I Don't Like Where This Is Going (24 page)

I guessed that Eli wasn't used to this level of chaos in his operations, and I also figured the living closeted trio was probably happy being out of the line of fire, except for the leashed one, who claimed to be claustrophobic and whimpered audibly until Eli fired a shot through the closet door, and then everything went
quiet for a five-count, and then Babatunji exploded through the shattered glass of the large front window and landed at my feet. His wrists were bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs. Eli and company leveled their pistols while the women screamed, and we all dropped to the floor. Tinker stood and took a bullet from somewhere in the shoulder.

Grady pointed at the west window and we all turned and saw Bay there with his gun. The oxford Ronan fired at Bay and blew out the window, then fell when a second shot hit him in the back. We heard a voice I recognized as Mike's say, “Lay down your weapons and come outside. You're surrounded.” And then Bay was in the east window and the west window at the same time. Was he working with mirrors out there? And then we heard what I knew was Bay's voice coming from somewhere over our heads, and he was gone from the windows. He said, “We're going to start tossing in tear gas.”

Eli said, “And we'll start tossing out bodies.”

Touché. One for the bad guys. I saw that Sneezy still had his arm around Blue's trembling shoulders. Babatunji opened his glazed eyes without moving his thick head and then closed them again. Patience stirred. I squeezed her hand. She groaned and blinked her eyes.

Bay said, “Send the women out, and we'll take them and leave.”

“They're hostages. And we're walking out with them.”

Two.

“And if you try anything, anything at all, we'll kill them one at a time. Or all at once.”

Mike said, “You okay in there, Coyote?”

“I've been better.”

“Patience?”

“She's with me.”

Eli and company walked out with the girls, got into their three cars, and drove off toward the highway. I looked out the front window and saw no sign of Bay or Mike. I yelled that we were not alone, as they surely knew, and said there were no weapons in evidence. And suddenly Bay and Mike were standing there in the room, Mike wielding a desert-tan tactical sniper's rifle.

Mike looked at the senseless Babatunji and said, “I know this guy, but who are these other clowns?” He walked to the chair where a very blanched Tinker was slumped and bleeding. “That's got to hurt.”

Bay said, “We should be going. We have hostages to rescue.”

Mike said, “Is this your establishment?”

Tinker nodded.

“It's fucked up what you're doing here. You know that.” Mike fired a burst at the ceiling and the glass chandelier crashed to the floor.

Mike asked Grady his name. I said he was deaf. Patience said his name was Grady and he had raped her. Mike put his mouth to Grady's ear and yelled, “Can you hear me now?”

Grady nodded. Mike pointed to Patience and then poked Grady in the chest. “It's unfortunate you did that, pig.” Mike pulled some handcuffs from behind his back and cuffed Grady to Tinker. He held his finger and thumb an inch apart, leaned in to Grady's ear, and said, “I'm about this close to shoving a grenade so far up your ass, if you burp, you'll explode.”

I crossed the room to Grady. I took Grady's head in one hand, Tinker's in the other, and slammed their skulls together. Grady's eyes rolled up into his head. Tinker winced but recovered and smiled. I grabbed the two heads again but made the mistake of visualizing what a second battering would do to Grady's skull, and I stopped.

Mike grabbed my arm, shook his head, and said, “He can't feel anything now.”

And then we heard yelling from the closet and pounding on the door. “Customers,” I said.

Mike pulled a Hummer sport-utility truck around front, and we hopped in. It was a paramilitary pickup with a cargo bed in back. We drove a hundred yards down the road, and Mike stopped, let the engine idle, got out, and walked to the back. Patience said we couldn't let the assholes get away with the girls. Bay said the three getaway cars were now equipped with GPS devices, and he showed Patience the three beeping vehicles on his iPhone's map. He figured they had ten miles on us. Fifteen, tops. Meanwhile, Mike pulled a rocket launcher and a rocket out of the cargo bed. He knelt about ten yards from the car.

Bay said, “Really, Mike?”

“The coup de grace,” Mike said. He fired a rocket at the bordello and scored a direct hit on the second floor, lit it up like a Roman candle. He put the weapon back in the truck bed and got back in the driver's seat. He fastened his belt.

