One of the problems with drug dealers was that they made too much damned money. When there was demand, they could always be counted on for supply.
That meant that instead of a shithole apartment downtown, or even a cheap place off Lake Street, Csaba had a whole fucking house in northern Minneapolis, in one of those neighborhoods that was trying to pick itself up but hadn’t made it yet.
And I had no way of getting there on my own. It was three in the morning. Buses weren’t running, and I knew a cab wouldn’t drop me off in that neighborhood.
Plus, I didn’t own a car. Too damned expensive to gas up, fix, and insure. And I sure as hell didn’t have anyplace to put it. Parking downtown was a bitch at best.
However. Kyle had a car.
I knew it was a stupid idea even as I headed toward his place, walking quickly through the empty streets of the warehouse district. All the streetlights had gone to zombie-blinking mode, like the start of the end of the world. I didn’t even smoke as I walked. The cold had settled into insta-freeze. Even out of the wind, my hands would have gotten frostbite in about two minutes without my gloves on.
Kyle lived south of downtown, between Loring Park and Uptown. Not in one of those new highrises, but one of the few houses that had survived and hadn’t been torn down yet for more new development. The place was a dump and the landlord a slumlord at best. He’d probably sell off Kyle’s stuff if his family decided not to bother to collect it. Maybe even go through and steal what he could before they got there.
I walked down the back of the block first. It was more sterile than I’d remembered. Most neighborhoods had trees in the boulevard, between the sidewalk and the street. This block didn’t. Instead, the buildings rose up from just a few feet back from the sidewalk, the cold trapped in the concrete and held there, making me feel as if I were walking inside a commercial fridge.
The warehouse district didn’t have much in the way of greenery, either, but at least the buildings had some sort of character. This neighborhood was “modern” ’70s, all cinderblock and emotionless.
Just after the corner stood another one of the houses that had survived. The yard had the barest cover of snow, looking like a frozen wasteland. One old tree still grew in the front, but most of the limbs had been cut from it. Was it actually alive? Or just a wasted hulk?
I slowed as I neared the next corner, looking to my left, down the street.
Didn’t see any cop cars. No lights flashing.
Either they’d already been to Kyle’s place and gone, or they’d decided the case wasn’t important enough to work through the night.
I didn’t know if that meant my luck was finally changing, or if taking Kyle’s car would turn out to be the most stupid thing I could do as far as the cops were concerned.
Didn’t matter. I needed to go hunt down Csaba, see if he knew anything about Helen, or the other girl, Lizzie, or even Kyle. Maybe he knew if there had been any other killings—he’d pay attention to that sort of thing because that would mean fewer customers.
Kyle’s hunk of junk was sitting right in front of his house. Must have been lucky whenever he’d parked it—it was normally impossible to find a place to park in his neighborhood.
The car was an ancient, blue, four-door Ford Taurus, a rust bucket like all the old cars in Minnesota due to the salt thrown on the roads in the winter. Kyle kept replacement insurance on it, along with a spare set of keys underneath an old coffee can on the front porch that also served as an ashtray. He’d joked that he wasn’t so much begging people to steal his car, but that if it happened, well, he was covered.
Despite the cold, the car started on the second try, turning over and revving up, disturbing the quiet of the neighborhood. I blasted the heater and defroster, shivering as the cold wind blew on me. How long before it blew warm? Knowing my luck, I’d already be up north before the actual heat kicked in.
I didn’t stay too long, though, warming the car up. Didn’t want the cops coming by, wondering what I was doing in Kyle’s car.
Particularly since my driver’s license was expired.
The road was slick, and Kyle had shit tires. I got the car out of the cramped neighborhood—even with cars parked only on one side and minimal snow, it was still tight—and onto the freeway, heading north. Only a few drivers were out—and the few drivers who were out were semis and taxis. The road looked bleached white from the salt, despite the orange glow of the freeway lights.
Too soon, I got off the easy four-lane and back into the twisting sprawl of the city streets. Fortunately, most of northern Minneapolis had been done on a grid, so the main streets weren’t too bad.
The side streets were a mess, though. I parked blocks before I needed to, preferring to walk, even though the cold bit into me like a knife.
The neighborhood here was all houses, boxy and rundown. The yards held old cars, discarded washing machines, and snowy lumps that wouldn’t be identifiable until spring. Naked trees lined the boulevard, stoically carrying their sprinkling of snow and ice.
