Perpetual Motion (11 page)

Cynical nodded appreciatively.

“In the meantime, could you go stand
somewhere else?” she said, waving him away with her hand. “You’re
scaring away my customers.”

Turning, he obediently left the counter,
looking for a dark corner to hide his age. Of all the scary
costumes in the room, apparently old age was the most frightening
to these kids. A couple of representatives of the future walked by,
giving him a hard look, which he returned without all the effort
they exuded.

“What are you doing here?” the shirtless one
snarled.

Cynical finished a swig of beer and eyed the
boy with the tattooed torso. A devil smiled out from his hairless
chest. “I’m looking for someone.”

“Told you,” the second one with a nose
piercing observed as he leered over his friend’s bare shoulder.
“Dude’s a narc.”

“Okay,” Cynical said, conceding the point if
it would end the dialogue. “Now move along.”

“I don’t answer to you,” the inked-up, alpha
dog warned. “In here, you answer to me.” The kid took an aggressive
step forward, which didn’t get the frightened reaction he was
hoping for from his quarry. “You want to dance with the devil?”

“No thanks,” Cynical said, “I was already
married to her.” The nose-pierced kid snorted; even his friend
seemed momentarily disarmed. Prematurely thinking he’d won them
over, Cynical took out the photo. “Have either of you seen this
girl?”

The shirtless leader leaned in, as if he was
actually going to take a look. Once he was close enough, he brought
his fist around like a windmill, smashing the glass encased photo
to the concrete floor.

“That’s going to be your face” the kid
spat.

The explosion of anger had surprised Cynical,
but the threat had given him time to ready himself for the
unavoidable fight that was to follow. Part of him wanted to warn
the kid that this wasn’t going to be a fair fight. But he knew the
kid wouldn’t have listened anyway.

When the shirtless one came at him, Cynical
stepped to the side and grabbed the back of his baggy jeans.
Continuing to whirl around, he helped his amped-up, would-be
attacker run smack into the brick wall behind him. With his elbow,
he gave the kid an extra crack on the back of his neck, instantly
dropping him to his knees. It may not have been elegant, but it was
effective.

Pivoting, he saw the second kid was
momentarily stymied, trying to decide whether he should jump in or
not. Having seen his friend fall so quickly, and his opponent
crouched in a practiced fighter’s stance, he was having second
thoughts. Trying to steer the sidekick into making the decision
that didn’t involve the emergency room, Cynical dropped his
fists.

“Help your friend up.”

Nose Pierce grabbed the slumping boy, pulling
him to his feet. Swallowing hard, the dazed kid muttered something
low enough not to be heard and, turning around, displayed a tattoo
of an angel on his back. With the support of his buddy, he shuffled
away, his distressed designer jeans dragging behind him.

The whole thing happened so fast it hadn’t
attracted much attention; only a few ghouls stared from a
respectful distance. Cynical picked up the photo of Michael and
Karen. A piece of glass was missing and a crack ran in-between the
couple. If he was the superstitious type, it wasn’t a good sign.
But he wasn’t superstitious.

Taking a pull on his beer, Cynical tried to
fade back into the background, just wanting be left alone for as
long as he had to be there and hoping it wouldn’t be too long.

With his beer long gone, the techno “music”
continued to assault him from every angle. He supposed he was
listening to different songs mixed together in one never-ending
music marathon, but couldn’t be sure. Compared to this, disco was
king.

Cynical checked his watch again. Two minutes
since the last time he looked. In total, he had been a prisoner of
the Boom Boom Room an hour and ten minutes. If he’d just taken
Mancuso’s fifty grand, he would have called it a night by now. Now
that his retirement depended on this case, he dug in for the
duration.

Out of the corner of his eye, he caught a
flurry of hand movements from the direction of the bar. As he
headed toward the taps, the bartender gave him a subtle head nod
toward a girl standing, more or less, by herself, drumming her
black fingernails on the counter.

