A Spill of Blood Ch. 03

"I'm afraid of them. They're hard men."

"Some of them. I'm not so sure about Charlie Everett."

"No, he's hard too." She was speaking from experience at judging men. "He's the weaselly kind of hard. You can manage that type, but you gotta watch how much alcohol they've got in them."

"What do you mean by manage?"

Despite her fear, I saw that flicker of amusement I'd seen in the eyes of the other girls, even Sydney's. The flicker of not-quite-derision at the amateur.

"Keep things raunchy. That type's like a teenage boy. They say they want girlfriend but what they really want is porn flick. But just like teenage boys, if they've had a few drinks, they can get stupid, and things can go sideways." She shrugged. "The others seemed like they treat girls okay. I mean, I've known Larry awhile, and he's never a problem."

"Even Mitchell?"

The amusement fled and the fear took over again. "No, not Mitchell. He's the kind you can't manage. You just steer clear of those. If you can."

The light in the room dimmed, and there was a sudden clap of thunder as the storm that had been threatening all morning broke. Nikki jerked and her hand darted under the throw pillow next to her.

My internal eyebrows went up. I kept the outside ones where they belonged.

She looked back at me. "I'm sorry. I'm all nerves. I need a drink." She got up, managing to keep the enticing view of legs to a minimum and moved to a rolling bar against the wall. "Do you want one?"

It was four o'clock, a little early to start. It wouldn't be the first time in my life, however. "Do you have rye?"

"Of course."

I believed her. That bar looked like it had just about one of everything. It also had a trashcan next to it with two empty seven-fifties poking their necks out. I recognized the labels. She had good taste in scotch and fear was making her indulge it. She poured from a third brother to those two into one glass, then held up a bottle of Wild Turkey Rare Breed for me. I nodded and she poured into a second glass. "Ice?"

"Yes."

She walked into the kitchen that opened off the dining area. While she was out of sight, I rose quickly and moved to the couch. I lifted the throw pillow. Sure enough, nestled in the crack of the seat cushion was a gun. I didn't recognize it from just part of the backstrap and the clip base, but it wasn't a toy.

I looked over to see Nikki standing in the doorway to the kitchen with my drink in one hand, an ice tray in the other. She was staring at me, frozen. I hadn't moved quickly enough. I thought she'd break the ice out of the tray in there.

"It's Larry's," she said. "I'm scared, so he left it here. It makes me nervous. I've never used one."

Great! Just the kind of person who should have one tucked in their couch.

"How 'bout I just put it in the drawer of the bar over there until I'm gone. Trust me, nobody's coming up here right now. And if they do, maybe I'm the one who should deal with them."

"You have a gun?"

"Yeah." I took no-answer for an answer and lifted the gun from its hiding place. When I saw what it was, I was doubly glad I was stowing it away. It was a nice gun, three pounds of metal when fully loaded. It carried us through two world wars, Korea, and Vietnam. It was a caliber I liked ... in my hands.

In the grip of a small woman who didn't shoot, I'd be lucky if the second shot was within ninety degrees of the first, let alone the next six from someone in a panicked frenzy squeezing away. There was a good chance the upstairs neighbors would be having an interesting time. Or maybe not. The safety was on and adrenaline-pumped beginners forgot about them.

There was a frozen moment when it was in my hand and I was facing her. I could see it in her eyes: Is this where I die? What if I was wrong to trust Sydney? I should never have let him up here!

I smiled and slid it into the bar drawer. It took a moment, but I could see the tension flow out of her like water pouring over a dam. With only a slight shake in her voice, she asked, "How many?" and held up the ice tray.

"One."

For her, one drink turned to two while she told her story and then walked through it again as I hoped for some missed detail. Her version wasn't much different than what I'd heard from Sasha or Sydney: fishing boat, party games, private time. Her account of the game had less description of the mechanics and more veiled admission about the activities than Sydney's oblique "a guy got a minute or two." No surprise there. Sydney's phone held that picture of Nikki taking one of those moments with Anders.

"Was Larry with you the entire time?"

"Yes, well, maybe a minute or two in the bathroom, but not long enough to do anything."

I thought back to that walk through Regan's house. A quick trip to the bathroom wouldn't have been enough time to navigate the journey to the office, grab something, then get back as if nothing had happened.