I said, “Where did you get a rocket launcher?”

“Craigslist.”

We saw the bronze pickup at the end of the road. I said, “Not this asshole again. This guy's been following us for days.”

Mike eased up to the truck. We could see that the tires had been shot out and the engine was steaming. Our stalker sat at the wheel, crying. Mike rolled down his window. The driver said, “I was parked here bothering no one, waiting for your friends in the backseat to come by, when these maniacs just opened fire. I took a bullet in the leg and one that grazed my skull and blew my hat off.” We saw the hole in the door that may have been the entry for the bullet in the leg. One lens of his glasses was shattered.

“I don't even own a gun,” the driver said.

Mike and I helped him down from the cab and into the backseat of our vehicle. Mike got out his substantial first-aid kit and cleaned and dressed our stalker's wound. Our stalker thanked him profusely, wondered if we might have something for the pain. Mike said, “Name it.” Our stalker thanked Mike, swallowed a Percocet, and introduced himself as Lawson Scott, PI.

He said, “The Kurlanskys hired me to find your friend Charlotte Edge. Said she murdered their beloved son and brother. And I found her with you, but then I lost you in Tonopah. Got stuck behind a jackknifed tractor-trailer for an hour and a half. And then I found you two again in Lovelock, but not Charlotte, and I was hoping you would lead me back to her.”

I said, “We won't.”

Bay said, “Find her and what?”

“Call them with her whereabouts and punch the clock.”

Patience said, “So you're not very good at your job?”

“I'm terrible at it, but I was the best the Kurlanskys could afford. I get two hundred dollars a day plus expenses, and I'm going to lose a bundle on this assignment. I mean, how do I explain a lost truck to Hertz?”

“Explain it
stolen
,” Mike said.

“Usually I'm spying on cheating husbands in Mendocino County. Steady work.”

I said, “What's that like?”

“One: they are always cheating. Two: they are always cheating with women from work. Three: they never leave their wives. Four: they never leave their girlfriends.”

“So the wives leave them?” Patience said.

“About half the time.”

I said, “We thought you might be a bad guy.”

“Just a working stiff.”

Patience said, “Have you thought about another line of work?”

“This is all I'm suited for.”

Bay said, “Where are you from, Lawson Scott?”

He smiled. “I usually tell people I'm from Alaska. Petersburg. Tell them I grew up swimming with seals and sledding down glaciers. But it's all a made-up story.”

“Why make it up?” I said.

“Because the truth is trite and tedious.”

I tried to imagine the horror that Patience had endured and hoped that, for now, in her confusion, she might assume that this was all an appalling dream.

Once we were back on the road, those of us in the backseat—Lawson, Patience, and me—fell asleep one by one. When Bay woke us up, the eastern sky was lightening, and we were turning into a hospital parking lot in Tonopah. Mike parked the car near the ER and helped Lawson out of the Hummer. He said, “I'm glad you like making up stories, Lawson, because very shortly you're going to have to explain this gunshot wound.” He leaned Lawson against an Audi. He called the hospital and told them where to find a seriously injured man. We said our goodbyes and drove away.

Patience said, “What about the girls?”

“We have their location.”

14

M
IKE WAS READY
to go shopping for our upcoming rescue mission. Deep shopping. What he needed you couldn't buy off the shelf. He said he was promoting a free market economy by circumventing needless governmental regulations. And then he laughed, slipped a Fat Elvis doughnut into his coat pocket, and headed out. Bay, Mercedes, Patience, and I ordered pizza, made cocktails, and sat in the living room talking. Patience said she kept seeing Grady's miserable face everywhere she looked. Her sadness and grief at her assault had evolved to rage. She'd need to see a therapist to talk her way toward meaning and a degree of serenity, but that therapist could not be me. I squeezed her hand; she put her head on my shoulder.

