The coffee at the truck stop tasted like highway runoff. Brody set the polystyrene cup down on the metal ledge of the MetroTab phone booth and gave it a dirty, distrusting look. From inside the enclosure, where one could upload new versions of GPS that included up-to-the-second address listings, Brody watched Thorp tape Saran wrap to the edge of the windshield frame, then pull the roll across. He carefully walked around the car holding the roll at arm’s length so it wouldn’t tangle, and, after biting a strip of duct tape, he secured the other end. He did this until there was a new shrink-wrapped windshield installed.
As the bar glacially filled on the MetroTab patch download, Brody glanced away from his phone to watch Thorp carry the empty roll to the wastebasket.
While dusting off his hands after a job finished, Thorp seemed to feel his friend’s gaze and looked up. Brody saw in Thorp’s eyes a mounting worry that the man was swiftly trying to cover by busying himself.
Thorp took a seat on the trunk of the Fairlane, folded his arms, and waited, watching the interstate’s gold and crimson lights ebb and flow. A second later, he popped up and went to the front of the car again, this time to lift the hood and check the fluid levels. Understandably, he was seeking busywork.
The download booth with the key-scratched fiberglass windows told Brody, “Thank you for using MetroTab. Every listing in the Chicago, Illinois, area has now been downloaded to your mobile phone and/or handheld device.”
Brody stepped under the pump awnings that buzzed with a million watts of fluorescent white. He queried Alton Noel on his freshly downloaded program.
“We’re about half a quart low,” Thorp said.
“We’ll be sure to tell Seb when we return it to him,” Brody chided.
“I’m just saying,” Thorp complained, “if we’re going to drive all over Chicago, we might as well have one thing marked off the list that won’t go awry on us. In most cases disaster can be prevented by keeping equipment in decent working order, you know.”
Brody turned his phone around to show Thorp the display. He stared at it. Brody narrated for what the program was displaying, “Al Christmas has an online journal.”
“Who the hell is Al Christmas?”
“I searched for Alton Noel and got no results. Mateusz mentioned Al Christmas, and lo and behold, I dropped it in a search engine and got a hit.”
“Well, what’s it say?”
“Can’t access it.”
“Suppose it’s them.” Thorp squinted. “Blocking it.”
“Possibly,” Brody said.
“It’s still up, though? You can see the address is operational, yeah?”
Brody nodded.
“That means it hasn’t been shut down all the way; it’s just been blocked. Could probably access it if we could get to whatever he used to create the journal. Most people don’t bother ever signing out of things like that because—who would? It’s only a blog. I mean, how often does this shit happen to a person, right?” Thorp snorted. “It’s probably under his reader application’s Favorites folder. One click and you’d be right in.”
“Are you suggesting breaking into yet another person’s home?” Brody asked, lowering his phone.
“You never know what he might’ve put on there. The guy hadn’t been back long. He probably needed a way to vent. I’m sure if something was up, he wrote it on there. You should see this box that I got out in the barn chock-full of composition books.”
Brody raised his phone to examine the page again. “Just like Mateusz said, his last known address was at a YMCA.”
“Nothing surprising about that. I shacked up there for a while when I first got back.”
“Suppose it’s even worth checking? He’s been dead for over a month. Wouldn’t they throw out his stuff?”
Thorp grinned. “You see this coat I’m wearing? Courtesy of the YMCA lost and found. Those people don’t throw anything away. What the police didn’t take following the shooting without a doubt ended up in the lost and found bin. And if Alton was using an ordi or some other device to write the journal, it’s still probably there and transmitting especially given the fact that there is a journal to deny you entrance into, right?”
For a second, all that could be heard was the ceaseless hum of the interstate and droning of the fluorescent lights above their heads.
Brody unbuttoned the collar of his coat. “What do you want to do?”
“What do you mean?”
“We have two leads here. We have Alton Noel’s place at the YMCA; there’s only one in town with rooms for rent. And we have Seb. With one simple flip of the switch we can have instant access to a potentially in-the-know criminal. Which way do you want to go?”
