Concrete Underground (2010) (15 page)

"She hasn't been answering her phone, she hasn't gone back to her condo, and she hasn't made contact with any of her friends. For all intents and purposes, she has vanished into thin air."

I made a couple notes in my notebook. "Why do you want me to find her for you? Don't you have anyone in your organization who'd be better suited for this kind of thing?"

"I do," he nodded. "The thing is, I can't necessarily trust this to someone within my organization. You see, I've had well--" he paused, "--I guess you could call it a security breach. Let me start at the beginning.

"A few weeks ago, I received an anonymous letter attempting to blackmail me. The details aren't important, suffice it to say that some person or persons claimed to have information that would be damaging to me and requested to be paid an exorbitant amount of money to keep it private. But - to be perfectly frank - this was not the first time this kind of threat has been made against me, so I didn't think much of it.

"Once I found Jacinda's dead body in my airplane, I started taking things a little more seriously. After some checking, my security analysts reported that there had in fact been a breach involving unauthorized access of sensitive information. Further investigation suggested Lily as the most likely culprit, and of course recent developments have borne this out. However, speaking frankly, she has neither the intellect, the vision, nor the constitution to conceive and execute a plot like this. She must have conspirators who are familiar enough with my operations to know the vulnerabilities."

I smiled. "In other words, you can't even trust your own people now."

He nodded. "Which is why I need you. So find Lily, find her conspirators, and if you can manage it, recover the information they stole from me. Although I realize that you'd be reluctant to hand that over if you do."

He led me back out to his assistant's desk where he set me up with the keys to an Abrasax company car and programmed his personal cell number into my phone.

Then he produced a red keycard badge bearing both the Abrasax corporate logo as well as the Highwater Society globe and crown symbol.

"This will get you anywhere you need to go," Max said as he clipped it to my jacket. "Anywhere."

---

Before leaving the building, I decided to put my new keycard to the test. I took the elevator down to the seventh floor, which housed Abrasax's public relations and marketing division. The receptionist there knew me by sight and normally had standing orders from Lily to call security the minute she saw me. This time she smiled warmly and let me pass unobstructed.

I swiped the keycard at the door to the staff-only area, and it worked. I made my way back to the corner office with the name plate "Lilian Lynch, Communications Director" and again the badge let me in.

Lily's office was extremely neat and orderly, which didn't surprise me given how anal she came off. If Max had his people search it for evidence, then they did a damn fine job of covering their tracks.

The thing that struck me about her office was the unsettling atmosphere of pre-fabrication. She had gone out of her way to fill the space up, to make it appear lived in, but the more time you spent looking around, the more you realized how superficial it was. Instead of photos of her friends and family, all the frames had pictures taken at company events and professional conferences. The only art hanging on the walls were a few Abrasax promo posters along with her various awards and certifications. The books on her shelves were all style guides and business self-help books,
How to Be a More Assertive Asshole
and the like. Somehow this ended up feeling more cold and impersonal than if she had just left the room bare.

I poked around in her files but found just the expected work papers you'd see in any flack's office - mostly spec sheets and collateral about various Abrasax products and services, old invoices of ad buys, and clippings from past publicity campaigns.

I tried booting up her computer but couldn't guess her password. I gave up after a few attempts, but then happened to catch sight of something reflective flashing inside an the air vent in the ceiling. Remembering the box hidden in Cobb's room, I grabbed one of the visitor's chairs from Lily's desk and stepped up on it to look inside. I didn't find any key, but I did instead find a small surveillance camera.

The pristine, undisturbed state of the office made sense. There was no need to search it because if Lily had hidden anything significant here, Max would have already known.

I took some white out from Lily's desk and painted over the camera lens - honestly, just to be a dick.

