Now, Ti observed her palm. There was nothing there except her "lines" as Tamara always called them. The love line, life line, and so forth. Ti couldn't remember all the details, but she liked to trace her fingernails over them as if she could change things.
Her phone alarm buzzed and snapped her back into reality.
She locked her apartment up and headed over to Sophia's place to feed the cat. Sophia was still gone and Ti was starting to wonder if she'd ever come back. It had only really been a few days, but it felt longer. Ti wondered if Sophia would call again. What emergency did she have? Did she have family? Why the hell was she in Las Vegas, calling from a pay phone? Ti thought about John back at the sagging house on Tchoupitoulous and vowed to call him that evening.
It finally cleared up and the rain passed. Bus 33 went right by Sophia’s place, but it came by every 15 minutes, so Ti stopped by Buena Vista Park on the way to catch a view. Several gutter punks lounged in the lawn to the right of the park, smoking pot and playing guitar. Ti wondered if they ever moved.
The walk up burned her lungs and the air seemed thin and tight. She began to sweat a little despite the lingering chill in the air, but was relieved to get to the top where she could cool down and catch her breath. The view of the city up here was a nice panorama, and Ti liked to come up here to think.
She still debated whether or not to tell Black about Claude. Deep within her head and gut, she knew he was somehow responsible for the murders Black had mentioned, but how? Was he even here in the city? Did it have anything to do with her? She couldn't imagine her father running a cosmetics business, but she could see Sophia being into it. She had ageless skin and Ti had never seen her with any blemish whatsoever. If she was using the products from her own line, it was a commercial in and of itself. Sophia could be a spokesmodel with that skin.
She shook her head and bit her tongue in response to the thoughts about Sophia. Now was not the time to lust over some woman who was potentially involved with her loser father, and who was also completely unattainable—though now, she had to go to Sophia's apartment to feed the cat. Ti decided that she would maybe take Sophia's money after all.
The apartment was still and a few minutes passed before Argie, sleepy-eyed and yawning, appeared out of the shadows. The apartment felt strange, as if it was sitting on a time bomb. It seemed so quiet, so abnormal. She sat down on the sofa in the exact same spot she'd sat in the day she'd found out Tamara was missing.
Tamara.
The reason she'd started all this tiresome research was because of Tamara. Now she felt she was in way over her head, drowning in too much information and stress. Her shoulders hurt from hunching over computers and papers, and she grimaced as she tried to rub out a knot. Still, she browsed through Sophia's books and looked in every nook and cranny of the place, but could not find anything new. If she knew what she was looking for, clues might be more apparent. She snorted with exasperation. Clues. This was turning into some ridiculous Scooby Doo cartoon. She looked at Argie and tried to imagine him as an animated talking cat. She felt like she was going fucking crazy.
There was an old book on the shelves with a black, battered cover. Ti opened it and saw that it was in another language, and there were graphic drawings of the entire autopsy process. Disturbed, she snapped it shut and placed it carefully back on the shelves. She paced around the apartment until she stopped at an antique sewing machine by the door. She opened the cabinet. Nothing. She almost closed it when she saw the glimmering blade, carefully hidden near the foot pedal of the archaic machine.
Ti cautiously treaded back to the bedroom. Everything was neat and orderly, as if she had carefully cleaned everything before leaving for her trip. Looks to me like you didn’t have any sort of emergency, Sophia. The desk and computer caught her attention and the green disk immediately popped into her mind.
Give up for today and come back tomorrow. She decided to listen to this inner voice. She'd wait to tell Black. She knew it was wrong, but she'd wait. Especially after seeing what she was sure was Tamara's birth name on those records.
She gave Argie a pat and told him she'd see him in the morning.
As she walked up the stairs, back at home, a figure in the upper stairwell caught her eye. A man. He loomed there, looking sickly and pale, his features hollowed out by the afternoon light.