“Hell, I don’t know. You’re the gumshoe. Say you’re on the trail of some … person or whatever. Which leads do you follow?” He paused. “We could always split up and see what that got us.” Thorp looked at Brody, at the interstate, back at Brody. He chewed his lip, twitching and flexing his pinkies back and forth, back and forth, the orchestra of actions seeming wholly unconscious.
“You all right?”
He groaned, a trumpeting that signaled all his jittery mannerisms to cease. He looked down his nose at Brody. “Just stop. Come on, man. We get some news about the wires over my house potentially making me weird, and now you’re going to look at me sideways every time I say anything. Trust me. Fit as a fiddle. I’m good. I think we’re finally onto something. On the drive over here, I was giving it some thought and …” He nodded, never finishing his sentence. “Yeah, I feel fine. Why?”
“Never mind. And no, by the way. Splitting up: bad idea. You don’t have a phone.”
“Fine. We can stick together. No big deal.”
“But which do we do first?”
Thorp leaned to one side to get his hand into the back pocket of his jeans. He withdrew a quarter. “Heads we go and pay this Seb fella a visit. Tails we go take a swing past the YMCA.”
Seb’s phone issued a couple notes of music. He had it flipped open before the song finished. He was out with his dudes at a bar, trying to rid their minds of a particularly sour day they had just experienced. Their boss was in no uncertain terms a slave driver. Working in the yards was a killer. A man could feel like his ass would bond to the seat of the forklift after what felt like days without a break. Sure, he had the Slavic cunt and her sow daughter to count on for bonus finances, but a man of appetites needed a lot of dough to fund not only overhead but a means to go out and have the big fun sometimes, too.
They were about to split for another locale to continue their night elsewhere since the she-beast behind the counter decided they were already lit enough and denied them another round. Seb found it fortuitous, since now out of the bar he could hear his cell ring—something that would’ve been drowned out inside the last watering hole. He smiled. The text informed him that his car’s tracker had just been turned on. After the dry cleaner bitch had boosted his ride, he’d kicked himself for not having the thing on all the time. Now here she was probably in the parking garage of whatever dump she lived in, fiddling with the settings of her newly procured ride, trying to find a way to turn on the windshield auto-tint, but she had tripped the tracker instead.
He grinned. “Silly broad,” he said, the cotton ball in his cheek partly slurring his speech.
“What’s going on?” Spanky asked.
Seb showed him his cell, the map displaying downtown and the flashing arrowhead in the middle representing his ride.
“That your whip?” Spanky inquired.
Seb nodded.
“Well, what you gonna do?”
“I’m about to get my ride back from a very, very silly little bitch. Let’s get moving before she realizes what she’s just done to herself.”
Spanky ground his gaudy Zäh—the SUV that was famously only available in a pearlescent paint job—to thrumming life. The Zäh growled out into the freshly plowed street, ignored the red light, and thundered due north.
They approached the parking lot of a closed-down porno theater and among the flickering streetlamps saw the lonely Fairlane sitting by itself. Spanky angled his vehicle behind the stucco-colored car. The piercing blue-white of the Zäh’s twelve headlights bounced off a rust-barnacled bumper, the license plate nearly hidden under a chalky layer of road salt. The running boards were splashed with dirt and more salt, evidence that the girl had really made use of her new ride and taken it all around town.
Seb sat forward, anxious.
“That it?” Spanky asked.
“That’s it,” he said. “Cut the high-beams on.”
The Fairlane was washed in even more brilliant blue light. The Zäh’s high beams passed easily through the rear window into the car. There were no silhouettes occupying the seats.
He motioned for his friend to pull forward. They crunched ahead cautiously, the massive tires roped with chains clinking and grating on icy tarmac.
They nosed up directly behind the Fairlane. Spanky flopped aside the stained floor mat and withdrew a matte black submachine gun from a compartment in the floorboard. He pulled back the slide, hard. Seb knew this trick; the double slap of metal striking metal with the first round being chambered would be heard by anyone stupid enough to try to hide within the Fairlane, a warning. Seb put out a hand to his partner. Easy does it. Approach the car slowly.
The men narrowed in on the car parenthetically—Seb on the passenger side, Spanky on the other. Seb drew his Colt and trained it on the passenger door. He took a breath and lurched forward quickly to peek inside, ready to pull the trigger. Through the frosted glass, he saw the front and back seats were empty. No one in the car. He noticed the windscreen was shimmery, oddly shiny.
