The Abbey (7 page)

“She’s a minor?”

I nodded, and Mick swore under his breath.

“She’s got to have ID to get in,” he said, putting up his hands defensively. “If they get past security, I serve them. I assume they’re twenty–one.”

“I’d say you should beef up security.”

Mick nodded.

“I’m starting to agree with you there,” he said. He rested his elbows on the bar and leaned forward. “You haven’t arrested me yet, so what do you want? Free drinks? A payoff? What?”

“I’m here for information,” I said, pulling out a barstool. I sat down and folded my hands in front of me. “I want to know what sort of place this is and who comes here.”

Mick looked at his cleaning staff for a moment and then reached for a bottle of a green cleaner. He sprayed the bar top around my arms and started wiping in a clockwise motion. The cleaner smelled like pine.

“We’re a club, like every other club in town. Our visitors are usually in their twenties and thirties. Men, women, straight, gay. We don’t discriminate. We get it all and then some.”

It sounded like a rehearsed speech. I smiled but didn’t let it reach my eyes.

“Most nightclubs don’t have inverted crosses on their steeples.”

“Our clients are creative people,” said Mick, shrugging. He reached beneath the bar and came up with two bottles of cheap vodka in each hand. “They don’t like a standard club experience.”

“Your clients pretend to be vampires from what I gather. Creative isn’t the first adjective that comes to mind.”

I thought I saw Mick smile, but it was gone as quickly as it appeared. He reached into his back pocket again, withdrew his butterfly knife, and sliced through the plastic spout built into each bottle.

“Our clients come here because they want to be someone different for a night. That’s what we give them. The decorations are theatrics.”

I nodded.

“You have any problems with drugs here?”

Mick put down his knife and rested his elbows against the bar.

“If we see anything suspicious, we call the police. This is a legitimate operation.”

I nodded again, not entirely sure that I believed him.

“You know somebody named Azrael?” I asked, remembering Olivia using the name earlier that day.

Mick nodded and shrugged.

“He’s a regular. Uses one of our
VIP
rooms,” said Mick, indicating a balcony overlooking the room with his chin. At one time, it had probably been overflow seating for Easter Sunday services. “He’s not into drugs.”

“You know that for a fact?”

Mick shrugged.

“Not a fact,” he said. “But I’ve never heard he’s pushing.”

“How hard are you listening?” I asked.

“Fuck you,” said Mick, turning and reaching under the bar. I couldn’t see his hands for a moment. I wasn’t comfortable with that, so I grabbed the front of his shirt and yanked him forward. The fabric ripped at the collar, and he stood up straight, his hands in the air. “Easy, easy. Who do you think you are, fucking Wyatt Earp?”

I let go of Mick’s shirt, and he made an elaborate show of straightening his collar and slicking back his hair. His shirt had been stretched so far that I could see a faded black tattoo on his chest. The lines were so crooked and blotchy that I couldn’t see what it was supposed to represent. It was sloppy work, even for a prison tattoo.

“Someone I care about is dead, so I’m not in the mood to put up with shit. Tell me what you know, or I’ll arrest you for serving alcohol to minors. How do you feel about going back to prison?”

Mick adjusted his collar, hiding the tattoo on his neck.

“Tell me what you want.”

“I’m glad we’re on the same page,” I said. “Is there any way I can get in touch with Azrael?”

“We don’t keep a roster with our client’s information if that’s what you’re asking,” said Mick.

“How does he pay for his drinks?” I asked, crossing my arms.

“Cash.”

I waited for Mick to continue, but he didn’t.

“Who pays for Alicia Weinstein’s drinks?”

“The blond girl?” he asked.

I nodded.

“A lot of men,” he said. “A lot.”

“Are you implying something?” I asked, my eyebrows narrowed.

“Take a look around, Detective,” he said, sweeping his arm across the bar. “This place has a lot of dark corners, a lot of couches, a lot of places to do things unseen. She was with a lot of men.”

I scratched the back of my neck, letting that sink in. Maybe she had worked for her designer clothes after all.

“Anything else you can tell me about her?”

“I serve drinks to the freak show. I don’t join in.”

I pointed to the picture of my niece on the bar.

