Spirit Me Away

by Aaron Paul Lazar

  Porter walked boldly up to a peeling brown door and banged on it. He waited a few seconds, and then called out, “Ralph. It’s me, Porter.”

  After two more tries, footsteps sounded inside the building. A man pulled back the grimy curtain behind the door, peering at us. He nodded when he recognized Porter, then opened the door.

  Ralph must have just finished showering, because his short black hair was damp. He smelled of minty toothpaste and wore a crisp white shirt and black dress pants.

  “Ralphie, we’ve got trouble. We need to get inside.” Porter cocked a thumb at the shop.

  Ralph raised one eyebrow, caught the serious expression in Porter’s eyes, and shrugged. “No problemo. I can open up for you.”

  He pushed past us, reached into his pocket for a ring of keys, and opened the door leading into his shop. “Come on inside.”

  Porter nodded from Ralph to me. “Gus, this is Ralph. We served together in ‘Nam for three years. Ralph, this is Gus. His wife and two friends have been taken. Forced prostitution.”

  Ralph’s expression turned serious. He walked behind the counter and began to unlock various glass cases containing guns, knives, and assorted weapons. Tall and broad shouldered, he’d apparently kept his hair short since the war, and it fit him.

  “Okay. What d’ya need?” he said.

  Porter focused on the guns, and I drifted anxiously around the shop. Televisions, toasters, vacuums, lamps, watches, and jewelry packed the shelves, cases, and display tables. My stomach flip-flopped when the reality of what happened started to sink in.

  The bastard has Elsbeth. What if he...

  The image of the monkey man standing over Valerie with his belt unbuckled and pants dropped hit me hard. Sweat dripped from my brow. I raised a shirtsleeve to wipe it off and suddenly decided the best course of action would be to follow Byron to the hospital to see if he’d woken up. Maybe he’d heard something that would give us a clue.

  I ran my fingers over a jewelry case, tapping anxiously on the glass, waiting for Porter. I glanced over at them impatiently. Porter had pulled out his wallet, but Ralph refused to take his money. Perspiration trickled down my neck. It was hotter than hell in the shop, even at this early hour.

  Tapping the case again, I looked down at it, horrified at what I saw inside.

  I rubbed the hem of my tee shirt on the glass and looked closer.

  Yes. There it is, Valerie’s ring.

  There was no mistaking it. Gold filigree, amber stone. Distinctive shape. Beside it was her locket, and…Elsbeth’s wedding ring.

  “Ralph?” I said evenly. “Can you come over here?”

  Porter picked up a leather holster and gun and looked at me intently.

  I started to shake in anger, and felt the blood rising in my face.

  “What is it, Gus?”

  They were at my side in seconds.

  “Look,” I said, pointing to the rings.

  Porter leaned over the case. “Mother of God,” he said. “Ralph, who sold you these rings?”

  Ralph shrugged. “Why? Are they hot?”

  “Damn right they’re hot,” I said, fists clenched at my side.

  He unlocked the case and opened it. “It was just yesterday. Nate brought ‘em in. I think his last name’s Graham. I suspect he’s maybe a fence, but he brings me pretty good stuff. The other day he...”

  I interrupted. “What does he look like? And where does he live?” I couldn’t take my eyes off the case.

  “He’s kind of short and wiry, darkish skin, like he’d been sun tanning all year. I’d have to make some calls to find out where he lives. Why? What’s wrong?”

  Porter pointed to the rings and locket. “These pieces belong to our women, Ralphie.”

  Ralph blanched, straightened, and headed for the phone. He made four calls. Finally, he hung up, handed us the jewelry, and scribbled an address on the back of an old envelope. “Here you go. Go get the bastard.”

  Chapter 45

  The address was located in the middle of the sketchy projects behind Northeastern University, near Huntington Avenue. I drove the Valiant in the direction of Fenway Park and sped down a side road just after the campus boundary, weaving around milling students and traffic.

  Porter wore the holster and gun beneath his jacket. We passed under a stone railroad bridge, crossed between the jammed parking lots of the university, and careened toward the address Ralph gave us.

