The Corpse Whisperer
Page 16
“Who was killed on Jora Lane today?”
“Why were the Feds called in?”
“What is your involvement in the investigation?”
And of course, “What were you doing in the morgue?”
The stink flies found a new target when Rico walked out the door. Jade pushed and shoved her way back toward the building, angling to get closer to Rico.
She bowled over a female newscaster and grabbed Rico by the arm. “Detective De Palma, tell us what happened on Jora Lane today.”
“No comment.” He walked past her without as much as a glance.
But Jade wouldn’t be ignored. “Excuse me, Detective De Palma. The city has a right to know.”
Rico fixed Jade in an icy stare and opened his car door. “Ms. Chen, the city will find out when CPD is damn good and ready to release that information, and not one minute sooner.”
He sank into the driver’s seat, started the engine and pulled away from the curb, leaving the swarm behind.
“Where to?” I asked.
“Home. We need some rest.”
“But Leo...his meds. We need to find—”
“We’re not going to do him any good if we can’t think straight.”
Rico was right. I was exhausted. For me, raisings are like marathons. Every ounce of energy inside me is spent when I’m finished.
Just a few short hours of sleep, I told myself. Just a few. Even the brain bitch didn’t argue.
Rico dropped me off at home. I figured the house would be dark and Nonnie would have left, to crash in her own bed. But the kitchen light was on.
Although Headbutt and Kulu barely budged when I walked through the door, Nonnie, sitting at the kitchen table, jumped like I’d scared at least ten years off her life. A cigarette hung from her bottom lip.
By the number of butts in her make-shift ashtray (an empty half-gallon container of ice cream) and the smell in my house, she’d taken to her new habit with the conviction of crack addict.
“Jesus, Nonnie. It stinks in here. When did you start smoking?”
“This morning—when you tell me Leo kidnapped.”
“Maybe you could do that outside. There’s a mushroom cloud at the ceiling.”
She ignored me. “You not find him. I know by look on face.”
I walked through the nicotine haze and patted her shoulder. “Were you waiting up, hoping he’d walk through the door?”
She dabbed at her eyes with a tissue. “Yes. And make sure you both in one pieces.”
At least someone was worried about me.
“We both need some sleep, Nonnie. Go on home. I’ll see you in the morning.”
I squeezed her hand as she plodded toward the door. “Thanks. You know, for everything.”
She gave me a wan smile, crinkling her puffy red eyes, put on her coat and trekked across the yard. I turned off the porch light, once she made it inside.
God, I needed sleep. I kicked off my boots and threw myself across the bed.
The night was filled with tossing and turning, worry about Leo, and wondering if he was seizing. Or, in the worst-case scenario, would he be dead by the time we found him.
Somewhere around three in the morning, I fell asleep and dreamed.
Leo and I sat next to each other on the plasticized couch at the safe house. He stared straight ahead, refusing to look at me.
Angry, I grabbed his face and turned it toward me. The half of his face that had been closest to me looked normal.
The other half had rotted away, with most of his cheek missing, his jaw bone and teeth jutting through the festering hole like jagged white rocks.
He snaked his tongue through the putrefied flesh and licked pus from the hollows of his cheeks.
My hands, still holding the sides of his face, were covered with maggots. When I jerked away, he pounced on me, jaws wide, teeth barred.
I bolted awake and stared into the darkness, waiting for my heart to settle down. As the visions in my dream drifted away, a foreboding voice whirred in my ear.
Soon…soon.
So much for sleep.
It was close to five, at least two hours earlier than I usually climb out of bed and crank up the coffee maker. I woke Headbutt from a sound sleep, called him up to my bed, and scratched behind his ears. Neither one of us was the cuddly type, but if one of us needed affection, the other always obliged.
It was a bit too early to wake Rico. I couldn’t help smirking at the fact that he likely spent the night alone, given the ration of shit he’d given Jade at the coroner’s office. I grabbed a shower and fed my animal posse.
