Killing Red (23 page)

Chapa considered switching to rum and Coke, but thought better of it and settled for the nonalcoholic half of that combination. Annie would pass by every few minutes and send a look in his direction. He figured that her break couldn’t be more than fifteen or twenty minutes away.

The crowd thinned out some, and only a few new faces had wandered in since Chapa got there. Maybe a late night rush would follow, but he doubted it. The folks who were there alone now outnumbered the groups.

Annie passed by again and mouthed the words,
ten minutes
. He was anxious to ask her a few more questions about the mysterious other person at Grubb’s house. Chapa watched as she swept across the floor, past the stage and the bathrooms, on her way to the bar.

Someone else was watching her too. Chapa had first noticed the man twenty minutes ago, when he sat down at the other end of the room. He was big, but not overweight. Still, when he leaned forward and pressed his heavy forearms against the tabletop, the floor below must’ve felt it. He was wearing a wool coat that hid everything except what appeared to be extremely hairy hands. He didn’t seem to be interested in the other patrons or the music. Just Annie.

Chapa was trying not to stare, but couldn’t help it. Something wasn’t right. The guy’s drink was tall and dark. He lifted the glass to his mouth, then it followed the movement of his head as the guy slowly pivoted when Annie walked past.

She seemed unaware of the set of heavy eyes trailing her from one end of the room to the other, and maybe it was no big deal. The servers probably dealt with creeps on a nightly basis. Could be this one was a regular. Chapa planned to ask her about him the next time she walked by, then he saw that the guy was staring straight at him.

Chapa wanted to play it safe and look away, but a growing part of him was feeling confrontational. He studied the guy’s face for anything that might be familiar, but came up empty when the stranger looked away.

A minute later, his large frame emerged from behind the table as he got up and walked to the men’s room. Chapa decided it was time for him to take a bathroom break as well. He would give Andrews a call after he got a better look at the guy.

As he made his way toward the restroom door in a back corner of the club, Chapa looked for Annie, hoping to give her a heads up, but she wasn’t around. He considered walking over to where the bouncer was shaking someone down for another six bucks, but knew he had nothing of any real significance to tell him. Maybe that would soon change.

Chapa hoped there would be other guys in the men’s room besides himself and Annie’s biggest fan. Safety in numbers. On any other night he might have gotten his wish.

That hope vanished as he pushed the door open and walked into the cramped, well-lit room, consisting of one stall, two urinals, and two sinks that shared a double mirror. He didn’t see the man right away, but as the bathroom door creaked to a close behind him the guy in the wool coat emerged from the stall.

Chapa tried to not act startled, but knew he probably looked every bit as surprised as he felt. They did not make eye contact as the man walked over to the sink, pushed his sleeves up as far as the heavy fabric would allow, then washed his hands. Chapa squared up at a urinal and pretended to take care of some business of his own. He realized that by now the guy might be thinking his interest in him was of a somewhat more personal nature. So Chapa pulled down the plunger and headed over to the sink.

He was about to turn the water on when the man abruptly reached into his coat. Without thinking, Chapa took an uncertain step back, then felt like a fool when a comb appeared in the man’s right hand.

Both men looked into the mirror, but not at each other. Chapa was starting to feel he had made a mistake when the man slipped the comb, which looked like a toy cradled in his enormous hand, back into his coat pocket. The guy took a step toward the door, then seemed to notice a few strands of hair that were still badly out of place, and raked his left hand across his forehead.

This was the hand that Chapa had earlier thought was covered with hair, but in the mirror he saw that was not the case. A tattoo that Chapa found as startling as it was familiar spread across the back of the stranger’s hand. Though he only caught a glimpse of it, Chapa instantly recognized the image of a bleeding heart with three knives through it as the same one that had haunted his drug-induced dream two nights before. He remembered how it had wandered across the murky landscape of his subconscious.

Then Chapa looked directly at the reflection of the man standing next to him. Their eyes met for a split second before the guy left the bathroom like he was late for an appointment. Chapa’s anger and determination began to take hold.