  Along with Valerie’s ring and locket, I slipped Elsbeth’s wedding ring into my jeans pocket, fingering it while we drove.

  In minutes, we arrived at a dingy, ten-story building. We parked as close as possible next to an assortment of decrepit vehicles, ran to the entrance, and scanned the buzzers in the doorway. The yellowed plastic sheet covering handwritten names was cracked and streaked with dirt. Most of the names had been scratched out, but N. Graham was scribbled on the seventh floor row of buttons. Number 708.

  “Let’s go,” I said. The metal security door stood warped and wide open. Stepping inside unchallenged, we hurried to the elevator. We pressed the buttons, but nothing happened.

  “Crap,” Porter said, pointing to the stairwell. “We gotta hoof it.”

  We began to climb. Slurs and obscenities plastered the walls and the stairway smelled foul.

  I tried not to think about what caused such rank odors as we trekked steadily to the seventh floor. We stopped at the top of the stairs to catch our breath, and pushed the door open into the main hallway.

  The place seemed deserted. I realized we’d seen no residents, heard no babies crying, nor seen evidence of any children. I scanned up and down the hallways, figuring the place was probably condemned and would be filled with vagrants and drug addicts at nightfall.

  Porter held up one hand and put a finger to his lips. The sound of rustling came from one of the open doors down the hall. He flattened himself against the wall and began to creep toward the room, gun extended.

  I followed him, sliding along the wall to keep a flat profile.

  Seven-oh-two. Seven-oh-four. Seven-oh-six.

  Finally, we reached room 708. The door hung wide open and the intermittent crackling sound continued. Porter swung around the doorway with the gun gripped in both hands. The room seemed empty, but the sound continued from deeper inside. I picked up the iron bar propping the door open and hefted it in my hands. We exchanged glances, and moved forward silently.

  The room was partially furnished. Rays of sun illuminated broken-down furniture. I was surprised that the light actually made it through the cracked and filthy windows. A glass-topped coffee table stood in front of a ripped couch. The table was covered in grime, old newspapers, empty coffee cups, and ashtrays overflowing with cigarette butts.

  The rustling sound changed.

  Crunch, crunch.

  It was coming from a room at the end of the hall.

  We crept along the filthy hallway strewn with rubbish, paper cups, and fast food wrappers, and finally reached the doorway.

  Crunch, crunch.

  We nodded to each other, and burst into the room.

  A red squirrel held a bag of potato chips in his paws, clearly determined to break into the bag.

  Crunch.

  I snorted and breathed again. Porter slumped against the wall and groaned.

  “Jeez.”

  We broke into a hysterical burst of laughter, which quickly dissipated.

  The squirrel scampered away with his prize.

  I scanned the room, picking out several dingy cots pushed against the walls with bare mattresses. Two metal folding chairs stood in a corner. A broken window was wide open, but little air moved inside the room.

  I walked closer to the beds.

  The packing sheets from some Polaroid pictures lay discarded on one of the mattresses. A number of blurry photos were also scattered about, obvious rejects. I began to fan through them, looking into the eyes of frightened, half-naked women.

  My heart hammered beneath my ribs. />
  Elsbeth stared up at me from a photo, her hair disheveled and her mouth set in a grim expression. Her blouse gaped open, revealing a white bra. I clenched my jaw, grinding my teeth together in fury.

  Porter called to me from the other side of the room. “Gus?” He lifted a string of broken crystal beads. Elsbeth had given them to Valerie last week. They scattered to the floor, pinging and bouncing off the linoleum. “Valerie,” he whispered. For a moment, I thought he’d lose it. His eyes burned and his face flushed bright red.

  “Look around,” I said urgently. “See if you can find anything that shows where they went. Remember, they talked about Japan. They could be headed for a ship, or the airport.”

  I gathered the photos of the kidnapped women and sifted through the papers on the chair. Porter snapped out of it, straightened, and got to work.

  Chapter 46

  We slumped in the middle of the empty apartment, each holding a pile of papers. The dead, sick feeling in my stomach had worsened while we’d wasted an hour looking for clues.

  “Anything?” I said. “Did you find anything at all?”

