Chapter 27
“She attacked me first,” the junkie on the floor pleaded, still tugging at his handcuffed wrist. “She attacked me—I was only defending myself!”
“I didn’t attack anybody,” Alex countered. “You tried to rob me.”
“That’s not what happened. You lie!” he hissed. “Bitch, you—”
“You need to shut the fuck up,” Con said.
The man’s eyes blazed into him, but he thought better of speaking again and instead clamped his cracked lips together.
Alex groaned in discomfort as she stretched her back.
“You okay?” Con asked.
“I’ll be fine,” she said. And then Alex turned towards the kid who had sold her the ticket. “Where do you get your movies from?”
“What?” he said, genuinely confused by the question.
“I asked you where you get your movies from,” Alex said again, flicking her hand toward the projector screen that was still showing what Con thought was a superhero flick.
He had to give it to his partner. Despite being attacked, Alex was still sticking to their plan.
“I—I don’t know. I—I just work here, I just take tickets,” the boy stammered.
“And deal heroin out of the theater,” Con added.
The boy’s eyes narrowed.
“I don’t know nothin’ about that.”
“Yeah, what the fuck you talkin’ about?” I ain’t—”
“Keep your fucking mouth shut,” Con warned.
“I don’t care about the drugs,” Alex continued. Her tone shifted again. Now she sounded bored. “I care about the movies. Where do you get them from?”
Both of the junkies were on edge, believing that this was some sort of trap. Even to Con, it sounded strange. Pirated movies were hardly on par with dealing heroin, no matter how small scale it might be.
Booth Boy shrugged.
“Like I said, I only take tickets. I don’t know nothin’ about no movies. Just write the damn signs and take tickets. Press play.”
“Take me to the projector room,” Alex said.
“I—I—” he met Alex’s stare. “Fine, okay. Fuck.”
Booth Boy led the way and Con followed, staying close to his partner.
Behind them, the kid on the ground said, “What about me?” He rattled the handcuffs. The steel bit into his wrist, leaving a gnarly red welt. “What about me ?”
They ignored him.
The ticket taker led them back out into the main lobby, and then to a small door hidden behind the defunct concession stand.
“I don’t know what the fuck you guys are looking for, but I’ll say it again: I don’t know nothin’ about no movies.”
They found themselves in the projector room. The device playing the movie was old, loud, and hot. The room itself wasn’t very large, maybe ten or twelve feet wide and deep. Con’s expectations were tainted by the quality of the theater proper, but he had anticipated to see large film reels like in the olden days. Instead, the beer fridge-sized device was hooked up to a computer and monitor.
“Alls I do is come in here and press play.”
“Show me,” Alex ordered.
The kid wiggled the mouse, and the monitor showed a log-in screen. The username was ‘admin’, but the password appeared as a series of asterisks.
“What’s the password?” Alex demanded.
The kid, still clearly confused about what was happening said, “Midnight matinee, all lowercase.”
Alex pushed him aside and punched the password in herself to make sure that it worked.
It did and the screen displayed a directory full of video files.
Con looked over his partner’s shoulder and read some of the titles in his head. The one running now was Quantum Guardians and he spotted Eclipse: Dawn of Shadows included in the list. The other names were more descriptive.
Anal this, bondage that.
Massive Loads 1 through 7.
Naughty Nurses up to thirteen.
How there could be so many of these derivative porn films was a mystery to Con.
“They ain’t mine,” the kid said, noticing Con’s gaze.
“Sure.”
Alex clicked some of the column headings, rearranging the file names by date, size, and even length.
It was becoming unbearably hot in the room now. Con had started to sweat while waiting outside the theater, and his perspiration rate had increased tremendously when he’d seen his partner in distress.
Now, he was forced to wipe his eyes, which burned from the salty liquid.
He didn’t know how much longer he could stay here.
“You find anything?” he asked.
“I don’t know yet,” Alex said, squinting at the screen and clicking the mouse.
“Let me try,” Con suggested. Alex gave him a curious look, and he wondered if she was stereotyping him. Because he was older, because he didn’t spend hours on his cell phone, he probably didn’t know how to use a computer.
Well , Con thought, joke’s on you.
Instead of taking the mouse from his partner’s hand, he grabbed the desktop computer and yanked. Two of the cords going from the box to the projector came free, but the third caught.
The kid cried out as the projector wobbled on the worn table.
“Hey!”
Alex positioned herself between him and Con.
“You can’t—you can’t just take that! How am I supposed to play movies?”
Con looked down his nose at the kid.
“You seem to be a pretty good actor,” he said. “Pretending that you don’t know what really goes on here. Why don’t you hop up on stage and perform a one-man show?”
The kid’s chin disappeared in his throat.
“What?”
Con paid him no mind as he looked over at Alex and said, “Let’s go.”
“What the fuck man? You can’t just take that. You need a warrant or some shit.”
“I can, and I will. Just be grateful that I don’t arrest your ass.”
With that, Con walked out of Midnight Matinee, the computer in his arms.
Alex followed.
“What about the kid you handcuffed?”
Con glanced to the adjacent apartment stoop, then down the alley. As he’d predicted, both were empty now.
“I’ll call someone local to pick the guy up.” Alex’s face was pinched, and she was walking with a slight limp. “You sure you’re not hurt?”
“I think I’ll be fine. Just bruised.”
“We should probably take you to the hospital to get checked out.”
“No, it’s not that bad.”
Con inspected his partner, wondering if she was seriously injured or just trying to put on a brave face.
He couldn’t tell.
“Trust me, I’m fine,” Alex said. There it was again: trust. She was good; really good. “Let’s just get back to the office. I want to see what’s on the computer.”