Rico called around six, saying he’d drop by to pick me up about seven. I could have driven to the station on my Low Rider, but it was easier (and more enjoyable) to ride with Rico—not to mention that, if by some chance, Jade saw us together, it would irritate the piss out of her.
That’s what I called a win-win.
Nonnie walked over when she saw Rico pull in the driveway. It seemed like she’d just gone home. The days and nights were beginning to run together.
We drove toward the precinct in silence. I’d actually started to doze off when Rico’s phone rang. He glanced at the number, frowned, and sent the call to voicemail.
I smelled trouble. Jade Chen kind of trouble. Maybe he was beginning to think with his brain instead of his pecker. Or maybe it was their first lover’s quarrel. The brain bitch told me to stay out of it, that it was none of my business. Fat chance.
“Trouble?” I asked.
Rico kept his eyes on the road and cleared his throat. “It’s nothing.”
“Why didn’t you answer it, if it was nothing?”
“Drop it. I don’t want to talk about it.”
I knew it. It had been Jade. Thankfully, Rico missed the smirk on my face. He didn’t say another word, until we got to the precinct.
By the time I hit the coffee machine and found his desk, he had already pulled up his computer and googled Stanous Electric. Strike one. The search came up empty. Then he checked for a phone number. Strike two. An electric company with no phone number. Something smelled fishy.
Rico stood and grabbed his jacket. “At least we have an address from the DMV registration I ran at the safe house. Let’s take a ride.”
He pulled the printout from his pocket and frowned. “It’s in the 1400 block of Republic Street. Why does that sound familiar?”
Republic Street, in Over-the-Rhine, could be a dangerous place. One by one, the neighborhood streets were being rehabbed, making the area a popular place for urban dwellers. Almost overnight the area was reborn with family-friendly Washington Park, restaurants and bars. But some streets, like Republic, with its battered three-story walk-ups and boarded windows, still harbored pockets of violence and crime.
Rico turned off Liberty Street onto Republic, and pointed to plumes of oily black smoke a few blocks ahead, on the left. “That’s right around the 1400 block.” He whistled as we reached the corner and pulled to the curb. “Would you look at that?”
There, in an open lot, was our black Lexus, right down to the plate, fully engulfed in flames. Not a soul in sight, no sirens sounding in the distance.
Rico called it in.
Two engines and paramedics arrived on the scene, within minutes. I sucked in a breath while the firefighters extinguished the blaze. What if Leo was inside the car?
Once the flames had been knocked back, we could see there wasn’t a body in the cab. But there was one more place to check. A member of the fire crew raised a shovel high above his head, and slammed it down onto the trunk latch.
The lid sprang up and I exhaled. No body there either.
Rico called in a forensics team, hoping to turn up some trace evidence that might point us in a direction. But the truth was, we were twisting in the wind, grasping at straws.
All I could think of was Leo. Was he dead? Alive? Maybe seizing?
Rico checked in with Weston to see if he’d come up with any leads. He wa
s out on the street, calling in favors from every snitch he and Rico had developed over the years. Beating the bushes was a little broad stroke for my taste, but it was as good a plan as any, since we had squat to go on. To save time, Weston agreed to take south of Vine Street. Rico and I took from Vine Street, north.
We had our work cut out for us. Every corner and every dive on Vine Street had resident snitches. And Rico knew them all.
We hit up Krueger’s, Fifth and Vine, The Lackman, and at least a dozen smaller, grungier places, I’d never stepped foot in before—or ever would again, if I was lucky. And I knew grungy when I saw it. I’d worked at The Blue Note Lounge, once upon a time, not so long ago.
By two o’clock, my stomach growled. It was time for a quick lunch.
“I know a place,” Rico said, “Right around the corner. Decent food, good service.” He grinned and picked up his pace. “Not to mention Ronnie Russo. Ronnie always has an ear to the ground.”
We walked into Enzo’s, another hole in the wall dump I’d never seen before. At first glance, the place looked like it couldn’t have been more than thirty feet deep, but a closer look revealed a narrow hallway at the end of the bar that led to the johns and a back room.