Sifting through the thirsty throng, he
situated himself next to a young woman with straggly long black
hair, black eyeliner and lipstick, and an unlit cigarette hanging
out of her mouth. She wore a short velvety dress and was almost
sexy in a damaged kind of way. It was definitely not the girl in
the photo, so he assumed it was her friend.

“Hey, you wouldn’t happen to be Lorisa, would
you?”

The drunken girl looked up with a confused
expression on her face. “Do I know you?”

“No, I’m a private detective,” he said as he
pulled out a lighter. “My name is Cynical Jones.”

“So?”

Flicking the lighter, he held out the flame.
“I’m looking for Karen Norton.”

It took a couple of attempts for the girl to
connect the cigarette with the flame, and when she did, she sucked
hard. Looking up, she tried to look smoldering, but it came off
more like a grease fire. “And why are you looking for Karen?”

“I think she might be in trouble.”

When the bartender brought over a cocktail
for the lady, Cynical put down a twenty. It was enough cash to pay
for the drink along with another generous tip.

“What kind of trouble?” Lorisa asked, a cloud
collecting around her head.

“Actually, it’s her boyfriend who might be in
the trouble.”

Lorisa laughed hoarsely at that one, choking
on her own smoke. “Michael Poindexter!” She coughed up more
exhaust. “What did he do?”

“I think people may be after something he was
working on.”

“Karen acted like he was working on some big,
important deal, but she wouldn’t actually say what it was,” Lorisa
said dismissively, rolling her heavy mascara lined eyes. “Karen was
always talking about how brilliant he was. Personally, I didn’t see
it. I told her he was a loser, but you know what they say: ‘love is
blind.’”

“Yeah,” Cynical agreed. “So, do you have any
idea where I could find Karen or Michael?”

“Michael works in some dump, a factory
building downtown, but I don’t know the address or nothing,” she
said with a shrug. “Karen lives just off campus - University
Circle. I told her to meet me here tonight.” She glanced around
with annoyance. “But she won’t show. She never shows – not since
she met
him
.”

“Does Karen have a cell phone or any way I
could reach her?”

“Yeah, but her cell phone has been turned
off. I don’t think she’s even checking email and she never used
Facebook or Twitter or anything.” Lorisa paused, as if for the
first time considering the implications of being interviewed by a
private detective. “Is she okay?”

“I don’t know,” Cynical answered truthfully.
“If you see her, will you ask her to give me a call?” He held out
his business card.

“Yeah, sure,” she mumbled, taking the card
and giving it a brief squint.

“How do you know each other?” Cynical asked,
just because he was curious.

“Oh, we were roommates in college our
freshman year. We always stayed in touch….until now.”

With that, Lorisa walked unsteadily away,
delving deeper into the nether regions of the club. He didn’t know
Karen, but he couldn’t help but think she was better off not
hanging out with her college roommate anymore.

Looking down, he noticed Lorisa had left his
business card on the bar. Deciding it was time to cut his losses,
the “x-detective” took his card back and headed for the door,
making it outside without further incident.

The thumping bass began to fade as Cynical
strode up the sidewalk and away from the wasted evening. It was a
depressing part of being a PI: chasing down leads that turned out
to be dead-ends. Hoping he would at least find his ride in one
piece, he
quickened his pace.

Almost at his
car,
he heard the sound of footsteps coming up behind
him. Someone was hurrying to catch up. Wondering if the shirtless
kid from the club wanted a rematch, he slipped into a doorway and
waited for his tail to show.

Within a couple of seconds, the footsteps
brought a figure with a sweatshirt hood pulled over his head. For a
moment, the person seemed lost, searching for the man who had
suddenly vanished into thin air.

“You looking for someone?” Cynical
whispered.

The hood snapped around; two eyes widening
with the realization that the person he was following was now
behind him.

Cynical couldn’t quite make out the shadowy
features, although what he saw didn’t look familiar. He didn’t have
long to place the face anyway. The young man’s hand was emerging
from the kangaroo pocket of his sweatshirt, the flicker of a blue
charge dancing above his finger and thumb.

It was a stun gun, and it was coming his
way.

As the electrical charge rose toward his
chest, Cynical briefly flashed on his tasering at the Mirage. That
wasn’t going to happen again, not if he could help it.

