Third Strike

CHAPTER 5

I didn’t have to go in alone.

Sean arrived inside the time I’d allotted, riding the black Buell Ulysses he’d bought at the same time as my own bike. He’d left the office fast enough after my call that he hadn’t even bothered to put on leathers. Instead, he was still in his suit. Apart from a helmet, his only nod to safety was some thin leather gloves that would have shredded in seconds if he’d hit the road surface in them.

He slotted his bike in alongside mine and flicked up the visor, his eyes hidden behind a pair of classic Ray-Ban Wayfarers with dark green lenses. His smile was all the more brilliant because I couldn’t see his eyes.

“Status?” he said as he killed the engine.

“The Lincoln pulled out about five minutes ago.”

Sean stilled, frowning as he slid off the shades and helmet and hung the lid over the Buell’s bar end.

“And you’re still here because …”

“My father wasn’t in the car when it left,” I said. I jerked my head towards the alley. “I hung around over there so if they made a move I could see which building they’d gone into. Got asked twice if I was ‘working.’” My mouth twisted. “I think it must be the leathers. Anyway, two guys came out—Buzz-cut and the driver.” The tension in my hands was somehow connected to my throat. “My father wasn’t with them.”

Sean touched my shoulder. “Thank you for waiting for me,” he said. “I know what it cost you.”

I swallowed. “Maybe I’m just too much of a coward to go in alone,” I said stiffly. “At least if you’re with me, then if it comes to it you can be the one to break all this to my mother.”

Sean set the bike on its stand, climbed off. “What exactly are you expecting to find?”

I followed him, unzipping my jacket. “It’s a brothel, Sean,” I said. “And you knew that as soon as I told you where I was, didn’t you?”

He’d already started across the road. I fell into step just quickly enough to catch the way the corner of his mouth quirked upwards, little more than a flicker. “I had a pretty good idea.”

“So why didn’t you say anything?”

He sighed, and the flicker became impatience. “What would that have achieved, Charlie? Your father’s the most priggish, moral bastard I’ve ever come across. You said he didn’t go entirely willingly. You’re a bright girl. You put it together.”

“They left him here,” I murmured, feeling my eyes start to hollow out and burn. “He didn’t want to come, but now he’s stayed. He would only have done that if they’d … forced him.”

I shouldn’t have left him in there. I shouldn’t have let them put him into that damned car in the first place. At the time, part of me had been still too angry with him to care. And now …

“Not necessarily,” Sean said. He glimpsed my face and stopped, half turned towards me. “You know the real reason I’m here?”

I shook my head.

“The real reason,” he said, “is how could I live with myself if I missed out on a chance to catch the great Richard Foxcroft with his pants down?”

I threw him a disgusted look and stalked on. We turned into the gloom of the alley together, stepped apart and slowed slightly, wary. At the far end, past the Dumpster, I caught fast glimpses of passing cars, their paintwork glinting in the sunshine. Bright colors, movement. The alley felt stagnant by comparison, hushed and lonely as the grave.

We both did a casual sweep as we walked into that place, watching for watchers, even overhead. Either there weren’t any, or they were better at concealment than we were at spotting them. Sean paused and reached inside his jacket. When his hand came out, it was holding a cheap Kel-Tec P-11 semiautomatic. He passed it over to me.

I turned the unfamiliar handgun over in my hands. It was old but serviced, the action well oiled when I worked it. The magazine was fully topped off with hollow-point nines.

“What’s this?”

“Unregistered,” he said, succinct. “So I’d leave your gloves on if I were you.”

“Jesus, Sean! If I get caught with this—”

He flipped his jacket back to reveal what looked like a matching piece sitting just behind his right hip. The thought that he’d risked carrying two illegal guns through the middle of the city brought me out in a cold sweat. They’d throw away the key.

“Face it, Charlie,” he said, “if we get caught in a brothel, we’re probably screwed anyway. Just remember the trigger’s going to be a lot stiffer than your SIG, so watch you don’t pull your first shot.”

“I have fired one of these before, Sean.”

He flashed me a fleeting smile. “Yeah, sorry.”