"Let's talk about the other girls then, and I want to know more about the men."

"I'm hungry, Harry. Can we order something, maybe Chinese?"

I hadn't eaten since breakfast. I left her to put in the order while I made a trip to Sydney's apartment. She'd complained that rust-colored sweats and washing out underwear in the sink were getting old. Like I said, my day for women's apartments.

I threw a bunch of stuff into a shopping bag I found in a kitchen cabinet, not even trying to remember the detailed instructions on what I should pick. Sydney would look good in a burlap sack. I made sure none of the colors clashed and that she had appropriate garments for the various parts of her body. Maybe I gravitated toward sheer lace for some pieces. Sue me.

Before she joined the Church of Distilled to Eighty Proof, my mother would have told me it was a guardian angel. Before he caught a slug in the aorta, my dad would have said it was instinct honed by experience. In my opinion it was some indefinable hint—a faint noise or some flicker of motion through the barest crack of an opening door that was below the threshold of conscious perception. Something that triggered reflexes on alert because of my most recent encounter with Mitchell.

My left hand was still pulling the door open when my body twisted sideways. The first bullet plucked at the sleeve of my left arm, right where my chest would have been if I hadn't moved. The second gouged a groove in the metal of the doorframe as he tried to track my movement. Then the wall was in the way. That was no certain guarantee. Even if public corridor walls are thicker, and even if the pops rather than booms indicated a small caliber, walls aren't bulletproof vests.

He had his problems too. Walls don't let you aim, and studs and wire mesh will deflect a bullet. He came through the door in a rush, the pistol already swinging my way. His rush met the bag of clothing coming from low to high in an arc as I completed my spin. It took the extended gun hand high and the third shot went into the ceiling someplace. Then the shopping bag tore and he was inundated with fabric.

Ten pounds or so of soft material. Nothing to do damage, but that wasn't the point. The point was to distract and then get my hand empty. He tried to refocus and re-aim, but he was slow and I wasn't. I had his knee with one hand, locked the other with it, and heaved upward. He went over in a tumble and I was on him.

The beast that had yowled in complaint when Doorman Deke denied letting anyone up to Emerald's apartment was now spitting in fury. I took the chain off. Once before in my life I'd felt like I did now: the world jumping into clarity from adrenaline's focus, the sense that I could count the individual ticks of time and move between them. Above all, frustration melting into the exultation of acting against the sewage of the world. No thought, no scruples, just the beast.

I was on him, heedless of my knees crashing on the hard floor as I lunged, my left hand wrapped in the front of his raincoat and my right in his hair. I yielded against his instinctive motion to struggle up for a brief second, just enough for his head to come up eight inches. Then I slammed every bit of my two hundred pounds of weight down through my arm. There was a crunch as his head met the terrazzo of the corridor floor.

He was tough, I'll give him that. Even as his eyes unfocused, the gun came off the floor. But I was having none of it. I caught the wrist rotating toward me and bent it inward and up hard, feeling the wrist bones pop. Did that jolt his finger? Was he squeezing already in anticipation of jamming that barrel against me? Was it simply a spasm of a concussed brain?

He put a bullet in his own throat.

Did I care? Maybe some part of me did. Maybe the part that was a human being was upset at the death of another. Maybe the part that was a detective wanted answers from this guy. It didn't matter. Those parts were spectators. The beast was in control and I held the man pinned, one hand still on the wrist, the other in his hair, my face no more than a foot away as he bubbled and gasped and choked out the last seconds of his life underneath me. Maybe I had a cold smile on my face. I don't know; you'd have to ask him and he's not answering anymore.

When it was over, I rocked back, feeling the soreness in my knees. I waited and then waited some more, straining my ears for sounds. Everybody who's seen a thriller movie has learned that silenced pistols are, well, silent. There's a little "pfft" like opening a soda bottle and somebody falls over. Yeah, in fiction.

The reality is that even a little .22 cracks at about one-fifteen decibels when it's suppressed. That's a leaf blower ... or a moderate rock concert. There'd been four shots. I waited because I needed to know if anyone heard and was on the phone to the police. It was a balancing act. I didn't want to disturb the situation if I was already jammed up. I didn't want to be caught by someone inadvertently showing up if I wasn't. So, I listened for sounds out of the three other apartments on the floor, the stairwell, and the elevator moving.