A couple of houses bucked the trend—one had strings of bright red-and-green Christmas lights circling the porch, another had a tree decorated in white lights and silver garlands. There weren’t any ostentatious displays like what I remembered from growing up in Minnetonka, with Santa and his whole fucking workshop done in blowup dolls, or the creepy snowmen in globes.
It was easy to tell Csaba’s place: all the lights were on, the party still rolling along, people hanging out on the front porch. The music wasn’t too loud, though. Had the cops already visited that night? Or was Csaba still trying desperately for some sort of respectability?
Even from outside, through the cold, the sweet scent of pot lay thick in the air. Two skanky girls shared a bowl on a sagging couch that took up most of the left side of the screened-in front porch, while a solitary guy watched them on the other side.
No one stopped me from opening the screen door and walking in. None of them even looked up.
The inside of the house was nicer than I expected. To the right was a squared-off, dark wood staircase going up. Someone had tied a big red-and-white-striped bow around the square end of the staircase banister. The place stank of acidic chemicals and spilled beer, but the wooden floors looked clean and there wasn’t garbage piled everywhere.
Going straight in from the door was a narrow hallway. At some point in the ’70s they’d decided to put red velvet wallpaper on the hallway walls. Half a dozen fake candles lined the floor and reflected the browns and reds darkly, the electric flames wavering in syncopation.
Underneath the staircase, a door stood propped open. I knew that would go into the basement dungeon—another place I didn’t want to go.
I turned left instead, entering the living room. Long tubes of black fluorescent lights hung over the windows that looked over the front porch, above the couch where an orgy seemed to be going on. I tried not to look—too much white-boy butt on display.
Through the archway to the right was a table covered in what had probably been a pretty good spread earlier, judging from the pizza boxes, and the half a rotisserie chicken that remained—hell, there was even a veggie tray. Plus bag after bag of potato chips, mostly empty.
I snagged a salt-and-vinegar chip as I passed by. There was a dark-haired girl curled around a bottle, sleeping in the corner, her dress pulled up and her panties showing.
Good thing I wasn’t really Mother Teresa or I might have tried to save her—wake her ass up and get her out of there before one of the boys decided “asleep” meant “yes.”
But I had find Csaba first.
Then maybe I’d come back for her.
The kitchen was a full-on disaster area. All the counters were covered with bottles of booze, glasses empty and not, as well as a glass bowl full of brightly colored pills in every color of the rainbow. Overflowing ashtrays filled the cheap white linoleum table in the eating nook, spilling onto the floor. At least three large black garbage bags were stuffed full of something that reeked. Vomit lay in a puddle next to the back door.
I knew it was just a matter of time before all that chaos rolled out into the rest of the living space. I’d lived in places like this, before. When I’d been on the street. Crash pads, though they were barely adequate for that.
Gave me the willies just walking around.
Csaba was nowhere to be seen. He might fuck in public, but I doubted he’d share a girl like the two (three?) in the living room. That meant he was either upstairs, fucking in one of the bedrooms, or downstairs, playing bondage games.
I didn’t like either option. Still, I opted for upstairs first.
I’d just reached the first landing when this scared-looking, skinny white guy came barreling down the stairs. He was dressed in combat fatigues—either scrounged or he was a vet. I didn’t know if he was high or what. I pressed myself against the cold glass of the window on the landing to get out of his way.
I needn’t have bothered. He flew past me, taking the stairs three at a time, weirdly graceful. He bolted right out of the house, as if his ass were on fire.
Didn’t make me any happier to be going upstairs.
At the top of the stairs, I finally recognized someone I knew—Dusty, Csaba’s second in command. He had that whole James-Dean-bad-boy slouch going on, leaning against the wall to my left. All five doors in the hallway were closed.
I didn’t have to guess what he was standing guard for. The rhythmic slapping sound coming from the door he stood next to told me everything I needed to know.
Dusty’s curly hair was probably as blond as Kyle’s had been, only I didn’t think it came out of a bottle. He had bad acne across his nose and cheeks, making his face red and scarred. It stood out in the half-light coming from the dim bulb hanging from the ceiling, like some kind of weird mask, while his chin and mouth disappeared into the dark.
“Whatcha want?” he asked, hitching up the pants that were belted across his butt, drawing my attention to his navy blue silk boxers.
I didn’t know if it was a good thing or a bad thing that he seemed to know me.
“Who was that racing down the stairs? What happened to him?” I asked instead.
