The Book of 21 (20 page)

He shifted his foot from the accelerator to the brake and held the wheel steady as the cab slid to a stop at the bottom of the ramp. Looking up to the overpass above, he saw the pickup had stopped there. Mezzalura wanted to back up, but the shoulder of the expressway was so narrow that the driver had to fight oncoming highway traffic to do so.

John only had a few seconds to spare. He turned and raced across the bridge into Manayunk. After a few twists and turns onto side streets, he decided on a new path into the city.

He then scanned the rear-view mirror for any sign of the pickup.

“Are they gone?” Amy asked.

“I think so,” he replied, glancing at his mirror one last time.

“What are we going to do?”

“We’re going over to my friend’s place to get you come clothes.”

“What’s this?” Amy asked, pulling Hallman’s papers out of his coat.

Reaching over, he took the papers, tucked them under his leg, and replied, “That’s what all this is about. It’s what they’re after.” He looked at her. “It’s what will get us out of this mess.”

She sighed again and then chuckled, “I thought I would show up at your apartment and surprise you with a nice quiet night. I guess I was wrong.”

John smiled. For the first time, she sounded like she would recover.

After about twenty minutes, they pulled up in front of Kim’s building. John grabbed Hallman’s papers, looked at Amy, and pointed at the door.

“It’s the white doorway, there. Give me some time to gimp my way around the cab.”

With John limping in pain and Amy half-naked, they made a feeble dash to the front door. Just as he wondered whether he would need to pick the lock, a woman came out of the building with her dog, and he caught the open door. They started up the stairs to the second floor.

On the stairs, John looked up to find Amy was trying to keep her buttocks covered with his sport coat. To his benefit, she was failing. John took the opportunity to enjoy the view; it took his mind off the pain in his ankle.

Finally, the intermingled agony and bliss of the stairs ended, and they moved down the hall to apartment 2B. John knocked on the door and waited a few seconds. When he failed to hear the door locks start to open, he figured that Kim was either getting out of bed slowly, or comatose from a hangover. Impatient, he knocked again.

“Come on, Kim…”

Amy stood and uncomfortably shifted her weight. Her eyes were darting about the hall, as if she were afraid the neighbors would come out and see her in nothing but John’s sport coat. Every twist and turn of her head told John she wanted to get inside as soon as possible.

John pulled out the case of lock picks and retrieved two small metal rods. Shooting Amy a guilty look, he bent over in front of the doorknob.

“You didn’t see this.”

Amy rolled her eyes. “I’m not going to start complaining about it in my situation.”

He inserted the rods and the door popped open.

“Kim?” he beckoned into the hallway.

Drawing his Beretta, he entered slowly and moved down the hall. He scanned the kitchen; unless someone was small enough to hide in the cabinets or fridge, John was guessing it was clear. The living room held only white furniture. The bathroom had the shower curtain neatly tucked aside so that John could see right away that no one was there. The last room was her bedroom. He reached in and tapped the light switch. The bed was made; nothing seemed out of place. A computer desk was flush against the far wall, so John could see that no one was hiding under it. The place was clear.

Behind him, he heard Amy come inside and close the apartment door.

John rubbed his forehead and thought about where Kim might be. She might have stayed out with her friends too long and be sleeping at one of their places. She might have hooked up with some guy and be happily getting herself laid. She might have stopped off with the girls at an all-night diner and be stuffing her yap with pancakes. There was no way to know, but he doubted this was a coincidence.

He sighed and groaned, “Where the fuck is she?”

Chapter 23:
Time for Thought

At the time, Kim was asking herself the same question. The effects of the ether were wearing off more quickly than she had imagined. Now she felt alert and aware. At least, she was aware enough to realize that something bound her arms behind her back, and that some kind of very sticky tape sealed her mouth. Her feet remained free. The faint red glow of taillights seeped in through the imperfections of the compartment; it looked like she occupied the trunk of her Nissan Sentra, but it was hard to be sure that the trunk was her own.