Mercedes told us about her new short story, inspired by the flood of prostitution that had been deluging our lives recently. She was calling the story “Firefly,” which was the central character's stage name. It's about a young woman who kills herself after an ex-boyfriend outs her on Facebook as a porn star. It was not the porn business that killed her, not the dirtbags who inhabit that debased world, but the friends at school she would have to face, their smirks,
insults, and corrosive laughter, those who were spreading the juicy news, and the church ladies, her mother's friends she would see on Sundays, the shame and the humiliation of the public revelation. Mercedes said she thought she'd been writing the story of a woman debased by men and by the sex industry, but then the story changed directions without her knowing how or why, and she followed the accidental plot and now she couldn't get Firefly out of her head.

When Kit arrived with our pizza—two Hang Tens and a Popeye and Olive Oil—Bay set the boxes on the counter, explained our situation, mentioned the kidnapped young women now being defiled at the House of Mirth, and said he'd pay for her evening's salary, tips, and then some, if she'd come in for a while and talk with us. And eat, of course, Bay said. And drink. Kit called work and told her manager that her car had broken down and she was waiting for the tow truck. She louched her Pernod with water till it was milky and drank it with her pizza. Django snuggled into Patience's lap, sniffed the aromatic molecules in the air, and closed his eyes.

Bay told Kit that the young girls he'd mentioned to her were being held as sex slaves—there was no other way to say it—at the place she had called the House of Mirth. He told her that we'd called the police tip line several times, but nothing was done. We called the homeowner's association. Got an assessment-of-violations notice as an answer. We had violated the community's rules by having three cars parked in a two-car driveway.

Kit said, “You don't want the cops involved. The two sleazebags who work the night shift over there are off-duty Metro cops.”

I said, “One of them built like a brick shithouse?”

“They call him Filthy Luka. The smaller one's Nicky Slots.”

“Anyone else inside besides the girls?”

“The madam who calls herself the concierge. Tulin something-or-other.”

Bay said, “We have a job opportunity for someone cunning, playful, and quick.”

Kit smiled.

“We need to get you inside the house, and I know that's against your company's very sensible policy, and I don't want you to lose your job.”

“I can't be delivering pizza all my life. Get in and then what?”

“You'll wear a tiny camera. We just need to know what we're getting into.”

“I'll complain of female troubles and ask to use the bathroom.”

“Get lost if possible and walk through all the rooms you can.”

“They have a standing order every Sunday at seven: two Blondes on the Beach, two Manhattan Men, two Del Reys, one BBQ Chicken, one box of Parmesan Pull-Aparts, and a case of Red Bull.”

“Tomorrow it is.”

I said, “How well do you know this Tulin?”

“Not at all. Catch a glimpse of her once in a while. But she's on the website.”

“Website?”

“Tulinsgirls.com.”

Bay got out the computer. I called Elwood. We needed a fourth. I told him the plan, and he agreed. Bay made appointments for a party of three randy fellows looking for nubile girlfriends, Saturday night at seven. “I paid a premium for a private party. We'll have the joint to ourselves.”

MONDAY MORNING BRIGHT
and early, Kit arrived with the camera and a box of cinnamon torpedo doughnuts. Everything had gone well at the neighborhood brothel except that she'd only made it
halfway up the stairs before Madame Tulin told her about the downstairs bathroom. Kit was still able to see that there were two bedrooms to the left of the stairs and one to the right. Mike got the strawberry jam out of the fridge. Bay attached the camera to his laptop. Elwood poured our coffees, and we all watched Kit's eight-minute reconnaissance video.

In the video, Filthy Luka took the pizzas and drinks from Kit, paid her, opened the door, and consulted with Tulin before letting Kit inside. Tulin sat at a desk staring at a computer. She wore a white open-sided blouse, black leotards, black ballet slippers, and reading glasses. The bathroom was off the kitchen, where Nicky Slots sat at the table playing solitaire. He stood when he saw Kit and flexed his knees so his white flared linen slacks fell adroitly over his black-and-white Spectator shoes. He asked her if she was here for a job interview. He wore his blue dress shirt untucked, with the sleeves rolled up in the Italian style to show the contrasting red color of the cuffs. The large living room was uncluttered, tastefully simple, and clean. There was a Modigliani print of a reclining nude on the wall above Tulin's desk.