“Hunter.” Dusty chuckled and shook his head. “No idea what happened to him, what he saw. Guy lives with ghosts.”
That made him either a junkie, or a failed pre-cog, or both.
“Csaba around?” I asked, hopeful, since Dusty had been nice enough to tell me about the other guy.
“Downstairs,” Dusty said, his voice going neutral. “You looking to score?”
“Naw, special home delivery,” I lied.
I worked in a sex & toy shop. Claiming to have goodies with me had gotten me into more than one “exclusive” party.
“Freak,” Dusty said, shaking his head and crossing his arms over his chest.
I knew when I wasn’t wanted. I still blew him a kiss before I turned and walked back down the stairs. What can I say? I really don’t know when to stop sometimes.
So it was down into the dungeon for me.
***
I did have some kind of luck, though I was never sure what kind. Since I worked in a sex & toy shop, there wasn’t much I hadn’t seen kink-wise from reviewing the porn videos, or looking through the catalogues, trying to figure out which titles I should order for the store.
So as I crept down the steep, twisted wooden staircase leading to the basement, I wasn’t shocked, horrified, or even turned on by what I saw.
It wasn’t the fanciest dungeon setup I’d ever seen. The walls were painted an incongruous sunflower yellow. Sconces held electrified candles, all set to dim, every three feet or so—atmospheric, I suppose. The floor was concrete and I bet there was a drain somewhere so it could be hosed down.
On one side of the big basement room stood a simple wooden cross with a voluptuous girl tied to it, her playmate/torturer wearing electrodes strapped to his fingers so arching sparks of blue lightning kept prickling her skin and making her writhe in pain. On the other side was a vaulting horse with a skinny boy strapped down to it, a woman in a knee-length, tight red leather dress whipping him slowly with a matching red leather flogger.
Men stood in packs, watching the two shows, their dicks out, stroking themselves or each other. When I reached the bottom of the stairs I saw, in another corner, a pair of blindfolded girls making out with each other, sharing a pocket rocket vibrator, passing it back and forth.
The smell of smoke and the musk of sex lay thick in the air. It was as bad as the booths for the peep show that I regularly cleaned out with bleach.
I took two steps, then stopped. Ew. The floor was sticky. I wasn’t about to look too closely to figure out what had made it sticky. I might have to wash the soles of my boots. I sure as hell wasn’t about to touch anything.
Just past the bottom of the staircase, Csaba sat on his slick, black leather couch. I figured it was easier to get the stains out of that than some kind of fabric, no matter how well it had been Scotchgarded. He nodded his fat head in time with the deep bass playing in the background, some rap song where the words had been scrambled and just the beat remained.
Csaba looked like a pudgy Greek, with greasy black hair and olive skin. He licked his lips constantly with his flabby tongue, as if he was tasting the air or something. His nose was practically melted into his skin, as if his fat cheeks had muscled in on the center of his face.
Yeah, there were reasons why he was sometimes referred to as Jabba the Hutt, though never to his face.
When I walked over to the couch, Csaba looked up with a scowl. “Looking to score?”
“No, I—”
“Then I ain’t interested. Get out of here,” Csaba said, waving me away with one of his ringed hands, his attention firmly focused on the boy being spanked harder now.
“Kyle Magnusson was killed tonight,” I told him.
That at least got Csaba to look at me. “Cops know what happened?”
I shrugged. “It was something weird. Maybe a new drug.”
“So you think they’ll be coming for Csaba? You thought you’d warn me? For what? What do you want?” Csaba asked.
I hadn’t, actually, come to warn him. However, it was as good an excuse as any. “Was Helen of Troy killed recently?” I asked.
“Yeah. Cops were thinking that was some kind of drug, too,” Csaba said, casually. Then he sat up straight. “Shit. They really are coming after me, aren’t they?”
Csaba stood up and clapped his hands. The music instantly stopped. The moaning of the woman followed by another static shot sounded clear through the basement.
“What about a hooker named Lizzie? Over in St. Paul?” I asked.
“We gotta move, people,” Csaba announced, ignoring me.
“There was another hooker, named Lizzie—” I said again, trying to get Csaba’s attention.
“I heard you the first time,” Csaba said bluntly. “Leave the soundbox. And the toys,” he instructed. Then he turned to me. “Hadn’t heard of her. Erikson might have, though. You’ll find him at Red Moon, in northern St. Paul, after midnight most nights.”