A split second later, he blocked the hand
away and simultaneously tossed a right jab into the middle of the
darkened hood. Instantly, the head snapped back - taking the rest
of the body with it. Glancing off a parking meter, the would-be
assailant fell to the sidewalk in a heap.

Bending down, Cynical picked up the stun gun
lying a few feet from the open hand. The attacker-turned-victim
groaned and muttered incoherently as his eyelids flickered open.
Pulling the hood back revealed a young, thin face with long,
tangled hair and a straggly beard. A trickle of blood found its way
from the hawkish beak into the facial hair.

“What do you want?”
Cynical asked. “Why were you following me?”

The kid merely shook
his head.

Unsure whether he was
being obstinate or still clearing the cobwebs, Cynical raised the
stun gun to the fuzzy face.

“Okay,” he said, holding out his hands in
surrender. “I heard you were asking about Karen.”

“Yeah, so?”

“So,” he managed a shrug from his supine
position. “I’m protecting her.”

“Who are you?”

“Me? I’m Desmond Traylor,” he said, as if
stating the obvious. “Michael’s partner.”

“Well, I guess we work for the same guy
then,” Cynical said, wanting to see how much this guy actually
knew.

“You work for Michael too?” Desmond asked,
confused.

“No, Michael’s boss,” Cynical said. “His
investor.”

With a wrinkled brow, it took a second for
Desmond to finally utter, “Mancuso?”

“Correcto.”

“A lot of people are looking for us right
now,” Desmond said, wincing as he dabbed at his nose with the
sleeve of his hoodie. “We can’t be too careful.”

Instead of inquiring how using a stun-gun on
strangers was being careful, Cynical asked the only question he
really wanted to know at the moment. “Where’s Karen?”

“She safe,” Desmond insisted.

“Take me to her.”

The blue charge on the stun gun illuminated
Desmond’s face as he began to nod enthusiastically. “Yeah, okay,
okay. It’s just a mile from here.”

Not trusting the kid any further than he
could punch him, Cynical gripped his arm and pulled him up to his
feet. Putting the stun gun against his lower back, he escorted
Desmond the rest of the way to his car, where he was pleased to
find it had all the same dings and scratches it had when he left
it.

Unlocking the doors, he shoved the kid into
the passenger seat. Keeping the stun gun with him, he went over to
the driver’s side, got in and started the car.

“Now, where are we going?”

“Go to the end of this block,” Desmond said,
seemingly resigned to cooperating. “Then take a left on
Venice.”

After a short distance on the thoroughfare,
the nervous kid pointed up ahead. “Turn right on
6
^th
.”

Cynical did as he was told, heading back into
a shady neighbor of rental homes and apartments. “So, why’s she
shacking up with you?”

“Because she’s scared and she doesn’t want to
be alone,” Desmond said defensively. “Make a left up here.” A twist
and turn later, they pulled up next to a gray three story apartment
that sagged with neglect. “Here it is. Home sweet home.”

Cynical got out, letting the kid lead the way
to the first floor doorway. A broken out light over the door and
bars on the windows did not conjure up feelings of safety.

Under his captor’s careful eye, Desmond got
out his keys out and turned the lock. With a little shove from
behind, he stumbled into his apartment, Cynical on his heels.

True to his word, Karen was standing behind a
raggedy couch in the middle of the windowless living room, as if
waiting for them. Just like her photo, dark hair hung down around a
thoughtful face; black glasses framed worried eyes. The intrusion
of a stranger had put her on high alert and she looked as nervous
as a cat ready to scamper out a window, if she could have slipped
through the bars.

“Who’s that?” she shouted at Desmond.

“It’s okay,” Cynical said, trying to sound as
reassuring as possible. “I’m here to help.” Since Desmond wasn’t
saying anything on his behalf, he continued, “I’m trying to find
Michael. I’m working for Mancuso.”

Her eyes flashed back and forth between
Cynical and Desmond, looking for some reassurance. “Mancuso?” she
repeated, as if it was a magical word she had once heard.