A call to Andrews from inside the bathroom led to the usual conversation with his voice mail. He left a detailed message including the location of the club and a description of the guy. Then Chapa slipped the phone back into his pocket and headed straight for the man’s table.

Chapa was aching for a confrontation, but one was not immediately available. The guy was gone. He had left a couple of bills on the table. Some folks had decided that Buddy Chuck’s second set was worth dancing to, and their movement obscured Chapa’s view of the bar.

He headed in that direction, figuring it was the only other place in the club where the guy could be. But when he got there all Chapa found was a couple of businessmen talking to some women who were hoping they might improve their odds of a happy retirement.

This vantage point gave Chapa the opportunity to carefully scan the room from one side to the other, while ignoring the bartender’s offer to get him a drink. There was no sign of the guy, and Chapa didn’t see Annie either, so he dropped a twenty dollar bill on the table as he passed his booth, and headed for the door.

“Did you see a big guy walk out a minute ago?”

“I’m a big guy, and I stepped outside a minute ago,” Chico the bouncer responded with a forced smile.

Was he trying to be friendly or just a smartass?

“He was wearing a thick wool coat, and might have been in a hurry.”

“Lots of people coming and going, many of them have coats on.” He left both hands open, palms up like some religious statue of a steroid-addicted saint.

Chapa got it. He was being a smartass, but one who wanted to get paid. Chapa’s last twenty fit nicely into the bouncer’s hand, like parking a Matchbox car into a two-and-a-half-car garage. He slipped the bill into a back pocket and pointed down a side street just beyond the left end of the two-thirds empty parking lot.

“He might’ve gone down that street.”

Chapa almost thanked him, but decided the over-tip was thanks enough.

Argyle Street was darker than the rest of the night. It was barely wide enough for one large car, and crowded with trees that reached higher than the houses they fronted. Parked vehicles crept in on both sides, but there was no traffic, and none of the usual city chatter of casual conversation.

Several blocks in the distance, Chapa saw cars moving down busy Lawrence Avenue. But shadows, thick like old curtains, were wedged into the obscure spaces between here and there. A man might easily be hiding in one of them, and that could lead to a bad result.

Chapa walked in the direction the doorman at Prather’s had pointed. He looked from side to side with each step, knowing that at any moment the man he was chasing could emerge from the darkness and come after him. As big as the guy was, there were still enough gaps between the brownstones to hide a dozen like him.

After he had walked a little more than half a block, Chapa started wondering if the bouncer had been on the level. Maybe the guy with the tattoo bearing an image from Chapa’s worst nightmare never left the club in the first place. Or could be he was in the parking lot when Chapa came out and was tracking him right now.

Chapa picked up his pace until he was half-jogging, but stopped when he reached the corner. As he scanned in every direction, searching for any sign of movement, Chapa considered what he would do if he found the guy. Like the dog that finally catches the car.

Except for the movement of a few defiant leaves still clinging to otherwise barren trees, the street was still. One intersection over on Chapa’s right, a car paused briefly at the corner before turning in his direction. As it did so, the headlights swept across a large figure who, though not running, was definitely moving away from Chapa at a no-nonsense clip.

Chapa kept his eyes on the guy as he crossed the street to the other sidewalk. The car passed slowly and parked at the end of the block. Chapa heard a door open and close behind him. He couldn’t decide whether to call out to the guy and maybe force a showdown, or continue to give chase and hope this led to a more public place.

The large figure maintained a steady pace, moving into and out of the shadows. Chapa was still gaining ground, no longer caring how much noise the soles of his shoes made as they scraped the pebble-ridden sidewalk. He closed the gap between them to half a block, a manageable distance. But a moment later, the guy was gone.

The next corner was at least four houses away, so Chapa figured that he had taken cover somewhere. Chapa walked out into the street, fanning away from the shadows, hoping that would give him a little more time if someone came at him from behind some bushes. But the street did not feel any safer than the sidewalk, and the parked cars blocked much of his view.

Slowing down a little as he got closer to where he’d last seen the man, Chapa was starting to wonder if he lived in one of these houses. Just beyond another dark two-story, Chapa found a long alley that led all the way to the next street over.