  Porter shook his head in disgust. “Cripes. Nothing.” He stood and slammed the bundle of papers against the wall. They fluttered to the floor lazily, as if the fate of my wife and our friends were of no consequence.

  I clutched a packet of papers I’d been searching through for clues. Some had street addresses of the “marks,” with brief descriptions of the girls’ statistics penciled over the addresses.

  “Red hr, tall, skinny,” was written over an address in Peabody, Mass. One of the photos had featured a lanky redhead whose mascara had melted beneath her frightened eyes and who held up her delicate hands before the camera in a vain attempt to hide her face.

  And there were more. Many more.

  “We have to call the cops now, Porter.”

  He sat down again and nodded slowly. “I know. There are too many of them.”

  I glanced down at a pamphlet that fluttered to the floor by my feet. Oddly enough, it was a handout for the commune we’d visited weeks earlier. I picked it up and whistled. “Singing Pines Commune. Maybe Nate followed us to the Cambridge Common Love-In,” I said. “I saw the woman who ran this place trolling for converts that day. Carol, was her name. She was handing out flyers, too.”

  “Could be.” Porter nodded dully. “I’m going to call the police officer who was at the fire. Do you still have his card?”

  I fished it out of my pocket. “Here you go. Officer Kinski. Do you have a dime for the call?”

  He stood up and nodded. “Yeah. I’ve got one. Listen, there’s no reason why we both have to wait here. Why don’t you head over to the hospital to see if Byron’s awake? I’ll catch a ride from Kinski, or I can hop the T. And here, you’d better take this.”

  He shrugged out of the holster and handed it to me. “Look here. That’s the safety. It’s locked now. Just release it, aim, and squeeze the trigger if you need it. But don’t let the cops see it, you don’t have a license.”

  I nodded and hefted the gun. It was heavier than I’d imagined. The metal was warm to the touch. I examined it, practiced with the safety a few times, and hoped I didn’t need to use it. “Thanks, Porter.” I slid it into the holster I now wore and got up, anxious to be on the hunt.

  Elsbeth? Where are you?

  I flew down the seven flights of stairs and along the street, impervious to the throbbing in my shin. I willed her to answer me, to contact me telepathically. Sig, Elsbeth and I had been inseparable since childhood. Why couldn’t it work?

  I hid the gun in the trunk of my car under the backpack I’d brought back from East Goodland, jumped into the driver’s seat, made an illegal U-turn, and sped toward the hospital.

  I thought about the enormity of what we’d discovered. All those women, their photos, their addresses. Nate must have been very cocky to believe that no one would locate his hideout and check out the evidence he left behind. And maybe, just maybe, he planned to return with his next load of victims.

  I realized that not only the police, but the FBI would be on the scene in a mad flurry of activity. National kidnappings of this magnitude would be assigned to teams of agents, not just a few guys who’d come in and work with the locals. It was going to be big. Huge. Porter would be tied up for hours before he could rejoin me, providing they didn’t link him to Ike’s murder or Jarvis’s shooting.

  Maybe they’d blame Nate, I thought hopefully.

  And damn it, I need Porter’s help.

  I arrived at the hospital parking garage in ten minutes. After working hard to convince the skeptical woman at the Emergency Room desk that I was Byron’s only local “family,” she buzzed open the doors and let me through. I found him quickly in one of the curtained rooms, looking pretty beat up and missing some hair where they’d shaved his head. A nurse was taking his blood pressure and he sat up, awake.

  “Gus,” he said. “I thought I’d never find you. They’ve been calling the apartment for an hour.” His eyes burned into mine. “I told the officer every bloody thing I could remember. You just missed him.”

  I nodded, realizing it must have been Porter’s phone call from Nate’s apartment that had drawn Kinski away from Byron’s side. The nurse smiled at me, and quietly swished away.

  “Are you okay?” I said. “They really bashed you, didn’t they?”

  He gripped my hand and swallowed hard. A white bandage wrapped his head. His eyes welled and he bellowed, “Some Indian bloke shaved my head.”

  “It’ll be okay, your hair will grow back in no time. They had to treat your wound, right? They had no choice, buddy. It’s what they do.”