He didn’t need to ask which door my father had been taken through. There was a line of them, peeling and dirty, but only one had a clear path to the base of it to give away its regular use. The door was steel plate, if I was any judge, with a facesize inset panel at head height.

“I think I’m better suited for this, don’t you?” he murmured.

Without argument, I backed round to the side of the Dumpster, out of sight of the doorway but only a couple of meters away. I held the gun down flat alongside my leg, where its outline wasn’t obvious from the street, my trigger finger alongside the guard.

In the four or five paces it took Sean to reach the door, his whole demeanor changed. Suddenly, his shoulders had more of a bow to them and he’d added a slight shuffle to his gait. He was a big guy who usually moved with lightness and a lethal dexterity but now, with his collar and tie sloppily loosened, he just looked clumsy.

If Parker could see him now, he would have bitten off Bill’s other arm rather than offer Sean a partnership. Mind you, if he really could see us now, we’d probably both get the sack.

Sean reached into his jacket pocket and brought out a sizable wedge of folded bills. He retrieved the Wayfarers, popped the lenses out carefully into a handkerchief and tucked it away, and slid the empty frames on. Not perfect, but convincing enough for now. The whole effect was the kind of tedious office nerd you’d run from the water cooler to avoid. He turned, saw my expression, and winked.

Then he banged on the steel and, after a long pause, I heard the grate of the panel sliding back.

“Yeah?” A man’s voice, deep and rough, managing to inject a wealth of hostile suspicion into that single grunted syllable.

“Oh, er, yeah, hi,” Sean said, his accent perfect New York yuppie. He’d allowed the glasses to slip down his nose a little and now he carefully used the hand that clutched the money to push them back up, like he was nervous. It was a beautifully weighted gesture that couldn’t have failed to suck the man’s attention to the folded bills.

“I was told I could, er, maybe meet someone here,” Sean went on. He coughed, then turned it into an uncomfortable laugh as the man behind the door didn’t immediately respond. “Er, have I got the wrong place? Only I—”

“Who sentcha’?” the doorman demanded.

“Oh, er, well, I don’t know him that good. Guy called Harry. At the office.” Sean waved the money again, jerking his thumb vaguely over his shoulder to indicate anywhere from Wall Street to Honolulu. “Well, he doesn’t actually work with me, y’know? Ha-ha. No, comes in all the time, though. Deliveries. Harry said this was the place.” He leaned closer, lowered his voice and wiped a leer across it. “Said the girls here were, uh, y’know, kinda broad-minded.”

There was another long pause, then the panel slammed shut. For a moment I thought his performance—authentically sleazy though it was—hadn’t done the trick. Then we heard the bolts slide back.

Immediately, I came out from round the Dumpster bringing the Kel-Tec up in my right hand, steadied with my left. The money was gone and Sean’s own gun was out though I hadn’t seen him reach for it. As soon as the door began to open and we could tell there wasn’t a secondary security chain, we both hit it. Hard. I was glad of the protective padding in the shoulder of my leather jacket.

I felt the hefty steel door kick as it connected with a body. One jolt as he rebounded backwards, then another as he cannoned off an inside wall and came crashing back for a rematch. The door won both rounds.

We charged through the gap to find a Goliath of a man struggling groggily to rise but his legs were trapped behind the vee of the open door. He wasn’t tall so much as enormously wide, with a stained T-shirt stretched to the limit of the fabric’s elasticity around his bulging gut. His physique might have been useful when he was upright, but floundering on the ground he was in serious danger of Greenpeace activists trying to roll him back into the sea.

Nevertheless, he made a reflexive grab for us. It was a valiant attempt but his coordination was gone. The best he could manage was to claw sluggishly at empty air as we passed. Sean merely swapped the gun into his left hand and, with almost casual violence, hammered the side of his fist into the man’s exposed temple. The smack Goliath’s skull made as it bounced off the brickwork behind him made me wince. When he went down for the second time, he was out cold.

We paused, tense, but nobody seemed to have overheard the doorman’s rapid defeat. Nobody who cared enough to come and see, anyway.

