about it?” I said.
“No,” the blonde said. “Jesus, I never heard of the guy.” She looked at the bartender, and he shook his head. To be honest, I couldn’t tell if they were lying or not. Sometimes it’s obvious. Sometimes you just don’t know.
I thought about it. I could make some more empty threats, or I could just cut my losses and thank God I wasn’t wearing a Louisville Slugger tattoo on my temple.
“Thanks for the souvenir,” I said, opening the door and stepping out into the club. The same girl was dancing, and the same customers were staring at her. Breathing through their mouths.
I walked outside, feeling a little silly carrying a baseball bat on my shoulder like I was about to start hitting fly balls for outfielder practice. Something told me I wasn’t doing this right. Whether or not they knew Grasso was moot. They were clearly the type that didn’t want to tell anyone anything. I thought about what I’d done—maybe I should have come up with a better story. I popped the trunk and threw the bat inside. Who knew when it might come in handy?
I backed the Sunbird out of the spot and was about to turn out of the parking lot when I saw a flutter of movement off to my left. I looked. At the back of the building was the skinny black girl, and she was waving at me. I drove around and pulled up next to her. She leaned in.
“I’ll tell you where he is for five hundred bucks.”
I pulled out my wallet and counted. “I’ve got three hundred and sixty.”
Her face was thin. Her eyes haunted. She was clearly on drugs. Malnourished. Desperate.
I held the money out to her, and when she reached for it, I pulled it back.
“He’s in a house on Barrington with a dancer named Ginger,” she said. I remembered when Nate gave me the address from the black Nova’s registration—it had been in a woman’s name. The name wasn’t Ginger though. It was something plain like Mindy or Missy. Melissa. That was it. Melissa.
“Is Ginger’s real name Melissa?”
She gave me a look like I was certifiable.
“No real names, I get it,” I said.
“Do you know the address?” I said. “Roughly?”
Her eyes took on a strange look, and I said, “If you don’t know, don’t lie.”
She nodded then said, “Alls I remember is it’s got a front porch with a refrigerator on it.”
I handed her the money. She took it, and her face took on a flush, already anticipating the drugs.
“Don’t even think of calling them to tell them I’m coming,” I said. “Or I’ll come back for a refund, do you know what I mean?” Actually, I had no intention of coming back, but I had to at least make an attempt at the tough-guy routine. Sober, she wouldn’t buy it. Strung out like she was, she might consider it. Anyone who knew me, of course, would have doubled over with laughter.
She hurrie
d away from the car and darted back into the building through the door. If the big blonde found out she’d given me the information, I was sure she would have her ass. Literally.
But I had a lead.
Chapter Thirty-Three
Barrington was located on the southern end of Grosse Pointe, bordering Detroit. All the exciting stuff happened down here. You could take your mansions and your yacht clubs and everything else from Grosse Pointe proper, but it was down here in the area they called the Cabbage Patch that all the excitement went down. They called it the Cabbage Patch, by the way, because the homes are so packed together, like, you guessed it, heads of cabbage in a field. Grosse Pointers are sooo creative.
At first, when the stripper had told me to look for a porch with a fridge on it, I thought it’d be easy to spot. But now, driving down the shitty street, I see she should’ve been more specific. Was it a side-by-side? Automatic icemaker? Freezer on the bottom?
Plenty of bikes and chairs and tables and air conditioners and a car bumper and a body (sleeping, I hoped) and plenty of dogs without leashes. Dogs without leashes. Sounded like a punk band.
I finally spotted a house with a lovely avocado-colored Frigidaire on the front porch. I stopped the Sunbird well shy of the house and put it in park, then got out and walked up onto the front porch. The fridge was in worse shape than it looked from the street. There were garbage bags piled inside. There were more garbage bags on the floor of the porch. I saw that quite a few of the plastic bags had jagged holes chewed in them. Rats. Lovely.
The door was cheap and flimsy. Big surprise there. I thought about what to do. Legalities. Options. Should I call Ellen or not? What if she came and the house was an abandoned rathole?
I thought some more and pressed my ear to the door. I didn’t hear a thing. I pressed the doorbell but didn’t hear any corresponding sound. I pressed it twice more with the same lack of result. So I pounded on the door for a good three or four minutes. Still nothing.
Goddamnit. By now, I was about to piss my pants. I pounded on the door again and noticed that when I hit it really hard, the latch came all the way out from the door. Hmm. I leaned my shoulder into it, and now I could get a thin glimpse of the room. Already, I saw a story formulating in my mind. Indefatigable PI checks out a lead. Walks up the front porch stairs, trips, crashes into the door, which opens up. He “accidentally” finds himself inside the house! Flippin’ brilliant!
Excuse in hand, I lowered my shoulder to the crap-ass poplar frame and plowed my way forward. There was a loud pop and a crack, and the door gave way. I stumbled straight into the living room and the working end of a .357, held in the firm, unwavering hand of none other than Laurence Grasso.
“You took long enough you little fucking punk,” he said.
* * *
•
* * *
He’d changed his appearance from his mug shot. Bleached hair, a bleached goatee. But it was the same guy. The same little predatory weasel eyes, coupled now with breath reeking of cheap wine.
“You just keep comin’, don’t ya?” he said.
“Like a fly with a nose for shit.”
He pulled back the hammer on his revolver. If I had to guess from the aroma of his breath, he’d been partaking in a local wine, probably a merlot. A 2003, perhaps.
