The Little Death (8 page)

Oh good, I found myself saddled with the only hooker with integrity.

Most of the text files were gibberish, perhaps encrypted in a way I was unfamiliar with, but one was unencrypted and was simply a list of surnames: Nelson, Reilly, Johnson, Clarke, Gibbons, Wuhl. There were numbers assigned to their names, although not in sequence.

I played another video clip and asked, “Do you recognize any of these places?”

Sloane snorted derisively. “It’s a little dark.”

“Not that dark.”

Sloane looked down at me skeptically. “What does this mean? Why are you asking me about clients?”

“Because I think your brother may have been up to his pretty neck in blackmail.”

“What? Who would blackmail him?”

I scowled up at him. Was anyone really that stupid? “He’s the blackmailer.”

That made him do a slight double take, eyes wide and mouth opening in shock. “Sander would never do that!”

“Of course not, ’cause he was always honest with you.” I disconnected the flash drive and wondered where I should keep it. My first thought was the office safe, but that was too obvious. It was the first place someone would look. I had an idea of a safe place, but how was I going to get there with Sloane shadowing me? I didn’t want him to know where I was dropping this, for his own safety if nothing else. I pocketed it for now and shut down my ancient computer. I may or may not have copied some documents to my hard drive—I have to admit the throbbing of my face was distracting me a little. There’s nothing like your head feeling like an infected wound to turn your thought processes into jelly. “Did you recognize any of the places or not?”

“It was too dark. I couldn’t tell.”

“Make a guess.”

He glared at me like I was the asshole. “I dunno! Maybe… one of those lamps looked like the kind they have in the Roosevelt.”

“The Roosevelt?” An old-world luxury-style hotel, baroque in its elegant decay, expensive and very much the property and playground of the rich. When it was open.

It was closed now and had been for the last few months. Initially it was closed for renovations, including a big new conference room, but rumor had it the owners of the hotel had run into financial issues, hence the renovations slowing to a crawl. Now no one was sure if or when the hotel would reopen again.

Had Sander entertained a client there before it was closed? I was trying to remember when it closed down. There were a few upload dates on the flash drive—did they correspond? I was trying to remember when I saw a shadow out in the foyer.

A person, turned into a shadow by the light behind them, moving slowly toward my door.

Sloane saw it finally and gasped, and I whispered to him to be quiet as I grabbed my shotgun from its hiding place. “Get behind the desk,” I told him, standing between it and the door. The shotgun was ready to go, because there was no point in having an emergency weapon that I’d have to pause to load. There were spare shells in my top desk drawer, but unless my aim was complete shit or there were a dozen guys behind this one, I shouldn’t need them. The one good thing about a shotgun is you usually don’t engage in epic shootouts with them. Either they get the job done right away, or you end up too dead to care.

The doorknob rattled ominously before the man got it open, and I leveled the shotgun at waist height, which would guarantee a lethal hit on a short or average-sized guy, or would take the legs out of a taller guy. I had a sudden flashback to the day Spencer died in a hail of bullets, which made me grasp the shotgun that much harder.

The door swung open slowly, and I had my finger resting lightly on the trigger, ready to twitch. But I could see that the man’s hands were empty and hung loose at his sides. The halo of light behind him set off the highlights in his hair, and that with his muscular figure let me know this was Tyler, even before my eyes adjusted to the light/dark contrast. “Tyler?”

His mouth opened and closed wordlessly, and I heard liquid pattering the floor in a regular rhythm. Blood was dripping from his right hand and had made a gory trail from the foyer. He found his voice finally and said, “I didn’t know—”

His pale eyes rolled up inside his head, and Tyler fell like a marionette whose strings had just been cut. I tried to catch him with one arm, still holding the shotgun in case the men who did this to him weren’t long behind him. But as he lolled in my arms, his warm blood soaking into my shirt, I had a feeling the thugs were long gone. They’d just wanted to drop off their present.

10

T
HE
ambulance lights painted the buildings in lurid shadows of crimson and black, and if there had actually been people on this block, they’d probably have come out to look. But this part of town was as dead Spencer was.

