by Chuck Dixon
A big blue car pulled close enough to the house that she could not see it past the roof below. Voices rose from downstairs. She crept to the bedroom door in time to hear the bolts on the front door being shot back. Voices below. They spoke English. Men she did not know were here.
She felt a thrill of fear that set her legs trembling. Strange men meant something bad to her. They came to take the girls away. Or maybe they were here on a visit like Kola, to use the girls any way they wished. Maybe they were worse than Kola. Like the men on the boat.
Before she realized what she was doing she had entered the hallway and rushed over the carpeted floor for the bathroom. They couldn’t have her if they couldn’t find her. The tile was cold under her bare feet. She pushed the door closed, but left a gap in case they heard the snick of the lock below. She sat on the floor against the wall by the door, watching the hallway.
Sonata had no ideas for an escape from the house. The mad inspiration that made her seek a hiding place was pure animal flight. No plan. No greater aspiration than to hide as long as she could to forestall the men from finding her. The giddy thought raced through her mind that they might take the other girls and leave her behind, forgotten.
The voices came closer. The fluorescent lights in the hallway ceiling blinked on. Sonata shrank back. Feet on the stairs. Men grunting.
Through the narrow gap she watched two men carrying a third between them. The man they carried was a big man and the two men struggled with the weight. His hands and feet were tied together. A dead weight. Unconscious.
One of the guards led them to a room at the end of the hall. It was a bedroom that no one used. It was water damaged from a leak in the roof. The wallpaper was gray and moldy. A black stain spread across the ceiling.
The three men went into the room. They spoke in English, muffled. There was some scuffling. One of them cursed. Then they were in the hall again and moved past Sonata’s view to return downstairs. The hall went dark. After a while the sounds of a football game from the television rose again.
Sonata slipped back to her bed. She lay watching the ceiling until it was washed pink with dawn light.
36
Jamil lay against the curb, arms spread, staring upward. Snowflakes rested on the surface of his wide open eyes. They did not melt — Jamil’s body temperature had reached freezing point hours before. Snow stood on the rest of his naked flesh.
He seemed to be regarding the pair of K.C. homicide detectives who were bent to study him.
“Junkie.”
“What was your first clue, Sherlock?”
“Look at the tracks on his arms. Bet we find more in his crotch.”
“You can find more in his crotch.”
“Got all the pictures you need?” one of the homicide bulls said to the crime scene tech taking photos.
The tech nodded.
“Get him to the M.E. Send us a report,” one bull said, holding up the yellow tape for his partner to duck under.
The M.E. determined that Muhammed Faiez Isa, AKA Jamil, died of an overdose of an opiate derivative. His fingerprints identified him as a felon with a record going back to shortly after he reached eighteen and right up to a year ago when he served six months for aggravated assault.
But it wasn’t as simple as another junkie overdose.
Barbara Triplet had been a Wyandotte County medical examiner for ten years. Sometimes she regretted not following her one-time plan of being a dentist. Then she’d weigh the pros and cons of a decade of cutting on corpses against staring into people’s open mouths five days a week. It always came out even. And this job had the bonus of patients who wouldn’t try to talk while she worked.
She stood by Jamil lying on the table and read off the details of the tox screen to an assistant named Kyle who typed it all onto a laptop. Medical Examiners didn’t recite their findings into a microphone anymore. It all had to be entered into forms. Boxes filled in and number codes provided.
“Any additional notes for homicide?” Kyle asked, eyes on the screen.
“Explain why there was a delay. We had to wait until his blood thawed enough to make the draw,” Barbara said, leaning over the staring corpse. He wore an expression of dismayed surprise. An ugly guy even when he was alive. He’d been frozen like a Popsicle Christ when they brought him, arms spread with rigor and the cold.
“This guy came into money recently,” Barbara said.
“Yeah?” Kyle said with only mild interest. No curiosity, these kids.
“I’ve seen it before. Longtime junkie gets a windfall. Now he can afford the good stuff. But he’s not used to it and plows a week’s worth of hits into his arm all at once.”
“Maybe he won the lottery.” Kyle snorted.
“You laugh, but there was this guy down in Florida? Won the Powerball. He could buy primo pharma quality smack now. Held big parties at his brand new redneck mansion. All the drugs you could want laying out like a buffet at an Italian wedding. Killed off most of his friends O.D.ing on the best dope of their lives. He died himself a year later. Same way.”
“So, unintentional suicide,” Kyle said.
"Not so fast, padawan. There are complications. He was found flat on his back. But livor mortis is all along his right side. He laid a while that way after he was dead. Someone moved him, dumped him. That's foul play. Even if someone didn't mean to kill him, they transported his corpse. Felony time."
"Didn't want him found at their house," Kyle said, tapping into the laptop: decedent moved from the location of demise by persons unknown.
“Or place of business. But, hey, we’re not paid to be detectives,” Barbara said. “Finish the forms and send them over to homicide. Make sure you get the names right on the leads. And make a note that I have additional physical evidence I’m bagging and entering.”
