Get Blank (Fill in the Blank) (6 page)

Mina would still be waiting on me, and she’d probably be a little confused when Dan showed up saying he was her lawyer. More to the point, Mina might still be in danger. Locking her up seemed like an opening gambit, and it’s not like there wasn’t someone who had tried to kill her recently and, in fact, had once tried to hire me to do the deed: Vassily “the Whale” Zhukovsky, local boss of the Russian Mob.

Nicky’s boss. Another coincidence.

My connections were a year out of date, but there was still someone who might try to help me. She had put herself on the line before, trying to keep Mina safe, and owed allegiance to the same cult Mina had once called home—before they had tried to betray her, of course. V.E.N.U.S., a feminist conspiracy that was pretty all right as these things went, final betrayal notwithstanding. I didn’t get along with the leadership, but Oana was okay. Even if her Romanian accent made her sound like Dracula’s petulant kid sister.

Oana Constantinescu was the winner of the bronze medal at the Women’s Individual All-Around in Gymnastics in Sydney. She was also a master of hand-to-hand combat and just crazy strong for a hobbit. Last I heard, she was coaching a team of gymnasts, trying to be Bela Karolyi minus the focus on eating disorders and plus a little ninja action. I’m not big into black-and-white morality, but within the shades of gray in the Information Underground, Oana Constantinescu was one of the good guys.

I pulled over a couple miles from the jail and called her. Her phone rang a few times and went right to voicemail. “Oana, it’s...” Who was it? Oh yeah. “Jonah. Call me. Number’s on your phone.”

She might be with her team and not taking calls, so I tracked the team down on my phone. They had a website, a Facebook page, and a Twitter account that, judging by the tweeter’s stern command of the English language, there was no way Oana ran. They operated out of a gym in Santa Monica, which was a short trip over off the 10 freeway, and it looked like they were in the midst of practice, based on the Instagrams one of the girls was compulsively uploading. Maybe their fans were really into sepia-toned pictures of muscular girls flipping around or practicing painful jiu-jitsu holds.

On the drive over, I had a lot of time to brood on this thing I’d found myself in the middle of. It was a lot bigger than it looked, and right now I was at the beginning. I could only see a single corner of it, and it would be hell trying to see the rest. But I had no choice in the matter, and with any luck I would shortly have help getting Mina and me extricated from the whole thing.

The gym was a white boxy building with blue trim and a variety of signs and flyers stuck on the wall, like the uniform of a fat and overfunded NASCAR driver, located a couple blocks from the beach. A stiff salt breeze was blowing inland when I got out of my car.

The inside of the gym was basically one large room filled with the smell of sweat sunk into canvas pads. In one corner, there was a raised boxing ring where two girls were drilling jiu-jitsu, which to the untrained eye looks like an exceptionally angry game of Twister. Another girl was flipping along a balance beam while two more were taking turns tumbling across a mat. Even though they were black, white, Latina, Asian, and someone who looked like a mix of all of the above, they were all of a type. None of them was over five feet tall, and while they had more curves than your standard gymnast, they were solid blocks of muscle with necks like my thigh. They wore their hair in perky ponytails and for some reason I will never understand, they were working out in full makeup. They wore shorts over their leotards, and almost all had a wrist, a knuckle, or an ankle wrapped in graying athletic tape. Chalk dust coated their hands and feet.

One by one their eyes went to me. I realized that a man my age wandering in and staring at them—and none of them was over seventeen—was probably an automatic pervert. They didn’t look particularly scared, though. The girl on the balance beam dismounted with a flip and cracked her knuckles like she was the bouncer at the Green Dragon.

“I’m looking for Oana Constantinescu?” I said.

“And who are you?” asked the girl from the balance beam. The two jiu-jitsu girls were leaning against the ropes. The tumblers had their veiny hands resting on very muscular hips.

“I’m a friend of hers. Jonah Bailey?”

I doubted they’d look into that name, but it was a work of art, if I do say so myself. I put a lot of thought into that one. See, I was looking at V.E.N.U.S. as a possible employer, so I wanted a name that sounded just a little feminine. Kind of a subconscious sort of deal. Also, the leadership of V.E.N.U.S. is extremely... zaftig. Actually make that zeppelaftig. They’re huge. And I say that as someone who finds the skin-and-bones look disturbing. So I figured if I was going into the belly of a whale, I might as well be named Jonah.