He moved to the front of the car and bellowed, “What the fuck?”
“What’s up?” Spanky whispered.
“The windshield. That fucking bitch broke my windshield. Look at this plastic shit, this sandwich wrap bullshit she put in its place. I’m going to put a fuckin’ brick through that bitch’s head.”
Even though Brody was coming up behind the slurring lug, he knew his presence had been detected while he was still a few strides off. He leapt forward just as Seb was starting to about-face and put the barrel of his unloaded Franklin-Johann to Seb’s neck before he could turn all the way around.
Seb froze, his posture going rigid. From behind, Brody could see Seb look to his friend for assistance. In profile, the one eye he could see was bugging from its socket. Do something, that eye screamed.
“Don’t look at him,” Brody scolded. “Just put down the gun, Seb.”
Brody glanced around the giant to see Thorp had done his part, had come up behind Spanky. With the clearest rendition of “okay, you got me” Brody had ever seen on a human face, Spanky cast his submachine gun to the asphalt with a loud clatter.
“Your turn,” Brody instructed his own captive. “You too.”
Seb had his arms raised, but his hand was still folded around the gun, nearly burying it in his impressive mitt. “You’re pussy-whipped by that fat bitch? Tell me it ain’t so. You can get all kinds in this city, man, and you’re going to go for that bitch—do her dirty work for her? Jesus H.”
“Get rid of the gun,” Brody said.
Seb reluctantly tossed the Colt away. “What’s this about? Is it because I roughed up your girl? If you knew her like I knew her, you’d do the same thing—she got a mouth on her. A bitch should know her place. A bitch should be seen and not heard. You do this, and you’re in for a world of hurt. Spanky, can you believe the stupidity of this dap son of a bitch?”
Spanky didn’t look to be in the mood to shoot off at the mouth like Seb. He kept his hands raised, his expression woeful defeat. “Daps be dumb,” was all he managed, and even that was barely audible with his downcast face partly buried in the fur collar of his coat.
“Get in.” Brody shoved the barrel of his pistol harder against the back of Seb’s thick neck. “And cut the chest thumping. You’re not fooling anyone here.”
Seb moved obediently toward the passenger door.
“No, you’re going to drive.” Brody glanced at Thorp, who was staring at Spanky. He had a weird air about him, both focused and indolent. Brody had to try twice to get his attention.
“Yeah?” Thorp asked, blinking out of his trance.
“You take him, have him follow us in his car,” Brody said.
“Okay,” Thorp said and ushered Seb’s pal back in his Zäh with a wave of his handgun.
Brody kept his pistol trained on Seb as he got in the driver’s side, the suspension creaking beneath the man’s considerable heft. When sliding into the passenger seat, indigo cubes of safety glass and snow crunched beneath them.
Seb surveyed the interior of his car, the broken glass everywhere, and when he met Brody’s gaze, there was no shortage of hate in his eyes.
“Start it up. Let’s go,” Brody ordered.
“You really expect us to get far with my car looking like this? We’re going to get pulled over. They’ll find you with that piece, baldy back there with a gun on my buddy. Let’s just call it even. You can keep the car, give it to your woman if that’s what you want. Just leave me the fuck out of it.”
“Let’s get moving,” Brody said, ignoring Seb’s pleas.
Seb double tapped the power button on the Fairlane, and after a second of protest the engine rumbled to life. Seb crushed the steering wheel, the rubber creaking under his grip. He cocked his head toward Brody, smirking. “Well, where would you like to go?” he asked, parroting an auto cab’s pleasant greeting with a sneer.
Brody broke his stare on Seb for a moment to look back at the Zäh. The two men both watched, waiting for what came next, the windshield wipers thumping back and forth. Thorp gave a weak thumbs-up, his expression remaining flat.
Brody turned forward. “Take me to whatever shit hole you live in. We’ll start there.”
“So you’re going to not only boost my car, but you want to rob me as well?”
“Not at all. I just want to get out of here before, as you suggested, the cops come sniffing around. Drive.”
Chicago was arctic, deserted.
