“OK. Great. Where’s Darren?”
“He’s down the block, last I heard.”
“Fine,” Mike said blankly. “Why don’t you walk down there and check in?”
“That’s fine, I’m going to circle around past the working girls and check them out.”
“You don’t think they’re actually connected, do you?”
“Not likely. I know we don’t want her to really get anywhere with this whole farce, but just in case those women try to take advantage of her, I want to get a good look at them.”
“Sounds reasonable. Check in with me when you make contact with Darren.”
Jason strolled casually around the side of the huge building, skirting around the swirling crowds gathered around the entrances. After several minutes, he emerged on the far side of the venue and saw three women standing together on the sidewalk across the street. He crossed over and walked by them.
“Hey, Baby, you’re looking good tonight,” the Black woman called out to Jason.
“Mmm, that’s some good-looking man there, Sheryl,” the white one said. “Hey, Babe, you wanna get nasty?”
Jason slowed down and looked toward the group, taking mental notes about their appearance. He spotted Darren standing in an alcove next to the door of a building across the street, within sight of Steph’s location. Jason stopped and nodded to Darren, receiving a low wave in response. Then he resumed walking.
“Oh, Baby, don’t walk away,” Sheryl shouted. Jason kept walking. He crossed back over the street and circled around the arena to a subway entrance. He glanced at Mike, still standing in the same place where Jason had left him, but did not make any further contact.
Mike had been following Jason’s movement, but there was no point in additional conversation. They were trying to keep a low profile, and they didn’t want Steph to spot them.
As the clock edged toward 8:30, most of the concert-goers had entered the arena. The plaza outside was empty save for the vendors, who were either packing up to leave or hunkering down until the after-concert rush in a few hours. Mike was thinking about moving to a location where he would be less visible now that the cover-crowd had abandoned him, when Steph made the decision for him by getting up and moving from her garbage heap.
Steph wheeled her pathetic little wire cart back across the street to where Tina and her two companions were standing, although their potential clients had diminished to a trickle. The crowd that might have been interested in a brief diversion before the show was basically tapped out. Steph approached slowly, then called out when she was about ten feet away.
“Hey, Tina. It’s Dani, remember? You said you might have a line on a supply?” Steph was slightly hunched over, still holding onto the handle of her cart, and looking up with as much hunger and desperation as she could manage. She twitched her left eye and scratched at an imaginary itch on her left hip.
Tina looked at her skeptically. “Sheryl, you think the boss would want to talk to this bitch?”
“I dunno,” Sheryl replied without enthusiasm, “She looks like shit. Probably ain’t got no money neither.”
“I got some money!” Steph broke in, acting more excited than was warranted. “Really, I do. I can pay.”
“Oh, yeah? Show me some cash,” Tina shot back.
Steph looked confused and glanced down at her cart, then back at the women. “Well, I’m not gonna wave it around here on the street. I’m not stupid. But I got some, so whatever you can do for me, hey, I’m good. I just wanna buy some and go. I ain’t no trouble.”
Tina squinted her eyes at Steph and then fixed her attention on the little cart. “What’cha got there in the trolley?”
Steph took a step back away from Tina. “My stuff. Just my stuff. Nothin’ nobody would want but me, so you just leave my stuff alone.”
“Well, I tell you what. We’re all goin’ back to the hotel to rest up until the show lets out. You follow along and we’ll see what the boss says.” With that, the three women blew right past Steph and her cart with a few long-legged strides. Steph turned herself around and dragged her cart after them, keeping a respectful distance. They crossed two streets, then made a left and walked down a deserted sidewalk until they abruptly turned into the entrance of a drab building, with no awning or other marker that Steph expected to see at a hotel. When Steph drew even with the door, she saw a dim neon sign in the window advertising “Rooms for Rent” and a small painted sign identifying the place as The Alexander Hamilton Hotel.
Steph hesitated at the door. This was clearly not going to be a safe space. She reached under her bulky clothes and pulled out her burner cell phone, tapped a four-leaf clover icon on the screen, then shut off the power and returned the device to an inner pocket of her overcoat. Then she took a deep breath, pushed open one side of the double-doors that marked the hotel entrance, and slid herself and her cart inside.
