“Brad? Thanks for coming. Hey, please call me Dev. Very nice to meet you.”
He had a solid grip, but he wasn’t giving me the I’m a real man squeeze. He looked me in the eye, confident but not cocky.
“Yeah, well like I said, I’m not sure I’ll be of any help.”
“You never know. Look I promised just five minutes of your time. Would you feel more comfortable if we got a table?” I asked.
“No, here will be just fine.” He didn’t look at them, but he’d included the two ex-jocks in his comment, whether he knew it or not.
“We can get a table for four if you’d prefer,” I said.
“Hunh?”
“Your pals, not a problem with me.” I nodded in the direction of the two. The larger one slid off his stool, about six four, chin jutted out a bit. He glanced at Brad.
“Hey, did I see you skate somewhere? Not Minnesota,” I asked, making it up as I went along.
“Fighting Sioux,” he answered before he caught himself.
Every once in a while I guess blindly and it pans out.
“Yeah, North Dakota,” his pal added almost simultaneously.
“We all played together up there,” Brad replied. “Look, Dev, like I said I haven’t seen Nikki for almost, well, for a very long time. And, I’ll be honest, you probably already know the last time we parted it wasn’t on the best of terms.”
“Actually, no, I know no such thing. In fact, I’ll be perfectly honest, I know absolutely nothing. Except that she’s supposedly missing and her sister wants me to find her.”
“Her sister?”
“Yeah.”
“I didn’t know she had one,” Brad said.
“You dated her, I mean Nikki, awhile back?”
“Dated? Yeah sort of, look here’s the deal. We met her, we all did, she was the entertainment for a bachelor party we attended. I called her on a couple of occasions, maybe a month, six weeks apart. But that was before I was married,” he added hastily.
“Me too.”
“Me three,” the pal on the stool added with half a chuckle.
“So this was a professional arrangement?”
“Initially,” Brad frowned and nodded. The two friends nodded as well.
“Any of you seen her in the past year?”
They all shook their heads the one who’d stood initially reached for his beer, took a long sip, then set the beer down. We were just guys talking now.
“So how’d you leave it with her? Did you just not call?”
They looked from one to the other, and Brad answered.
“That was sort of the deal breaker. See, I met her to sort of end things. She had started contacting me, and I didn’t need any trouble. She went ballistic, crying, screaming how could I do this to her? Not fun. And I purposely set our meeting up in a public place. Mears Park, about three o’clock on a sunny Saturday afternoon. I thought it would be safer. God, el wrongo! People were grabbing their kids and hustling out of the park. She was swearing, she even took a swing at me. Jesus, I’d just passed the bar exam, I was about to be engaged not the sort of attention I wanted or needed.”
“When I heard that, shit, I just never called her again,” this from the pal still sitting.
“Me neither. She was fun but who needs it, plus the whole hooker thing. I mean I got a kid,” the pal standing took another sip, a long one.
“She phoned me about a week later,” Brad said, “and threatened to post pictures on the Internet, tell my girlfriend, all sorts of threats, wanted ten grand. I mean she was blackmailing me, or trying to. I just let her rant and then told her I’d taped the call.”
“Did you?”
“No, but she’d left a message on my phone earlier that day a couple of minutes of her screaming about the same sort of shit, you know, posting pictures, but she never mentioned any money in the message. Anyway, I told her I taped the call and I’d send her a sample. I sent her the phone message she’d left, and that was the last I heard from her, ever. So anyway that’s why Barry and Greg are here, I or we thought maybe this was a setup to, you know, blackmail me or us, again.”
When Brad mentioned their names, Barry and Greg nodded, like they were just being introduced over a casual beer instead of being fingered as call girl’s customers and potential blackmail targets.
I reached into my pocket and pulled out the photo of Nikki and the smaller Asian woman, both naked with tan lines. There were two guys standing alongside and behind them on a beach, maybe a lake, maybe the ocean, hard to tell. The Asian woman had a sunburst or something tattooed around a pierced navel.
“Is this Nikki?”
“Yeah,” Brad nodded but looked deadly serious. Barry and Greg passed the photo back and forth, nodded. No one joked.
“You know either of those guys in the photo? Or maybe where it was taken?”
Barry looked at the photo again, shook his head no as he looked.
“Any of you happen to know who the other woman is?”
Head shakes all around.
“Did you ever meet at Nikki’s?” I asked hoping to get a line on what was up with the place. They all shook their head no again.
“I always met her in a bar, then, well I’d have a room lined up somewhere and we’d go there,” Barry said.
“To tell you the truth I was always a little leery about getting bush whacked,” Greg smiled at the term. “You know some guy hiding in a closet with a baseball bat or the cops come knocking on the door and it was a set up and now I’m really screwed. I, well, I paid her and then just took her back to where her car was once we were finished. We never spent the night together or anything.”
I couldn’t help but think, oh well, since you didn’t spend the night together I guess that makes it okay, you idiot.
“Did you know where she lived?”
All three shook their heads.
“What kind of a car did she drive?”
Three completely blank looks from one to the other.
“What did she charge?”
“Usually about two hun…”
“Don’t answer that,” Brad interrupted, cutting Greg off.
“Okay,” I said.
“Look Dev, like I said before I don’t think we can be of much help. None of us have seen her for quite a long time. We’ve no idea where she could be or even who would know.” Greg and Barry nodded in agreement.
I asked Brad,
“What about the pictures of you she threatened to post on the Internet?”
“That was the screwiest part, or one of them. She never took a photo of me, not even with her phone. The places we got together, I arranged them so it’s not like she could have had them bugged. She never knew where we would end up. I don’t ever recall so much as holding her hand in public. It was strictly business, very private and yeah, believe me, I know it was really stupid, on a number of levels.”
I had to agree.
“Sorry, wish I could help you more but that photo you passed around, that’s the first time I’ve even seen Nikki in almost a year and a half, God’s honest truth. After the blackmail threat I purged all my records of anything to do with her. I wouldn’t know how to contact her if I wanted to, which I don’t. Look we’re expecting, Linda and I, my wife. The last thing I need, or any of us need right now is Nikki coming back and holding us up. God, I’d go right to the cops.”
More nods of agreement.
I left shortly after that. Nice-enough guys who’d been really stupid and instead of giving me any answers just left me with more unanswered questions. I shook hands all around, threw a twenty on the bar and told them the next round was on me.
Chapter 8
Aaron LaZelle’s call woke me up at 8:45 the next morning. Okay, I was awake but I was in the lounging mode, still in bed staring at the ceiling.
“You dipshit, don’t tell me you’re still in bed!”
“Mom, is that you?”
“Look dopey, I’m about four blocks from that flophouse you live in. Meet me at the Donut Hole for lattes and French donuts. I’ll start without you. Oh and you’re buying!”