Concrete Underground (2010) (5 page)

By the time he showed up I was already deep into my third drink and trying charm the bartender, Maggie, into comping my fourth. I was failing miserably as usual, but at least it was fun trying.

As soon as Nick walked through the front door, I slammed my palm down on the bar top. "Tricky Nicky! Have a drink, brother!"

He slid onto the bar stool beside me and smiled warmly at the bartender. "Has this low life been giving you grief, Maggie?"

She grinned at him. "Only since I opened the front door." Nick winked at her and ordered a half-pint of stout.

"Pansy," I scoffed and slammed the rest of my whiskey.

He shook his head. "God I miss you, you mad bastard. I can't imagine why Andrea won't let you come around the house anymore."

I shrugged. "I know, it's like as soon as she started squirting out brood, she suddenly gets all uptight about people starting fires in the middle of your living room."

"Imagine," he said as he raised his glass of beer.

I clinked my empty glass to his. "So guess who I ran into last night at Jenny's wedding?"

He shrugged.

"Brian Lopez."

He chuckled. "No shit. How is old Double-Dip?'

"Fat and sad," I replied while waving Maggie over for a refill. "And married to a smoking hottie. Well, married or engaged or whatever."

Nick nodded. "I met her. They were at a Police Union dinner around the holidays. She's a butterface."

I arched my eyebrow. "She had a face?"

Maggie rolled her eyes while she filled my glass. Nick caught her glance. "I know, he's got no class, but what are you gonna do?"

"Anyways," I continued, "she's way too hot for him, and that's not gonna end well. You just know that one of these days he's gonna come home and find her with the pool boy or some shit."

"Or with the pool boy, the plumber, and the mail man, all taking turns," Nick said. "Buddy of mine went to McKinley High with her, and apparently she had a reputation."

"Well, whatever... Brian's a douche now anyways, so fuck 'em."

"Yeah, he's a douche. Actually he's always been a douche." Nick drained the last of his beer. "Come to think of it, you've always been kind of a douche, too. But at least you're good for a laugh."

"I'll drink to that," I said, slapping a handful of bills down on the bar. "Next round's on me."

"Uh oh, Maggie," Nick chuckled. "If D's actually buying me a round, he must need something."

I flashed him a wolfish grin. "Let's head back to the patio and have a smoke, yeah?"

We went outside. I lit up, and he took a deep breath of my second-hand. He quit when he entered the academy and had to get his fix vicariously.

I showed him the article I clipped about the dead woman. "I need to know all there is to know about this."

He glanced at it and furrowed his brow. "What's to know? Some transient got scrubbed and left in a ditch on the side of the highway. Best guess is that she was hitchhiker who got picked up and wouldn't pay the fare." He bobbed his hand up and down in front of his pelvis to mime someone performing fellatio on him.

"There's really no ID, though? You couldn't match any fingerprints or dental records or biometrics and shit?"

He laughed and shook his head. "I don't think you really understand quite how those things work."

"So? I'm a journalist. It's not my job to understand things. I just ape the sounds other people make, like a parrot."

"Ape like a parrot - that's poetic, really." He chuckled then looked back at the article. "Look, there was one possible ID, but we looked into it and it didn't pan out. I probably shouldn't even mention this, knowing you, but one of the guys on the force thought he recognized her, said she looked like some lady who went missing a while ago. He remembered seeing her in the papers a lot, she used to run a computer company."

I perked up at that last tidbit. "Really?" I pulled out my notebook and started scribbling.

"Settle down. We checked the dental records - yes, dental records," he groaned, "and she wasn't a match."

"Could the records have been faked?" I asked.

"Only if you're some kind of paranoid conspiracy theory nut job," he replied.

"Sweet, I'm in like Flynn."

"Why are you interested in this anyways?"

I took the clipping back from him. "Don't worry about it. You know me, I just like to poke my nose in other people's business."

We went back inside and made small talk over one more round - long enough that Nick felt like he could politely ditch me to get back to his real life.

