Blood Trade, page 11
Her voice broke as her body was wracked by heavy sobs. “I cut his heart out… and then I literally cut his heart out.”
Chapter Nine: What Happened to Martin Forester
“So now you know the whole, sad, fucking story of my life,” said Xochitl. “Foster care to the army, to stripping, to private investigator—not much of a story, really.”
“You’re kidding,” replied Dominic. “They could make a movie of your life, but nobody would believe it. Not dull though.”
“No, not dull.”
“Alright. Now that I’ve been filled in, we can go eat breakfast.”
“I told you I’m not hungry.”
“Well I’m hungry.” He handed her pictures back to her. “If you don’t want to eat, you can sit and tell me all about your case. I’ll happily let you watch me eat, if that’s what you really want.”
“Oh joy,” she said. “At least that won’t be dull either.”
Xochitl spent the next twenty minutes cleaning up and reapplying her makeup while Dominic paced her tiny bedroom. Then, grabbing the pad with Novelyne’s notes on Martin Forester and the man’s picture, she led him downstairs and back out the way they had originally come in. They left Dominic’s Cruz parked where it was and walked across the street, past the pawn shop, and toward Glitter Gulch. The Gem had a decent breakfast spread, so she led him into the casino and upstairs to the buffet. She paid. She still had some of his money.
Even though she wasn’t hungry and had said that she wasn’t hungry, Xochitl did get a plate and like most buffet diners, piled it with far more food that she was actually capable of consuming. She was already eating when Dominic returned to their table, balancing three plates.
“You know, you can make more than one trip,” she said.
“No need.”
He carefully set out the platters. On the first, he had a Denver omelet and a piece of ham. On the second was a waffle and two cheese blintzes, all covered in syrup. The third plate had two pieces of buttered toast and a small pile of grits. After sitting down, the FBI agent looked around expectantly.
“She’ll be around to get your drink order in a few minutes,” said Xochitl. “We can go ahead and start eating.”
He frowned, but turned his attention to his food and began carefully cutting it into pieces. The omelet, the ham, and the waffle were all transformed into small triangular bites.
“I got pancakes,” said Xochitl. “I know I said I wasn’t hungry, but you can’t say no to pancakes.”
“I don’t really like pancakes,” he said.
“You’re kidding. I’ve never actually met anyone who didn’t like pancakes before. How about hotcakes?”
“That’s the same thing.”
“You have a waffle. Don’t waffles taste pretty much just like a pancakes?”
“Waffles are airier,” he said. “And pancakes are round. I don’t really like round food.”
“Those blintzes are round.”
“They’re cylindrical, though granted, when I cut them up the pieces will be round—bite-sized though. I don’t mind so much it they’re bite-sized.” He looked around again for the server. It was not a woman who waited on them but an older black man in a white apron.
“What can I get you to drink?” he asked as he approached.
“A glass of milk and an orange juice,” said Xochitl.
“Water,” Dominic said.
Xochitl was almost full before the waiter brought her drinks, though that didn’t cause her any discomfort, unlike Dominic. He didn’t begin eating until he had his water, and by that time Xochitl thought that his food might well be cold, though he didn’t complain about it. Just as she expected, he took a sip of his beverage after every three bites of his meal. He ate his ham, then his omelet, then his waffle, blintzes, toast, and at last he started in on his grits.
“What is that?”
“Grits.”
“How can you eat that? Nobody even knows what that is.”
“It’s grits. It’s made of corn.”
“It doesn’t look like corn.”
“Of course it does,” he said. “Look closely. It’s very much like corn meal. They shuck the corn, soak it in a weak lye solution, dry it, grind it, and reconstitute it with boiling water. Some people eat it with sugar, but in the south we eat it with butter, salt, and pepper.”
“What are you talking about? You’re not from the south.”
“I started eating grits when I was at Virginia Beach.” He gave her a studied frown. “If we’re done talking about my food, I’d like to know something about your case.”
Xochitl gave him the few details that she had. Martin Forester was a middle-aged accountant who decided to play sugar daddy to Foxy’s dancer Evan Clark… yes, she was pretty sure that Evan was anatomically a woman. He’d been missing for a while, and then had shown up in a company of a couple of unhappy looking gentlemen who were long of tooth, and no, she didn’t mean they were old.
“If he’s an accountant and he’s been playing the part of benefactor to the arts,” said Dominic, “it probably means that he was skimming off of whoever he was working for. And if he was working for vampires, it would be a vampire with a fairly large organization—like our friend Israel.”
“What do you suppose Israel is trying to do, take over the town?”
“If he is, he’s got some stiff competition. The pimps don’t normally share resources, but they might if they felt threatened, and if Israel pushes into where the real money is, he might end up at odds with the Chicago mob.”
“You mean like the mob mob?” asked Xochitl. “Like Goodfellas.”
“More like Casino,” he replied. “What? You thought Tony (the Pipe) Bruno just lived here so he could supply you with hamburgers?”
“So which side do we help?”
“We don’t help either side.” He sipped his water. “If it was me, I’d let them all kill each other and then follow around to stomp on whatever cockroaches are left. But it’s not me. It’s Assistant Director Mitchell. I’ll find out what his plan is in the morning.”
