The Hard Bounce - страница 19
“That’s why I’m fucking worried. At least with us scumbags, you can see us coming.”
He had a point.
Kelly Reese got out of the front passenger side and opened the rear door for me.
“Ooh, full service?” I said, smiling with the old charm turned up to eleven. She didn’t acknowledge that I’d spoken. I stopped and leaned over the top of the door. “See, normally when I give the ladies my young Connery-esque grin, they smother me with thrown panties. You could at least say hello.”
“Hello.” All business and colder than a welldigger’s arse.
Ah Boo, you old hound dog, you.
Fuck it. One small step for man, one giant leap into the shit pile. I climbed into the car. Kelly shut the door and put herself back in front.
The car was upholstered in black leather softer than milk. Smelled nice too, like a new jacket. It wasn’t a limo, but a smoked Plexiglas partition divided the front and rear like in a gypsy cab, sans the money chute. If there was any conversation up front, I couldn’t hear it. I tapped “shave and a haircut.” The divider rolled down a couple inches. I could only see the tops of Kelly’s and Barnes’s haircuts.
“What?” Barnes grumbled. Nice to know we were still buddies.
“You’ve been working this,” I said to the crack, “am I right?”
“What?”
“Trying to find her yourself.”
Silence.
“Ms. Reese there told me the kid’s been gone a week. I’m gonna assume her family noticed before yesterday.”
“You’re a fucking genius.”
“So am I also correct in assuming you’ve fallen flat on your ass?”
He rolled the Plexiglas back up. I looked out the window. The car was turning off Commonwealth and getting on Storrow Drive heading east. After a couple miles, Barnes pulled off at South Boston, driving toward the harbor.
I won’t go into details on the rest of the drive, but in case you didn’t already know, Boston’s streets are a wheelman’s wet dream. Unlike in cities that were actually designed, Boston’s planners simply paved over the old horse trails. There’s never a simple route from point A to B. To get to B, you have to turn toward point N, bear left, head north past point square root of 173, back to N, then ask directions.
The car came to a final stop on Atlantic Avenue. Rows of converted industrial warehouse lofts faced the skyscrapers by the harbor. The street was empty, most of the offices closed up and lights off for the night.
We sat for a couple minutes, engine idling. I rapped on the Plexi again. The partition came down less this time. No friendly “what” either.
“Gotta suck to be that close. I mean, she was in The Cellar. Literally just minutes-”
Just before the crack disappeared again, I could have sworn I saw veins bulging in Barnes’s ears. I was driving him batshit, but he still wasn’t going to give anything away.
Barnes shut the ignition and unlocked the doors. Until then, I hadn’t realized I was locked in. The lock pulls fell completely into the hole when they were engaged. That bugged me. I don’t like knowing flight isn’t an option, even if I find out after the fact.
Fuck, who am I kidding? I wouldn’t know flight if I fell off a cliff and grew wings.
I opened the door and got out. Another black sedan sat idling in front of us.
Showtime.
Barnes opened the door to one of the loft complexes. Kelly was close behind him. I lagged back a bit. Try as I might, I couldn’t figure out what would put those two together in a zip code, much less connect them to the girl.
I gave the names on the door buzzer a quick look-see, in case I needed to know later. Loft one was scratched off. Two was Carbon Graphics. Three, David Pfeiffer Photography. Four through six were for Infonet Streaming. None of the names meant anything to me. Barnes walked to door number one.
The loft with no listing.
Perfect.
The loft was cavernous, dimly lit, and very empty. A painter had used it at one point, but not in a while. Dried paint in varying hues was smeared along the floor. Bolts of canvas stood by the door, and paint cans covered in thick dust sat next to a mural that read Andrew Lipp-Murals and Painting Gallery