The small paraphernalia that surrounded her in the compartment soon confirmed her suspicion. It looked like the stuff she had left in the tiny trunk over the years. She thought of the trunk as a place to ditch unneeded items while on the road—a sort of graveyard for her tourist goodies.

Now, it felt more like a coffin, carrying her to her grave.

A coil of rope in the corner of the trunk accentuated that idea. She assumed it was a remnant of the rope that bound her hands. The neat coil was cinched in the middle, and reminded her of a hangman’s noose.

The car seemed to be bouncing along a smaller road and not a freeway. She was basing this on the sway of the car and occasional stops. Every once in a while, the car hit a pothole or bump, which tossed her a few millimeters in the air.

She wondered if she should try to exploit the occasional stops of the car. If she could kick on the side of the vehicle and try to yell, she might attract some attention. It was a desperate move, but it was all she had.

Kim thought about what would happen after she started making noise. Most probably, the car would be in the middle of nowhere. Even if someone heard, Marco would probably just drive away while the people at the stop scratched their heads. If that happened, Marco would wait until they were in a secluded spot, pull over, and give her another dose of ether—or worse.

The fact that her legs were free gave her another option. Maybe,
if
she could turn herself just right, she
might
catch Marco with a kick to the jaw when he opened the trunk. A well-placed heel
could
drop him.

Kim closed her eyes and shook her head. Too many things could go wrong with that plan. Too many events depended on chance, and if her luck failed, she was done.

She would only have one shot. It had to be good. At least, it had to be better than what she was coming up with so far.

Kim thought back to the bathroom, trying to determine if she could leverage anything she had heard. Marco seemed to know everything; he even knew when she would be in the bathroom. She knew nothing about him.

Marco did his homework. He knew that she was unhappy in the city, and she wanted to go home. She now knew why her mother told her not to talk to strangers; she had shared personal information that he was using against her. The idea that she told him so much about herself irked her. He held all the cards when it came to leveraging knowledge.

Kim closed her eyes and shook her head again. She breathed deeply through her nose and cleared her mind.

Thinking back to the bathroom again, she remembered Marco’s little speech. He was proud of the way he engineered his plan. There was shock value, and a touch of irony that kept people from looking too close and seeing what was really going on. People had a way of ignoring the unpleasant things they did not want to hear.

Her mind moved to what happened when he came at her—the plunger. While adept at removing clogs in the toilet, it did nothing to stop Marco. It did make him angry, though. With a malicious glare in her eye, she thought, “The bastard didn’t like that, did he?”

If she could, she would tie him up and suffocate him with that plunger. She would watch the horror in his eyes—that same horror she saw when she bounced the toilet tool off the side of his head. She would let him know what it felt like when you were a victim of something terrible. Then again, maybe she would just hang him upside down, dip his fecal-phobic head into a cesspool, and let him drown.

She suddenly knew what she had to do to get out of this. Her eyes rolled in disgust. She wondered if she could, but knew what would happen if she failed.

Chapter 24:
Morning Mail

The sound of the shower broke John’s train of thought. Amy had apparently found the bathroom, which meant they would probably be there a little while. He holstered his gun and decided to find her some clothes.

While both women were beautiful, Amy was undeniably bigger on the top and slightly smaller on the bottom than Kim. Looking for tighter pants, he limped over to Kim’s closet. There, he took a pair of jeans from a shelf, and snagged a pair of sandals from the closet floor. Turning to her bureau, he found that the top drawer held underwear. He forgot about the bras and took a pair of briefs that might cling to Amy’s hips. From the next drawer down, he procured one of Kim’s oversized sweatshirts.

He hobbled his way to the bathroom door and found his sport coat hanging on the doorknob. As he bent down to lay the clothes on the floor, he heard Amy crying in the mist of the shower. He took his jacket and decided to give her some time.