I straightened slowly as Sean stepped back over the unconscious man and shoved the steel outer door closed again.

“Harry?” I said, keeping my voice no louder than a whisper. “Who the hell’s Harry?”

He shrugged. “Oh, there’s always a Harry.”

Inside, the small bare entrance hall was only marginally less seedy than the exterior of the building had suggested. The doorman had a little recess at one side, with a folding card table and a chair with the stuffing leaking from the seat. The table contained a selection of dead beer bottles, some crumpled White Castle burger wrappings covered in ketchup, and a tiny portable TV tuned to one of the sports channels. It told me all I needed to know about Goliath’s lifestyle and expectations.

Only one other door led off the hall and we took it, moving fast through the narrow opening and spreading out on the other side.

The next room was bigger, and empty. At least some attempt had been made at decoration here, with a couple of faded prints on the walls—illustrations out of the Kama Sutra. The positions didn’t look anatomically possible, never mind fun.

A built-in couch had been fitted into the corner. It was covered in pink velour and had retained its original nasty hue by dint of the clear plastic cover that protected it—from what, I shuddered to imagine. The illumination had been kept low in a poor attempt to be seductive. A single bulb filtered through an upside-down dark red shade. The dull lino underfoot made faint sucking noises as we crossed it.

The far wall was covered by a thin curtain, that was suddenly pulled aside. Sean and I both reacted instantly, snapping the guns up. An Asian girl with long straight blond hair came through, wearing a smutty pale pink negligee. She froze for a second when she saw us, then started screaming.

I was closest. I reached her in one long stride and, following Sean’s earlier example, hit her with my upswept elbow under the jaw, aiming for the sweet spot just to the side of her chin. The effect of the blow was magnified by the fact she had her mouth open when I delivered it.

Her teeth clacked shut as her eyes rolled back and she dropped, graceless enough that I didn’t have to check if she was faking. She and the blond wig parted company, revealing short black hair, badly cut, beneath it. Close to, she was neither as young as she was supposed to be, nor as old as she had become.

I turned to find Sean watching me.

“What?” I said. “You think the ‘Harry sent me’ line would have worked on her?”

“Maybe not,” he agreed, “but let’s try and leave the next one awake enough to answer questions, shall we? Like—where’s your father?”

I turned away without answering. As soon as we’d entered the place I’d been fighting the underlying sense of panic. My father might be many things, but indiscriminate was not one of them, and the last thing you could possibly be in a place like this was choosy. Surely, if he’d really wanted the services of a prostitute, he would have picked somewhere more upmarket than this. On sanitary grounds, if nothing else.

He’s dead. My God, he has to be dead.

Shaking my head did little to dislodge the recreant idea of it. I flexed my fingers round the pistol grip of the illegal gun. If anything had happened to my father, I vowed I would find the men in the Lincoln, and I would watch their bodies fall.

My only disquiet was that it wouldn’t be the first time.

“Let’s find out, shall we?”

The brothel was laid out on five narrow floors that branched out from a musty central stairwell. Each floor had rows of doorways along a thin partition wall, leading to tiny, lightless cubicles. Sean and I swept the building from the ground up.

The occupants were nearly all female and mostly alone. The majority of the workforce looked Asian—possibly Korean or Vietnamese. The girls seemed to live in the rooms where they worked, their few shabby possessions hidden behind a curtain or in a flimsy plywood wardrobe.

The place had a smell all of its own. Old cooking fat that had been overheated one time too many, mingled with stale sweat and other, more earthy odors, all not quite masked by the false cheer of cheap fabric freshener and the thin reek of even cheaper perfume.

And desperation. The only locks we encountered were on the outside, which probably accounted for the browbeaten lack of reaction to our arrival. If any of the girls spoke English, they weren’t making a big thing of it, but I suppose it was unlikely they were being paid—in any sense—for their sparkling conversational skills.

On the fourth floor up, we kicked the lock off the inside of a door this time and found a woman older than the others, a fact which was obvious even in the low light. Her larger living quarters spoke of middle management rather than labor.