"Ti," said a familiar voice. Some strange magnetic force pulled her further up the stairs, but she didn't know quite why. She could feel her pulse in her ears, and the blood spurted in forceful jets throughout her entire body. She got closer. She recognized the face now: it was as if this person had died and come back as a different identity. But she knew the face, knew the eyes...those same eyes had crinkled with laughter on so many days in the coffee shop. She said the name without even really realizing it.
"Tamara."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX
Black: Off the Wagon
Annoyed, Black scratched his chin for the thousandth time. He had to shave. Soon. He had been putting off little things like checking the mail or watering the little houseplant that Rita had left. It was now brown and shriveled. Black thought about how well it resembled his life nowadays. He frowned and threw the plant in the trash, then got a beer out of the fridge and sat in his chair.
He had been saving this “emergency beer” for when things got shitty. Things were shitty. The case with the missing runaways was getting to him, mostly because he wasn't sure where his primary suspect was. He thought Sophia Varga might know where the Moreau guy was, but he couldn't get in touch with her. He worried that she might be covering for him some kind of way. If Celestine knew anything, she was keeping it to herself. And he was having nightmares about Jason again.
Fuck, he thought. I slept with some hipster kid who may be involved in a case. Black couldn't figure out what was so attractive about her. She was like an enigma wrapped in an enigma: one friend in the entire city, but strangely charming and witty. And dressed somewhat like a boy. Rita had been all high heels and perfectly styled hair, so tomboys were definitely off Black's radar.
Sophia did say something about a local boyfriend, didn't she? He wondered if anyone knew who that was.
Tamara was killed or kidnapped by someone who knew her, and Black had a hunch it was the same person involved in the disappearances of all the young runaway boys and trans women. Black was willing to bet that of those victims, Tamara knew at least some of the runaways and all of the other trans women. So that meant he'd have to chat with another trans to see if someone else in the community knew something. He dialed Ellen Wong.
"Do you know of any bars where, um, transpeople hang out?"
"Jesus, Robert. Yes, there are a few, but there's one in the Tenderloin on Post Street that I know of for sure. Why?"
Black told her about his idea.
"You'd probably have more luck going alone, but I'll be happy to go with you if you want. And for the record, you're probably going to want to keep an eye out for and ask for trans women. Not drag queens, transvestites, cross dressers...she had the surgery and probably hung out with other people who did too, and probably some people who want the surgery."
"Thank you for the lecture. I'm sorry, but this is fucking confusing. I mean, damn me to hell for not getting the terminology right or whatever, but that sounded like another language to me."
"Are you sure you don't want me to go with you?"
"I'll go alone, for fuck's sake. I'll call you if I need you to protect me, okay?"
"Good luck." Black could practically hear her smirking on the other end of the phone. How she'd love to be there and see his reaction and interaction in the bar.
"Screw you," he said under his breath. They would probably promote Wong first. He finished his beer and got dressed to go out.
* * * *
"That's the girl you want to talk to," the bartender nodded in the other direction as Black swallowed the last of his martini olive. He turned and recognized her right away. She'd been in for sol
iciting before. She was a little on the shorter side and Black remembered her from before, when she was really just a he in a dress. She was Korean with wild, teased out hair and she had real tits now. Her name was Jada. Shit. Fucking exotic, thought Black.
"What?" Jada snapped as she tossed her purse down on the bar. "I haven't done anything."
"I know that. I'm not accusing you. But I would like to talk to you about someone I think you know. Tamara."
"Jesus," Jada sighed as she blew a tuft of the teased hair out of her face. "What'd she do?"
"I'm not sure, but she's missing. Jada, there are other trans women who are missing, runaways, prostitutes--"
"Sex workers. You don't call them that anymore. It's like saying 'whore' or something." She tossed her hair back and popped a cigarette in her mouth. The bartender lit it.
"Okay. Look. I am not really PC. I have never pretended to be. Just call me totally ignorant if you want.”