That would have been the end of it. One more junkie no one would miss. Only this junkie had a mother who had a K.C. city councilman for a brother who promised to rain all kinds of shit down on Kansas City PD and the Wyandotte County sheriff if the people who murdered his nephew weren’t brought to justice. And that’s how it bounced back to homicide as a legitimate murder investigation.
“Goddamn Arabs stick together,” one of the bulls said.
“I think he was a Turk,” the other said.
“Fuck’s the difference. They’re all a pain in my ass.”
The detectives’ shared line of reasoning mirrored that of the M.E. The junkie died somewhere inconvenient and needed to be moved. Best bet was a place of business. An illegal business. There were two hot-sheet motels within two miles of where the junkie was dumped. And one cathouse inside the same radius.
They operated on the theory that their stiff would go with the cathouse. The tox screen said he was loaded to the hairline with medical grade morphine, the champagne of opiates. That cost him. It fell in line with a windfall.
“If you’ve got the cash why not go where there’s premium pussy?” As one of the bulls put it.
The house in the middle of the fourteen hundred block of Calvin Street was called Barbie’s Playhouse by local vice. It was an upscale operation, at least compared to picking up tweakers and trannies down on Independence Avenue. The girls were as clean as their last HIV test and they were all females with their original God-given parts. In the right light some of them might even be called pretty.
It was an operation ultimately run by “Big Stan” Stomata, a Turk who owned a chain of car washes, four Arby’s and two strip clubs in addition to the house on Calvin and various other holdings. He was connected with the city by campaign contributions and was a player in all the right charitable organizations. Big Stan had juice but not as much juice as the city councilman. That meant the only courtesy Big Stan rated was a phone call before the two homicide bulls arrived with a half dozen uniforms for back-up.
They didn’t need the back-up. The daytime manager met them on the front walk and escorted them inside, all smiles. The bulls pulled on vinyl gloves an
d did a casual walk-through of the premises. They peeked into rooms decorated like cheap Halloween versions of Victorian boudoirs, Chinese throne rooms, Roman villas and even a dungeon in the basement. In the light of day it all looked tacky as hell. But to the customers, fueled by hormones and alcohol, they might look like Hollywood sets.
The girls, three who were on daytime stand-by for walk-ins, sat in the living room watching reality TV and doing each other’s nails. They could be sorority sisters but for the hard eyes and cheap dye jobs.
“I like it,” said one bull after the survey.
“I like it too,” said the other.
They informed the day manager that they were shutting him down until a crime scene unit went over the place.
“You have a warrant, right?” the day manager said. No animosity. It wasn’t a challenge. He only wanted to make sure the protocols were followed in case his boss asked.
“Here’s your copy, chief,” one of the bulls said and held a three sheet form out to the manager.
“What are you looking for?” The manager held the form close to make certain the address was listed correctly.
“Carpet fibers,” the other bull said.
“Carpet fibers?” the manager said.
“Yeah. Science. Fuck yeah,” the bull said.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“You need to live in the now. Right now. Fuck the future. The future is fear. Fuck fear. We don’t do fear.”
37
They started with a beating.
That let him know they’d done this before.
They knew not to start by asking questions.
First, supremacy must be established. The subject must be shown that the interrogator is in charge. The subject must learn that his will is not his own. He belongs to his interrogator. There is no hope and no respite coming. Mercy is a quality unheard of unless the subject does something to earn it. And only the interrogator can determine the price for clemency.
He was naked. They’d cut off his clothes and taken them away. He had only a thin blanket to cover him against the cold. That was torn away when the single ceiling light came on and the room filled with strange men.
Levon curled up as much as he could on the narrow bed, the only piece of furniture in the tiny room. He protected his head. He tensed his muscles against the blows.
Two big men. One to hold him down, a knee on his neck. The other punched him in the torso in a workmanlike fashion. Thorough.
Gut.
Flanks.
Lower back.
Thorough but not professional. They were bouncers or brawlers. They could tune a guy up to collect money. Teach a hard lesson over a slight. Prison yard bullying.
The blows to his already-bruised ribs pained him the most. His side was a map of dark blue flesh. He let them know it hurt with grunts and gasps. They didn’t want to kill him and laid off the ribcage at the order of a third man leaning in the doorway watching.
The third guy was smaller than the other two but clearly calling the shots. Slight build, sallow skin. A mop of badly dyed blond hair. A cigarette clamped in the corner of a permanent sneer of derision. The guy barked and the two heavies let up on Levon. They panted from the effort. The room filled with their beer sweat.
Listening, Levon lay still on the bare mattress, moaning for their benefit. The shot-caller spoke, hustling the heavies from the room. A language Levon was familiar with but wasn’t fluent in. Turkish, maybe. The lights went out. The door was shut. A whiff of foreign tobacco in the air.
He reached to catch the corner of the blanket in his fingers. He did his best to pull it over him. Staying warm was key. He allowed his muscles to relax then tensed them again. Legs, arms, shoulders, hips. Working blood into protesting limbs, fighting the stiffness that would cripple him when he needed to move.
