Nobody's Child (Georgia Davis Series) (16 page)

A
week after she got off the bus in Chicago, Vanna didn’t care where she was or what she was doing. The first three days—at least she guessed that’s how long it was—Lazlo made her do things, some of which she’d never done before. She tried to resist and even bit him once or twice, but he retaliated by slapping her so hard her ears rang. At least he took a shower once in a while and made her do the same. When he wasn’t raping her, he was on his cell talking in what she learned was Russian.

At some point another woman and man showed up. The woman was rail thin and had short, spiky blond hair; the man was tall and skinny, with a buzz cut and stubble. Vanna started to tell them she was a prisoner, that she was hungry and exhausted and wanted to go home, and that Lazlo ought to be behind bars. But the man clapped his hand across her mouth as soon as she started and shook his head.

“Soon you happy,” he said in broken English.

Vanna wanted to bite his hand, but she couldn’t reach it with her teeth. After trying unsuccessfully a few times, her cries diminished to whimpers.

Meanwhile the woman rummaged inside a leather bag that looked like a Marc Jacobs rip-off and fished out a small makeup kit. After unzipping it, she took out a packet of tinfoil, a syringe, and a butane lighter. She barked out an order to Lazlo in Russian, and he brought over an empty glass. She unwrapped the packet, tapped some white powder into the glass, mixed it with water, and put the flame underneath the glass.

Vanna knew what it was. She’d snorted heroin back in Colorado, even smoked it once. But she’d never shot up, even though Dex had told her it was a whole different trip. Her expression must have indicated that she knew what was happening, because the man with his hand across her mouth arched his eyebrows.

“You stop cry now?”

She nodded. He removed his hand. She stayed quiet.

Once the mixture bubbled, the woman picked up a syringe. Vanna swallowed. Was this for her? The woman gazed at her, appraising. Then she drew the mixture into the syringe and motioned with her other hand. It smelled like a box of Band-Aids.

Vanna scooted across the bed. The woman turned to Lazlo, who nodded. Then she took Vanna’s hand, turned it over so her palm was up, and rubbed the vein that went from her wrist to her elbow. When it popped up, swollen and blue, she smiled. “Okay.” The woman held her wrist and plunged the syringe into Vanna’s vein.

It took only a few seconds. First came a rush that flooded her body, spreading into every crevice and pore. But it was different from meth or ecstasy. Instead of energy, intensity, and speed, Vanna felt an overpowering warmth and looseness and calm. Then a feeling of weightlessness. She was no longer on the bed. She was flying above Lazlo, the man, and the woman. Seconds later, a euphoric gravity pushed her gently back on the bed, but Vanna didn’t mind. She was perfectly content, a warm blanket protecting her. She wasn’t asleep and yet she was in a dream, a dream that numbed all pain. She didn’t have a care in the world.

She was aware of what happened next, but it was all mellow and warm and loving. First she fucked the man; then the woman fucked her. Then Lazlo fucked her; then all of them were fucking one another. Her world ended at the edge of the bed, but it was okay. She might have been a prisoner, but if this was how it felt, she’d stay a prisoner forever. Never before had she felt so loved, so cherished.

A
fter that Vanna didn’t care about anything except junk. Lazlo and the couple were generous, allowing her to shoot up whenever she wanted. Each time she went to that place, it was bliss. The world was rosy, and she had her rightful place in it. She even wished happiness for her mother. Her poor mother, who would never know the joy that could be hers.

A couple of weeks later the blonde showed her how to shoot up between her toes. Better, the woman said. More hygienic. No one wanted to see tracks on a girl’s arm. There was plenty of skin down there, and she told Vanna she could alternate toes. By the time she got through the skin between them, the punctures on the other foot would have healed and she could start over again. Vanna giggled.

It was sometime during the third week, about the middle of April, that things changed. Still holed up in the fleabag hotel, Vanna hadn’t been outside in weeks. Sometimes she forgot she was in Chicago. Lazlo was gone most of the time now, but he left her with a goon, though not the man who brought her dope. This was a guy with a gun, who reeked of body odor and foul-smelling cigars, and banged her whenever he could tear himself away from the TV.

He’d grunt when he came and fall asleep afterward, but mostly he ignored her, as if she was nothing more than a lump of flesh, there to service him. Once in a while he brought her a sandwich or fries, but between the junk and the lack of regular food, Vanna could feel her ribs sticking out. When Turdball napped—of course he snored—she thought about calling room service or ordering a pizza, but they’d disconnected the phone, and the door was double locked. Once in a while, when she was coming down, she thought about taking his gun and turning the tables on him. But he slept with it holstered around his middle, and there was no way she could get it without waking him.