“Somebody connected to this club killed my niece. If I find out you’re running anything illegal through here or that you’re lying to me now, you’re not going to make it to jail.”

Mick swallowed and nodded.

“Yeah, I got ya.”

I closed my eyes and was about to turn away, but stopped.

“Word of advice, lose the knife. You might have other detectives stop by, and they’re not all as forgiving as me.”

“Thanks,” said Mick, his lips thin.

“Don’t mention it.”

I left the club the same way I had gone in, already taking out my cell phone. Mick might have professed ignorance of what went on in the club, but someone had to know something.

I punched in a text message to Jimmy Russo, a confidential informant I used to run when I worked homicide. He was a mid–level street dealer with his ear on the ground. If someone was moving drugs through The Abbey in any kind of volume, Jimmy would know about it. I asked him if he could meet me that afternoon near Monument Circle.

After that, I hopped in my car and headed downtown towards a bar I knew that served two–ounce shots. I had a couple of drinks as I waited for Jimmy’s response. When he didn’t get back to me an hour later, I left feeling more than a little buzzed. I bought a newspaper from a vending machine and sat on a bench in the Indiana Artsgarden, a seven–story, glass–and–steel atrium suspended above the intersection of two busy downtown streets. I read a few articles, but mostly I watched the cars pass by.

My cell started beeping twenty minutes later. My drinks were wearing off a little by then, and I could walk without my head feeling as if I were swimming. Jimmy agreed to my meeting and said he was five minutes out. I dropped my paper and took the stairs to street level.

Monument Circle is a circular piece of real estate in the center of town with an elaborately carved memorial to Indiana soldiers in the center. At one time that memorial would have towered above everything in town, but now it was dwarfed by the forty–story bank buildings that had sprung up around it. The area smelled faintly of sulfur, a gift from our aging sewage system, and there was a big enough crowd that I could hide if need be.

I crossed Meridian Street in front of Christ Church Cathedral and took a look around. Jimmy leaned against a brass plaque describing the monument. He wore a white Oxford shirt, gray slacks, and a pair of aviator sunglasses. If I hadn’t known better, I would have thought he was one of the fresh–from–college, white–collar bankers that worked in nearby buildings. He nodded at me when he saw me.

“You look good, Jimmy,” I said, putting my hand forward for him to shake when I was a few feet away. Jimmy pretended not to notice, so I dropped it to my side. “It’s been a long time.”

“That it has, my man,” he said. “It’s James, now.”

“Moving up in the world, huh?”

He snickered.

“James is always moving up,” he said, casting his gaze around the crowd. “Let’s take a walk.”

I nodded and followed him. A group of kids stood beside the monument while their teacher told them about World War II and Indiana’s role in the supply chain that fed and armed our soldiers. James looked at the crowd before his shoulders relaxed again.

“Now what can James do for you, Detective?”

“I need some information about a club in Plainfield.”

Jimmy or James or whatever he was called stopped and tilted his head.

“Plainfield? The ’burbs are a little out of my regular rotation.”

“Club’s called The Abbey,” I said. “The guy there I’m interested in is named Azrael.”

He shrugged.

“I ain’t heard of it or him.”

“Azrael may think he’s a vampire,” I said. “Or at least he may pretend to be. I think he’s moving something through the club.”

James stopped then and tilted his head. He took off his glasses, allowing me to see his hands for the first time. He had bandages on his thumb, index, and middle fingers. He shifted his weight from foot to foot and looked uneasy. In the past, James had always been forthcoming with what he knew, and if he didn’t know something, he could almost always find out. Something had him spooked.

“Now I already said James doesn’t know anything, so why are you still talking?”

“If I find something, your name will stay out of it,” I said. “No one will know we talked.”

James turned and continued walking. We left Monument Circle and started walking south on Meridian Street. When I was growing up, that might not have been the smartest move, but the city had gentrified and cleaned itself up in the past twenty years. Downtown was now trendy and had some of the nicer bars, restaurants, and stores in the region. James finally stopped and sat at a green table in front of a Borders Bookstore Cafe. He rested his hands in front of him. The bandages over his fingers were tinged with red.

