Concrete Underground (2010) (12 page)

"If you're not here to rent a room, then I don't have anything to say to you," he responded gruffly.

"Okay, we're here to rent a room," Columbine said and laid a hundred dollar bill on the counter. "That should cover it, right? So let's chat."

He snatched away the bill before I had a chance to object, then looked suspiciously between the two of us. "What do you want?"

I showed him a photograph of Cobb. "Recognize him?"

"Yeah, he stayed here. He left the same night you came by - the night that faggot in the leather pants broke my nose and you just sat their holding your dick."

"Better you than me," I shrugged.

"Do you remember anything unusual about him?" Columbine cut in. I had to keep from grinning; she was playing the part perfectly.

"And if you actually make it believable, the little lady might be willing to drop another C-Note on that room," I chimed in as I took out my notebook.

The manager snorted and looked back at the photograph. "You're lucky, you know. Most of the time I can't keep track of who comes and goes in this place; after a while they all kinda blend together. He stood out a little, though."

"What made him different?" I asked.

"Well the first time I saw him, he came in with one of the girls. Then later he came back to stay himself. That's a little weird," he said.

"Why's that?" Columbine asked.

"Because anyone who can afford to pay for one of the girl's services can usually afford to stay in a nicer place than this dump," he explained.

"Oh," she replied meekly, realizing what kind of "girl" the manager was talking about.

"Who was the girl he came in with?" I asked while.

"I dunno, some Asian chick. Like I said, they all blend together, you know."

I placed some more photos on the counter. "Was it any of these women?"

"Couldn't say," he repeated. "If you really want to know, you should talk to Stella upstairs in room 309. She knows all the girls."

I nodded. "Okay, let's get back to the man, then. About how long ago was it that he came in with the woman?"

"About a week ago. Then it was a day or two later that he checked in." He pulled out a file of index cards and flipped through. "Yeah, it was Tuesday that he checked in. He only stayed two nights. The third day, Thursday, he paid for but left early. Actually, I think he left while you were upstairs."

"Did he have any visitors while he was here?" I asked.

The manager shook his head. "Not that I noticed. He stayed in his room pretty much all day, kept to himself, and only went out after dark. I kinda got the impression that he was hiding out. I guess maybe you're who he was hiding from, huh? "

I smirked. "Could be. We'll go upstairs and see Stella now."

---

I knocked on the door to room 309. When it opened, I immediately recognized the woman who answered from my last visit here; she was the blonde who handed me the phone in the hallway.

She smiled wearily when she saw me. "Well, now. I honestly didn't think you'd be back."

"Stella?" I asked.

She nodded. "At least that's the name I give Johns."

"My name's D Quetzal. I'm a reporter," I said, showing her my card. "And this is Columbine."

"I know who you are," she replied to me. "He said you'd be coming back to ask questions. I said, 'Patrick, you knocked that boy out cold with a baseball bat. If the good Lord gave him any sense at all he's gonna stay far away from here.' But now here you are. So I guess you'd better come in."

She stepped aside to let us pass. Her room was laid out like Cobb's, but she had done a lot more to personalize and decorate it. She had placed a small wooden vanity with chipped paint in the corner and covered the walls with photos of old movie starlets. A small ornate lamp with a purple shade sat on the nightstand and gave the room a violet glow. She pulled the chair from the vanity over and offered it to Columbine. The she sat herself on the edge of the bed and motioned for me to sit on the foot locker.

"Sorry I'm not really set up for entertaining," she chuckled.

"It's fine," I said as I sat down and took out my notebook, "I'm just a little taken aback. Are you saying you talked to Cobb about me?"

"Last night," she confirmed. "He came to say goodbye."

"Where was he going?" Columbine asked.

Stella didn't answer, but instead looked at her reproachfully.

"Do you know him well?" I cut in.

"No, I only met the man last week. We talked a little bit, that's all," she answered.

"The manager said the first time he came in here, it was to see a woman. Do you know who she was?"