The only traffic were the snowplows grinding up one street and down the next, amassing dunes at intersections and burying cars whose owners hadn’t bothered to move them. Flashing amber lights, cascading over the cityscape. The hiss of the salt being scattered in the plow trucks’ wake, like it was attempting to hide its scent trail from predators.
Seb drove like a gentleman. Kept it well below the speed limit, stopped at lights as he should, and even used his turn signal.
When one panel of the cling wrap broke free, the snow and wind pounded in over the hood and into their faces. Squinting through it, Brody held the gun with one hand, resting it on his lap. There were cameras at every major intersection, but they were too close now to get stopped for having an illegal weapon in a moving vehicle on a public street. He kept glancing at Thorp and Spanky to make sure they weren’t lagging too far behind. Getting split up because of a poorly timed light could prove disastrous.
During a wait at a painfully long light, Seb adjusted the heat, screwing the knob all the way to the hottest setting, but the vents couldn’t compete with how much cold was seeping in. Seb, despite his size, was visibly shivering, his gap-toothed jaw rattling at inconsistent intervals. “You’re not even with that dry cleaner chick, are you?”
Brody pulled his coat collar up. “Just a friend.”
“And her errand boy, taking out the trash. Is that it?” Seb asked.
“It’s not even about her, if you want to know the truth,” Brody said. “But for the record, when we get through here, if I ever hear you saying a fucking word to her—I swear to Christ Himself I’ll come and find you.” It was an honest threat, but at the same time, Brody felt like he was doing the chest thumping now. Still, he left the caveat out there in the chilled space between them. For whatever reason, Brody felt it had to be said.
“This is the face I make when I’m scared.” Seb laughed a single high-pitched note through his nose.
“Just drive.”
Brody wished he was home and away from all this. He wanted to put on some music, sit by his row of windows, and watch the sun come up. He wanted to buff the floors of the community center—work off the remainder of his debt—and never get involved in anyone’s problems ever again.
When they came to the next red light, Brody watched in the side mirror as Thorp gazed at Spanky as if he were weaving a long and altogether boring story. But Spanky wasn’t speaking. The weekend gangster, with the eyebrow ring and tattooed cheekbones, held the wheel in both hands and stared directly ahead, his pierced lip unmoving. Thorp dabbed his upper lip with the back of his hand. When Thorp pulled it away, despite his view being divided by a mirror and a pane of glass, Brody could see a bloody streak across the lower half of Thorp’s face. A nosebleed.
Brody watched Thorp dab again and again, checking his hand each time he pulled it away. He’d glance at Spanky to make sure he wasn’t using the opportunity to pull a fast one but kept dabbing at the slow escape of red from his nostril. Thorp looked up, found Brody’s gaze, and held it. With a red-streaked hand, he made the A-OK gesture that denoted “clear for takeoff.”
Brody nodded and Thorp smiled but not with his eyes.
“Go,” he told Seb. “It’s green.”
Not much to Brody’s surprise, Seb lived in a cubie, an underground extended-stay motel. The living area was a ten-by-ten cement cube that came with a Murphy bed, no TV or refrigerator, not even a toilet or a sink. The cubie tenants shared a couple of bathrooms upstairs that doubled as the public restroom for the bus depot. Cubie Apartments, a place for the discerning criminal—as even the commercials subtly stated in not so many words. The mascot for the place was even a lamb seen in mid-leap over a fence. Undoubtedly, its look of mischievous delight was meant to convey someone dodging a cop, parole officer, or bounty hunter.
Seb turned down a slush-littered back street and up to a garage door painted in the candy cane stripe, fought with the electric window to get it to shimmy down just far enough to allow his arm out, and punched in a ten-digit code at a panel. From there, Seb drove the Fairlane down the ramp into the dank underground area where the lighting was sparse and the entire place reeked of exhaust and human filth.
He wedged the Fairlane into the parking spot of his apartment and killed the engine. Spanky carefully maneuvered his ostentatious pearl-on-wheels sport utility vehicle into the next spot over. The attached cubie was currently vacant, its door laced with police tape. Seb sat with his hands in his lap, looking ahead at the dented metal door of his miniscule home.