A minute passed. No shouting, no dogs barking excitedly. Praying that meant everyone was at work and not huddled behind a couch whispering to a 911 operator, I took stock.

If I left him here, he'd be found within the hour as people came home. That was too soon. I wanted some more time with Nikki. I needed her to give on Larry, and police knocking on the door would put a crimp in that. The stairwell had the same problem. There was at least one fitness buff in every building who took the stairs. If I dragged him into Sydney's apartment, I'd get that time, but there was a hundred percent chance of implicating her.

It was inevitable though, assuming anybody looked here ... and I was betting someone would. This guy wasn't Carson Brady. Assuming this was the other person at my beating meant that Brady would find some pretext to come investigate, maybe bringing back legit cops when he didn't find an answer right away.

When they got here, they'd find a bullet in the corridor wall. There was a gouge in the metal of the door frame that some tech would identify as a bullet mark. The police would come into Sydney's apartment the second they could get a warrant, and they'd find three spent rounds embedded somewhere. They might as well find the body too, plus the weapon he'd killed himself with.

I was getting really tired of dragging bodies with my ribs, but I did it. I went back and surveyed the corridor. The fancy Gore-Tex material of his rain jacket seemed to keep blood in as well as water out, at least for the moment, so there was no trail for the casual eye. With the door closed behind me, I breathed out a sigh and got to work. I'd just committed a felony by moving the body, I needed to make use of the time it bought me.

A quick search of his pockets turned up nothing. Not a wallet, no money, not even the forgotten dry cleaning stub that would let me crack the case wide open. I took a set of his prints on a glass coaster, stuck it in a baggie, and stashed it in my jacket. I re-bagged Sydney's clothes and went back up to Nikki's place.

She knew something had changed when she saw me. I wasn't over the adrenaline flood and I'm sure it showed. The beast was back in its lair but hadn't submitted to the chain yet.

"Nothing," I said when she asked. "Some bad news. Nothing I can share." If I told her that a killer had been in the building stalking Sydney, me, and maybe her, she'd freak and I'd get nothing out of her.

Nikki handed me my glass, refilled. "Well, maybe this will help. Food will be here in a couple of minutes. It's just down the street." The little table was set for two.

Nikki settled on the couch and drew her legs up under her. Again I got a flash of a limb. This time it wasn't immediately withdrawn. She seemed more relaxed. She sipped her drink. I took a big swallow from mine and forced my breathing to slow.

When the intercom buzzed, she said, "Would you get it, Harry?"

Over Sichuan beef and Kung Pao shrimp, I drew what I could out of her. I wanted her to start with the men, but that was a bust.

"There's not much I can tell. Jordan booked with Eroticos. I think he probably booked Sasha and Luiza too. He has a great house and a nice boat. I can't tell you much more than that. From what I heard, he makes you put in the effort for your money, but it's not a bad time at all. The rest of the guys are hobbyists who just wanted to get laid. As for Larry, I won't talk about him."

No matter what I said, she wouldn't budge from that last beyond repeating they'd been together all evening. I had a little better luck on the subject of the other women. She assured me she only knew Sydney and Cara well—there was a little hitch at that last name—but she didn't balk from talking.

"I talked with Sasha a bit on the boat. She was sitting next to me."

When she finished describing pretty much the same person I'd met, I said, "Doesn't like men much."

She looked away, then shook her head. "No, I think that's wrong. She doesn't mind men. She just wants to win against them. This business ... this business can eat at you. If she figures she comes out on top, it helps."

She glanced over at me, saw I wasn't figuring it quite the same way.

"Harry, five thousand for the booking, plus tip. But the boat part was nothing more than hanging out with free booze. So really, you could say just three hours of work. She'll keep half plus the tip, and most of that the IRS will never hear about. A thousand an hour from men rich enough they could get it for free in this city if they bothered." She paused, then cracked a small grin while staring at my face. "And she didn't get smacked in the face to earn it."

I rubbed my jaw where the glove had done a number, knocked a premolar loose, in fact. I smiled ruefully to acknowledge the playful poke and added a trip to the dentist to the list of Get To Someday. She had a point about who was getting taken in that transaction. I wasn't sure I agreed, but it was arguable.