“Okay,” she said. “You’re ignorant.” She tossed her hair over her shoulder and took a drag off her cigarette. Black could see the bartender out of the corner of his eye. Mind your own fucking business, he wanted to scream.
“I just want to help. You seem to know her—did you know she’s been missing?”
Jada didn’t say anything.
“I know you don’t trust me, but I really want to ask you about Tamara. She's missing and I want to know who she hung around with. Can you tell me that?"
Jada's wet red lips were parted in dramatic anticipation and shock. "Tamara's really missing?"
Black just gave a quick nod and pointed to his empty martini glass. The bartender twirled and pulled the gin and vermouth out, but kept her head slightly turned in order to hear. Black looked over at Jada, waiting.
She inhaled and stood up straight and stiff. "Okay. Tamara was always telling me about her bosses. She always sounded a little freaked out. She didn't tell me much, other than that they always talked about getting rid of all the filth…" Jada trailed off and Black knew what she meant. The prostitutes…sex workers, he thought to himself. "They run a business and I forgot what it's called, but it's cosmetics. Tamara said that her boss likes to take the filth off the streets and turn it into something good. She told me this story about this like, model or whatever that they found, who was really just a homeless skinny girl who was really desperate for money. Her boss liked to record them for commercials. He would ask them about what they thought real beauty was, and this model said something like, 'well, it's what lies within…' And I remember that well." Jada flicked her ash onto the floor and sipped something pink the bartender brought over. Jada looked at Black.
"I have always thought about that line, but to me the "lies" really stuck out the most, you know what I mean? Tamara made some sick joke that they made soap out of all these dirty, “worthless” people and sold it to rich fuckers, but I thought it was some glimpse into her weird sense of humor. Anyway, I don't know who runs the business. Some man and a younger woman, maybe some others? I don’t know."
Black sat there, dumbfounded, glued to his chair. The thought of actually using the bodies for something had never even dawned on him. He felt like a blithering idiot for being so blind. He tried not to show it. Jada must have seen something, because she laughed.
"They pay Tamara a lot just to manage that coffee shop. You know how much these surgeries cost? And the hormones? I think they helped her out with it, or that man did because he thought it’d be exotic or something. Jesus Christ. And now she makes an honest living running a little dive coffee shop. Stick it up my ass. I think she was involved with one of those crazy fuckers—she’s bisexual, you know, even if she won’t admit it. And they kept her around and paid her so she wouldn’t talk to the cops. I mean, she’s from New Orleans…it’s pretty easy to convince most people from New Orleans not to talk to the cops,” Jada said as she crushed out her cigarette for emphasis. "Anyway. So she's missing. They probably killed her for blabbing. I thought she was just trying to fuck with me, you know? She told me some really fucked up shit. Did you know that?"
Black sort of did, but it was only a guess.
"Why didn't she go to the police?"
"And admit she worked for these people?"
Black looked at Jada, her eyebrows raised, that questioning look. He should know the answer to that.
“How about before she moved here? Did she talk about her life back in New Orleans? Her former name?”
“No. I think Katrina really fucked up her life, then she had the surgery and moved here. I’m not even sure it was a legit surgery. It’s a big operation and New Orleans is still stuffy about all that shit. I wouldn’t be surprised if it was an under the table sort of thing, then she left with the clothes on her back and came out here to start a new life. I never asked her about it. I didn’t think it would be polite, you know, to ask her questions about some past traumatic shit—“
“Okay, I get it, I get it.” Black held up his hands in self-defense. His phone buzzed rudely and he pulled it out of his pocket, annoyed. It was Wong.
"Yes?" He glanced at Jada, who was looking at him like he'd punched her in the face.
"I need to talk to you. The coroner found something you need to know about."
"On my way." He ended the call and turned back to Jada. "Call me if you think of anything else. Or if you hear from Tamara. We need to talk to her. She's not in any kind of trouble. Okay? I want you to tell her that if you see her."
"Fine. Whatever," Jada said as she took the outstretched card.