“You know what a punk is?” he said.
“Kill him and let’s go,” a woman’s voice said from the kitchen. I didn’t know what startled me more: the voice or the utter lack of emotion it carried. Unlike me, Grasso paid the advice no attention whatsoever. He was focused on me.
“Let’s go,” the woman said again. Wherever she was, I couldn’t see her. I didn’t recognize the voice. The calm authority, the bored indifference in her tone, however, was unmistakable. I was more scared of the person attached to that voice than I was of the ex-convict with the gun pressed to my forehead. Not to say I wasn’t scared. Quite the contrary, actually.
Grasso moved around behind me, sliding the muzzle of the gun across my forehead and around my scalp, like he was tracing the line of a bowl to give me a haircut. He stopped behind me, and then I felt his forearm go around my throat. He pressed in against me and either he had a screwdriver in his front pocket or something very bad was going to happen to me.
“I used to fuck guys like you in prison,” he said.
“I’m married,” I said.
“Goddamnit, we don’t have time for this,” the woman in the kitchen said. “He probably called the cops already.”
I tried to see, leaning forward slightly and looking from the corner of my eye. All I could see was a doorway and a kitchen cabinet and countertop. I heard the sound of a chain lock sliding, then a deadbolt thrown. She was definitely getting ready to leave. I hoped Grasso would follow her example. Quickly.
I craned forward a little more and the left side of my face exploded in pain as Grasso used the barrel of the gun to deliver a karate chop to my face. “Don’t worry about her,” Grasso said. “Worry about me.”
The side of my face was on fire, and I felt blood running down my chin. The gun slid along my scalp again, this time ending up at the very back of my head.
“The cops are on their way,” I said. “They know I’d tracked you down. Do you really want another murder on your sheet?”
I was throwing out marshmallows here, I knew. But I was scared to death of dying. I needed to somehow convince him that not killing me was the right way to go.
“It don’t fuckin’ matter now,” Grasso said. He shifted, and I sensed that he was moving the gun to his left hand, which begged the question: what did he need his right hand for?
“Come on, let’s go!” the woman called from the kitchen.
“Shut up!” Grasso yelled into my ear. And then I felt something so hideous I froze.
With his free hand, Grasso tried to pull down my pants.
“Mister Nosy Bitch following me around, chasing me, just who the fuck do you think you are?”
“I—”
“Shut up, punk!”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” the woman in the kitchen called.
“Nothin’ better than a virgin punk ass,” Grasso said, and as he yanked on my pants, I grabbed one of his fingers and bent it back until I felt the bone break, which it did with a sickening little crunch.
Grasso screamed in my ear, and then he curled his leg around mine and pushed me forward. He pinned my arms so that I smashed face first into the hardwood floor. I felt something give in my face, and a searing pain ricocheted around inside my skull. Blood was in my mouth.
I felt air on my skin and knew with a panic that it was my ass. Grasso had my pants down.
“Fucking bitch,” he breathed into my ear. His breath was hot and fast. I didn’t know if it still smelled like wine, I figured my nose was broken.
I heard the sound of Grasso’s zipper, then the rustle of fabric as he lifted his shirt to pull down his pants.
A sound came from the front of the house that had a tinny quality to it. It sounded suspiciously similar to a police siren. We all heard it at the same time, and the woman in the kitchen said, “Shit!”
“Motherfucker!” Grasso said. Doors slammed outside, and heavy footsteps pounded up the front walk. I heard a lot of shouting, but everything seemed fuzzy and out of focus. I tried to move, tried to roll, but nothing happened. I had a funny tingling sensation down my spine.
“You fuck,” the woman said.
I heard Grasso run to the front door and shout.
“Shit,” the woman said, but her voice was further away now. Had she left?
“Just let me—” Grasso started to say, and then there was a loud crashing sound followed by two shots close together. Boom. Boom.
Grasso garbled something, and I heard him drop to the floor just as the walls around me exploded and the gun boomed. A cacophony of sounds greeted my ears. More crashes, shouts, tires screeching, the back door slamming shut, more heavy footsteps.
I rolled
as best I could. A stabbing pain raced up my left leg, and then the back door banged open.
A newer tinny sound from the front porch was going strong. A cop’s radio. There were running footsteps as I tried to get my bearings and then someone behind me said, “Freeze.” What a stupid thing to say, I thought.
I desperately wanted to pull my pants up, but at this point, it wasn’t worth the risk. Besides, the cops had arrived, probably because a neighbor had seen my dramatic entrance. Compared to the fear of being raped and killed, having a Grosse Pointe cop see my bare fanny was no big deal.
I lay still, my heart beating, the pain in my body building to a crescendo.
And then I heard a voice.
“Not one of your finer moments,” my sister said.
Chapter Thirty-Four
Later, we were standing outside the house on Barrington. I’d given my official statement, been given a quick once-over by the paramedics, and was now ready to receive the wrath of my sibling. Ellen pointed at my leg, which had gotten a basic bandage from Grosse Pointe’s finest emergency medical response team. It was a giant Band-Aid.
“So were you shot?” she said.
I shook my head. “It was a sliver from the floor.”
“A sliver,” she said.
I could tell she was on the verge of either laughing at me or slapping me silly.
“Yeah, it was a sliver,” I said. “A big one.”
“Only you could be in the middle of a shooting and come out of it with a sliver.”
“A big sliver.”