On my way out of the office, I heard a cell phone start ringing and realized it wasn't mine. I looked around to figure out where it was coming from and tracked it down to the row of coat hangers mounted on the wall in the far corner of the room. She had a couple coats hanging, and I rifled through the pockets until I found her BlackBerry. By that time, the call had already gone to voicemail, but I browsed around and found her phone book, appointment calendar, call logs, and e-mails going back for six months stored in it.

Not wanting to walk away empty handed, I slipped the phone into my pocket.

Once outside Lily's office, I ran into three men - two dressed in security uniforms, one I recognized as the surveillance-nut from the party, the one with the birthmark whom Max had called Ben Garza.

"What were you doing in there?" one of the guards asked.

I flashed the red keycard badge that Max had given me. "I work here. I was looking into something for Mr. Maxwell."

The guard turned to consult in hushed tones with his partner and Garza. "You shouldn't have interfered with the surveillance equipment," he finally said as he turned back.

"Fuck off," I said, sensing an opportunity to press my advantage. "If you have a problem with the way I'm doing my job, go ahead and call up Max himself. I'm working directly on his orders, not some creepy peeping tom or a couple rent-a-cops."

I stared down the guard, who I could tell was salivating over the thought of taking his nightstick to the side of my head, but he just stood there bristling.

"Then get out of my way," I scoffed and walked past them. Garza glared at me disdainfully, so I threw him a quick shoulder check on my way out. "Punk bitch."

16. Dirty Business

I took the elevator down to the fourth level of the underground garage and found space 423, which matched up with the tag on the keys Max gave me. A black Porsche Boxster was parked in the space.

I hopped in and fired it up, then gave Columbine a call as I drove out of the garage. I asked if could come pick her up, and she gave me her address.

On the way there, I made a quick stop at the civic center to see Nick.

I parked the Porsche in the red zone, left the Abrasax badge hanging from the rearview like a parking placard, and ran up the steps to the police headquarters. I asked the desk officer to see Nick, and when she asked if I had an appointment, I started ranting incoherently and flailing around like a mad man with Tourrette's who thinks he's on fire.

Usually this type of behavior is frowned-upon in police stations, and I was about to be politely escorted into an interrogation cell by several large cops with nightsticks when Nick, who luckily had been passing by close enough to hear his name, intervened.

He hurried me into his office and locked the door. "This better be good."

I pulled out the three blue envelopes from my bag and dropped them on his desk. "What's all that?" he asked. "The love letters you've been writing me all these years but have been too shy to send?"

I threw my head back and held my gut, silently miming laughter. "These were sent to me anonymously. I need you to do cop stuff to them. Check for fingerprints, DNA, whatever crazy CSI shit you can come up with."

He had picked up the envelopes and started inspecting them, but then abruptly dropped them when he heard my request. "You could have told me you needed prints before I started handling them, you know."

I shrugged at him like he was speaking in tongues.

"Meet me at the Casbah after work," he groaned in resignation.

Just then an attractive Indian sergeant poked her head in and told Nick, "Hey there's a Porsche parked out in front in the fire lane. At the desk, they told me I should ask you about it."

I gave Nick a couple quick pats on the back. "I gotta go."

---

Twenty minutes later I pulled up to a small one-story duplex in a mostly run-down neighborhood on the east side. As I got out of the Porsche and approached the door, I could hear the Dresden Dolls' "Dirty Business" blaring from inside. I knocked.

When the door opened, I was surprised to see it was Violet who answered. She was dressed casually in a white boy-beater and a pair of cotton pajama pants, and she still looked unbelievable. Her hair was tied back in a black bandanna, and she was splattered with different shades of paint.

"Come on in," she said with a smile. "Col's expecting you."

She led me into her living room, which looked exactly the way I would have guessed it should look. The furniture was color-coordinated in dark shades of browns, creams, and burgundies. There was no television to serve as the focal point; instead, the couches and chairs were all arranged to face each other and facilitate conversation. The only visible piece of technology was the small MP3 player dock that was currently blaring out Amanda Palmer's aggressive piano work. An entire wall was covered with jam-packed bookcases. A handful of modern art pieces were dotted around the room as accents. At the far end, a hallway split off leading to bedrooms on one side and a short flight of stairs on the other, which led into a lowered room that obviously served as her art studio.

