by Rob Hart
“Well, I’m glad we’re both winning at today.”
With his free hand he tosses a black cloth at my chest. “Put this on. Play any games, I will shoot you in the back.”
“Firing a gun isn’t as easy as it looks. If I break off on a run, are you good enough to hit me?”
He smiles. The worst kind of smile you can see on someone’s face when they’re holding a gun. “I’m not worried.”
I pull the hood over my head. He leads me down the steps, letting me swing my foot out to find each individual stair so that I get to the bottom safely.
The two of us head outside and walk down the street, him leading me, and I have to wonder if there are people walking by, and if they see a hooded man being led down the streets of Alphabet City, and whether that gives them pause.
I feel like the gun should give me pause. I’ve seen guns, tucked into waistbands, sitting on tables. Never had one with the business end pointed into my direction. T-Rex aside.
If Rick wanted me dead, he would have done it in the building. That’s what I keep telling myself.
At least that’s one mystery solved. The man in the hood. Which gets me thinking. I still haven’t given much thought to the actual parameters of this game. Like, the whodunit. Not that it really matters, but with not much else to do right now, I’m curious.
Lindsay is a ghost. Everywhere I go, people know her but no one really seems to know her. Terry, on the other hand, is clearly a bad guy. He has money issues. So how does Lindsay play into it?
Maybe the family has money and he’s working on getting some of it. That makes the most sense. Maybe he’s killed her, but that seems a little too fatalistic. Even in New York, people want happy endings.
Then there’s the question of Chell. I’m operating on the assumption that the girl who Chell played was Lindsay, only because there’s no other clear option. The only thing throwing me is one detail: Lindsay’s photo. The resemblance between Iva and Lindsay is uncanny. Iva and Chell don’t share the same facial features. Chell’s face is sharper, her eyes bigger. She’s couldn’t pass for Iva’s sister, not the way Lindsay does.
My sinus cavity feels empty. I need another line. My breath is making the hood damp and I don’t like the feel of it against my face. I hope they wash it between uses.
Coming down the block is the click of high heels, and a woman exhales. There’s the sound of two people kissing quickly on the lips, and the guy grabs my shoulder.
“I still have the gun,” he says. “Don’t try anything stupid. I will kill you.”
There’s a groan of old metal, and he leads me down a stone staircase, guiding my head for what’s probably a low clearance. Then we’re in a hallway. My shoulders brush up against the walls as I sway back and forth. He’s behind me. When we’ve walked about a hundred feet he stops me and fiddles with a lock. It smells like cigarette smoke and mold and hard water.
We get through a doorway and he sets me down on a chair and ties my hands behind my back. I keep them at an odd angle so that maybe I’ll be able to wriggle out of them. After a few moments Terry pulls the hood away from my head.
We’re in a basement room, probably below a bar, not entirely dissimilar from the one below Apocalypse. A concrete box with exposed brick walls and a scuffed floor.
The room is empty save the chair I’m tied to and another chair to my left, a coil of rope sitting on the seat. There’s a small table by the door with a beer bottle on it. No label. Paulsen is standing directly opposite me on the other side of the room, the gun dangling against his leg.
He’s flanked by Iva Archer. She’s smiling. This morning it was warm and vulnerable. Now her lips are set like blades.
“So,” I ask the man with the gun. “What should I call you? Terry? Joel? How about Rick?”
He tenses, tilts his head. “How did you find out my real name?”
“It may come as a surprise, but I’m actually pretty clever.”
Iva laughs. “Clever enough to get tied to a chair with a gun pointed at you.”
“Yes, please note the sarcasm,” I tell her.
“Rick,” says the man with the gun. “You can call me Rick.”
To Iva I say, “And your name?”
“You can use my professional name. Fanny Fatale.”
“Well then. I’ve been looking for you, too.”