They’d beat him again. Maybe one or two more times. Then the shot-caller would get down to business. The questions would start.
From there it was a balancing act. They wanted the money and the diamonds they were sure he was hiding. They’d found his get money in his clothes. It was enough to shake up the men who brought him down, enough for them to hand him up to their masters. Now he was in the hands of men only interested in what he could give them. And once they were convinced that he was a vessel they could empty at will they’d expect him to pay off.
Levon would allow them to think he was broken when it suited his goals. And his only goal was to escape. And to accomplish that he'd have to allow them to hurt him. But not hurt him enough to impede his escape. That meant playing the hand he was dealt and playing it on his timetable not theirs.
He contracted and released his muscles and stretched his joints as best he could while he surveyed the room again. The shadows of the window frame on the floor told him it was late afternoon. The window faced west. It was barred on the outside and nailed shut on the inside. The panes were too narrow for him to squeeze through even if he broke the glass. His cell was a room in an older home. There was no closet. A hundred-year-old house. The only door led to a hallway. The door was solid wood in a wooden frame. No deadbolt. No lock of any kind that he could see. The knob was a cut-glass antique.
They’d offered him no food of any kind or any water to drink. His internal clock told him that it was more than twenty-four hours since his last meal. He could go another forty-eight before that presented a problem. And he’d gone longer and still remained ambulatory.
He considered more immediate options. He was limber enough and had enough strength to work his bound wrists over his ass and down his legs until he had his hands in front of him. Only that would be of no use to him with his ankles still wrapped tight in plastic strips. With his hands, even bound, before him and his legs free he could make the rest work to his advantage. The room offered nothing that would allow him to cut through the plastic. Nothing that would let him do it quickly in any case.
There was no telling when his captors would return. If they caught him halfway through working his hands to the front or sawing through his bonds with the edge of a piece of glass it would go hard for him. He’d be bound even tighter and probably after a vindictive beatdown.
The only bright spot was that they had not secured him to the steel frame bed. He still had the range of motion his bindings allowed him. He could get off the bed if only in a pathetic hop.
He took that cold comfort with him as he willed himself to sleep, the last restorative alternative left to him.
It was dark in the room, nighttime dark, when the three men returned for another beating. This time they dragged him to the floor to work at him with kicks.
When it was over they made to go. Levon chose his words carefully, choking them out in wet sobs.
“Please. Please. What do you want?”
A snicker from the blond. The room went dark. The door closed with a click.
Gunny Leffertz said:
“When the shit is rising and the piss is raining down you remember that you are not alone. Jesus is with you and I am with you. And even after Jesus runs away calling for his mommy, I will still be there with you. And you dare not fucking give up on me. Give up on yourself. Give up on our country. But give up on me and I will fuck you up here and in heaven.”
38
The door opened again.
It was still the same night, he was sure of it.
Levon lay where they’d left him on the bare wooden floor with his back to the door.
A slender bar of light lay over him. He could hear an intake of breath behind him.
A woman.
He rolled over to see a girl peeping in at him. Her dark eyes were wide. Her mouth parted in surprise. She was petite with narrow shoulders and slender arms and legs. Dark hair fell to her shoulders. Her eyes darted to the side at a noise from somewhere deeper in the house. She reached for the knob to pull the door closed again.
“Can you help me?” he said, voice low, just for her to hear.
Her fingers rested on t
he doorknob. She said something in a whisper — a question. Something in the language sounded Slavic. Soft consonants. Elongated vowel sounds.
“I am hungry,” Levon said, trying Russian.
She blinked and stared, pupils darkening. She understood.
“Please. I am hungry and thirsty,” he said.
The girl nodded and slowly pulled the door closed.
He watched the bar of yellow light beneath the door. The muted sounds of a television somewhere. Voices talking merrily. The music of a commercial that he remembered only because Merry laughed each time she saw it. The scent of cigarette smoke.
A shadow appeared in the strip of light. The door opened and the girl entered, pressing the door shut behind her without a sound. She knelt by his side and set something on the floor before helping him to a sitting position.
“For you to drink,” she said in inexpert Russian.
He felt a can touch his lips — some kind of soda. Her hand gently cradled his head, she tipped the can enough to let him slurp mouthfuls of the sweet stuff. He drank steadily until the can was empty. He could see her smiling at him in the gloom. A child's smile beneath dispirited eyes.
“Thank you. You are an angel,” he said as she pulled the can away, resting back on her heels. She turned her head, the smile gone, her eyes cast down.
“Can you help me?” he asked.
“I am nobody,” she said, voice small.
“Can you help me?”
“I am nobody,” she said, soft as vespers.
“My name is Levon,” he said.
She said nothing.
“I have a little girl of my own.” Reaching out. Making a connection. Touching her somehow.
Her eyes were closed now.
“A little girl like you.”
She spoke, a whisper. He strained to hear.