I stopped him as he was getting up to go. "Hey, if you're free tonight, I could use someone to get my back at this party." I dug into my pocket and showed him the invitation that Columbine had given me.

"You need someone to get your back at a party?" he asked skeptically.

"Brother, you wouldn't believe the week I've had. I feel like I need a body guard just going down the street to get a taco."

"I believe it. I still read your articles." He looked over the invitation. It read:

LABYRINTHINE

ART * TECHNOLOGY * PERFORMANCE * INTERSECTIONS

SATURDAY, MARCH 13, 9:00 P.M.

2332 NORTH ALAMEDA AVE.

"This sounds a bit fruity," he said with a raised eyebrow. "You're really going to this?"

"Maybe. It's for work," I explained.

"I'll pass. As tempting as it may sound to babysit you at some poofy circle jerk, I'm just going to stay home and nail my hot wife instead."

"No you won't. You have kids now, you're not nailing anything," I reminded him.

"Oh yeah," he said disappointedly. Then he glanced back at the card. "What's this symbol on the back about?"

"There's no symbol. The back's solid black."

He shook his head. "It's black ink on a black background. You have to hold it at the right angle to see it, like the Metallica Black Album cover."

"Or
White Light/White Heat
."

"Yeah." He showed me. It was the crown-and-globe symbol again.

"I thought you were supposed to be an
investigative
journalist."

---

Jenny turned her nose up at me as I sat down, sniffing loudly and filling her nostrils with the strong alcohol stink I was emitting. "So have you been drinking already this morning, or are you just still drunk from last night?"

"A little of both," I said.

She peered at me disapprovingly over her iced latte. We were sitting at a table in front of a strip mall coffee shop. Jenny was wearing huge gold-rimmed sunglasses and had a decent collection of shopping bags gathered at her feet.

"Busy afternoon?" I asked.

"Just picking up a few things for Mexico. We leave tomorrow morning."

My attention was drawn away by a group of men in black jumpsuits standing around in the parking lot next to a white van with the red
Asterion
logo painted on its side. It was hard to tell, but I thought one of them was the same guy I'd seen on the Light Rail a couple days before, the one who'd been reading the paper.

Jenny seemed to notice my distraction and followed my gaze. "Is something wrong?"

"No, it's just those Asterion guys seem to be everywhere now. I guess business must be booming."

"Yeah, we hired them last month to archive our old financial records," Jenny replied. "They came in and hauled everything away, I was so happy to get all that empty space back. Of course it doesn't really matter now, since I'm going to have to find a new job when I get back from the honeymoon.

"Anyways, I'm rambling," she admitted good-naturedly. "So what did you want to talk to me about?"

"I wanted to ask you about someone I met last night."

She bared her teeth ecstatically in a knowing grin. "Really? A woman, I presume."

"Settle down, it's not like that. She's just a girl who said she can help introduce me to Dylan Maxwell."

"Was it Natalie?" she asked.

"I don't know. She was wearing a motley dress and a black veil."

"Yep, that's Natalie," Jenny confirmed.

"She said her name was Columbine."

"Ugh, she's still doing that?" Jenny smacked her lips in disgust. "That seems so macabre and distasteful."

I paused. "Well, you know it has nothing to do with Colorado, right?"

Jenny ignored my comment. "She's Brad's cousin - James' daughter. She's kinda the black sheep of the family, if you couldn't guess."

"Do you think she could really get me an interview with Maxwell?" I asked.

"If anyone can, it'd be her. They're good friends."

I pulled the rave card out of my pocket. "She told me to meet her at this party. I was kind of on-the-fence about going - it really doesn't look like my kind of scene."

"You should go," Jenny said. "I think it would be good for you two to get to know each other. She's a good kid, but she's - I don't know - lost, maybe. You could be a positive influence on her."

"Really?" I asked in a voice that plainly showed my surprise. I don't think my sister had ever described me as being a positive influence on anybody.

Jenny nodded. "Yeah. Now, Brad may not be so enthusiastic. He was pretty worked up last night when he heard that the two of you had locked yourselves in the men's room, but I assured him that Natalie isn't your type and nothing probably happened."

