Get Katja (10 page)

The station wagon’s engine rattles and grinds as it comes to a halt then lets out a little burp of steam.

As DeBoer had approached Lindenmuth he’d spotted a red Honda parked up and there was enough of a glow from the nearby street lights to detail the outline of two people inside. He’d slowed slightly as he came up to the car, trying to get a look at the occupants out of the corner of his eye, then continued on for another block before circling back to the junkyard from the other side.

Now he sits in the car, thinking.

Itching. Burning.

He looks around for any other suspicious vehicles or figures but the street is dead. The one in the Honda had, at least in the brief glimpse he had gotten of them, looked like a women but there is the distinct likelihood that it could be one of Lady’s D notorious transvestite crew instead. He takes the pistol from his shoulder holster and checks it. Slips it back in and starts to button his coat over it then thinks better of it. Then carefully reaches into a pocket and takes out the syringe which had earlier been stuck in him, still with a thumb’s height of fluid inside the plastic chamber. Puts it back.

He gets out and casually walks towards the alley then straight past it, again relying on peripheral vision, but it’s enough to let him know that the white van is still parked there, facing him. He slows after a few paces then turns back, fumbling in his pockets as if having forgotten something. Stops when he reaches the alley and peers into it.

At first all he can see is the van, then a figure emerges from behind it. Tall and broad, high-heeled and with shoulder-length blonde hair.

Lady Delicious, rummaging around in her handbag. She turns away from him and he rushes to the other side of the alley, then along the wall towards the van. He ducks underneath the driver’s side window and shuffles towards the rear wheel so that his legs and feet will remain hidden. Listens.

He hears her mumbling something to herself then there’s a thud against the van, coming from the inside. DeBoer jumps back in shock but doesn’t move. A voice, coming from inside, too muffled to be able to tell what is being shouted. More pounding.

Then Lady Delicious’s heeled footsteps, going towards the front of the van. DeBoer edges himself in the opposite direction, ending up at the rear of the vehicle. He peers around it and sees the Tgirl leaning in through the now-open passenger door, then stands on his tip-toes to see through the van’s rear windows. There’s movement inside, a figure lying on the ground, barely visible, but skinny and with a shaven head.

He reaches for his gun then thinks better of it. Instead he retrieves the syringe.

It is all so exquisitely perfect: to not only get his hands on the punk again but to steal her from the very one who was about to be sent to collect the debt from him—and to use the weapon which had been used to take her from him in the first place.

Footsteps again, so he retreats back around the side of the van. Crouches down, watching Lady D’s incongruously muscular legs, then realizes he can see her reflected in a pane of glass which is laid up against a dumpster straight ahead. She’s got a phone in her hand now and is thumbing a message or number into it. She turns away from him and he doesn’t waste the opportunity, jumping around and stabbing the syringe into her neck, squeezing the end to deliver what remains of the sedative into her bloodstream. She grabs at her shoulder, tries to twist around but DeBoer has a hold of her. She claws at him blindly, one of his sleeves rucking up and her fingernails raking along his skin to ignite a line of pain but he holds firm until she slumps in his arms. The phone drops from her hand and he lets her crash to the ground, ending up folded in half, her forehead and left shoulder in contact with the ground, hair cloaking her and her ass high in the air.

DeBoer takes out his gun, edges up to the door. He listens but it’s all gone quiet inside. Stands on his tip-toes again but can no longer see the figure inside. He stands as far back as he can whilst still reaching the handle then opens the door, gun pointed at the opening.

Nothing.

No one.

“Alright,” he says, stepping from side to side, trying to see into the darkness. “Come on out you little bitch.”

Movement, then a hand, held up high, fingers spread, quickly followed by another in a gesture of surrender.

DeBoer suddenly lunges at the punk and grabs her, pulling one arm up behind her back farther than is necessary to restrain her, smiling as she squeals in pain. He forces her towards the car, slamming her into it then throwing her into the back while she is still stunned. With his grip on her finally gone she spins around to face him.

DeBoer lowers the gun just a little. “What the fuck? Who the hell are you?”

A shaved head, yes. Skinny, yes. Wearing the same leggings and skull t-shirt as the punk. But not Katja. Not even female.