Black got back to the station in less than ten minutes. Wong was waiting for him behind a stack of papers.
"It's a woman."
Black howled with laughter.
“No way." He realized he probably had too many martinis. A presence to his left made him stop and turn. The pathologist. Oh shit.
Darryl Camlin was in his fifties, short with a wild mop of grey hair. Black always thought he resembled Albert Einstein with thick glasses. He also thought Camlin never really liked him all that much, which was no good since Black was on homicide. Camlin looked at him the same way he always did, like Black was a pitiful, stupid drunk. I suppose he’s right, thought Black.
“I found some skip marks over a couple of different sternums which reflects your suspect was using something with a sharp edge. From the angle of the marks, the killer is either around Wong’s height, about 5’5—unless your suspect attacked the victims when they were lying down, which is very possible. They were probably drugged—single homicidal stabbings involving the heart area are often associated with incapacitated victims.”
"How the fuck do you know?"
"I'm a pathologist. I've seen this before."
That little bitch. He thought instantly of Sophia. But how was that possible?
"What did you find?"
"Some bones washed up near China Beach. We found two different sternums, and each of them was scraped," Wong explained as she pushed some photographs across the table towards Black. He saw what they meant.
"I'm conveniently unable to reach that Sophia Varga woman. I think she's left the state."
Wong smirked. "I have a feeling I know where she is. I did some research on her. She co-owns a business called Everlasting Beauty. It's--"
"Cosmetics," Black finished for her.
"Yes," she said, seeming surprised that he knew. "You talked to one of Tamara's friends?"
Black nodded. "Jada thinks they kidnapped transients and prostitutes and killed them for their fat and anything else they could get a hold of."
The pause between them lasted for what felt like hours. Wong just kept shuffling through the glossy photographs for a long time before she spoke up again. "She's likely in New Orleans. She owns a distribution center here in the city and Claude Moreau, the guy you've been trying to find, owns one in New Orleans. We set her off. They may be trying to cover something there. And we need to get in touch with this other person on the accounts, this Thomas Fink guy."
"I don't want federal involved in this unless it's absolutely necessary. We'll make some calls to New Orleans."
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN
Ti: Something Familiar
It was like seeing someone familiar, only with a Halloween mask on. The person in front of her didn’t have on a stitch of makeup and had on jeans, a loose black t-shirt and a leather jacket. And Tamara had never pulled her hair back into a ponytail. At least she sat in her familiar pose, which always reminded Ti of how Oprah sat. Legs crossed, hands in lap, leaning forward. It looked so strange now.
"I can't go to the police because I'm involved. How can I get you to understand?" Tamara's brow furrowed as she asked.
Ti made Tamara repeat the story twice. She met Sophia in New Orleans before her surgery. Claude became her pimp. Her roles became more and more important and involved: he gave her modeling jobs, got her to recruit other models, got her help doing insider tasks. Helped her move to San Francisco after Katrina. The coffee shop must have been some kind of front, but the whole thing was perplexing. John hooked her up with the job, but how? Did he know Claude some kind of way? Ti now wondered about all the “inventory” kept in the back of the shop. Hell knows what she was really doing back there, Ti thought as she stared at this person in front of her. She didn’t ask any questions. She just let Tamara talk.
“I’m the only person who knows about the connection between Sophia and Claude. They say they help people who are struggling, but they don’t. They use them and get rid of them somehow. Several people I know who have modeled for them are missing now. And I talked back to Claude—I called him up and asked him about it. So what does he do? He comes all the way here from New Orleans and beats the shit out of me, going ballistic because I didn’t know anything about some boyfriend Sophia has supposedly been hanging out with. So do you really want to involve the cops or just let them figure it out by stepping back and staying safe? And besides, do you really want to reunite with your father? You’d see him if this went to court."
Manipulative, Ti thought. "No, I really don't," was all she could actually say.
"At least he was looking out for you a little...you wouldn't have the barista job..."
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