The walls were nothing more than an assortment of dart dings and bullet holes, connected by patches of crumbling drywall mud. Stuffing poked out of the ripped, red vinyl bar stools. The woodgrain laminate on top of the bar was mostly missing. A yellow haze covered the mirror behind the bar back. The place wouldn’t have been complete without the unmistakable stink of stale smoke, hot sauce and piss.
All things considered, it was my kind of joint.
The bartender, a big-boned, bottled-blonde female, tall enough to hunt geese with a rake, leaned over the bar and yacked with a couple of geezers, who were staring at her cleavage through the ties of her lace-up leather vest. A tattoo of a flaming skull, with spark plugs coming out its eye sockets, covered her left bicep. The tat read: The Hard Run Fast.
Rico and I stood at the end of the bar and waited for her to turn around.
When she ignored us, Rico put his fingers in his mouth, whistled as loud as he could, and yelled, “Yo, skank. What’s it take to get a drink around here?”
Bionic Blondie spun on her heels, wrapped her man-hands around a fifth of Fireball, raised it high and barreled straight at Rico.
I stretched across the bar and threw a hard right to her jaw, then tried to yank the bottle from her hand.
My punch didn’t even slow her down. She wasn’t about to let go of that bottle of Fireball. Neither was I.
Before it was over, she’d pulled me over the top of the bar and onto the floor in front of the sink.
She wrestled the bottle away from me and brought it down against the edge of the bar above my head. A deluge of whiskey and glass rained down on me.
She swept her frizzy blonde hair out of her eyes and said, “Had enough, you half-pint ho?”
Seriously? Game on, Amazon.
I kicked her in the jaw.
She sat on me and balled her hand into a fist, so she could knock me senseless.
As she punched me in the face, I used my hips as leverage to flip her off me, and then kicked her in the side, to roll her onto her gut.
I put a knee in the middle of her back, reached for my cuffs, and said, “Now, I’ve had enough.”
The guys at the end of the bar whooped and hollered.
Rico hopped over the bar and screamed, “Everybody stop!”
He worked his way in between Blondie and me and pulled us apart.
“Nighthawk, stop. Ronnie. Hey, girl. Look at me. It’s Rico. Chill.”
Blondie did a double-take, and dropped a fistful of my hair. “Damn, De Palma. Is that how you greet an old friend? Call me names and insult me? You’re lucky I didn’t put a permanent part in your skull.”
The two of them hugged it out while I shook the glass shards out of my hair and wrung the excess whiskey from my clothes. The side of my head throbbed, and had grown a knot. Perfect. But her jaw had an ugly purple knot on it, too.
Damn straight, I can hold my own.
“Nighthawk, this is Ronnie Russo, the owner of this dump. Ronnie, meet Nighthawk, my partner.”
Ronnie wore a sheepish grin. “Sorry for the Fireball bath. No hard feelings, huh? If I’d have known it was Rico, I wouldn’t have rushed him with a bottle. Guess I need to start taking my Xanax again. Nice to meet you.”
She stuck out her gorilla mitt and shook my hand, hard enough to crush blood vessels.
Rico plopped down on a bar stool. “How ‘bout a couple burgers, Ronnie? The ones with avocado, cheese and onion?”
I followed suit and sat down, my eyes burning a hole through Rico. Way to almost get us killed, dumb ass. Don’t mind me sitting here, dripping hundred-proof on the floor and picking glass out of my scalp.
“Here you go, honey,” Ronnie said, tossing me a towel.
The two old farts sitting at the other end of the bar snickered.
“What are you looking at?” she said. “Crawl back into your shot glasses. I’m taking a break.”
She called our order back to the cook and then turned to Rico. “How long’s it been? Three years? Five?”
“Four. I bailed you out on your assault charge against that pimp.” He leaned across the bar and lowered his voice. “You owe me, remember?”
Ronnie leaned over the bar, stuck out her chest, and shoved her massive mammaries in Rico’s face. “Any day, any time, pretty boy. I’m all yours.”