"She's getting dressed," Violet said while turning down the music with a remote. "Go ahead and have a seat while you wait."

We sat down together on a couch. She picked up one of her clove cigarettes, and I lit it for her.

As she smoked, she laid back and put her feet up on my lap. She had small, delicate toes, and her nails were painted a metallic purple that matched her hair. I watched her silently, mesmerized by the fluidity and gracefulness of even her simplest movements. She looked elegant, like an old black-and-white move starlet, even while lounging around in PJs.

I took one of her bare feet in my hands and started massaging it. She smiled and let out a small, satisfied sigh.

"So what, are you and Columbine roommates?" I asked.

"Pretty much. We let her stay in our spare room after she and her father had a big falling out. It was supposed to just be 'til they patched things up. That was three years ago."

"I see," I said. "'Us' being you and your husband."

She smiled silently. Then, as if on cue, the front door opened. I looked over my shoulder and saw Saint Anthony walking in, dressed in a charcoal gray suit caked with mud. He stopped in his tracks when he saw me on the couch with Violet's foot in my hands.

"Hi babe," she said, standing up and walking around the couch to greet him. She wrapped her arms around his neck, and they kissed deeply while Anthony's hands reached down and cupped her ass, causing her to let out a playful giggle.

I fought back the urge to wretch.

Anthony and Violet finally broke off their embrace, then both turned to look at me. "I'll go remind Col that you're waiting," Violet said sheepishly and headed down the hallway.

In the meantime Anthony pulled off his suit jacket, revealing a white shirt underneath splattered with dried blood. I felt a knot in my stomach and prayed that it wasn't Lily's.

"I heard Max brought you on board the team," he said and stripped off the bloody shirt, acting perfectly nonchalant. I saw that he had a large sacred heart tattooed right in the middle his perfectly-chiseled chest. He opened a coat closet next to the front door and took out a hooded sweater.

"Word travels fast," I responded as he zipped up the sweater over his tattoo. I realized that I had been staring and that he noticed it, too. I caught his narrow, menacing gaze and suddenly felt unsettlingly like an albino mouse dropped into a python's cage.

Mercifully, Columbine came bouncing into the room only seconds later, her ebullience instantly cutting through the tension. She was pulling off a rockabilly look in tight blue jeans with short cuffed legs, a red checkered halter top, big hoop earrings, and her hair tied back in a handkerchief. Big cat's-eye sunglasses and cherry red lipstick provided the finishing touches.

"Let's blow this joint, daddy-o," she said.

"Well come on, little mama," I replied, grateful for the bailout, and led her outside to the Porsche.

"Nice ride, where'd you get it?"

"Max," I said, plugging my phone into into the deck and switching it to MP3 mode. "He put me on the payroll."

From the speakers, the late great Lux Interior wailed:
Well come on, little mama, let's tear this damn place up.

---

I drove us back to Lily's and brought Columbine up to speed on the blackmail plot, Lily's disappearance, and Max's job offer.

"So you sold your soul to the devil. Nice," she teased as we got out of the car. "So much for being all hardcore independent, anti-corporate, punk-as-fuck journalist."

"It's only selling out if I back down and don't publish whatever dirt I find on Max in the process," I countered.

"Just keep telling yourself that," she said in a playfully mocking way as she typed in the code to open Lily's gate.

"It's still so strange to think that Lily is mixed up in all this," she continued as we walked upstairs. "I mean, she's certainly got reason to hate Max, but she's not really the blackmail and conspiracy type. She's my friend and all, but frankly she just doesn't have enough imagination."

"Hold on, what did you mean about having reason to hate Max?" I asked.

She replied, "Well they had a pretty messy break-up. I don't think she ever really got over him."