Chapter 17 #2
A tatter of fabric fluttering like a sniper’s wind sock.
He felt it, an electrical surge at the base of his throat. He moved past the arrowhead fence tops hemming the subterranean level and eased down the slick concrete steps.
Snagged on a lifted splinter of rust from the handrail, the ribbon was no more than six inches long and half as wide. His heart rate ticked up as he reached to pull it free.
Tiny lilies against a blue background.
He stared down the half dozen steps to the barred door below. Set his jaw.
Descended.
Improbably, the door was unlocked. Someone had left in a hurry.
He tugged it open, the loose rubber sweep rasping against the ground.
The smell of mold rushed him, overpowering a chemical reek.
He stepped inside. Crappy subflooring, a few patches of carpet, a tragic pink couch, and a bed positioned in the center of the room like a prop. Or an instrument. In several spots, faint specklings of scarlet varnished the ticking stripes of the mattress.
His heartbeat quickened once more, though it remained shy of ninety.
Beside an empty jug of hydrogen peroxide, an uncapped black Magic Marker, and sundry other trash was a discarded ski mask.
He stared at it.
The missing eyes stared back.
Ominously, the door to the bathroom had been removed.
He eased forward another few steps, clearing the sight lines beyond the tub.
His boot nudged a splotch of carpet, and he looked down to see a silver-dollar-size impression indenting the stiff fibers, like the peg of a pogo stick.
A tool? A weapon? The prong of a floor lamp?
A form cast a shadow across the doorway. “The fuck are you?”
At the threshold stood a ruinous woman, her face a Shar-Pei collapse of folds and smoker’s wrinkles.
Stained sweatpants, sweatshirt with matching stains, feet shoved into stretched-wide house slippers.
Blond hair with startling black roots taken up in a ponytail, flares of wiry gray wisping out at the sides.
She scratched her thigh with the muzzle of a plasticky Kel-Tec 9-mil that looked like it hadn’t been cleaned in generations. “This is my place.”
“Doesn’t look like you sleep here.”
“Why do you care where I sleep, perv?” She waved the pistol vaguely in his direction. Her clothes carried the reek of recent cooking, onions and meat. “Comes with the apartment above.”
“Yeah?” Evan said. “You rent this out?”
“Why? You lookin’?”
“I suppose I am. Looking.”
“You’re trespassing’s what you are. Don’t think I don’t deal with tough guys.”
“That who you rent to? Tough guys?”
“Not me. Guy who stays here does. Fucking dumb move, that was, me letting him stay here.”
“Why’s that?”
Easing inside, she tugged at her fatigued elastic waistband, let it snap back into place. “Not like I can report him, can I?”
Evan got it. “You’re subletting, too.”
“None of your fucking business what I do. I scramble like everyone else to afford to live in this fucking city. You wanna judge me?”
“No,” Evan said. “Your guy, he sub-sublets a lot?”
“‘Sublet’ is a bit grand a term for what he does.” She scoffed, her folds shifting, and waved her pistol around some more. “Put it this way. Turn on a black light in here, it’d look like a paintball fight.”
“So he doesn’t stay here?”
“Rarely. Runs his scams instead. Leaves me to clean up the messes. And there are messes.” She might’ve been forty or seventy.
What were once pretty sea-green eyes flashed out from the wreckage of her face; in their present context, they looked trapped.
“But isn’t that what we do? Clean up your messes? ”
“I don’t know. Is that what you do?”
“Why are you here?”
“Have some business with your subtenant.”
“Osman? You gonna beat his ass?”
“Want me to?”
She considered, chewed a chapped lip.
“Where is he?” Evan asked.
“Where’s he always.” She jerked her chin. “Strip club across the street. Oh, I’m sorry. ‘Sports bar.’” Somehow she managed to make air quotes even around the gun frame. “You’ll recognize him. He’s the smug fuck. Turkish or Armenian.”
“Those are,” Evan said, “not the same.”
“No?”
“So I’ve been told.” He edged toward her. If she did any more baton twirling with the 9-mil he was prepared to break her arm. But he’d prefer not to touch her.
Now she had the pistol pointed at his crotch. His patience was thinning.
“You should be careful,” he said. “Any altercation could escalate into a gunfight.”
“You’re not packing.” Clearly, she couldn’t make out the ARES hidden in his appendix holster. “So how exactly’s that gonna happen here?”
His hand shot out, stripped the crappy pistol from her.
He dropped the magazine, caught it between the ring finger and middle finger of his right hand, and jacked the slide to clear the chamber.
With his thumb, he flicked the rounds free from the mag one after another so they rained down across her long-suffering house slippers.
“Because,” he said, “you brought a gun.”
She’d withdrawn against the wall, hands flared in a show of passivity.
He brushed past her and up the stairs.
He stood on the sidewalk, breathing the layered air of the city at nightfall.
He glanced over at the HOW’S MY DRIVING?
lettering on the back of the moving truck, ass-coverage for liability.
Which likely meant further measures. He checked the rear bumper and around the brake lights to no avail.
Circling the truck, he examined the grille next—nothing.
Multiple tickets had yellowed beneath the wipers of the bug-splattered windshield; the truck had languished awhile in this spot.
No obvious gear was suctioned to the glass.
But there on the rearview mirror, forward-facing, was a shiny button dot of a lens, aimed just past where the stairs met the sidewalk.
If the thugs and young woman had turned left out of the apartment, he’d be out of luck.
But if they’d turned right, the surveillance camera might have captured them.
The moving truck, by definition mobile, wouldn’t have shown up in Joey’s geofenced search, which zeroed in on fixed cameras. He snapped a shot of the license plate, texted it to her with a brief description of what he needed.
Then he stepped to the edge of the curb and took in the street. A half block away, a Daisy Buchanan–green neon sign beckoned: THE VELVET KITTY.
Behind him, the woman stumbled up the stairs, breathing hard, slotting the reloaded mag back in the gun. She came at him with more bandido-waving. “You think you can just—”
He seized the Kel-Tec out of her flailing hand again, pocketed the mag, and checked the slide. Stepping off the curb, he dropped the pistol and heel-kicked it behind him down a storm drain.
Her screamed expletives accompanied him up the street all the way to the strip club.