Even the brain bitch wanted to barf. I laid my head on the bar and said, “It’s okay. Just act like I’m not here.”
“I am,” she said.
Rico moved toward Ronnie like he was going to plant a kiss on her cheek, then whispered, “Sorry. I need a different kind of currency. The mob snatched a guy. We’re looking for him. Whatcha got for me?”
Ronnie tilted her head toward the back hallway and said, “I’m going to go check on your food. Walk down there like you’ve got to take a whiz, and meet me in the back room.”
Off she went, and a few moments later Rico wandered down the hall, leaving me with Dumb and Dumber at the other end of the bar.
Dumb didn’t waste any time. “Hey, sweet stuff.” He smiled, showing me his gnarly grill. “You handle yourself pretty good. I got some moves of my own. Why don’t you come down here and let me show you a few?”
I got off the stool and shook more glass out of my hair. “Why don’t you shut your yap and leave me alone. If you’re lucky, I might let you live.” I pulled my Ka-bar. “Or not. You decide.”
Rico returned to his seat as I stuck my knife back in its sheath. Then he glanced down at Dumb and Dumber, both gazing silently at their drinks. Rico closed his eyes and sighed.
Ronnie came back out with our burgers wrapped to go. Rico put a twenty on the bar and told her to keep the change.
“Good to see you, baby boy. Don’t be such a stranger. Nice to meet you, sweetie,” Ronnie called as I stepped outside. “Hey, the Fireball’s on me, next time you come in.”
Damn straight it will be.
“Yeah. Thanks for...” Luckily, Little Allie intervened, “lunch.”
I climbed back into the passenger seat of Rico’s car and got a whiff of myself. “Run me by my house for a minute. I need to change.”
“No shit, you need to change.”
What the hell did he mean by that?
“I sure as hell hope she had something for you, after all that.”
Rico chuckled. “Ronnie always comes through. She said a couple of Giordano’s button men were drinking there last night, low talking about some guy they’re holding at a place called The Ultimate Tapper.”
“What’s that?”
“How the hell should I know?”
“Okay. Where’s that?”
“Not a clue.”
As we pulled from the curb, the brain bitch lectured me that even clueless, we were Leo’s best hope.
The poor bastard.
19
We Don’t Need No Stinking Plan
Even with the windows down, Rico’s car…well…I reeked of Fireball Whiskey. As we pulled into the driveway, I invited Rico in, hoping he’d keep Nonnie occupied while I showered and changed.
We stepped through the back door to find Headbutt stretched out across the top of his favorite air vent. One bloodshot eye opened, taking note of our arrival, and then slowly slid closed.
Nonnie, at the kitchen sink, cleaning the bird cage, turned to us expectantly. She dropped the cage into the soap suds, causing Kulu to mutter curse words from her perch on the curtain rod above the window.
Nonnie squished her eyebrows together and poked her gnarled finger toward Kulu. The sassy little pecker-head stopped in mid-squawk.
Impressive.
While drying her hands on a dish towel, Nonnie asked, “You find Leo?” Her nose curled as I passed by. “Why you stink of cinnamon?”
“Not yet, and I had an accident at lunch,” I said, tossing my phone onto the kitchen table and cruising down the hallway toward the bathroom, without even slowing down.
What the heck did I have left to wear?
Washing clothes had taken a back seat the last couple of weeks. Hell, it always takes a back seat. But having not been there much, I couldn’t have done it anyway. For practical reasons, other than my emergency loads, I have two grades of laundry. Semi-Dirty (everyday dirt) and Name That Stain (biohazardous waste).
Thoroughly convinced that my only options lurked in a semi-dirty mound beneath my bed, I was amazed to find my freshly laundered jeans and T’s, stacked on my perfectly made bed.
Thank God for Nonnie. If I’d actually been paying her, she’d have deserved a raise.
After a quick shower, I threw on my Zombies eat brains. You’re safe. T-shirt and a clean pair of jeans. As I walked back down the hallway, my nose caught a whiff of fresh-baked rugelach.