I called Kyle right after the ambulance, but he arrived ten minutes after it, still not believing I could be in so much trouble in such a short span of time. When he saw me standing there with blood on my shirt, he came up to me with a gasp. “My God, are you all right?”

“Yeah, it’s not my blood,” I told him, pulling him into the lobby of my building for some privacy. Most of the guys out there were just beat cops who had no idea I’d already been at another crime scene, but they would find out soon enough, and I’d be lucky not to end up cuffed and shoved in the back of a black-and-white.

“What the hell is going on?” Kyle asked, brown eyes almost popping out of his skull. When he got exasperated, his eyes became wild things, and his dusky skin seemed to flush darker. “What have you gotten yourself into, Jake?”

“I’m not sure, but I intend to find out. Do me a favor, and take Sloane into protective custody. Not officially, though.”

“What the hell do you mean not officially?”

“Take him to your place, and don’t tell anybody, not even your partner, okay? It’s imperative you don’t tell another cop. Right now you’re the only one I trust.”

“This is crazy! You know that, right?”

“Yeah, I know. But I think I know what I’m doing now.”

His look was so deeply suspicious it was honestly wounding. “I think enough people have been hurt tonight. You should come with me, and we’ll work this out.”

That almost made me laugh. What was there to work out exactly? But I knew he was just trying to help, save me from myself. He was good at that. I was touched that anyone beside my bartender cared. “I need you to trust me, Kyle.”

His exasperated look came back. “Trust you to get yourself killed? I think it’s high time you get some help here.”

I could tell he wasn’t going to let this go. One of the most endearing—and irritating—things about him was his stubbornness. I moved in closer, close enough that I could feel his body heat and smell the coffee he must have been chugging by the gallon. He took a tentative step back but then leaned forward slightly, as if to smell me. I bet I smelled like cordite and blood.

I cupped the side of his face and asked, “Do you love me?”

I’d caught him off guard with that. I saw the confusion in his eyes, and he looked for a moment like he might deny it, but of course he relented. “I wish I didn’t.”

I stroked his cheek with my thumb and tried to look as innocent as I possibly could. This was very difficult, as I’m not sure I’ve ever been innocent in my life. “Then trust me. If I need help, I will call you, and I’ll expect you to drop everything and come running.”

He rolled his eyes. “Jake—”

Whatever he was going to say, I silenced him with a kiss, passionate enough to distract him as I dropped the flash drive into his coat pocket. There was no one it would be safer with, especially if Kyle didn’t know about it.

I have to admit, it was still nice to kiss him. He must have felt the same way, because he grabbed me tight enough that my ribs creaked, and while the bruises sang sick little songs, I remembered how it had been last night, how he’d made the pain go away. I knew I had to keep him sweet, but I kept forgetting I was supposed to be a heartless bastard about all this. It used to be so easy.

I broke away before we both got a little too into it, and said, “I’ll be all right. Just keep Sloane safe, okay?”

Although it took Kyle a moment to shake off, he did, the lust in his eyes being replaced by his natural wariness. “You have to call me in one hour. If you don’t, I’m coming after you.”

“Kyle—”

“Don’t argue with me! And once you get back, I expect a full explanation, none of this
trust me
bullshit. Understand?”

“Got it.” He may have been a Goody Two-shoes, but I could only push him so far before his dark side came out. And since he was a cop, you know he had a real ugly one. Still not as ugly as mine, but I knew better than to push it.

We came out as the ambulance was pulling away. Tyler had been stabbed a couple of times, and according to the paramedics, he had some pretty ugly bruises on his stomach and back, suggesting a beating—a beating where they’d been careful to avoid hitting his pretty face. Maybe it was a halfhearted attempt to kill him; maybe it was just a vicious warning. I just wasn’t sure if it was solely for him or split between me and him. I guess I’d find out.

Before the other cops noticed I was there, I slunk off into the shadows, and I was down the alley before I heard one of the beat cops ask Kyle where I was. I hated to leave him in such a hard spot, but I knew he could get out of it with no problem. The good thing—possibly the only good thing—about being such a square was people always trusted you, even if they were corrupt themselves. Hell,
especially
if they were corrupt. They could never see even a tiny bit of themselves in Kyle; therefore, he must have been the most trustworthy guy in the world. Must be nice. Would’ve been nicer if Kyle could appreciate that “get out of jail free” card.