To Brody, it appeared that he was preparing himself for death—his face was back to the solemn frown that made Brody think even more of those Easter Island heads. The fire in his eyes seemed to have guttered out to a weak smolder sometime during the drive.
“Go ahead,” Seb said. “Do me in. God will understand I was just a misguided fuckup.”
Next to them, the engine of the Zäh silenced.
Brody looked beyond Seb to see that Thorp still had his gun trained on the friend. But Brody was unable to make out Thorp’s expression. He could see only the side of his face, a smear of dried blood hooking around from his nose like lipstick that had been applied during a sneezing jag.
Brody returned his attention to Seb. “I’m not going to kill you.”
“Then what do you want? I don’t have much. I already blew my whole check tonight.”
“I don’t want your money, either.” Brody tried to find a way to word his request. He took a deep breath and shifted in his seat. “I want to find Titian Shandorf.”
“The goddamn serial killer? What in the fuck do you want to find that animal for?” Seb gasped.
It surprised Brody to see someone as hardened as Seb cower at the mere suggestion of Titian Shandorf. “It doesn’t concern you. If you don’t know him, maybe I’ll just change my mind about killing you and move on to your friend over there, see if he knows anything.”
Seb remained silent. He gazed at his cubie door.
Brody squeaked on the cracked seat as he turned. He thumbed back the hammer on the Franklin-Johann. “Giving me the silent treatment isn’t exactly a wise tactic at this particular juncture. Time is an issue here, and I need to know what you know if you want to continue to be able to live in this dump.”
“I say anything about him, he’ll find me,” Seb said, his sturdy bravado obviously spent. “He’s a ruthless motherfucker. He cuts people up, fuckin’ keeps people locked in cages, tortures them, does shit to them. Rapes them and makes them eat shit and drain cleaner and forces them to kill themselves. Records it, sells the tapes. He gets off on it.”
“Well, by the look of things, you’re not a stranger to cutting people up, either.” Brody knocked the barrel of his handgun against the plastic-encased testicles hanging from the rearview mirror.
“Those are bull nuts. I just hustle money. I say a few choice words to that chick and her mom, they cough up dough, and I go about my merry way. Shandorf and his crew are into some other shit. Human sacrifices. Satanist stuff.”
“There’s a rumor that he can also be bought, despite being such a sick fuck.”
“You can’t buy someone like that. He’s a volcano with rabies. He gets his hooks into something and that’s it. You get in his crosshairs, your days are numbered.”
“Do you know anything or not?” Brody pointed the pistol directly at Seb’s cheekbone. He didn’t let the metal touch his flesh, didn’t want to scare him that much, but he wanted to make a more thorough threat, a mortal promise hovering in his periphery. “Because, and I’ll remind you, this is important.”
“The Glower is the only place I know you can find him.”
“Nope, I checked there already. The place is dead. A few knives, a dance floor, some sound equipment. Besides, the place got raided and it’s on lockdown, under constant surveillance. He wouldn’t go back there, and I won’t waste any more of my time with it, either.”
“If he’s not at The Glower, I don’t know where the fuck he could be. If you were some psycho killer, do you think you’d make it easy to be found? I hear the guy burned his jig years ago, owns no electronics—making sure there’s no way to trace him. The motherfucker probably doesn’t even have fingerprints anymore. Maybe he used a laser pointer or some shit to screw up his retinas so that not even those would scan and injected himself with other people’s blood so it won’t test right. If the cops can’t find him, you sure as hell won’t be able to.”
Brody weighed the conjecture and the facts. Like so many urban legends, the truths just sounded like truths, whereas the bogeyman stuff didn’t hold up when analyzed logically.
Brody put the grip of the pistol against his forehead, as if he were attempting to break a fever with the aid of the cold metal. He had his eyes closed to think for just one second. He heard the creak of Seb shifting on the split vinyl seat. Out of the corner of his eye, Brody saw Seb’s palm and the five stretching towers of his outspread fingers reaching toward him, a hand big enough to crush a planet.
He turned the pistol at him. “Hold it.”
“Sorry, pal. Holding your piece like that, it was almost like you wanted me to see your shooter has no clip in.” Seb clutched a twisted handful of Brody’s coat, pulling him closer and driving a fist into his face at the same time.