I nodded. “Okay.”
Before taking the case, I gave her my terms and my price – it was best to get that out of the way first – to which she agreed, even to the bit about what happens if I found her sister in a morgue somewhere, or if she didn’t want to come back.
I got a few more facts from her, things that didn’t show in the photograph: height, weight, any birthmarks, tattoos, that sort of thing. She gave me the name of the nightclub to which her sister said she was going, and though she didn’t know where they lived, the names of the friends with whom she had gone. I could start at the club. Perhaps one or the other of those friends would be there again.
I gave her a card with my phone number so she could call me if she heard from her sister, and she pulled out a walkie-talkie and in a few minutes, Buster, now one of her personal bodyguards, stepped in. He grinned as he reached into his jacket and handed me an indecent amount of cash.
“When will you get started, Mr. Murray?” she asked as she prepared to leave.
“Right away, Ms. Effingham.” I didn’t say it to her but when someone has been missing for over a day, someone who always stays in touch but hasn’t, it’s best to move as fast as possible. There was also the fact that they weren’t from Charlotte. That meant the young woman might not be familiar with which sections to avoid.
She studied me, then she smiled. “You may call me “Madison”. May I call you “Tennessee?”
I returned the smile. “Madison it is, and yes, you may.” I saw interest in that look, and yes, she was fine, but I never went to bed with a client. That could cause complications. Especially if the case didn’t end well. “I’ll be in touch.”
I began that evening, as soon as she left, and that night was when I learned of her sister’s probable whereabouts. I’d lucked out at the nightclub and found those two friends of hers. That is, if one could call it luck that I was going to have to go to Blue Heaven.
Her friends, having only recently moved to Charlotte, hadn’t lived here long enough to learn about that particular neighborhood. They didn’t know that it might not be the best place to visit, so therefore, they didn’t advise her not to go. That they didn’t know wasn’t surprising since no one much talked about it.
I knew finding someone in that confusing and shifting place could prove to be difficult, more so than usual, but I’m stubborn about some things. I’d never before cancelled simply because it might get hard, and I didn’t intend to start.
Chapter Twenty
SINCE I WOULD HAVE TO GO AT NIGHT AND getting in through the regular entry after dark posed a problem, that brings me to another disagreeable feature about Blue Heaven: the gully surrounding the place was full of the blighted vegetation that showed up after the Event.
I couldn’t speak for the rest of the world but none of the blighted patches in the city proper were as extensive as that around the Blue Heaven neighborhood, and I’d never run across any that widespread in any other parts of the country to which I’d been, either.
For Blue Heaven, the blight was a six hundred foot wide section of strange withered trees, scrubby weeds, and bare soil. This cheerless band of wasteland encircled the entire neighborhood and set it off from the rest of the city. Other than through the entrance, the only way in was across some section of that strip. Hardly anyone tried going in that way because, going through that grim stretch was almost certain to get you killed.
It meant you not only had to fight your way across six hundred feet of nastiness, but if you made it past that, you had to figure out how to get through, or over, the vine covered eight-foot stone wall that also surrounded the place.
The thought of going into a blighted area wasn’t anything that had ever crossed my mind, nevertheless, the next night, which, since it was January, was miserably cold, I found myself stealing across that piece of nasty. You do what you have to do and I didn’t have a choice as it was my only other way of getting in since I didn’t want to be stopped and questioned, and at the main entrance, there were always a couple of big shit-witted goons occupying the guardhouse twenty-four seven.
How did I think I’d get in unscathed? Note that I said hardly anyone went in through the blight and that you were almost certain not to make it.
I knew of an exception, a man who had gone through the Blue Heaven blight at least three times – and lived. There may have been others but if so I hadn’t heard of them, only about the ones who went in and never came out. So, as far as I knew, he was the only person who ever successfully made the trip through that inhospitable strip of land.
I met him a couple of years before and he wasn’t exactly a pal but we sometimes shot pool together.
“Ain’t no good way ta go slidin’ through that crap, man,” grunted Cue. “Ain’t no best time, neither.”
He uttered those words as he lined up his shot after I asked what would be a good way to go and the best time for slipping in through that stretch of desiccated vegetation.
I didn’t know his real name. “Cue” was what everybody called him because he loved nothing better than shooting pool. I’d gotten him into a game down at “Bob’s”, the bar and pool hall a few doors down the street from the flat I called home and office.
“They’s only bad ways, an’ bad times for doin’ it. Now, a bad time ta do it is durin’ th’ day ‘cause them turds at th’ gate take turns lookin’ over th’ wall an’ taking pot shots at anything that moves, an’ they ain’t th’ only ones keepin’ a eye out for somebody tryin’ ta come in that way. If ya luck up an’ make it to the wall ya will git caught tryin’ ta sneak in an’ that ain’t good. But, they don’t go near th’ wall at night an’ it ain’t watched. ‘Course, th’ worst time ta do it is at night.” He leaned over and took his shot, which was a good one, then stood up and studied me. “But, that’s when ya have ta do it so nobody sees ya creeping yo skinny ass in.”
I had a feeling he was going to say that. “Why’s night the worst time?” I asked. Like I didn’t know.
He finished shooting, and racked up the balls before cocking his baldhead over and squinting at me with one bloodshot gray eye. “You ain’t even gotta ask that, Tenn. You know why. An’ that place is worse than any that little shit we got ‘round th’ city. But, I can tell ya how ta git in, an’ how ta git around th’ worst of it.” He smiled. “Tell ya what, ‘cause I like ya, jist gimme one-fifty an’ ya got it.”
See? Not a pal. But, I knew I’d have to pay him for the information. And Cue never haggled so that was his final price.
I hesitated. A hundred and fifty bucks wasn’t an extraordinary amount of money. In fact, with the latest round of inflation, it was more like having fifty or sixty dollars seven and a half years ago, but it was still a nice piece of change. I got to thinking maybe I could take my chances at the entry. Then, I re-thought. I’d have to tell those tan-uniformed blockheads why I was there and my instincts were telling me that letting them know I was searching for a missing young woman in their neighborhood might not be a good idea.
That might bring out the suit, and I suspected “I’m here for a friendly visit” wouldn’t be likely to cut it, either. In my line of work, you had to be good at lying and I was a decent liar but I knew that, usually, the only people allowed in at night were ones that lived there or someone from law enforcement. You needed a damned good reason and what kind of excuse could I give that would make them let me in without sending for the suit? Given time, I could set up one but I didn’t have a lot of time.