We caught her bending over an old square sink in one corner of the room, and she straightened with an expletive that was pure homegrown Brooklyn. Statuesquely built, her most startling feature was a pair of massive breasts that, to my cynical eyes at least, were so clearly man-made they probably had a “Best Before” date stamped on them. Her dress was gaudy without even the excuse of being cheap.

Very recently, someone had caught her a belter across the left-hand side of her face and she’d been trying to negate the aftereffects with a cold wet cloth pressed against it. She went deathly pale at the sight of us, but stood her ground, putting the cloth down slowly.

“Who the fuck are you?” she demanded. Her eyes flicked to the doorway behind us a couple of times, waiting for Goliath’s intervention. When it didn’t come, she checked us out again and frowned. Her tone modified a little. “Whaddya want?”

“English guy,” I said shortly. “Came in here about half an hour ago. Where is he?”

She heard my accent and her face grew calculating, but she didn’t try to bluff us. By the look of the bruising, she’d tried that ploy once today already and it hadn’t gone well for her.

“Upstairs,” she said. The reluctant fear in her voice twisted in my belly, grabbed at my chest as I began to move. “Hey, I didn’t have nothing—”

“Stow it,” Sean said.

He was right behind me as I took the stairs to the final floor two at a time, was alongside me as we broke our way into each of the matted little rooms up there. He didn’t speak, and I’m not sure I would have heard him over the raucous clamor inside my head even if he had.

It was the last room. It always is. We hit the door hard enough for the flimsy hardboard to rip out of the frame and sway drunkenly from one hinge before toppling to the floor.

Inside, we found my father standing centered under the dusty bulb. He was minus his suit jacket, with the buttons of his shirt halfway open, revealing a vee of pale hairless chest beneath, and he was just in the process of sliding his tie out from under his collar.

Or rather, the girl in front of him was taking care of that part.

She was young—much younger than just about any of the girls we’d seen so far in that place. Well under the age of any kind of informed consent, with taut skin the color of latte and glossy long dark hair. Her back had been to the doorway, presenting us with a perfect view of a slender body not yet entirely spoiled. She spun, gasping at the violence of our arrival, to reveal classic almond-shaped eyes.

Apart from too much makeup, she was completely naked. Just for a moment, the side of my brain responsible for lucid thought and reasoned argument totally shut down. Instinct and training took me forwards, only peripherally aware of Sean moving to check and secure the room.

I closed in on my father, registered the absolute shock and the pure, undiluted shame that coated him like a layer of grime, moments before he covered it with a haughty mask. That was what did it. Another silent lie on top of all the others.

Blinded, I gave a howl of utter rage and backhanded him across the face with enough force to snap his head round. I was still wearing my bike gloves, which had tough carbon fiber protectors across the backs like lightweight knuckle dusters. My father staggered a pace from the blow, but made no attempt to block me or prevent another. That was enough to bring me up cold.

Raked with guilt and anger, I felt the blood drop out of my face so fast that my vision buckled and I nearly fell.

“You … bastard,” I said.

The certainty that he was dead, and all the emotions connected to that conviction, had set vicious barbed hooks deep into every part of me. The sudden discovery that he was very much alive ripped them out all at once, leaving behind a bloody mess of tattered thoughts and raw confusion.

He was alive, and I wanted to kill him for it.

“Charlie.” It was Sean who spoke, gently, firmly, putting his hand onto my forearm to press it downwards. It was only then I realized I had the gun up, had been watching my father’s reaction over the top of the sights and had seen nothing wrong with the picture that presented.

“Don’t do this,” he murmured. “I hate to resort to cliché, but he genuinely isn’t worth it.”

I let my arm drop away, found it was trembling as badly as the rest of me.

“Don’t worry,” I said. “I wouldn’t waste the round.”

I lurched back as the adrenaline boost drained away, almost collapsed against the wall near the doorway to the corridor. My left thigh burned and I resisted the urge to grab at it. I was damned if I was going to show more weakness in front of him.

As soon as we’d burst in, the girl had scuttled onto the rumpled bed by the far wall and tucked her legs up close to her body, head buried against her knees and her arms wrapped tightly round them. If you look insignificant enough, and you can’t see the monsters, maybe they will leave you alone.