Stella nodded, so I handed her the stack of photos I had tried to show the manager. She flipped through the pictures quickly, then suddenly stopped at one and her posture deflated. Finally, she flipped it around to show me; it was Jacinda Ngo.

"It's a beautiful picture of her," she said. "God, she looks so young. And look at those clothes she's wearing, so glamorous."

"Did you know her well?" I asked.

"Better than most," she answered. "I met her a little less than ten years ago, and our paths always seemed to cross from time to time. She called herself Isabel."

"Isabel," Columbine repeated and took the photo back from Stella, whose eyes were beginning to well up. Columbine's own face had fallen, too, clearly empathizing with the other woman's sorrow.

"It's such a shame," Stella added morosely.

"What do you mean?" I asked.

Stella looked up at me, a little surprised. "She's dead. You didn't know that?"

"I did," I responded, "but how did you?"

"Because I was there when she died," she said matter-of-factly.

Columbine and I looked at each other in stunned silence.

"How did she die?" I finally asked, still reeling from her revelation.

Stella's face turned bitter. "Well, Patrick killed her, of course."

"Hang on," Columbine said, shaking her head in astonishment, "I think you better start at the beginning."

"It happened last Monday night," Stella began. "I saw them come upstairs together and go into Isabel's room. I didn't think anything of it, of course. But then later I happened to be walking by and heard Isabel crying through the door. I went inside to check on her and found the two of them sitting on the bed.

"Isabel was holding something in her hands," she continued. "It looked like a photograph but I couldn't really see it clearly, and she folded it up and handed it back to Patrick before I could get a closer look. She looked up at me with tearful eyes and said to Patrick, 'I want Stella to be there when it happens. I want to hold her hand. I need a friend, someone to keep me from getting too scared.' I remember those words clearly.

"Patrick looked surprised and asked her something like, 'Are you sure you want to go through with this?' She said she did, and I of course had no idea what they were talking about, but I followed them just the same, downstairs to a car parked in the little alley on the side of the building. Once we got there, they explained what was going to happen, and I was horrified. I tried to talk them out of it, of course. But I could tell from Isabel's eyes that it wasn't going to do any good. 'I need you to do this for me, Stella. I need you to just trust me and help me get through this,' she said. 'But I understand if you can't.'

"How could I say no? I took her hands and held them as tight as I could and looked her straight in the eye. Then the most incredible look came over her - she looked relieved, at peace. Then Patrick came up behind her and wrapped the rope around her neck and strangled her.

"When she finally stopped moving, I helped Patrick lay her down on the back seat. Just before he drove off, he promised he'd come back to see me, to explain."

"Did he come back?" Columbine asked.

"He did," Stella said. "The next day he came back and checked into the same room where Isabel had been staying, room 313."

"What did he say?" I pressed. "Did he explain why she wanted to die?"

"Well, I don't suppose anyone could have ever really explained that - why someone would
want
to die. That's the type of thing you can't make someone understand; the only way to get it is to experience it yourself. But I suppose you're asking more about a sequence of events, and Patrick did at least try to explain that much to me as best he could.

"The thing you have to understand first off is that Isabel had a past. She never talked about it of course, but it was obvious to anyone who would care to see that she wasn't born into this life. But then I'm sure you know a little more about this than me, what with your picture of her and all. Patrick knew about her past, too, which is why someone hired him to find her. Well, find her and kill her."

Columbine winced at her words. I objected, "But Patrick Cobb wasn't a killer; he was a reporter. That doesn't make sense."

Stella smiled at me indulgently. "It's amazing what desperate people will agree to do for a dollar. But as it turns out, you're right. Patrick wasn't a killer. When he finally found her, he couldn't bring himself to do it. Instead, he warned Isabel that people from her past were after her and offered to help her escape. To his surprise, however, she told him that she didn't want to escape. She said she was tired of running, tired of pretending to be someone else. She said she had spent ten years hiding from her past, and she always knew that sooner or later it was going to catch up with her. So she asked Patrick to finish what he had been paid to do."