If it was Rick’s DNA on Chell, then she must have been the female set. Fanny must have wanted the part Chell had, but Chell didn’t want to give it up. They decided to kill her. Maybe they did it together, maybe he did it after they fucked and that’s why there were two sets of DNA. Regardless. Doesn’t matter. I’m here now, and this bullshit ends.
Fanny leans down into my face. Her breath smells like chocolate. I want to smash all the bones in it. She asks, “Do you know why you’re here?”
I ask, “The game or the real reason?”
“You figured out the game?”
“I did.”
Rick shakes his head. “No you didn’t.”
“You were looking for a patsy. Iva or Lindsay or whatever her name is, she posed as her own sister and sent me all over town. Anyone looking for her would find people who remember me, so I’d come back as a suspect. But you were going to double-cross her. You would pull the bag off my head, she’d be tied up too. Once we were down here you’d leave us alone, I’d get out of the chair and use that stage-prop beer bottle to get the gun away from you when you come back into the room.”
Rick smiles. “How’d you figure it out?”
“I told you, I’m clever. Current circumstances aside.”
“If it makes you feel better, I’m impressed. No one’s ever figured it out that quick. Now, tell me where the drive is.”
“Not on me.”
“So it’s at the apartment.”
“I was evicted.”
Rick takes out his phone and taps at the keyboard. “I know. You’re staying at your friend’s place. The Indian kid.”
“The drive isn’t there.”
“You’re lying.”
“If you send someone there and he gets hurt, I will murder you much harder than I had planned.”
“I’m not terribly worried about that.” Rick finishes what he’s typing, puts the phone into his back pocket. “So, there’s not much left to say here.”
“Tell me why you did it, first. At least give me that.”
“Did what?”
“Killed Chell. Why did you do it?”
Fanny and Rick look at each other like they’ve walked into a conversation halfway through. Rick says, “We didn’t kill Chell. We didn’t even find out she was playing us until after she died.”
“You’re lying. You found out about the drive or you found out about Ginny or something, and you snatched her and you killed her to cover up, I don’t know, this dumb fucking turf war you’re having. Which, you better believe that if you hurt me, Ginny is going to cut through you like a fucking howitzer.”
Rick laughs. It’s a high, unsettling laugh that makes me think he knows something I don’t. He reaches the gun up to his head and uses the barrel to scratch his scalp, then drops it back to his side. “Ginny signed off on you. I can do whatever I want.”
“What does that mean?”
“You seem to have a passing familiarity with what’s going on, so I guess you’ll understand me when I say we’ve negotiated a cease-fire. We’re going to back off on the robberies and assaults, and we’re stalling the direct attacks on Ginny’s turf while we sort some things out.”
“What robberies and assaults?”
Fanny shakes her head. “He doesn’t know as much as he thinks he does.”
Rick leans down in front of me, and speaks like he’s lecturing a child. “The robberies and assaults The Hipster King has been overseeing. On one hand, it messed with Ginny’s relationship with the local cops. Made it look like she couldn’t handle her neighborhood. And on the other, we wanted to bring a little danger back to this neighborhood.
This place has gotten soft. We’re bringing the authenticity back to New York City.”
“Are you kidding? That was you? Are you guys behind the groper around Tompkins Square Park, too?”
“Make an omelet, break some eggs, all that jazz.”
The gears in my brain grind and nearly snap. “You killed Chell to make some ideological fucking omelet?”
“I told you we didn’t kill Chell.”
“And I think you’re a fucking liar.”
Rick smashes the gun across my face so hard I almost fall to the side. I run my tongue across my teeth and find one is loose. I know it should hurt, but I’m over the threshold. My body can’t process any more pain.
Rage bubbles in my stomach, forces its way up my esophagus. I put my feet flat on the floor, roll my weight onto my toes. Rick doesn’t notice. I try to get him to lean forward to me, just a little. I tell him, “You got bagged for a sexual assault up in Boston. Once a degenerate, always a degenerate. I know Fanny wanted a part in the game and Chell got it. You two killed her together, didn’t you?”