"Okay, what about the others?"

"Luiza ... umm ... I don't know a whole lot. I didn't talk to her much. She was fishing and then she was sitting on the other side of the deck. When we got back, we were kind of busy. She seemed nice. Kinda normal. Umm, she works for the same agency as Sasha?"

I knew that already. "Do you know its name?"

"Gallerie, with an 'ie' not a 'y'."

I nodded for her to go on.

"Coco is with Richard. I'm not sure, but I think maybe he's her sugar. She's definitely known him for a while. You could tell from the way they talked. Also, the other guys acted like they knew she was private property."

"Any idea how I could get in contact with her?"

Yeah, I wasn't supposed to do anything of the sort. Jordan had said it explicitly: "Coco too. She's his." But I was having trouble with loose ends and the clock was ticking, so I wanted something in my back pocket.

"Not really unless you call Richard. She was just Coco." She wrinkled her nose for a second. "And that name ... probably not real." She saw my glance and interpreted it correctly. "It's close enough. It's Nichelle, Nikki for work. Dad was a real Star Trek fan. Brothers William and Leonard, one sister Majel."

I didn't get it, but then, I never watched the show. If something hadn't made it into popular culture to the extent of "Klingon" or "Enterprise," I was clueless.

"She did say something about the LIRR, so maybe she lives out on Long Island."

I filed that away.

"Sydney, well, you know her yourself. I met her when she came to Eroticos and we got along. I got her name on the apartment list here. And Cara—" Again, there was a hiccup of fear and upset. "Cara I knew the best. We worked together several times, but we were friends outside too."

Luiza had mentioned that Emerald needed a revolving cadre of girl-partners, so it didn't surprise me to hear they worked together. I noticed that Nikki made no reference to the tension with Sydney, nor working with her at Larry's request. Given how steadfast she was in not talking about him, I set that aside for maybe another day.

Nikki tossed back the last of her scotch. "I'm switching to wine," she announced. "I have a limit of two on those." She stood and scooped up my glass that was down to a quarter inch of pale liquid. I didn't protest.

Despite focusing on trying to find ... futilely trying to find some nugget in what she was telling me, I was still charged with juices that hadn't faded yet. My body was telling me it wanted to punch a hole in a wall. My mind was worried about a dead body two floors down. The body was winning and would keep winning for a bit.

"You didn't mention Kimi," I said to her back. I saw her stiffen slightly.

Hmm. "What?"

She answered without turning around. "I didn't like her, but I also felt a little sorry for her."

"Why?"

"Because she was kinda sullen. Guys don't pay for that. The rest of us had to work a harder to keep the mood good. But ... Mitchell." She shuddered.

"What did he do to her?"

She turned to look at me fully. There was a long pause, then she shook her head. "You don't really want to know, Harry. You're not that kind of guy. You don't need to go into that kind of sewer. Nobody does."

I let it go. "Kimi's disappeared too," I told her.

I saw the fear flood back, along with the vulnerable look that had struck me when I arrived. This was an exhausted doe facing the ring of wolves.

"Maybe she chose to disappear," I said. I tried to keep my voice reassuring. "I mean, you're hiding away here. Maybe she's doing the same. Or maybe there's some other reason."

Yeah, leading the witness. Nikki wasn't stupid.

"You think she took the stuff? Maaaybe ..." The tone of the dragged-out word was considering, not doubtful, as her gaze turned inward, thinking back. "I mean, I saw Cara go with Charlie, but then we left, so I don't know where the others went."

It had been a hole in Sydney's story. Not a hole like she was lying, just a person unaccounted for. She'd been with Anders. Nikki with Larry. Emerald with Charlie. Luiza and Sasha were already gone with Jordan, and Coco with Richard. But after coming back upset from Mitchell, Kimi had dropped out of the storyline.

"You know," she said finally, "that makes the most sense to me." There was a note of relief. This was a woman on edge. The idea that Kimi was a thief was far more reassuring than that Kimi was another statistic.

"Sorry, but I need to hit the head," I said.

"In there. I'll have this waiting." She held up my drink.

When I came back, she was settled on one end of the couch. She held out my drink and I took it. I also took the implied invitation of her pulling her feet up under her again. I sat at the other end.