No, they won’t.

Her submissive posture angered as much as it disturbed me. There was a thin dark red robe on the floor that was trying to be silk but was as artificial as the madam’s breasts downstairs. I leaned down, snatched it up and threw it across to her. She stopped rocking just long enough to clutch it in front of her body.

“Well, well, Dick,” Sean said then, his voice softly mocking. “This opens up a whole new side to you.”

My father darted him a savage glance but didn’t reply. The area around his cheekbone had already begun to swell, puffy. I hadn’t broken the skin but he was going to have a hell of a bruise.

Still clinging to that brittle dignity, he retrieved his tie from where the girl had dropped it in her flight, fed it back through his collar, and began reknotting it. His movements were apparently calm and sedate, but it was little more than a thin veneer. I could see the shake of his hands, the pulse in his jaw.

“So, you still think you don’t owe me any kind of explanation?” I said.

He refastened his cuff links and reached for the jacket he’d laid across the back of a narrow chair. The suit had been tailor-made for him by Gieves & Hawkes of Savile Row and fitted to perfection, in devastating contrast to the decayed dilapidation of that tawdry little room.

“I owe you nothing, Charlotte,” he said then, and his arrogance was astounding. “I make my own choices. I won’t ask how you found me—invading people’s privacy seems to be second nature to you—but I most certainly do not need your approval for my actions.” He allowed his lip to curl just slightly. “Nor do I require you to accompany me.”

“Approval?” I said, aware my voice had become almost a squawk. I flung a hand towards the huddled creature on the bed. “She’s young enough to be your daughter, for fuck’s sake! Christ, she’s practically young enough to be mine!”

He stilled. “Get out, Charlotte,” he said coldly. His eyes skated over Sean, who’d been standing watchful and silent during the exchange. “And take your nasty little bully boy with you.”

Sean shrugged off the insult and started for the door. As he passed, my father gestured to the gun Sean carried with an expressive flick of his fingers.

“Violence. Is that the only thing you people understand?”

We’d caught him in a run-down brothel with a naked teenage hooker and still he tried to take the high ground.

“Perhaps it is,” I said, not moving. “So how’s this for violence? If you don’t walk out of here with us, right now, I’ll knock you senseless and carry you out—and, believe me, it would be a pleasure. Either way, you’re leaving.”

His spine straightened. “You can’t.”

“Oh, don’t tempt me.”

“No, you can’t!”

I registered the edge of panic in the rising tone with something akin to wonder. Of all the emotions he’d shown since we’d entered that room and exposed him, this was the first hint of fear.

“I can’t leave you here,” I said, without pity. “If my mother—”

“That’s just it.” He grasped the reference like a talisman. “Your mother. If you feel anything for your mother, Charlotte, then just leave me here and go before it’s too late. Please.”

“Too late? What the hell are you—”

Then, from underneath us, we heard crashing and highpitched screaming and loud voices bellowing commands. Sean and I ran into the corridor. About halfway along was a narrow window with a view down into the alleyway. When we looked down, all we could see were the flashing lights on top of the squad cars.

“Oh. Shit,” Sean muttered. His eyes met mine. There weren’t any other exits or we would have found them on our way up. The management was clearly more anxious about customers trying to skip out without paying, than they were about the possibilities of escape from a fire.

Sean picked the illegal Kel-Tec out of my nerveless grasp. Without having to watch his hands, he stripped the gun down to its frame and dumped it out of the window, where it fell five stories, straight into the open Dumpster by the entrance. His own weapon quickly followed. Nobody on the ground heard or saw a thing. Even so, I knew we were headed for deep, deep trouble.

We went back. My father hadn’t moved, but someone had hit fast-forward and he’d aged maybe twenty years. His face was gray in the dull light. “It’s the police,” I said. “The place is being raided.”

My father nodded, mildly resigned, as though I’d told him it looked likely to rain, and the sudden realization hit me that somehow he’d known this was going to happen. The girl continued to rock gently on the bed.

And we waited, the four of us, for the thunder of boots on the stairs.