Rick shakes his head. “This is getting tiresome.” He moves forward to bring the gun up, which gives me just enough room to reach him. I lean forward onto my feet and launch myself into his stomach. We crash against the wall and the gun goes off next to my head. My hearing cuts out and I see the gun leave his hand, but I don’t hear it clatter against the floor.
Rick is doubled-over in pain so I take a look over my shoulder. Fanny is picking the gun up. I kick it out of her hand and turn to the wall. I’m stooped over, bent at the knees, still tied to the chair, so I give it a crack against the wall and it shatters.
Fanny scrambles for the gun again. She grabs it, but doesn’t have a good grip. I take it out of her hands, go over to Rick, who’s just gained his composure, and bash it across his face.
When Rick comes to, he’s sitting on the floor, his arms tied around the water pipe in the corner of the room. While he was dazed, I was a gentleman and offered Fanny the only unbroken chair in the room. Then I tied her to it.
A couple more lines of coke and I’m just about right. My ears are still ringing from the blast of the gun but I can hear a little better now.
It’s my first time holding a gun. You’d think that wouldn’t be true, given my line of work, but it is. I don’t like guns. They’re a coward’s weapon. Still, I know the basics. Check the clip. I know that in order for it to fire the safety has to be off, which it is. And I know which end is the dangerous one. It’s heavier than I thought it would be. Cold, too. I hold it down at my side.
“Why the game. This whole ridiculous thing?” I ask Rick.
“Access to people and information. Money.” He shrugs. “And it’s fun.”
“And Chell was a threat to all that.”
I train the gun on him. Rick looks up at me with pleading eyes. He says, “We didn’t kill Chell.”
“Bullshit. It fits. She was a spy in your organization.”
“We didn’t...” He trails off, still woozy from the blow, snaps back. The smug look is gone from his face. “That’s not how it was. We were upset when we found out, but we only found out after she died.”
“What about the thumb drive then? How did you know I had it?”
“My guys, the two guys from the bridge. They were at Chell’s apartment the night you took it. They saw you come out and get in a car, and they figured you had it. After we figured out who Chell was, we thought she swiped it, which she did. It’s paperwork. Financial records. But that’s all. We did not kill her for it.”
“Liar.” I slam my boot into his crotch, and unlucky for him, I decided to put on the steel toes this morning. He doubles over in pain and dry-heaves, his eyes crossed. Fanny screams, “Stop! Of course I wanted this job, but we didn’t kill her!”
“Shut up,” I tell her over my shoulder. I take Rick’s chin in my hand, pull his eyes up to mine. “You’re a sexual deviant. People like you don’t change. They never do.”
“That wasn’t how it went.”
“Then how did it go?”
He’s almost crying now. “It was my ex. She was trying to get back at me for something and she accused me, but it wasn’t true. That’s why I’m not in jail. I’d never do that to a woman.”
“I feel like you’re lying. Should I kick you in the nuts again?”
Fear blooms across his face like ink in a tank of water. I take the vial out of my pocket and put it to my nose, but it’s not the coke, it’s the lavender oil. The smell of it floods my head. Chokes me. I pull the vial away and the smell lingers along with Chell’s voice.
Asking me what I’m doing.
That voice makes the room look different.
Like the pieces suddenly don’t fit together so well.
“If you didn’t kill Chell,” I ask Paulsen, “then who did?”
“I don’t know. I don’t know. She said something about a guy. A guy she knew. He grabbed her wrist. It was sprained. It happened right before she came into work.”
“Who?”
“It wasn’t my place to ask.”
“Not your place?”
“It’s not like that. You know Chell. She liked to handle her own shit. She didn’t tell me who did it. But it was definitely someone she knew. The way she talked about it, it sounded like a guy she was involved with.”
I reach the gun back over my shoulder like I’m going to hit him. He arches away from me. “I swear that’s all I know.” His body is shaking.
The room is filled with the scent of lavender.
