34. Aus
AUS
I didn’t tell Thea the whole truth.
I couldn’t. Not now. It isn’t relevant.
At least I hope it isn’t.
Rouge is dead. I went to go see her body myself.
She didn’t have a funeral—who on earth would offer to pay for one in light of what happened?—but I couldn’t believe it when I heard she was dead. I had to see her corpse in person.
I thought she was invincible. Immortal even.
She turned a blade on herself. Pierced her own breast with it, making sure her heart would never beat in another’s chest.
In the end, she was the only woman who could take herself down.
She was cornered, don’t get me wrong. Bianca and Harrison did a great job exposing her. The secret weapon was apparently her bouncer, Chet. She thought she could trust him. In the end, his allegiance was to chaos and chaos alone.
I paid an armed guard off to get into the morgue. Approached her table, pulled the sheet back.
She looked as immaculate in death as she did in life. Her clothes hadn’t yet been removed, and she wore several of her infamous red diamonds. Had it not been for the gaping stab wound over her left breast, I’d have thought she was simply sleeping.
But she’s dead.
Dead dead dead.
I saw it myself, even listened for a pulse against her cool neck.
Which means this red diamond isn’t from her.
At least not directly.
But it could be from someone who was aligned with her.
One guy, Florian Rose, owned a fancy historic hotel downtown. He was actually in surgery for an injury to his eye when news broke about Rouge. Video footage surfaced of him performing horrific rituals with the bodies of the employees Rouge killed. He was arrested upon waking up from surgery.
A few other people were arrested. But not enough.
Rouge Montrose has followers carrying on her misdeeds even in death.
The organ harvesting is over. Shinzo Life is closed.
Bianca cooperated with the police investigation.
They combed Aces from top to bottom. A small space lay hidden above a secret door in the women’s restroom.
That’s where they kept the organs before distributing them through Shinzo.
But beyond that, they didn’t find anything else unexpected.
The cops searched Rouge’s other clubs, the Jade Sanctum included, but they didn’t find anything.
Is it possible they didn’t search deeply enough?
I have to dig into Rouge’s past. Uncover the secrets the detectives failed to.
“Let’s go to my place,” I tell Thea. “We’ve got work to do.”
She nods, her jaw tensed.
She can’t go back to her place anyway. It’s still swarming with cops.
I drive us back and bring her inside, throwing a few TV dinners into the microwave for sustenance. Not what I imagined the first dinner I’d prepare for her would be, but I don’t have time to whip up a Michelin-star meal.
I pull out the dinners—chicken tenders and mashed potatoes—and serve them up.
I take a bite of mashed potatoes—still freezing in the middle, great—as I boot up my laptop.
It feels silly, but I have to start somewhere. I search “Rouge Montrose.”
Hundreds of articles pop up, most of them about the organ scandal and her suicide.
It made national news. I remember when it happened.
For days, it was all you could read about online.
People dressed up as Rouge and Chet for Halloween.
Drag queens did shows inspired by her eccentric looks.
Rainbow Unlimited unleashed about fifteen documentaries.
And then the news cycle moved on like it always does.
Rouge’s name was nothing more than an echo of a past time.
Or so I fucking thought.
I go to the advanced settings and search for results before March of last year, when Rouge died.
An article from the Tribune catches my eye. It was written a month or so before I left Vegas and started working at Jade. I open it.
Rouge Montrose announced today her family’s acquisition of four of Chicago’s most unique retreats: MINOS, the Noir Parlor, Second Star, and the Jade Sanctum.
“I’m proud to welcome these exquisite locales to the Aces Underground family and am even more delighted they’ll be operating on a cover basis—no membership required!
I have traveled the world seeking out talent to staff each of these clubs and bring the same Aces Underground magic the Montroses have been weaving for three generations to a wider demographic,” Ms. Montrose said in a statement earlier today.
“MINOS is happy to have the prestige associated with the Montrose name at our disposal,” Zebulon Minos, owner of the club before the acquisition, stated. “It’s no secret clubs like ours have been struggling to regain our footing the last few years. This is nothing short of a miracle.”
Lucille Vivienne of the Noir Parlor expressed similar sentiment. “I have been in discussions with Rouge regarding her ideas for our club, and when we reopen after a brief remodel, Chicagoans will be in for a real treat.”
The Tribune has reached out to Scythe of Second Star and Asha Paisley of the Jade Sanctum but has not yet received a statement from either.
I stop reading.
I’m familiar with the other three names. Zeb, Lucie, and Scythe. They owned their respective clubs when Rouge took over and reclaimed the reins when she died and Bianca dissolved the partnership. I’m the odd guy out. I didn’t own Jade when Rouge bought it.
I never knew the name of the woman who owned the club before I did. Rouge never mentioned her name and iced me out if I ever asked about the previous owner. She said she didn’t like to dwell on the past.
I google “Asha Paisley.” No results. Closest I get is an Etsy shop selling paisley-patterned cloth napkins.
It’s an unusual name. It could have been misspelled. I try other iterations. Ausha Paisly. Awsha Paysleigh. Nothing.
In this day and age, having no presence on the internet is something deliberate, something calculated. A woman who owned a club so big it attracted one of the most powerful moguls in the city of Chicago should have an online footprint.
But my predecessor doesn’t.
It’s as if her entire life has been scrubbed off Google.
“What is it?” Thea peers over my shoulder.
“I found the name of this woman. Asha Paisley. She owned the Jade Sanctum before Rouge took over.”
