That’s not the thing that made me go ‘hmmmm’; it was what was written in blue ballpoint on the back.
A single word.
A name.
Bambi.
I leaned toward Mr. Gunther and showed him the card.
“Bambi,” I said. “Where?”
“… hostium nostrorum, quaesumus, Domine, elide superbiam: et eorum contumaciam dexterae tuae virtute prosterne…”
“Stop that,” I said, “or you’ll get to meet your lord and savior sooner than later, capiche?”
He stopped the chanting.
I wiggled the card and repeated, “Where?”
He looked from the card to me and back again. His eyes, which were already pretty well bugged out, bulged nearly out of their sockets. The steady stream of Latin dribbled to a stop.
He said, “N — no…”
Behind me Tall was starting to groan and move sluggishly among the rubble.
Outside the music was still pounding, but who knew what Palakas was doing. Calling the cops. Calling more thugs. Loading a gun. I could hear a big clock ticking in my brain.
“Talk,” I said. “Or should I let the dog out to play?”
Turns out, he didn’t want to see the dog again.
Didn’t really want to talk, either, but we crossed that speed bump without anyone losing a wheel.
Kurt Gunther and his partner, Salvatore Tucci — Mr. Tall — were bouncers. Not a major surprise there. But they didn’t work here at ViXXXens. They worked at a place called Club Dante. I’d heard of it but had never been there. It was one of those so-called ‘gentlemen’s clubs’. Lots of girls with almost nothing on and lots of booze, but they don’t consider themselves a titty bar. The girls are prettier — or have more expensive cosmetic surgery — the booze is all top shelf and over-priced, and lap dances cost more than most of the customers here at ViXXXens make in a week. Places like that are usually fronts for the sex trade, but proving it is a bitch. You have to be a member, and anything hinky happens behind closed doors. The clientele are the local rich and powerful, which means the place has a lot of money and a lot of juice. Places like that don’t get raided, or if they do, word has already come down and when Vice breaks in everything is a-jay squared away.
“Is Bambi out there?” I asked him.
Gunther started to tell me that she wasn’t, that he didn’t know who she was, but I reminded him that if I had to show him the wolf again, then the beast was going to take home a trophy. Gunther clearly didn’t want to sing in a high squeaky voice for the rest of his life.
He told me that Bambi was hired to work a special party out at Dante’s. They had lots of small rooms for parties.
“Who hired her?” I asked.
“Meyers,” he told me. “Daniel Meyers.”
The stockbroker.
“Where is she now? Where’s Bambi?”
Gunther said he didn’t know. He and his partner picked her up at ViXXXens and dropped her at Dante’s two nights ago, but the manager over there said that she split. They’d come back here looking for her but had so far come up dry. They were hanging around the place hoping she walked in.
I can usually tell when people are lying to me — it’s a smell thing — but Gunther was telling the truth. Or, at least as much of the truth as he knew.
I left him there and got out of the bar pretty quick. I caught a quick glimpse of Palakas across the bar talking on the phone. Didn’t wait to find out what kind of heat he was calling.
Bambi’s apartment building was close, so I headed over there and parked outside of the Windsor South Apartments. It was a six-story block built like a slab, with balconied apartments front and back. Cheap but not squalid. Lawn out front needed mowing but it wasn’t full of crab grass or weeds.
There was no doorman. The lobby had an intercom, but no one answered at either Bambi’s apartment or that of her friend, Donny Falk. So I loitered around until someone came in. When they used their key to open the inner security door, I went through with them. I gave a grunt and a nod like I knew them, and busied myself by pretending to look at something interesting on my BlackBerry. We got in the elevator. He got off at four; I went up to six, then found the fire stairs and went down to three. The apartments on the right-hand side were odd numbers, left side were even. Bambi’s apartment was 309. Falk’s was 307.
I knocked on 309 and heard nothing but echoes.
The hall was empty, the door was locked. I sniffed the door and smelled only those things I expected to smell. Wood, old cooking smells, a little mildew, and dust.
The place even felt empty. It had that kind of vibe. Like a dead battery.
The other doors along the hall stayed shut, so I bent to study the lock. Every P.I. worth his license can bypass a lock without much trouble. The really good ones require a set of lock-picks and maybe three minutes work. This one was a cheap-ass lock, and I opened it with a flexible six-inch plastic ruler I carry for exactly this kind of thing. It pushed the tapered bolt back on its spring and the lock clicked open. I glanced up and down the hall and then stepped inside.
Denise Sturbridge’s apartment was neat and small and clean. And empty. I ghosted my way through it. There were dishes in the dishwasher, leftovers in the fridge, some trash in the cans that told me nothing, the usual stuff in the bathroom, and exactly what you’d expect in the bedroom. Drawers filled with cheap but attractive clothes. Dance stuff. Shoes, but not too many and most of them inexpensive. A hamper with soiled items in it. Twin bed, pink sheets, a stuffed turtle.
I touched very little, but I sniffed it all. And, although that sounds intensely creepy, think of it more like a dog and less like a thirty-something adult man.
I catalogued the scents of Denise Sturbridge as a living person. I added that to the already-logged scent of her blood.
There was nothing of note anywhere. A work schedule was posted on the side of the fridge, held in place by a magnet from a pizza shop. There was a TV and DVD player, and most of the disks she had were romantic comedies or Disney stuff.
Girl stuff.
Kid stuff. Like the stuffed turtle.
My heart hurt looking at it.
“Where are you, kid?” I asked the empty apartment. “Give me a little help here.”
But there wasn’t even a whisper of anything useful.
I wiped off everything I touched and left her apartment. I drifted down to Donny Falk’s door and froze in my tracks.
There were splinters on the carpet and when I peered at the frame around the lock I could see where the wood had been cracked. Someone had forced the door and then pushed the splinters and twisted metal back into place as far as it would go. You had to look close to see it. I was looking close.
Which is when I caught the smell.
Faint.
But there.
Sickly sweet and gassy.
Only one thing smells like that.
I put my ear against the wood and listened for any sound of movement. Anything at all.
Nothing.
Shit.
I leaned my shoulder against the door and pushed it open. There wasn’t much resistance beyond the friction of the broken lock and torn frame. I stepped inside and immediately pushed the door shut.
Donny Falk was kitchen help in a strip club, and he clearly lived small. Mismatched Salvation Army furniture, plastic milk crates and boards for shelving, posters thumbtacked to the walls, a threadbare rug over worn linoleum.
Maybe that had been enough for him. Maybe he kept the place clean and filled it with music and friends and his own hopes and dreams. Some people cruise along that way. If they don’t have much then at least they have some measure of freedom. They make genuine friendships, and they’re loving and loyal to anyone who shows them respect and kindness.