Then Csaba firmly turned away from me. “Davis, grab the truck. Pauline, roust the group upstairs.”
I slipped away before Csaba could decide to give me some type of order, make me help him move him and his party.
Were the police really on their way? Would they blame someone like him?
Of course they would. He was probably next on their list. Had he dealt to Kyle? It wouldn’t surprise me. The warehouse district in downtown Minneapolis was Csaba’s neighborhood.
I raced up the stairs as quickly as I could, stepping aside as Dusty and others came trooping down.
Upstairs, the orgy had already been interrupted. Boys were shoving their legs into baggy jeans. I didn’t go look for the girl in the room with the food—the party was on the move, and someone would wake her enough to bring her along.
The cold bit into me as soon as I stepped outside. Fuck. I paused in the porch and slid on my gloves, zipping up my jacket and pulling it tighter around my neck.
It wasn’t going to help much. Cold like that just burned.
The sky was still inky black, with stars peeping through the light cast by the streetlights. There wasn’t any noise, now. The snow muffled my footsteps and the main streets were too far away to hear the traffic. It was like the cold had killed everything. Some might have found it peaceful—I found it creepy as fuck.
I walked as quickly as I could back toward Kyle’s car, my hands shoved deep in my jacket pockets. I needed a cigarette. I needed a good long nap. Hell, I’d settle for a quick fuck and a rest at that point.
I was so focused on my own steps, and not falling on the ice and breaking my ass, that I was almost all the way to the car before I realized I wasn’t alone.
A round-shaped man stood on the sidewalk in front of me. My stomach fell. This wasn’t good.
“Figured you knew more than you’d say,” came a nasal voice.
Shit. Ferguson. The cop. Had he followed me? Had they tracked Kyle’s car?
It didn’t matter. I was well and truly fucked. There was no way I could make bail if they arrested me.
Hell. They might just decide I’d killed Kyle for his car, since I’d stolen it right after his death.
“Look, I can explain,” I started. I didn’t see Ferguson roll his eyes, but I’m sure that’s what he wanted to do. Every criminal probably told him that kind of line.
A strange wailing sound started up from behind me.
“What the—” was all that Ferguson managed to say before someone grabbed me from behind, an ironlike arm slipping around my waist. I was picked up and thrown over a shoulder. Then I was bouncing, my stomach hitting rock-hard shoulder, as we moved with speed along the frozen sidewalk.
“Let’s go,” came the insistent command in my ear.
Not like I really had any choice about the matter. The thing—person—man?—who had me by the waist wasn’t letting my feet touch the ground.
I didn’t know humans could move this fast.
Ferguson yelled something behind us. Despite my luck, he didn’t start shooting.
“Who are you?” I asked. “Where are you taking me?” It had all happened so quickly. I didn’t know if I should start struggling or screaming or what. The guy was freakishly strong, too. I wasn’t tiny, and he was acting as if I didn’t weigh anything at all.
“Someplace safe,” the guy growled. “Safer, at any rate.”
I froze solid at that. Was Ferguson dirty? What exactly was this strange man trying to save me from?
We dove between houses, leaping off a pile of car parts and sprinting up, over the snow, between two houses, into a garage and out the back side of it.
Half a block away, a car waited, idling by the curb. It was black and a beater, like Kyle’s.
Somehow, that made me feel better.
“Go,” the man ordered after he’d opened the door to the backseat and shoved me in, settling himself next to me.
The car was warm. My face instantly felt like it was on fire, particularly after the cold and the wind of the night. The car smelled like week-old french fries, moldy seat cushions, and spilled soft drinks.
“Who are you?” I demanded, turning to the guy sitting next to me. “And why did you kidnap me?” I figured I should at least get my story straight. Ferguson might argue that I’d run, but really, I hadn’t had much choice in the matter. Sure, I could have struggled, but going along with the crazy person had seemed like a better idea at the time.
“I didn’t kidnap you. I rescued you,” the guy said.
He was skinny and pale and dressed in Army fatigues. I couldn’t really see his face in the dark of the car, but I bet his eyes were blue and wide and scared. “Hunter?” I queried.
He gave me a quick flash of white teeth. “Yes. And you are my companion. My true blood brother.”
I caught the eye of the pudgy guy driving in the rear view mirror. “Only the lucky few get chosen this way,” he told me solemnly.
Shit. I think I would have rather faced the police than two crazed junkies.