The light from a lamppost at the other end of the narrow passageway was doing a fair job of illuminating the far half. But it had no effect on the sixty feet of alley that lay before Chapa. Shadows sketched that portion in varying shades of night, making it difficult to detect any movement.

Chapa strained to see beyond its mouth, and deep into the brick and concrete corridor. He wondered if the guy could have already sprinted the length of it. Maybe. But then Chapa should have heard footsteps beating on the broken pavement, and he hadn’t.

Having gone this far, Chapa found no reason to wait another second. He could feel his pulse climbing as he walked into the alley. In all likelihood the guy had come out the other side and could already be in a cab, cruising down Lake Shore Drive.

Chapa was being a bit more cautious now, but no matter how carefully he stepped, the sound of his footsteps echoed off the walls, eliminating the element of surprise, if he ever had it to begin with. Though it had not rained in days, there was a dampness there that probably never completely went away, and a smell of filth Chapa would not soon forget.

He stopped when he thought he heard a noise, like something scraping against the pavement, coming from somewhere not too far away. The light from beyond the other end of the alley cut a diagonal line across its base and up the side of the left wall, about forty feet from the opening. It also cast several crooked shadows that Chapa kept an eye on as he got closer to the better lit end of the corridor.

Ahead on his left he saw a large Dumpster, easily big enough for anyone to use as cover. A few feet beyond that, a steady stream of smoke rose from behind a tall stack of wooden crates. If the man he was tracking was tucked behind either of those, things could get ugly.

Again Chapa heard a sound that might have been footsteps, but could not tell which direction it came from. He rushed to one side, and pressing his back against a grime-caked wall, Chapa made himself as hard to see as possible. His left heel slid across some muck in the elbow between brick and pavement, and Chapa almost fell, managing to balance himself in a squatting position.

From that vantage point he was able to get a better look back toward the dark end of the alley, where he had started. Was someone there?
It had to be him
. How easily he could’ve hidden in the dark bushes or behind a porch near the entrance of the alley and waited for Chapa to wander in.

Chapa stood and started moving fast toward the light at the far end, looking back every few steps, until he finally saw someone moving in the dark, coming faster, matching him step for step. As he passed the Dumpster, Chapa stumbled over one of the crates, but managed to stay on his feet, though he scraped his hand on the rough pavement as he fought to keep his balance.

A wave of hot smoke caught Chapa flush in the face, blinding him for a split second. He wiped the burn from his eyes and was only thirty feet or so from getting out of the alley when the light from beyond silhouetted a large figure.

Chapa came to a dead stop. Though he could not see the man’s face, he knew it was the guy from the restaurant. He was also a carbon copy of the figure Chapa had seen the night before in Erin’s front yard. Chapa had made a mistake earlier when he identified Lance Grubb, and now it was going to cost him.

The stranger slowly lifted his left arm until it was perpendicular to the rest of his body, and pointing at Chapa.

“You are a slow study,” he said in a thick voice that was laced with an accent.

The man was digging in his coat pocket with his right hand.

“You’re so fascinated with Red, I’ll show you what she will experience. I’m going to hurt you, drug you a little, then hurt you some more.”

With his right hand still buried in his pocket, the man took a measured step forward, and the light from the street flashed for just an instant across an object in his extended hand. Chapa wondered if the gun this guy was holding was the same one used to kill Dominic Delacruz.

Knowing there would be no room for negotiation at this point, Chapa started backpedaling, hoping to slip into the shadows before the first shot. The guy was closing the gap in a hurry, chewing up yards, not feet, with each heavy stride.

Chapa slammed into the Dumpster and felt a jagged edge tear through his coat and into the soft skin of his back. No time to worry about small wounds. He spun off from the blow and continued to back away from the man with the gun.

As soon as he was out of the light he would turn and run zigzag. He was about to do that, when a shot ripped through the alley and Chapa fell backward, his head slammed into the dirty pavement. He lay there, groggy, unable to move, and wondering what a bullet wound was supposed to feel like.