“And?”
“And in the entire internet, there’s only one mention of her. This article in the Tribune.”
Thea shrugs. “Some people like to keep a low profile.”
I shake my head. “People who like to keep low profiles don’t run clubs like the Jade Sanctum.
For example”—I type my own name into the search bar and dozens of results come up—“you can see I’m widely known.
So are the other owners of the clubs she used to own.
” I scratch at my forehead. “It’s not adding up. ”
“Let me try.” Thea grabs the bag she brought from her place. Dodo comes running. “Nothing in here for you, sweetie.”
“I might have some milk in the fridge if she wants some,” I offer.
“Milk is actually pretty bad for cats. Common misconception,” Thea says. “But I brought a few days’ worth of kibble. I’ll feed her soon.” She grabs her laptop and plunks it down next to mine. “Where did you start?”
“I searched Rouge Montrose and then filtered out results before March of last year. That’s when she died, so all the articles after that are about the organ stuff.”
“Right.” She opens her laptop. “Let me show you a little trick of the trade for us in the news.” She opens a search engine whose name I don’t recognize—Quadmunch.
“This is like Google, but you can refine your search results much more efficiently. Ever since twenty-four-seven news became a thing, a lot of the smaller stories get lost in the bigger ones, so this helps us when we’re trying to fill our segments on a slow day.
You can filter out anything from a major news source.
So we can search Rouge Montrose’s name and not see a million articles from the big networks all rehashing the same story. ”
She clicks, and the resulting page is much smaller than what I found on Google. Still quite a few results but a much more manageable sampling, mostly personal blogs and independent news websites.
“Anything about Asha Paisley?” I ask. “I can’t get her out of my head.”
Thea searches. “No, I’m afraid not.”
I scratch my chin. “How about just Paisley? And Rouge Montrose?”
“You’ll probably get some podcast interview about her favorite fashion patterns.”
“I don’t care. Just search it.”
Thea nods, scanning the screen. “Interesting.”
“What?” I crane my neck toward her laptop.
“I was right. There are a few articles pertaining to fashion, but then there’s this little blog. It looks like an obit.” He scrunches his lips. “Why would an obituary include the word ‘paisley?’”
“Open it up.”
Thea nods and clicks.
The blog is rudimentary, like the websites in the late nineties. No ads, no fancy headers. Just text and some heavily pixeled artwork. The name of the blog? Not Here Anymore.
The word “Paisley” is in the blog tags at the bottom, along with “Rouge Montrose,” “Aces Underground,” and “organ harvesting.” Then a slew of other patterns: “houndstooth,” “gingham,” “polka dots,” and more.
“Even weirder,” I say. “The other three tags are what you’d expect to see. But why the hell did the author include a bunch of patterns, including ‘Paisley?’”
“Not sure,” Thea says. “But Paisley is the only one that’s capitalized. It’s probably worth a read.”
“Agreed.” I scroll back up to the top of the article.
Aces Underground has lost its long-serving matriarch.
Unfortunately, Rouge Montrose has died. She was in her late forties and lived life to the fulliest. However, it was revealed after her death that she was involved in some harrowing activities involving her employees.
A lot of it cannot be excused, but we still honor her legacy.
Legacy indeed is something Rouge took very seriously.
In her lifetime, she often remarked that the end was the beginning.
Very few women were as successful as she was in her line of work which was very impressive.
Every beginning, she said, meant something.
So fairwell, Rouge, we hope you have found peace.
I blink. “That’s one of the most terribly written obituaries I’ve ever seen.” I read through it again. “All the misspelled words. The stilted language. It glosses over the organ trafficking completely. And what the fuck is that tangent about legacy about? What does that have to do with anything?”
“It is odd.” Thea squints at the text. “And then in the middle of the legacy stuff, they add that extra sentence about very few women being in her line of work. The flow is off.”
“Off? The flow is completely plugged up.” I laugh. “I guess bad writing can be fun to read, but we should check someplace—”
Thea holds up a hand. “Just a minute.”
“What?”
“The end is the beginning…” she reads aloud. “Every beginning meant something…”
“It’s nonsense,” I say.
“You worked with her for years, didn’t you? Did Rouge ever talk about legacy like this? About beginnings and ends and all that fortune-cookie nonsense?”
I furrow my eyebrows. “No, come to think of it. But it’s not like we ever had any deeply philosophical conversations.”
But that’s not true. Rouge often cornered her employees and asked them odd questions.
I remember one time she asked me point-blank with zero context what I would do if I were trapped in a hot-air balloon with no way of getting it down.
She looked disappointed when I didn’t come up with an answer before telling me I should consider chopping off my own legs, roasting them in the fire that keeps the balloon afloat, and eating them.
She then nearly collapsed in a fit of laughter when she saw the look on my face.
She really was an insane bitch.
“It’s a puzzle,” Thea says.
“What?”
“The obit. The legacy bullshit. It’s telling us that the beginning of every sentence in the obit is important. That’s why the language is so awkward. They’re fitting in a message.”
“No way.”
Thea nods. “They probably threw in the misspelled words to throw you off the scent. You’ll just think it’s a bad writer and move on. And that’s if you find this blog, which is buried under thousands of articles about Rouge’s death.”
I grab a pencil and pad from the kitchen counter, quickly writing down the first letter of each sentence. When I’m done, I look at the message, my eyebrows nearly flying off my head.
“What does it say?” Thea asks.
I hold up the piece of paper. On it are written two words.
AUSHA LIVES.