I had only one potential lead: the Roosevelt. Yeah, the place was supposedly closed, but how had Sander been able to film there so close to closing? Maybe it was closed at the time, which begged the question how it happened. So I was going to find out. That’s what detectives are supposed to do, or at least that’s what those
Murder, She Wrote
reruns taught me.

A couple blocks from the scene, I flagged down a cab and had it take me to Victoria Avenue, where the Roosevelt was located. I figured if the cabbie didn’t know exactly where I was headed, he couldn’t tell anyone trying to trace me exactly where I’d gone. I wasn’t sure who I was trying to evade exactly, but it seemed like a good idea.

The Roosevelt looked dark and abandoned, looming over the end of the street like a drunk who had somehow passed out while sitting up at the end of the bar. It was closed up and dark, looking like a perfect place to film a low-budget horror movie on the cheap. There were a few upscale shops in the neighborhood, as well as a few empty suites where businesses used to be, but all were closed now, as it was pure night here, save for the light from some needlessly ornate streetlamps. The rich are different—even their streetlights are pretentious.

I stood in front of the locked, tinted glass doors of the hotel and looked for any sign of a break-in or recent occupation. I tried peering through the window as best I could, but there just wasn’t enough light.

I was going to walk around the hotel, see if I could find an entrance or exit that wasn’t locked as well as the others, when I heard music in the distance. I figured it for the bass thud of one of those obnoxious car stereos everyone seemed to have nowadays, but the music wasn’t growing louder or fading; it stayed at one single level. A parked car?

I pressed my ear to the window and strained to listen. I wasn’t one hundred percent sure, but it almost sounded like it was coming from somewhere deep inside the hotel.

Was that even possible? I looked up, toward the higher stories, but they seemed as blacked out and dark as the lower levels. But wasn’t that what blackout curtains were for?

I walked around the building, finally discovering a rear exit door that wasn’t locked as well as it should have been, and after loosening the lock with my handy picks, I was inside.

After a moment, where I let my eyes adjust to the dark, I realized the music was indeed coming from somewhere far above me, although it remained faint. Mainly what I could pick up was a repetitive pulsing bass beat, dance music. The hotel had squatters, but ones more careful than your average homeless person.

The door had brought me into the kitchen, where it smelled like dust and abandonment. So whoever had been using the hotel, they hadn’t been bothering with the kitchen. I moved carefully so I didn’t kill myself or knock over something noisy, and I managed to make my way out into the empty dining room.

I could barely see—it was dark and gloomy enough that I felt like I was at the bottom of a algae choked pond—but I could make out enough of the empty tables and snowy tablecloths to feel like a ghost haunting this dead hotel. I wondered if this would happen when I was actually dead, then decided, even if I did believe in this shit, I’d haunt a better place. Maybe Lau’s, or a casino. I could fuck with the slots, make them pay out all the time.

The hotel lobby was even eerier, which I hadn’t thought was possible. But that music, taunting, a faraway oddity that demanded explanation, was no louder here. Suddenly there was a hum, mechanical and seemingly from everywhere and nowhere at once, and I realized it was the elevator. Someone was headed down to me.

There was nowhere for me to go except behind the front desk, so I did, jumping over the polished but dusty thing and ducking down behind it, grabbing the weapon in my pocket. I didn’t bring my shotgun, because it wasn’t the most inconspicuous of weapons, so I was forced to lift Kyle’s Taser. Oh sure, as soon as he realized I’d taken it, he’d be so pissed off at me we’d probably go from on again to off again, but at least I didn’t take his service revolver. Strangely enough, I didn’t think that would win me any good will. Kyle could be so fussy.

The elevator came to a stop, and after a tense moment, the doors opened with a slight hiss. “Yeah, I got it,” a man said, and I kept a finger on the Taser’s trigger, ready to jump up and use it. “I didn’t fuck this up. This is your fuck-up.” There was a pause, and the man said, “I don’t wanna hear this shit. Fix it.”