“Please . . .” the boy says, holding out his hands, shuffling closer. His face is swollen and bloody, his lips crusted with dried blood.

“Hey, hey!” DeBoer warns him, jabbing the pistol at him. “You just stay right the fuck where you are! I’m a detective, you understand?”

“I don’t know what’s going on,” the man says, a globule of saliva dripping from his mouth. Still shuffling. “I was just . . . I mean . . . I don’t even . . .”

And then before the detective knows what is happening the boy lashes out, kicking the gun from DeBoer’s hand and sending it skittering across the wet pavement. DeBoer turns and the boy leaps out, knocking DeBoer to one side before fleeing past him. The boy runs back up the alley, leaps over Lady Delicious’ still-prone form, collides with the wall and the van then is gone. DeBoer recovers his weapon and gives chase but he gets wedged in the small gap between alley and van. He tries to squeeze through, his raincoat snagging, eventually having to take it off to free himself but by then the boy is long gone.

“Motherfucker,” DeBoer growls.

He still isn’t sure what’s going on, whether the informant has set him up or not, but what he does know is when it is time to get the hell out of somewhere. He goes back around the other side of the van, stops by the driver’s door. Opens it. When he leans in his main intent is to hope the vehicle’s keys are there and either steal them or just take the van but those plans vanish at the sight of the bags lying in the footwell. Three of them. He reaches in and pulls one of them across.

It’s stuffed with money.

He grabs all of them, calculating how much might be inside. Twenty thousand at least—maybe thirty? Enough to cover his debts plus a little extra, and though maybe not as much as the punk might have brought him it’s certainly far less trouble.

He snatches the bags then hurries back to the station wagon, deciding that Lady Delicious can keep her fucking van. He has what he needs—now all he has to do is clear what he owes before anyone realizes how he has been able to do so.

Stasko flicks the headlights back on then rushes around to where the punk’s body lies, hoping that he’s hit her hard enough to floor her without doing any major damage.

She groans, holding her leg. Rolls onto her back.

“What the fuck is going
on
tonight?” she says.

No.
He
says.

The boy holds one hand up against the glare of the headlights to protect swollen and bruised eyes, injuries that look as if they were there prior to the impact of Stasko’s car.

“You’re wearing her . . . her clothes,” Stasko says as the realisation hits.

The man sits up before suddenly crying out in pain.

Stasko grabs him, eliciting another yelp. Shakes him viciously. “Where’s Katja? What the fuck are you playing at?”

“I don’t—I can’t—”

Stasko shakes him harder to get some sense out of him. Slaps him across his already-battered face.

“Where is she?!”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about!” the boy protests, still clutching at his leg.

“The girl! You’re wearing her clothes!”

And the boy looks down, plucking at the t-shirt and leggings as if only noticing his clothing for the first time. He appears to be trying to figure out an answer to Stasko’s question. Then something clicks.

“Nikolai’s friend?” the boy asks.

Stasko stops shaking him. Nikolai. Bridget’s guinea pig.

“Tell me where she is,” he asks, more softly this time.

“I don’t
know
.”

“Where can I
find
her?”

“I don’t
know
!” the boy pleads, then his expression suddenly changes. He points over Stasko’s shoulder. “There.”

Stasko looks where he is pointing, farther up the street. Sees nothing.

“Don’t fuck with me. There’s no one there.”

The boy shakes his head wearily. Jabs his finger again. “
There
,” he repeats.

“I’ve told you already . . .”

Stasko’s words drift when he looks again. He lets go of the T-shirt, of Katja’s T-shirt, and walks a few paces towards the brick wall which lines the street—towards the poster.

It’s the same as the one he’d seen earlier that day, the image which instantly entranced him, except this one isn’t half-torn. It is intact, including the part that had been missing from the first copy—the part which announces the time and date of the band’s gig.

The Wheatsheaf. 10:00 P.M. Tonight.

Stasko checks his watch. 9:50.

He rushes back to his car, leaving the boy where he is and ignoring his pleas for help. He throws it into reverse, spins it around, once again heading in the direction was going before spotting the figure stumbling around in the darkness, when he spots Bridget’s red Honda up ahead. He pulls up alongside her vehicle and she is momentarily panicked at the sudden arrival before she realizes who it is and winds down her window.