More than just the name, though. I made sure Jonah Bailey had the feminist bona fides. Registered member of the Peace and Freedom Party, a blog that mostly mined and reposted stuff from Jezebel and similar sites, and even a dummy piece from the Vassar College newspaper about how Jonah organized a march against sexual harassment amongst the dining hall employees. Jonah Bailey looked like the perfect well-meaning stooge for V.E.N.U.S.

Problem was, while I personally hold the opinion that women are pretty fantastic, I’m also an unrepentant asshole who has no filter on the jokes he makes in mixed company. Didn’t make me terribly popular with V.E.N.U.S. leadership. Still, the Jonah Bailey name would probably hold up if I claimed I had spent the last year working on an organic kale farm.

“Never heard of you,” said Balance Beam.

“You know all of Oana’s friends, then?”

Balance Beam was not amused. “Why didn’t you call her?”

“I did. No answer. I haven’t seen her in a while, and I was wondering if she had changed phones or something.”

“I’m not giving some creep off the street her number.”

I let the creep thing slide. “How about you call her and tell her Jonah Bailey is here to see her?”

They all exchanged looks. Finally, Balance Beam, who appeared to be the leader, said, “All right. Emma W., could you do it?”

One of the tumblers, a tiny Asian girl who might have been some kind of elf, nodded and zipped off to the office. Even running casually, she did the light-footed and stiff-armed run gymnasts use in competition. I turned a chuckle into a cough when I saw the others staring at me.

“So... how are you ladies doing?”

The gymnasts just stared me down. It was rather disconcerting. I had no idea how clued in they were, so it wasn’t like I could just start throwing around conspiracies and make any headway. I had no idea if Oana was still with V.E.N.U.S., especially considering how they tried to sell Mina out while Oana had put a lot on the line trying to keep her safe. I sighed. Somehow I had managed to make my dizzying array of loyalties even more complex.

Emma W. emerged from the office. “She’s not answering her phone.”

“Did you try her house?” Balance Beam asked.

“I tried home and cell.”

Now I was worried. “Guys, look. I swear to the goddess or Nadia Comaneci or whoever that I am Oana’s friend. I owe her a lot. I need to see her, so if one of you could tell me where she lives, I’d be grateful.”

Balance Beam shook her head. “I don’t think so.”

“Then one of you can come with me!”

“Get into a car with a strange man?”

“If Oana taught you
anything
she knows about jiu-jitsu, I’m about as dangerous to you as a corgi with pillows for teeth.”

Balance Beam smiled at a memory. Pretty sure it involved her breaking someone in half with her shins. “You have a car, right?”

I nodded.

“Three of us will go with you.”

“Fine. Let’s just go now, please?”

“Emma K. and Emma R. Let’s go.” The two jiu-jitsu girls hopped out of the ring with disconcerting grace.

“Wait. All your names are Emma?”

“My name is Emily,” said Balance Beam.

“Right. Totally different.” I shook my head and Emily and the two Emmas followed me out the door. Emily got in shotgun, leaving chalky handprints on my door handle. The Emmas were in the back. I felt like the oddest combination of hostage and sex criminal.

“Where am I going?”

“Near Dodger Stadium,” Emily said.

I nodded and got back on the freeway, grateful I wouldn’t be transporting any minors over state lines. “What happened to your nose?” asked one of the Emmas.

“Headbutted an orc.”

On the stereo: “I Am the Resurrection” by the Stone Roses.

Pretty tempting to call it Christian claptrap with a title like that. It sort of is, but the first clue is in the name of the band. See, the term “sub rosa” originally came from the Knights Templar, who would hold their meetings under a stone carving of a rose. When you realize that, it’s a short road to determining the purpose of the song as a not-so-subtle threat to those who thought the Knights Templar were dead and gone.

I got off the freeway and drove east of downtown up into the short hills at the edge of Chavez Ravine. The houses had a pleasantly ramshackle look to them and apart from the cars on the street, the neighborhood had probably not changed much since the ’40s. Large berms rose on either side of the road and palm trees and cactus sprouted from the yellow dirt. Emily guided me through the winding streets to a modest one-story house poised at the end of a street.

Right away, it was obvious there was something wrong. The front picture window was shattered, glass in the dirt and stuck amongst the needles of a barrel cactus beneath it. The house was on a small rise, with a decent amount of distance between it and the neighbors. Probably one of the selling points to someone like Oana.