Mike watched the screen of his phone, which displayed a map of the local streets and a blue circle indicating the position of Steph’s subdermal tracker. Then, an alert message popped up and a ping advised him that Steph had activated her phone’s clandestine broadcast function. Mike was walking along the sidewalk a block behind Steph. He stopped to fit an earbud into his left ear and connect it to his phone. He knew where Steph was, and he could hear what she could hear. The plan was seemingly working fine, although Mike would have been happier if she had spent the whole night on the pile of boxes outside the liquor store and never made contact with the three hookers.
Chapter 40 – The Alexander Hamilton Hotel
STEPH IMMEDIATELY THOUGHT that the lobby of the Alexander Hamilton Hotel looked more like the waiting room of a long-neglected doctor’s office. In the cramped space to the left of the door was a line of worn chairs, with a similar line on the opposite wall about ten feet away. At the end of the row of seats, a forlorn potted palm tree sagged against a grimy window. A television mounted eight feet high in the corner displayed a baseball game for the benefit of the three men who occupied the space. All of them looked homeless and strung-out. Each of them was dressed like Steph, with mismatched layers of dirty clothing and clunky boots. Two were white and had unkempt beards and long, stringy hair. The other man was Black and had a shaved head. None seemed that interested in the game.
To the right of the door, a plexiglass partition separated the lobby area from a man who was leaning back in a chair and smoking a cigarette. The plexiglass ran the length of a ten-foot desk, at the end of which stood a large door bearing a sign that read “Wait for Buzzer.” As Steph stood there, trying to take in these strange surroundings, she was startled by a loud clang, followed by an even louder buzzing noise coming from behind the door. A man emerged. He was Black, and looked very much like the three men sitting in the waiting area. He glanced at Steph and then hurried out the front door toward the sidewalk beyond.
While Steph was trying to figure out her next move, the man behind the plexiglass leaned forward toward a series of holes in the barrier and shouted, “Gus! You’re up!”
One of the two white men in the lobby jumped to his feet, faster than Steph thought possible given his bedraggled appearance. He shuffled toward the desk, then turned and faced the door, which buzzed again almost immediately. Gus grabbed for the handle and pushed it open while it was still buzzing. The noise stopped and the door slammed shut.
“Can I help you?” the man behind the plexiglass shouted at Steph, who was still standing a few feet inside the door, clutching her cart of belongings with her left hand. She startled and turned her head towards the man, looking confused.
“I – I – I’m, I was following Tina.”
“Right. You Dani?”
Steph looked at the man with a blank expression, before remembering her alias. “Yeah, that’s me.”
“Take a seat,” the man instructed, pointing toward the chairs.
Steph walked to the nearest chair and pulled her cart up alongside it. She sloughed off her coat and jammed it into the
basket, trying to make room around the other contents. She took off her hat and gloves also, stuffing them into the pockets of the overcoat, covering up her cell phone. She waited twenty minutes before anything happened.
The buzzer sounded again and Steph’s head shot back in that direction. Another man emerged, this time much better dressed and looking like an executive running late for a meeting, rather than a homeless drug addict. The man behind the glass shouted, “Yo, Dani!”
Steph jumped up, grabbed the handle of her cart, and hurried toward the desk. As she approached, the buzzing sound startled her again. She went to the door, grabbed the metal handle and pushed it open, dragged her cart through, then allowed the heavy door to slam closed behind her. On the other side, a hallway stretched out in front of her, with dim light bulbs set into ceiling fixtures that were probably elegant fifty years earlier, before they were covered with grime. On her immediate right, near the edge of the hallway, she saw a large door with a small, rectangular window in the middle and a red EXIT sign glowing dimly over it. She could see a concrete stairway through the window and wondered if she should go up. She wasn’t sure, so she stood there.