The periods between shooting up were getting longer, and she needed dope more often. But the couple came only once a day. Sometimes they left her an extra hit, which the goon used as a reward after he screwed her. They wouldn’t let her shoot herself up, even though she’d watched how they prepared it and knew she could. But as long as she could get to that warm, loving place, she didn’t much care who did it or how she got there.

Between the highs, though, she began to feel a gnawing, empty sensation. Sometimes she was restless and broke out in a sweat. She began to lift the shade and peer out the window. The view was limited: a dreary brick building across the alley with a Dumpster against the wall. But if she angled herself at the edge of the window, she could see a scrawny tree in the backyard and a fire escape leading from the window to the ground.

She wheedled and pleaded with Turdball. “Isn’t there a park nearby?” she asked. “Can we go out for a walk? It’s boring here.” But he pretended he didn’t understand English and raised the volume on the TV. Which started to piss her off. Vanna didn’t like to rely on anyone. And yet she was dependent on the couple who brought her dope, and when they didn’t show up, she had to fuck Turdball to get it. She began to plan an escape.

The logistics would be tricky. The woman had taken her clothes, even her mother’s jacket. Vanna usually lay around in a bra and panties, sometimes one of the men’s dirty T-shirts. Assuming she could escape, how to score was another problem. Although not as thorny. She was in Chicago; there was H all over the place. She knew what to do—it wouldn’t be much different from what she’d done back home. The biggest challenge would be getting away and finding some clothes.

She convinced herself that once she was out on the street, someone would help her. She knew how to repay them, and once that happened, she’d be on her way. She went to the window, raised the shade, and looked out. The tree in the backyard across the alley was budding. Which meant it was spring, and warmer. She studied the fire escape, trying to calculate how much time it would take her to climb down.

She lowered the shade, went back to the bed, and pretended to shiver. “My feet are cold. You got any socks?”

When he returned a blank stare, she pantomimed putting on socks.

He gazed at her as if considering it. His hand crept to the gun. Then he shook his head.

Shit. Did he know what she was planning? She lay back against the pillow, if that’s what you could call the hard lumpy material, oily and smelly from so many heads resting on it. Turdball glanced at his watch. He was probably figuring out if he had enough time to fuck her again before the couple showed up. For the first time since, she welcomed his interest. Maybe he’d fall asleep afterward. She smiled in what she hoped was a seductive way. He got off his chair.

Luck was with her. Afterward he did fall asleep. Once he started snoring, Vanna sprang into action. She slid off the bed and quietly opened the closet door. A thin, dusty blanket lay on a shelf. She draped it around her and tried not to think about how many men had come on it. She crept to the window and unlocked it, but as soon as she started to raise it, it squeaked.

Even though the TV was still on, Vanna froze. Turdball snorted and shifted but didn’t wake. Carefully, slowly, she raised the window. The subsequent squeaks weren’t as loud, and the noise from the TV muffled them. Once it was open wide enough, she scrambled onto the fire escape. The first thing she did was fling the blanket to the ground. Then she started down. She knew she should have closed the window but didn’t want to waste time. She just prayed she would be fast enough to get away.

At the bottom of the fire escape was a gap of about ten feet between the last rung and the ground. She climbed down and let go. She fell, twisting her foot, but forced herself to get up. Her ankle hurt like hell, but she kept going. She snatched the blanket, threw it over her, and limped toward the back of the hotel. Even though the sun was shining, it wasn’t as warm as she’d hoped. She wouldn’t be able to stay outside for long. She needed shelter. Someplace to hide.

She remembered the Dumpster alongside the building in the alley. That would be the last place anyone would think to search. And while the idea was, on its surface, disgusting, the truth was she probably wouldn’t smell much worse than she already did. She hobbled along the fence line of the hotel’s property. She was sure she’d seen a gate to the alley, but now that she needed it, she couldn’t find it. Where was it? Panic rolled through her. She didn’t have much time. Turdball must be awake by now.

She gazed up and down the length of the fence. No gate. She’d been so sure it was there. Was it just something she’d imagined? A heroin dream to give her the illusion of freedom? She had to find another hiding place. Maybe in the basement of the hotel. Every building had a basement. She shuffled to the back door of the hotel, thinking she would slip inside and take the stairs down.

Instead she ran into Turdball. He was aiming his gun at her chest.

T
uesday morning blew in a deep azure sky painted with fluffy white clouds that seemed to augur spring, but the air was still frigid enough to numb Georgia’s fingers. She was back at Chad Coe’s house in Riverwoods, cupping her hands around a thermos filled with coffee. Coe was beginning to irritate her; she had plenty of suspicions about the guy but nothing concrete—except that he owned a warehouse that had housed a trafficking ring, at least temporarily. Even if he didn’t know what the place was being used for, he had to know the people he rented it to weren’t your fine, upstanding citizens.

