Page 81 of Fade Out
“I’m going to look around the bars.’
“I’ll go with you.”
“No. You need to stay here in case he comes back.”
“Terry’s here.”
I lowered my voice, “Yeah, um, someone reliable.”
Franklin took a long moment. I could tell he wanted to contradict me but couldn’t. He turned and left the room. I looked around. I had no idea what I was walking into. I’d need more than just two knives. Maybe that was ridiculous, maybe I was being overly cautious, but better safe than sorry.
As I walked through the apartment, I remembered that Brian kept a few of his mother’s things on the built-in cabinet in the dining room: a blue-and-white bud vase, a delicate tea cup, a paperweight. I grabbed the paperweight and slipped it into a pocket. It was glass, egg-shaped and about twice the size of a large egg, filed flat on the bottom, and inside had a delicate red flower made of glass then encased in glass. It was heavy and solid, fit nicely in my palm and would crack a skull.
I was nearly out of the apartment when Franklin said, “Nick, he’s not in the bars. You know that.”
“I have to try,” I said and hurried out the door.
I found Harker’s old Lincoln over on Roscoe near my old apartment, jumped in, and drove down to Wells and Ontario. It was a quiet neighborhood. Not a lot of residential buildings, plus it was Sunday night. It was roughly an hour before sunset, the sky was steel gray and the light waning.
I pulled over to the curb across the street from the half-finished building on Ontario. It took up one corner of the block. The lot was circled in plywood fencing—now plastered with posters of upcoming rock concerts, most of them for R.E.M.—and a scaffolding built to prevent building materials falling on the heads of pedestrians.
The lot itself was maybe two hundred feet down Ontario and a hundred on Wells. Two sides abutted hundred-year-old brick factories which now housed failing family businesses—a mattress maker, a furrier—or they housed nothing at all.
At the west end of the Ontario side, I noticed a dip in the sidewalk. That had to be some kind of entrance. I also noticed there was a gate made of metal fencing crossing the dip. I crept down the block and parked directly across from the Ontario entrance. The parking spot was illegal, but a ticket was the least of my worries.
I got out of the car and stared up at the unfinished building. The bottom ten floors already had windows and gray granite slabs attached. The floors above lost their windows and eventually the granite, leaving nothing but bare girders with thin concrete and rebar floors strung between them. Way up top was a crane.
I had a bad feeling in my stomach that I was going to have to climb up there. I wondered if Rita was looking down at me right then. I searched the building looking for her, but in the dimming light I couldn’t see much.
First, I was going to have to get through the fence. I walked over to the gate and gave it a little shake. The chain holding it together fell loose. Well, that was easy. Too easy. This was probably how Rita and Possum had been getting in and out. And since they’d invited me, they’d made it easy for me to follow them inside.
How much time did they spend here?I wondered. And what did they do when they came? Then I had a funky thought. This must have been the address where Rita had sent Hilly Buckman’s body. So, why? Why here? She knew there’d be no one to accept it. She knew it would be returned. She could have just made up any address—although if she’d been wrong and actually sent the body somewhere real…
Had she been deliberately leaving me a clue?If I’d looked closely at the box when it was in the hallway outside my office, I might have known something was wrong. But I hadn’t. I’d had no reason to. So was she taunting me? Knowing I’d miss the clue altogether. I couldn’t think too much about that, not just then.
Standing there at the entrance, out in the open, all I could think about was the fact that Rita had a gun. She’d shot me with it. I tried to remember what kind it was. A .38 Special, or at least it was in my memory. Those guns weren’t too accurate over fifty feet unless you spent a lot of time on a firing range. So, if Rita was in there waiting to shoot me she was probably close—provided she didn’t have another weapon altogether which was, unfortunately, possible.
I tried looking sideways through the fence. Not an easy task, it was pretty close to the plywood wall. I knew I would step through the gate sooner or later, so I just went ahead and stepped through. I searched each floor again looking for Rita or Possum. Everything seemed especially still. Disturbingly so.
I can’t say I have a lot of experience with construction sites, but I still knew there’d be a temporary elevator somewhere attached to the side of the building. I mean, they couldn’t put in the nice elevators until they were finished. So I should find that elevator.
Or stairs. Finding stairs would be better. They’d know where I was if I came up on the elevator. It would make a lot of noise. I needed to find a way into the building and then find the stairs. The entrance was in the front, on the Wells side of the building. There was probably a way in down there.
Instead of rushing down I stayed where I was. In front of me, a ramp led down to the parking garage below the building. The darkness started almost immediately making the entrance look like the entrance to a cave. A scary cave. I wondered if there was an entrance to the building down there. A staircase that went up to the first floor and possibly continued upward. Finished buildings had them.
I can’t say I loved the idea of stumbling around in the dim light looking for the stairs. Instead, I decided to go down and look at the front of the building first to see if there was a way—
There was a flash of light in the garage below me. At first I wondered if I’d really seen it. I stood very still, waiting for it again. And then there it was. They were down there, in the garage, underground. Rita, Possum and Brian. I almost started down the ramp but stopped myself.
What were the flashes of light?A flashlight? A match? The light was deliberate. They wanted me to come down the ramp. They were already in the dark, giving them the advantage. At least for the first level I’d have some light behind me. They’d see me, but I wouldn’t see them. And…
If Rita had some kind of flashlight she could shine it in my eyes and then her friend could shoot me. That didn’t seem like a good way for this to end up. I backed out of the gate and crossed the street to my car. I opened the trunk of the Lincoln. I needed some help.
Harker had an emergency kit. I’d only opened it once, so I didn’t know everything in it, but I did have some idea. When I was on patrol we always carried a kit around in the trunk. You get used to that. I reached in and pulled it to the edge of the trunk. I unzipped the black duffle it was in and began poking around.
There was a flashlight. I pulled it out and flipped it on. Nothing happened. I unscrewed it and dumped the D battery out. It was a corroded gooey mess. Not surprising, I suppose. Harker might have last checked the bag when he bought the car, which was somewhere around seven years before. I took a quick look around for some backup batteries but there weren’t any. There were, however, two flares. They looked pretty good—or at least better than the battery—I put them in my back pocket. The other things in the bag: jumper cable, gloves, bandages, burn cream—didn’t seem like they’d be useful.
I went back through the gate. Standing there at the top of the ramp, I knew that Rita had the advantage. She knew I was coming. She had a gun, she had an accomplice, she had the dark. I needed to figure out how to take those advantages away from her. I considered creeping slowly down the ramp, but she’d be expecting that. So I did the opposite. I ran down the ramp as fast as I could. I needed to get into the dark as quickly as possible. The dark was dangerous, but it was also safe. It put us on a more equal playing field.