Just as Steph was about to turn around and try going back to talk to the desk attendant, a door opened down the hallway and Tina emerged. She waved toward Steph, motioning her to come forward. Steph walked slowly down the dimly-lit hall, past two elevator doors. When she reached the door to room 108, which Tina was holding open, she looked up at the taller woman with a frightened expression. “It’s cool,” Tina said calmly. “You come on in and see the boss and he’ll fix you up. I told him you were OK.”
Steph hesitated at the threshold to the room. Then she inched forward and peered inside, but could not see much aside from the bottom end of a bed and a floor lamp in the corner. There was no sign of the other two hookers. Steph walked in slowly, still hauling her wire cart behind her, its wheels squeaking. When she crossed the threshold, the door closed behind her with a joltingly loud slam. Steph looked back, but Tina was not there – leaving Steph alone with whoever was inside the room. She almost panicked and thought about turning around and running back out the door, but she wasn’t sure that she would be able to get through the buzzer door. She pressed forward with a few hesitant steps.
Steph then heard a deep voice call out, “C’mon in, Dani. I don’t bite on the first date.”
When Steph reached the corner of the short hallway that led into the room, she finally saw the whole space. It was fairly large, but shabby, with maroon wallpaper and a grayish carpet that looked like one big stain. A made-up bed sat in the center of the room, with a night-table and lamp next to it. Beyond the bed a man sat in a low chair in front of a desk under the glow of a high-intensity lamp. The glare from the lamp made it hard for Steph to see his face as she squinted into the bright light. He had an earbud in one ear. The other bud hung down from its cord and lay on the desk. His outline was imposing. He was thickly built and wore a white button-down shirt with a crisp tie. A dark jacket hung neatly on a nearby chair. The man, who she assumed was the boss, was smoking a cigarette. “Tina says you’re looking for a room, is that right?” the coarse voice asked.
“What? No, not – I mean, I told Tina I wanted to score some meth.”
“And Tina told you that I’m the man who can get you some?”
“Um, yeah, that’s right,” Steph choked out, far more scared than she thought she would be, considering that this was the exact plan she was supposed to follow. She was so nervous that she completely forgot that her telephone was broadcasting the events back to Mike and Jason. It did not occur to her to narrate what was happening by talking to the oddly scary but well-dressed man.
“You got money?” the man asked.
“Sure, I got some. How much you askin’ for and what are you selling?”
“Selling? Young lady, I don’t know what you’re talking about. This is a hotel. We rent rooms. You want a room?”
“I’m – I mean, I don’t – wait, is there stuff in the room? Is that how it works?”
“We’ve got lots of different rooms, Miss. Some folks want to get a room so they can fuck. Some people just want to take a nap. Some people aren’t feeling so good and need some meds. Is that what you are? Somebody who needs some medication?”
“Oh, sure. Yeah. That’s right.”
“Do you have a prescription?” the man asked.
“Huh?”
“A prescription. From a doctor. Do you have one?”
“Uh, no,” was all Steph could manage.
“Well, I don’t think we can provide any pharmaceutical products without a prescription.” The man stared at Steph, as if waiting for a response, but she had none. “But I think there’s a doctor in the house who might be able to take care of you. I can send you up to his room and you can ask him for a prescription. Would you like to do that?” The man leaned forward, and as he did, his head blocked out the bright desk lamp, allowing Steph to see his face. He stared at Steph with probing eyes.
“Um, sure. I could do that.”
“You’ll have to pay the doctor for his services.”
Steph hesitated again. “How much?”
“That depends on what you want him to do for you. If you want a week’s supply, it might cost more. But maybe you want just a day – something to get you through until morning.”
“Yeah,” Steph said quickly, remembering the part she was playing. Her sister used to say that she just needed one more hit – just enough to get her through until tomorrow, then she would quit. It was never true, but Steph remembered how sincerely she always said it. “Just need to get to tomorrow. When can I get it?”
The man sat back in his chair, allowing the bright light to shine back into Steph’s eyes. “You go up to room two-twenty-two. You ask for Doctor Smith, and he’ll take care of you. Then you come back down here to see me and we’ll talk some more.”
Steph turned to leave, having trouble maneuvering her cart in the cramped space.
The man called out to her, “You can leave that here, Sweetheart. I’ll look after it for you.”