The room is filled with the scent of Chell, forcing me back into a well of doubt.
It’s in his eyes, and it’s in his voice. And no matter how badly I want it to be him so I can put this to bed, it’s not.
He’s telling the truth.
But I’m pretty sure I know who wrenched her wrist.
Quinn, when she refused to marry him.
Maybe I was wrong about him. Maybe he’s enough of a monster to kill a woman. Maybe after she refused his proposal he hurt her, then followed her and finished the job later that night.
And Chell didn’t say his name on the phone because she knew how much it would upset me.
That’s got to be it.
Rick is still hiding his eyes from me when I pull his cell phone out of his pocket and smash it against the wall. Rick asks, “You’re just going to leave us here?”
“You’ll get out eventually. I don’t need your friends getting in my way right now. When you do get out, you tell your king I think your plan is fucking stupid. A couple of muggings aren’t going to make this place better. And tell him to clear his appointment book, because I am going to find him and beat his goofy ass into the fucking dirt.”
They’re still protesting as I close the door and head out through the darkened hallway, holding my hand against the wall as a guide. I eventually stumble onto a staircase, and a grate leading to the sidewalk. I throw it open and scare the shit out of a group of smokers assembled outside a hookah restaurant.
Rick was texting during his monologue. He probably sent someone to go search Bombay’s apartment for the drive. I break into a run, pray I can beat them to it.
Bombay’s apartment is trashed worse than mine was before I abandoned it.
His laptops are smashed. The bookcases in the living room have been torn down. The coffee table is upended against the wall, and the lamp that was next to the couch is now in pieces, scattered around the room.
Looking at it, I can’t even be angry. How am I even supposed to react to this? It’s my life in microcosm.
I’m about to turn around and walk back out when I come across my dad’s scanner. Someone put a boot into the top. The faux-wood metal casing is bent, and the black plastic on the bottom is cracked.
I plug it in to see if it still works. It doesn’t.
All the inside pieces are smashed.
I’m sorry dad. I’m so sorry.
There’s movement behind me. I expe
ct to find Bombay ready to tear my head off, but it’s not. It’s the hipsters from the bridge. They must have been in the kitchen or the bedroom when I came in.
The redhead is holding a long silver knife with a black plastic blade. He moves to my left, the blond flanking me on the other side. The redhead says, “The drive. Now”
The blond is closer so I drive my fist into his stomach. He doubles over and I grab the back of his jacket, smash him into the wall. He doesn’t get up. The redhead holds up the knife in front of him. His voice is vibrating in a spot somewhere between fear and rage. “Don’t think I won’t use this. And you don’t have a fucking bridge to jump off of this time, asshole. This time you answer to me. No more games.”
He doesn’t die when I throw him out the window into the alley below. We’re only two floors up. But it does shut him the fuck up.
I text Bombay: I am so sorry.
I turn off my phone before he can write back.
As I wander through the West Village, I text everyone in my phone: Where’s Quinn?
Finally Mikey writes back: Speakeasy.
Speakeasy doesn’t have a name. That’s just what people call it. And even that is a little misleading, considering there are people lined up around the block to get in. And anyway, a speak makes me think of hard liquor. This place specializes in crappy beer and mixed drinks.
The line is at least forty people deep but Jimmy is working the door, so he waves me in as a collective groan erupts from the crowd. As I’m stepping past him he puts his hand on my chest. “You’re bleeding.”
“From where?”
“Ear. Head. Couple of places.”
“I’ll take that under advisement.”
“Clean yourself up when you get down there.” He takes my hand and stamps it with a black star, then picks up the rope and lets me go downstairs.
The club is at the bottom of a staircase, in a room that reeks of beer and bodily fluids. Everyone is glowing. The entire place is outfitted with black lights. With all the blood I’m covered in I must look like a crime scene. The club is laid out like a square, with some hallways and alcoves and side-rooms, centered around a sunken dance floor.