“My office can take care of you if you’re having a problem,” I said.

“James doesn’t have any problems with anybody, Detective.”

I leaned back in my chair and stretched, deciding to take a different tact.

“What happened to your fingers, James?”

He looked down and immediately pulled his hands off the table.

“Nothing.”

I nodded and leaned forward.

“James, we’ve always been straight with each other, and I’m starting to get pissed. I’m on a case, and my time is limited,” I said. “I think you know something and you’re scared, so I’ll make you a deal. If you tell me what I want to know, I won’t arrest you for trying to sell me an ounce of cocaine.”

He shook his head.

“I didn’t try to sell you nothin’.”

“Who do you think the Prosecutor’s going to believe? Me or you? Especially when I search you and find drugs in your pockets.”

“Fuck you, man,” he said. I thought he was going to leave, but he stayed at the table, apparently thinking. His forehead was furrowed, and I could see the carotid arteries on his neck pulse fast.

“What happened to your hands?” I asked, softening my voice.

James stared at me for a moment, but then he laid his hand flat on the table and peeled back the bandage over his index finger. It was purple and swollen; the fingernail was completely gone. I looked up, my mouth open. “Who did this?”

James swallowed and shook his head.

“I don’t want none of this,” he said, securing the bandage over his fingers again. “Whatever you’re doing, keep me out.”

“If you tell me what happened, I might be able to make sure it won’t happen again,” I said. “You’re my CI. I’ll take care of you.”

James shook his head and looked away.

“You’ve been out of the game for a while. Things change.”

“Some things stay the same, though. Someone’s giving you a problem. You tell me who it is, I’ll give them a problem.”

James ran his unbandaged hand across his scalp. I saw his throat dip as he swallowed.

“Fuck, man,” he said. He was almost shaking. “I tried to make a buy. That’s it. It went bad. What else you want to know?”

“Who’d you make a buy from?”

James reached into a pocket and pulled out a cigarette. He lit up and leaned back.

“I don’t know their names. Heard they’ve got good shit. Almost pure and fucking cheap. I put out some feelers and got jumped. Took my girl and me and tied us to chairs. They wanted to know how I heard of ’em. I told ’em just rumors, but they wanted to know who’s been talking.”

I nodded for him to go on, but he didn’t say anything.

“What did you tell them?”

“I told ‘em that fucking everybody’s been talking,” he said, throwing his hands up. “They pulled off my goddamn fingernails with pliers anyway. Didn’t even say nothing. Just did it and left.”

I nodded. That was a little rougher than usual, even for the drug trade.

“What’d they look like?”

James snuffed his cigarette out on an ashtray on the table.

“I didn’t see no faces. They wore ski masks,” he said, trembling by that point. “I need a new job, man. These cats are for real.”

I took a deep breath.

“Who set it up?”

James shook his head.

“Fucking fat bastard named Rollo,” he said. “Ain’t heard from him since.”

Rollo wasn’t familiar, but I could look him up if need be.

“You got any family outside Indianapolis?” I asked.

James nodded.

“I think you should visit them for a little while,” I said. “I might stir up some trouble in the next few days.”

I figured I was sober enough after my meeting to go into work and check my messages, so I stopped by my office. Someone had put a manila file folder and stack of yellow Post–it notes on my desk. The first note told me to call Susan Mercer, my boss. The second was in the same handwriting and suggested that I wear something fire retardant because she sounded pissed. Of course, Susan was always pissed, so that wasn’t anything new.

I ignored the notes for a moment and flipped through the contents of the manila folder. It was a report from my niece’s preliminary autopsy. I scanned through it until I found the opinion. The assistant Coroner, Dr. Hector Rodriguez, pegged the time of death at five to six in the evening and said the immediate cause of death was a probable overdose leading to heart failure. That didn’t tell me much new, but the typed note at the end of the report did.

From a friend. Be careful.

At least Olivia hadn’t abandoned me completely. I tucked the folder into the top drawer of my desk and locked it. I called Susan’s office next. She answered quickly and requested I meet her in her office to discuss Rachel and Robbie. I could already feel the headache starting to brew in my skull. I swore under my breath and told her I’d be up in a few minutes.