“I’d rather take it with me,” Steph replied.
“It’s not a request,” the man said sternly. “You leave it here. The doctor doesn’t like folks bringing things into his office.”
“But I need my money,” Steph pleaded.
“Fine. You get your money and then you go upstairs.”
Steph pawed through the cart, moving a blanket and an old sweatshirt aside and pulling out a battered black purse. She strung the long leather strap over her shoulder and then moved the cart against the wall. “Two-twenty-two, right?”
“That’s right. You go ahead now and I’ll watch your stuff for you.”
Steph hesitantly turned, walked back to the door, and exited into the dim hallway. Once there, she unzipped her purse and looked inside. Her heart sank when she realized that she had left her cell phone in the pocket of her coat, which was in the wire cart. She quickly reached back for the door handle, but it was locked. She thought about knocking and asking the scratchy-voiced man for her phone, but she couldn’t think of a good enough reason why a meth addict would need her phone before getting her drugs. She turned and walked to the elevator.
Ж Ж Ж
When Steph emerged from room 222 clutching a zip-lock bag, she stood motionless in the hallway, trying to figure out her next move. She had played the part of the desperate meth addict as well as she could have during her five minutes in the room with the “doctor,” who had written her a prescription on a pink pad and accepted her cash. He had suggested that Steph could get a discount if she provided a blow job, but Steph had claimed to need her hit so badly that she couldn’t wait. The small bag had cost her all the cash she had, but she was happy to take it and run. The doctor said she should go back downstairs to talk with the boss when she left. But Steph did not want to have anything to do with him, even though he was holding her cart of stuff, including her burner phone.
She took the elevator back to the ground floor and then turned right toward the door leading to the lobby. She remembered the buzzing sound that signaled that the door was available to be opened. She considered seeking out the attendant from behind the plexiglass, but he might not let her out without calling the boss first. Maybe if she waited, she thought, she could sneak out. She looked around and saw a short hallway around the corner from the big door. The hallway had no doors, but at the dead-end about twenty feet away, there was a wood-framed square in the middle of the wall. She stuffed the bag of meth into her purse and examined the structure. There were two buttons, like elevator call buttons, just to the side of the square, which was made of wood with a bronze knob at the bottom. She tried the knob and was happily surprised that it lifted up and the door opened, revealing a cubby-hole of space with wooden sides and a hard, white bottom. The cube was about three feet on each side. Steph had never seen a dumbwaiter in her life and had no idea what it really was, but she could fit inside, so she climbed in and slid the door down.
The light from the hallway was blotted out by the closing door. Steph was breathing rapidly and her heart was pounding in the total darkness. She wished she had her phone. She hoped that someone would come through the buzzing door and that she would have a chance to pop out from her hiding place and scamper through before anyone could stop her. It seemed like a good plan. She tried to position herself with her ear to the door. She tried not to focus on the futility of her efforts to track down Christine’s killer. At that moment, she could not remember how that had seemed like a good idea. All she could focus on was how scared she felt. She was no cop. She took a deep breath and slowly exhaled through her nose, trying not to cry.
Chapter 41 – Waiting Game
MIKE STARED AT THE SCREEN OF HIS PHONE. When it dimmed, he swiped his finger across to keep it from going into sleep mode. The map of the neighborhood stared back at him, along with a small, blinking dot, which had been in the same spot for the past half hour. At one point he thought he detected some movement, but then the dot settled back into its familiar spot. According to the google map, the location was occupied by the Alexander Hamilton Hotel, which he had never heard of. He tapped the telephone receiver icon (which always made him smile, since so few people used telephones with such old-fashioned handsets) and punched the “last” option to dial Jason. They had been exchanging calls every few minutes. Mike was standing on the corner of Atlantic Avenue, a few blocks from the hotel. Jason was on the other side of the location, also about two blocks away. With the GPS locator on her, they were not likely to lose track of Steph, but they didn’t like to entirely trust the tech, so they kept their eyes on all the pedestrians. Darren was across the street from the front entrance, watching the foot traffic go in and out of the place.
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