She starts to speak but Stasko cuts her off.

“I know where she is,” he tells her.

Frank’s place, complete with a candy-cane pillar and framed portraits of long-dead models with their long-dead haircuts, is at the end of a block, separated from its neighbours by the shuttered remains of a liquor store.

DeBoer ignores the glass front entrance and walks around the back to a heavier door complete with a barred window and pornographic graffiti, the same door which he had, only a few hours earlier, been thrown out of as if he were nothing more than another piece of trash.

He knocks on the door. Waits.

Waits more.

He shifts nervously, the scratches on his arm now itching.

Maybe this isn’t such a good . . .

The security plate behind the little barred window slides aside. A pair of eyes blink in the darkness.

“Frank? It’s . . . it’s DeBoer. I have your money.”

There’s a pause then the security plate slides back into place and a moment later the door is opened. Frank stands there in a dressing gown, bleary-eyed.

“I’m sorry to wake you,” DeBoer says, “but I . . .”

He holds up the bags of money. “I’m here to settle up.”

Frank rubs at his eyes then steps aside to let DeBoer in. He closes the door and re-engages the lock.

“Come on through,” Frank says, guiding DeBoer through the shop and into what appears to be a study.

“So let’s see it.”

DeBoer eagerly tips the cash onto the desk before them, pushing it into neat stacks.

“It’s all there,” DeBoer assures him. He’d counted out the twenty thousand that he was due in the car and stuffed the rest into the remaining bag then hid it under the driver’s seat, already cycling through what to do with the excess. First on the list is another poker game though he’ll probably have to find somewhere else to play just in case Lady D, or some other snitch, figures out who took her money.

Frank touches the piles with one finger as if sensing the quantity by feel alone.

“So,” DeBoer says, “we’re all squared now?”

Frank picks up one of the bills, holds it up to the light.

“They’re genuine,” the detective insists, exaggerating offence. “You don’t seriously think I would—”

“No,” Frank says. Then he stops, the bill still pinned between two fingers. “But it looks like whoever you got it from wasn’t giving it up lightly.”

And he nods at the scratches on DeBoer’s forearm.

When Lady D comes to, the anger hits her first but it is unconnected to anything for a short time. Fizzing and hot, it dances around her like an impatient child desperate for attention. Then it snaps into place.

That pink-haired bitch Soelberg fucked her over.

She grasps at the back of her neck and finds something still sticking in there, plucks it out. An empty syringe.

Her head swims with whatever she had been injected with, muddying her thoughts and sight.

She hauls herself to her feet, struggling in her heels to right herself and having to use the alley’s wall for support. She staggers around the back of the van, finds both of the rear doors wide open.

And nobody inside.

She thinks back, trying to get it all clear in her head. Watching the two women hurry away. Going to start the van, looking in the rear view mirror at the prone figure in the back. A tingling up her spine. Getting out and opening the rear door, splitting the spray-painted mouth wide. Climbing in and taking a closer look at Katja.

Not Katja.

Then a rage, calling each of the girls one by one to tell them what needs to be done, to find the nurse, and the punk, at any cost.

And then what?

She looks down at the syringe in the palm of her hand. Would Soelberg really have been stupid enough to have come back? She’d already gotten away, why risk the fight?

And then another realisation hits.

She rushes around to the driver’s side, almost colliding with sheet of glass laid up against a dumpster as she continues to fight through the mental murk. The door is slightly ajar and she already knows what she will find inside.

The bags of money are gone. Her entire takings from that night—gone.

She punches the vehicle. Catches a glimpse of herself in the sideview mirror.

One side of her face is grazed and dirty. Her wig is a mess. The stolen dress is torn at the shoulder and one of her heels is damaged, hanging on by a thread. She snaps it off and throws it away.

Whoever has taken the money is dead. It’s as simple as that. If it’s Soelberg then she will be dead twice over—but first she needs to get a new outfit.

Lady D gets into the van, the druggy confusion respectfully fading enough to let her plan her revenge.