When Stella finished, the silence hung heavy in the room. I finished writing down what she had said in my notebook and glanced over to Columbine, who no longer appeared to be having fun. I turned back to Stella and asked, "Did Cobb say who hired him, or did you ever get any indication from Isabel who from her past might be after her?"

"Patrick didn't say. I'm not sure he even knew who they really were. And as for Isabel herself, she never talked about her past at all. The only thing was, well..."

Stella trailed off, hesitating as to whether she should continue. "What is it?" Columbine prodded.

"There was one funny thing about her. She had this special John that she'd go to see once a year on April 18
^th
- the same day every year, like clockwork. I don't know who he was, and I never saw him, but she told me about him. They had a special meeting place where he'd pick her up and take her to a fancy hotel. They'd stay in the penthouse, and she'd wash herself up with expensive soaps and lotions and perfumes. He'd give her a designer dress to wear to dinner, always at a fancy restaurant. He'd reserve them a private room and let her order anything she wanted, no regard for the price, and they'd always have a rare bottle of champagne with their meal. Then she'd sleep over through the night in that big penthouse bed with silk sheets. In the morning, he'd drop her back off at the meeting place, and she wouldn't hear from him again until their next date."

"The same day every year like clockwork," I repeated. "How long was this going on?"

"Ever since I first met her."

"And you didn't have any who he might have been. No guesses, no clues."

"Well, he obviously had to be someone very rich,. As for clues..." Stella paused again. "I'm not sure if this'll help, but she'd always wear the same necklace whenever she was going to meet him - a ruby pendent, and she only ever wore it for him."

Columbine's eyes nearly popped out of her skull.

I smiled. "Thank you, Stella. You've been very helpful."

She glanced down at the photograph of Jacinda again, and the tears finally came. But something struck me as peculiar about the way she cried - it wasn't hysterical sobbing, and it wasn't mournful weeping. Then, as a wide, beaming smile spread across Stella's face, I realized with surprise that they were tears of pride.

"My God, she looks so beautiful. It's almost like she's an entirely different person. So confident, so powerful, like she's queen bitch of the world." She let a bittersweet chuckle escape her lips. "I thought I knew her pretty well, but looking at this photo... I guess she's not who I thought she was."

12. She Begged Me To

I woke up in the middle of the night to the sounds of someone coughing violently amid the heavy smell of cheap whiskey and stale sweat. I sat up, and though still groggy and disoriented, I thought I could make out a figure standing at the foot of my bed in the darkness.

I reached over and switched on the lamp on my nightstand.

The first thing I noticed as my eyes adjusted to the light was the snub-nosed .22 revolver leveled at my head. The second thing I noticed was the tall, gaunt man holding it. He was still dressed in the same well-worn suit as he was wearing when he took the swing at me in the flophouse. His face was badly bruised, his left hand taped up, and a bright red splotch was visible on his shirt inside his open suit jacket. He was shaking and stunk of alcohol; his skin was a sickly pale color.

"I'm sorry I hit you the other night," Cobb said. "When I saw you in my room, I assumed you were one of them."

"One of who?" I asked.

"Don't be dense," he sneered.

I sat up and picked the gunk out of my eyes. Cobb continued, "After you left that night, I followed you, checked up on you. You really are a reporter."

He chuckled bitterly to himself and lowered the gun. Then he reached into his jacket pocket with the bandaged hand and produced the shiny blue box I had seen behind the vent in his room.

"I need you to take this and keep it safe," he said, tossing it to me. "No one can know you have it."

I caught the box and turned it over in my fingers. It was cold and metallic, a rectangle of roughly five inches by two inches. There weren't any visible joints or hinges, or any apparent way to open it.

"You need the Ariadne Key to open it," he said. "I heard them say that Lilian Lynch could get it."

"Who are they, exactly?" I pressed.

He shook his head. "I don't know. Lynch was the one who approached me about tracking down Ngo. She was the only one I ever dealt."