His wife pulled out in the SUV around nine with their child—Georgia thought it was a girl—in the car seat. Another hour went by before Coe followed in the Beemer. Georgia tailed him, this time to a large A-frame house on Greenwood Avenue in Glencoe. She parked, jotted down the house number, then fired up her tablet. Nothing happened. Crap. She’d forgotten to charge it last night. Her tablet had become as critical a tool as her Glock. More so, in fact, when she considered how much she used it. She’d have to check the owners later. She bit her lip. Another annoyance.

Coe stayed at the house for more than an hour. Was he seeing a client? Finally he emerged and walked briskly to the Beemer. Looking almost jaunty, he rubbed his hands together as if he’d scored big. He fired up the car, then headed west to Waukegan Road. The man was more than an irritation, she decided; he was making her crazy: driving here and there, popping in and out of places. Did he work out of his car like that lawyer in the crime novels?

At Waukegan Road he turned south to a small strip mall between Dundee and Shermer that included a gas station, a driving school, a liquor store, and a nail salon. Coe parked in back of the Le Nail Spa and went inside.

Georgia turned into a strip mall across the street and parked facing out. She knew this salon. Ellie Foreman had told her about it. Years ago they’d been involved in the same case, Georgia as a cop, Ellie as a video producer. Foreman had discovered the place was a mecca for Russian immigrants; almost all the women who worked at the salon hailed from the former Soviet Union.

When Georgia looked into it, she discovered why. Apparently a popular magazine in the Soviet Union had featured Northbrook, Illinois, in an article ten years earlier, calling it an ideal place for Russians planning to emigrate to the States. She wasn’t able to get her hands on the article itself, but she’d been told it hyped Northbrook’s schools, low crime rate, reasonable cost of living, and resources that helped immigrants learn English and American customs.

Whatever it said, it had worked. Over the years thousands of Eastern Europeans had moved to Northbrook, and the village developed a reputation as a Russian émigré’s paradise. Unfortunately, the crime rate was no longer low. Wherever Russians went, they brought crime, and the Russian Mafiya were all over Northbrook.

Still, there was no reason to think that a place that offered manicures and pedicures was coddling a nest of gangsters. More likely they were just hardworking women struggling to make ends meet. Georgia got out of the car and pulled on her gloves. She didn’t want them to see the sorry state of her nails. Bitten to the quick. A manicure would be wasted on her. The few times she’d had one, the polish chipped in hours, and a day later, her nails looked like they’d gone through the spin cycle of a washing machine. She slowed her pace and crossed the street, as if she had all the time in the world. As she sauntered past the salon’s window, she peered in, pretending she’d just noticed the place.

Two rows of manicure tables, twelve in all, filled the room. Women in pink, blue, or green smocks sat at the tables. Five or six customers, their nails in various stages of decoration, sat across from the girls. The girls with no customers paged through magazines, watched a TV mounted on the wall at the far end, or chattered on their cells. She didn’t see Chad Coe.

Georgia pulled the front door open and walked in. A list of prices was taped to the wall. She pretended to study it until a slim woman in a blue uniform approached her.

“May I help you?“ Her English was heavily accented.

Georgia whipped around and pasted on a wide smile. “Good morning. How long have you been here? The salon, I mean?”

The woman furrowed her brow. “Oh, about ten years, I think.”

“That long? Wonderful. I’m so happy to find you. I just moved here.”

“You want mani-pedi?” the woman asked.

“I sure do. May I take a quick look around?”

“Course.” The woman flashed her a toothy smile.

Georgia strolled between the tables to the back of the room. She hoped she looked like she was inspecting the place. At the back of the room underneath the TV was a table with a coffee machine, cups and condiments. Beside it was a back door that presumably led outside. On the other side was an alcove leading to a smaller space. She poured herself a cup of coffee, hearing a low murmur coming from that direction. She took her time doctoring the coffee, although she usually drank it black. Then she turned around and casually glanced toward the alcove.

Chad Coe was in earnest conversation with a middle-aged blowsy woman whose red lipstick dominated a face with birdlike eyes, painted-on eyebrows, and the faint shadow of a mustache. Unlike the other women in the shop, she wore a long flowing skirt and white blouse. Was she the owner?

Neither Coe or the woman appeared to take any notice of Georgia, so she retraced her steps to the front, thanked the woman who’d greeted her, promised to call for an appointment, and ducked out.

Georgia went back to her Toyota, threw out the coffee, and climbed in. She pulled out, crossed the street, and parked in the lot of the first strip mall. The Beemer was in front of the salon’s back door. Georgia was at the other end.

Chad Coe came out a few minutes later. So did the woman he’d been talking to. Both got in their respective cars. The woman drove an older Chevy Impala. There were two exits from the lot; Coe turned one way, the woman the other. Georgia decided to stick with Coe. She would check out the woman another time.

But Coe must have finished his business, because he drove back to Riverwoods. She headed back to Evanston.