Amy’s shower would give him time to check his email account and see if Janice sent a list of Dunglison’s calls. Though his smartphone was fully capable, he still feared that Mezzalura might have someone inside the department that could track him. He decided to use Kim’s computer, which meant he had to head back to the bedroom.

Once there, he noticed a poster of
Tournée du Chat Noir
on the wall above the monitor. It was the only piece of artwork in the entire apartment. John tried to ignore Kim’s poor taste in decorating as he hobbled over to the computer and then hit the power button.

The computer booted up and displayed 5:20 AM on the desktop. It would be light soon, and Kim was still gone. John knew that if Kim had met with foul play, the apartment might not be a safe place; they would want to make their stay here short.

John opened his email account and scanned down the list in his inbox for the name “Foxy Babe,” which Janice used on her personal account. He constantly had to tell his junk email filter that the letters were “not junk” because the program figured, with a name like that, it must be from a porn-related spammer. He once wondered how shallow someone had to be to refer to himself or herself as a “Stud” or a “Babe.” Now, he knew.

He opened up the email from “Foxy Babe” to see a little reminder from Janice that read, “I’m so excited about Kazuki’s! Give me a call tomorrow and let me know the date so I can put it on my calendar. You know how I LOVE sushi!”

John knew this meant, “Call me and give me a firm date, so I know you are not screwing me over on this. By the way, to entice you, allow me to mention that I will probably be horny after eating sushi, and since you will most likely be the closest male, you will probably benefit.”

After shaking his head, he inspected the list of numbers Janice found. There were two columns. One column listed calls into Dunglison’s office, and the other listed calls out of Dunglison’s office.

There was definitely a problem; there were no names. Janice had only sent him numbers. John knew she was holding the names that went along with the phone numbers until he called with the dinner information.

If he were in the office, he could have someone cross-reference the phone numbers against departmental directories in a matter of minutes. That would at least tell him if a cop was dumb enough to use an official number, or a personal number known to the department. Unfortunately, he was not in the office. If John wanted to find this guy, he might have to start calling each number, one by one. There was just not enough time to manually make his way through the list right now.

Thinking back to the hotel, and Hallman’s stack of papers, he decided he had learned a valuable lesson about drawing conclusions before thoroughly examining the information he already had in front of him. He would give the numbers one more careful look before he either gave up or started a call-o-thon. About half way down the list, there was a number that rang a bell in more ways than one.

John needed to be sure, and he thought his cell phone held the answer. He decided to turn it on for a short amount of time. He had already made up his mind to get out of the apartment as soon as possible. If Mezzalura’s goons located him on the cellular grid right now, he would be on the move before they arrived.

He ran a search for the number in his address book. It matched the one he had saved for Ben Shalby.

As the cop on duty, Shalby could read the facts at Dunglison’s house in any way he wanted. He could interpret the surface facts to indicate a lover’s rendezvous ending with the vengeance of a drug-crazed kid. Letters discussing Erv Fullman could be hidden or ignored. Should Harry Mulgrew find something at the scene, Shalby would just laugh at Harry and dismiss the item as unrelated—as Shalby always did. Should Shalby’s fingerprint be found somewhere odd, he would just play dumb and say he accidentally touched any particular object that happened to bear his prints. The case would then be closed.

John pondered Ben Shalby for a minute. Shalby looked incompetent on almost every case. John had always considered the man a prime example of the Peter Principle; the idea he actually might be the evil genius of the Fraternal Order of Police was a bit hard to believe.

John wondered whether he could trust these phone records. Someone had been a step ahead of him all night, and that might be the case now. He had been wondering whether Mezzalura had someone inside the phone company. If she did, that person could do more than trace a cellular connection. Someone with access to the company records could easily add Shalby’s number to Dunglison’s bill.

Implicating the detective on call last night would be a good move; it would be easy enough to construe that Shalby had killed Dunglison and timed it so he would get the call to investigate. The department would then spend time raking Shalby over the coals while the truly corrupt cop went about their business and helped feed Internal Affairs false evidence as needed.