  He nodded, sighed deeply, and gave me a crooked smile. “I feel so bloody useless when it comes to this stuff. Sorry.”

  I pulled up a chair and sat beside him, careful to avoid the IV paraphernalia. Thoughts of my grandmother Odette pushed against the back of my mind. I struggled to ignore them. “Do you remember anything that could help, Byron? Tell me what happened. Everything. All the details, okay?” I didn’t hide the anxiety in my eyes this time.

  He touched his forehead gingerly and grimaced. “Okay, here’s how I remember it. Porter sent us home from the fire at the diner around four o’clock yesterday afternoon. Elsbeth and Valerie cooked up some supper, made some sandwiches for Porter, figuring he’d come by later. Valerie had said she knew he’d be starving, so...” He looked off in the distance as if he were remembering, suddenly stopping as if he lost the connection to his memory.

  “Byron, what happened next? Come on. The girls are in terrible danger.”

  He shook himself. “Sorry. I’m a little muddled. They put me on drugs for the pain.” He grunted and shifted against his pillows. “Okay. It was just after we’d eaten. Lana offered to clean up, and that’s when they broke into the place. They grabbed her first. I heard her scream from the kitchen and did a mad dash toward it. There were three blokes in the room. One held her with his arm around her neck and a gun to her head. And that monkey bloke was there. The one we chased through the park.”

  “What did the others look like?” I asked.

  Byron shuddered. “The one that held Lana was hairy and dirty. He looked like some kind of druggie. The other one was big, blond and scruffy. Not a bad looking face, but he was a bit heavy.”

  “Go on.”

  “Well, I hesitated when I saw the guns. The blond came after me. I ran. He jumped me from behind, we struggled, and then he whacked me on the head. I think it was with the butt of his gun.” He reached up tenderly to feel the bandage over the wound. “Hit me bloody hard, didn’t he?”

  “I know. Does it hurt?”

  He shook his head carefully. “Yeah, it hurts like hell. I think the drugs will help in a bit.” He pointed to the IV dripping into his vein in the crook of his elbow.

  I cared about him, I really did. But I was losing my patience. “Did you hear anything after that? Any names? And plans? I need to know where
they went, Byron. I’ve got to find Elsbeth.” I whispered it fiercely and squeezed his hand hard.

  He winced and cast his eyes down. “I’m so sorry, Gus. I didn’t hear a thing. I didn’t hear what happened to Elsbeth or Valerie.” Dismay washed over his face. “Oh my God. How are you going to find them?”

  I stood up abruptly. “I don’t know. But I’ve got to do something. Anything. And I’ve got to do it now.”

  Chapter 47

  I left Byron in the capable hands of the hospital staff and drove back to the apartment. Scouring each room, I looked for hints that might lead to my wife. I found only the remnants of their dinner dishes and the warm milk bottle on the counter. I emptied it down the drain, wishing Siegfried were here to help find his twin. As I rinsed out the bottle, I decided to call him. Maybe he could sense something that would—

  The phone rang.

  I jumped to answer it and was shocked when it wasn’t Porter. “Hello?”

  “Er… is that Gus, um, LeGarde?”

  I didn’t recognize the voice. “Yes?”

  “This here is Wiley. From Singing Pines.” Each of his sentences sounded as though it ended in a question mark.

  “Wiley? I can barely hear you. Can you speak up?”

  “Sorry, man. I can’t. I don’t want ‘em to hear me.”

  “What?”

  “Uh, listen. I shouldn’t be calling you, but I saw them.”

  “What?”

  “Listen, man. I saw your women. Your wife and that girl with the red hair.”

  My heartbeat quickened. “Elsbeth and Valerie?

  “Yeah. That’s them.”

  “You saw them? Where?”

  “Here. At the Pines. They brought them in last night with the others.”

  “What others?”

  “It was a new shipment of girls. They come in for help. You know, rehab? They put them out in the new building in the back. We’re not s’posed to talk to them. But I saw your two women, and it seemed really odd. They didn’t look like addicts to me.”

  I listened in stunned silence. Porter burst into the apartment just as I thanked Wiley and hung up.