She opened her purse and showed me a handgun. Antique six-shooter. Probably wouldn’t have fired at all. But I’m sure “Roach” didn’t want to take that chance.
“He came back for her two nights later,” the mother said. “Dorothy refused to listen to me, she walked the halls all night long. She couldn’t sleep or eat…she was so thin.”
“Withdrawal,” I said. “Very common in these cases. Nothing to worry about.”
Sometimes a good lie is all it takes to make a client feel better.
“He broke through a window and took her. Or she broke the window and climbed down to him. I’m not sure. But I saw them running through the hedges. Him in the black leather jacket with the skull stitched on the back. I’d have known it was him even without that silly jacket.”
“What was Dorothy wearing?” I asked. A few more procedural questions followed. She gave me a picture of Dorothy. It was taken a year ago, before Roach came into the picture.
The picture showed sunlight, green grass, and the blossoms of a cherry tree. Dorothy stood beneath the branches in a yellow sundress. Her hair was long and wavy, the color of ripe corn, her eyes black as midnight. She was smiling. The kind of smile that makes you feel good, yet also a little sorry for her. I believed Ms. McIntyre when she said her daughter was a good girl.
Good girls are prime currency in the city.
“Promise me you’ll find her,” my client said. “Bring her back to me…” A fresh welling of tears ran down her cheeks. Dorothy’s mother was a looker too. I could see her beauty beyond the patina of pain and worry that marred its surface.
I knew better than to make a promise I couldn’t keep.
“I’ll do everything I can,” I told her. “I have some experience in these matters. Go home and get some rest. I’ll contact you in a few days.”
Ms. McIntyre paused at my office door and looked back at me.
“Do you think…do you think he took her…into the city?”
I nodded.
She nearly fainted. I grabbed her shoulders and she fell into my arms.
“Don’t worry,” I told her. “I know the city. Leave it to me.”
I cashed her check as soon as she left.
The picture of Dorothy lies on the passenger’s seat next to me. Neon lights seep through the windshield to glide across its glossy surface, painting her face in shades of hot pink, cherry red, and bruised violet.
Most of the outer streets are lined with the burned-out husks of old cars or service vehicles. You can only drive so far into the city before you have to get out and hoof it. Luckily, I have a good parking connection.
A pack of red-eyed starvelings eyes me as I glide by. A bottle of piss or alcohol smashes across my windshield. I hit the gas and take a few corners fast enough to leave them behind. It’s not far to the alley that slopes beneath a crumbling tower. At the bottom of the ramp is a steel door like the kind you used to see in bank vaults. I hit the brakes then lay on the horn.
A couple of armed guards appear from nowhere. I pass them my investigator’s license and a pair of neatly folded fifties. They hand me back the license and the vault door opens. I glide through the rows of vehicles, most of them left to rot here years ago. But there are a few clients like me, a few machines left in working order. I pick a spot near the exit, pay the attendent, and get my gear from the trunk. All of this is going on my expense report.
A longcoat hides the hand cannon strapped beneath my right arm. The picture of Dorothy slides into my right pocket, along with my silver flask. The hunting knife slides neatly into my left boot. Sometimes you have to work quietly in the city. That’s when a good knife comes in handy.
The door I use to exit the parking vault is hardly visible from the street. I hit the asphalt and head toward the glittering chaos of the inner city. The light rain is steady and warm. Gusts of wind kick up swirls of dirty cellophane. Sheets of hanging moss dance like restless ghosts. Seven blocks later I spot an old woman with a black suitcase walking directly toward me. There’s nobody else on the street. I’m in a canyon whose walls are pocked with glassless windows. Firelight flickers through rectangular orifices. The telltale signs of squatters and drug dens.
The woman with the black suitcase is closer now. I see her wrinkled face, the sway of her wide hips. Her hair is long and matted, her eyes hidden by the brim of a moth-eaten hat. She wears a raggedy longcoat over a tattered dress and army boots. She clutches the suitcase to her breast with both hands and walks with a slow limp, like she’s never been in any kind of hurry. One of her hands rubs the surface of the case like petting the back of a lizard.
I cross to the other side of the street but she stops, head turning to follow me.
I reach the far sidewalk, step over a junkie who’s either sleeping or dead in the gutter, and keep my eyes trained forward. The woman with the black suitcase laughs behind me. It sounds like a death rattle, like her throat’s been cut and later healed into a mass of scar tissue.
I turn the corner and leave the horrid laughter behind me.
Up ahead I spot the globe of crimson neon blinking above Frankie’s Utopia. A crowd of anxious junkies waits outside, quivering like snakes, waiting for their chance to gain admission. I walk to the head of the line, show my ID, and pay off the bouncer. He lets me inside.
Down a set of filthy stairs, through a reinforced iron door, and the pumping bass of the club rattles my bones. The sheer volume makes conversation near impossible. The lights flash and strobe, a mass of half-naked bodies writhes like some great amoebic organism. The room reeks of sweat, cheap perfume, and sex. A dozen clashing colors of smoke rise from the crowd. Overtaxed veins pulse beneath shallow layers of skin. The place is a junkie’s paradise. Hence the name.
At the bar Frankie recognizes me. She winks, pours me a shot of bourbon. Her mohawk haircut is covered with glitter, and her contacts sparkle in rainbow hues. Looking at her makes me dizzy.
“How’s it hangin’, D?” she yells in my ear. “Been a while…”
I nod and show her the picture of Dorothy McIntyre.
Frankie frowns and looks at me like I just spoiled her evening. She picks up the photo, examines it, then shakes her head.
“Nobody like that in the city,” she shouts above the assault of the bass.
“At least not anymore, right?” She smiles at my little jest.
I ask if she knows a guy named Roach, wears a skull on his back.
She grins, points across the teeming dance floor. And there he is, Mr. Roach in his skullface jacket, nodding his head, sweating and jerking to the industrial funk. I leave some money on the bar, drink the shot, and make my way through the crowd.
“I swear, I don’t know where she is!”
It’s hard for Roach to talk through his broken teeth and bloody lips, but he manages. He squirms across the puddles of piss and petrol. I grab him up again, slam him against the alley wall. His veins pulse like tiny snakes trying to burst free of his skin.
I drive a knee into his stomach. He pukes. Starting to sober up.
“Tell me another lie and I’ll get mad. Dorothy McIntyre. Who’d you sell her to?”
Roach wipes blood and bile from his mouth. He’s crying now.
I slap him. “Don’t cry. Be a big boy. Who has Dorothy?”
The punk coughs and shivers. “I can’t say anything…they’ll kill me.”
I bring my face real close to his. I let him see the big knife, feel its point on his eyelid. “I’ll kill you. After I take your eyes. Tell me now and you’ll have a chance to run. Get out of the city. If you don’t, it’ll kill you anyway. Just a matter of time.”