I smirked, picturing him simultaneously clenching his jaw, his fists, and his sphincter as he imagined me defiling his little cousin in myriad unspeakable ways on a filthy bathroom floor.

"So please don't fuck her," she added. "Not even to spite Brad."

I screwed up my face as if it was ludicrous to even suggest that. But secretly, if only for a second, the thought actually had crossed my mind.

"You still haven't told me what he thought of my article."

She shook her head. "Why do you keep asking? It obviously pissed him off, is it really that important for you to hear it from me?" I grinned, enjoying watching her get wound up. She realized that was what was going on, and it just made her angrier.

"Fine. You really want to know what he said about it? He thinks you just wrote it to get attention from me. He thinks it's your weird, passive-aggressive play to sabotage our marriage, like you're trying to make me choose between you and him. I told him that was crazy - that you wouldn't endanger your career and your professional reputation over something as stupid and petty as that."

I kept my eyes downcast so as not to meet her gaze and instead focused on the black-on-black symbol on the glossy rave card.

6. Labyrinthine

I showed up at the address on Columbine's invitation just before eleven; it was a converted warehouse in an industrial zone on the city's north side. Since it was a Saturday night, everything else was empty for miles. The parking lot was filled with sports cars, hybrids, and shiny suburban tanks. The door facing the parking lot was open, spilling out muted lights and the din of yuppie chatter. It cast a somewhat foreboding aura over the entrance.

The first thing I noticed as I approached was the beefy refrigerator in a rented tux blocking the doorway. The second thing was the surveillance camera perched on the wall above his head.

I had stopped home and changed first, so I was sure I was dressed mostly appropriately for some rich faux-hipster art party - charcoal gray pinstripe jacket over a
TV on the Radio
t-shirt, skinny cuffed jeans, Docs, and a black fedora. I certainly didn't look any worse than the other idiots I saw filing in and out of the door. I even had an invitation. So I was fairly confident I'd be able to gain admission to this thing without incident.

"No, absolutely not," the doorman said, pressing a meaty palm into my chest.

"I was invited!" I said, exasperated. "I have documentation." I waved the rave card in front of his face.

"No dice."

I stepped aside to let a couple of aging goths through the door and wondered for a moment if the doorman somehow knew who I was. Then I noticed the ear piece he was wearing and my eyes darted back to the surveillance camera.

"Motherfucker," I spat and raised both arms to flip off the camera.

I didn't know it at the time, but at that moment Dylan Maxwell was sitting in front of a wall of monitors, laughing his ass off.

I circled around the building, looking for some kind of alternate entrance. To my chagrin, all the windows lined the top of the building over thirty feet above my head. Reaching the back, I found a series of roll-up doors on the loading dock and one normal door that for didn't appear to have any handle or knob. It clearly opened only from the inside.

I cursed angrily under my breath, and just as I turned to descend the stairs off the loading dock, I heard the door open behind me. I twisted my head to see a woman emerge, her thick, long hair dyed a vibrant shade of purple.

She stood there, framed by the open doorway, looking statuesque and regal in a full-length black trench coat with a the belt cinched tight around her waist, showing off the curve of her hips. She had large brown eyes that seemed just a little too big and dark compared to the rest of her pale face. The rest of her features were angular and severe. I guessed her to be around my age and of Eastern European descent.

I watched her with my mouth hanging open as she propped the door open and pulled a pack of cloves from her pocket. Before I realized it, I had bounded back up the steps and pulled out my Bic to light her cigarette. She leaned in to touch its tip to the flame, her eyes rolling up to look at me. Then she uprighted herself and blew a steady stream of smoke into the night air.

"Thanks," she said.

I pulled out my own cigarettes and lit one for myself.

"Did you lock yourself out?" she asked with an amused grin.

"Nah," I explained, "the gestapo at the door wouldn't let me in, so I was looking for a way to sneak in."

"Really? Why wouldn't he let you in?"

"It's all political," I replied with a shake of my head. "Best not to worry about it."