One of the Emmas gasped and all three were scrabbling at the doors as soon as I stopped. I was a little slower out of the car, trying to take the scene in. Unlikely Oana would still be there in light of that window. There was no police tape, either.

Emily was one step into a gymnast’s run for the front door when I grabbed her shoulder and said, “Wait.” I’m not sure exactly what she did next, but as soon as conscious thought returned, I found I was on my knees wondering how one finger could cause me so much pain. “Don’t... don’t run in there,” I gasped. “We don’t know what... could you stop hurting me now, please?”

“Sorry,” Emily said, but I don’t think she was. She let me go and I got to my feet, massaging my finger. “You shouldn’t grab people.”

“I didn’t want you running in there into who knows what. Just do me a favor and hang back. If someone my age dies, it’s not quite as much of a tragedy.”

The gymnasts exchanged a look and Emily nodded.

“One thing,” I said. “When was the last time any of you talked to Oana?”

“Practice yesterday,” one of the Emmas said. “She was helping me with my leglocks.”

That was Monday, the same day Mina had been arrested. I looked back at the house. No tape. Nothing over the window. That meant no one had called the police. This wasn’t the best neighborhood in the world, but you’d think an altercation would have at least triggered a 911. I went to the door and listened. Nothing inside that I could hear. I tried the door. It opened.

Into chaos. Oana’s house was trashed. Whatever had happened in here was brutal. Furniture was smashed, shelves toppled, her chess set had its marble board broken in half. In the opposite wall, I spotted a bullet hole. That made the lack of police even more suspect, unless the attackers had silencers on their guns. I liked that idea even less. I stepped inside, shoes crunching on glass from shattered picture frames. I tried to keep the emotion out of it, to just take in facts, but it was difficult. Oana had gotten her ass royally kicked saving Mina one time, and as far as it went, that meant I owed the little gymnast. And it looked like I was too late to repay her.

In the wreckage on the floor, Oana’s medals from the Sydney games glinted up at me, as if to say, “She’d have taken us if she got away!” There was the gold, which she’d won as part of that unstoppable Romanian women’s team, her silver for the vault, and the big one, the bronze in the women’s all-around that said in 2000, she was the third best in her sport on the planet.

My mind ran through a hundred conspiracies, trying to figure out who had a beef with Oana and V.E.N.U.S. There were the Guardian Servitors of the Anorectic Praxis, of course. The Knights Templar. New Camelot. The list went on and on, and I still didn’t know who might want Oana dead. Who knew what she had been up to in the year I’d been gone? And even before then, it wasn’t like we were confidants. Truth be told,
I
thought she was an annoyance right up until she proved to be the best ally I’d ever had.

I went deeper into the house, seeing the same story throughout. It got a hell of a lot worse in the kitchen. On the white wall, over a calendar of puppies, was a spray of blood followed by a messy streak. It went from the doorway into the kitchen on a downward stroke, like someone had been shot, hit the wall, and had fallen.

A strangled sob came from behind me. All three girls were in the little breakfast nook leading into the kitchen, tearing up as they stared in horror at the blood.

“This isn’t a lot of blood. Nobody’s dead from this.” I tried to sound authoritative. It wasn’t too hard; I had a little experience, not in the investigation of murder, but certainly in the covering up and in the faking thereof. I was pretty good at those.

I walked into the kitchen, the linoleum creaking with my steps. A wooden door with a broken window looked out into Oana’s backyard, a nice open area that ended when the ground dropped away. It was a pretty view of a hilly area of Echo Park. I thought maybe I should have a closer look.

My foot creaked again. I looked down. Stepped. Stepped again. Frowned. I knelt and moved the knit rug away from the side of cabinets. There was a trapdoor beneath it, blood smeared on the handle. I allowed myself a smile. Oana had a way out. Of course she did. She was smart.

The girls were comforting each other. One of the Emmas was going to pieces. I opened the trapdoor and poked my head in, shining the light from my phone inside. There was a cramped tunnel burrowing away into the earth, way too small for me or any other grown human being. For a tiny person like Oana, it was the perfect escape hatch: a place where the vast majority of pursuers could not follow. To confirm it, a few drops of blood shone on one of the wooden supports. In the business, places to hide small things like documents and Romanian bronze medalists are known as slicks, and that’s what this was.