Xochitl pushed the remains of her half-eaten breakfast away from her.
“So, where do you suppose I should look for Martin Forester?”
“Have you thought about the fact that Foxy’s is right on top of one of the main thoroughfares of the underground city?”
“You guys from out of town love you some underground city. You know it’s not what you think it is. It’s just the part of the flood control channel system that sits below the Strip.”
“And since it rains only half a dozen times of year,” said Dominic, “it’s populated by a few hundred lost and mostly forgotten homeless people.”
“Yes. And some vampires that feed on them… and a few other unpleasant things.”
“I think we should look there.”
They left the Gem and Dominic drove to Sahara Boulevard. The great east/west thoroughfares that intersected the Las Vegas Strip were named for the hotels that dominated those intersections—Hacienda, Tropicana, Flamingo, Sands, Sahara. Foxy’s was just north across Sahara Boulevard from the Sahara Hotel. Directly behind Foxy’s, accessed by an alleyway, was a small building without any external sign or markings. It was part of the Southern Nevada Flood Control System. Even an inexpert lock pick would have been able to enter the building, but Xochitl and Dominic found the door jamb busted and the door ajar. The interior of the small building consisted of nothing more than a set of cement steps leading down into the darkness of the underground flood channel.
The FBI agent had two flashlights in his car—one large and one small, but both very bright. He handed the larger to Xochitl. It was one of the type used by night watchmen that could easily take the place of a truncheon if necessary. The one he kept was only as long as a pencil and only slightly bigger around. The cement steps led down to a landing, changed directions, and continued down to the channel floor. The channel itself was essentially a large rectangular tunnel running east and west. At the point in which they entered it was twenty feet wide eight feet high. Both walls, the floor, and the ceiling were completely covered with graffiti.
“Uphill or downhill?” asked Dominic.
“Uphill first,” replied Xochitl. “There’s a Y branch just west of here. One of the branches cuts over to Charleston.”
They had gone less than a hundred yards before they spotted the first signs of human habitation. A lean-to made from three wooden loading pallets and several cardboard boxes sat against the north wall. Inside was an old mattress from a single bed. No one seemed to be around, but the odor of unwashed human being hung in the air.
“What do you think?” asked the FBI agent. “It doesn’t look very permanent.”
“Nothing down here is very permanent. Everything lasts only until the next rain. The regulars though have someplace they can pull out to and then move back. I doubt we’ll find too many of them so close to the Strip.”
“Do you want to go back the other way?”
“No, not yet.”
A hundred and fifty feet further on, the channel split into two branches. Each of these new tunnels were as large as the combined one. They continued on to the right. The channel made a long slow turn to the north and then back to the west. Once it had straightened out, it was joined by dozens of other smaller openings to the right and left, spaced about fifty feet apart. Most of these were not much bigger than a narrow household hallway. Glancing down each as they passed, Xochitl spotted a light some distance down the third passage on the right. As she stopped, the light disappeared.
“Come on.”
When they had walked about sixty feet down the tertiary passage, their flashlight beams touched an obstruction ahead, and a voice called out.
“Friend or foe?”
“Friend,” said Xochitl.
“Cops?”
“No.”
“Vampires?”
“No.”
“Alright,” said the voice. “Move forward slowly.”
They walked carefully toward the voice.
“Close enough. Now, shine your flashlights on yourselves.”
They did.
“Shit. I thought you said you weren’t cops or vampires. You look like one of each.”
“I’m with the FBI, and she’s a private investigator,” said Dominic, and then under his breath. “I told you that you looked like a vampire.”
“What do you want?”
“We’re not here to bother you,” explained Xochitl. “We’re looking for a man that may have been taken by vampires.”
“Alright. Come on in.”
The obstruction proved to be a makeshift wall with a door cut into it. It was made of pieces of plywood, no doubt stolen from construction sites, and didn’t look as though it would have been too difficult to knock down. The lights inside came back on and the door opened revealing a rather round, red-headed woman who looked to be in her mid thirties. She guided them in and locked the door after her. Beyond the makeshift wall was a tiny apartment, with a bed, a table, two mismatched dining chairs, and a radio attached to an old car battery with jumper cables. The lamp which provided the light was a battery-powered camping light. The woman directed them to the dining chairs, all the while holding a dull-looking machete.
“Hey, I know you,” she said. “You’re the crazy chic from downtown.”
“This is the guy,” said Xochitl, holding up the picture and ignoring the “crazy” comment.
“Yes, I figured that was him,” said the woman. “They killed him and dumped him, just up the way, closer to the village.”
“The village?” wondered Dominic.
“That’s what we call it. It’s where most of us down here live—further up, on the other side of the Freeway. My husband Bob doesn’t like to be too close to everyone else.”
“Where is Bob?” asked Xochitl.
“He’s at work. He’s a custodian at Foxy’s. He had a job at the Klondike, but got laid off. Then I got sick and all our money went to doctors. We lost our house, but I’m cancer free now.”
“You say this guy was killed?” asked Dominic.
“Yeah. The vampires come down here every once in a while, but they mostly leave us alone. I guess they’re just like everyone else and think we’re not even worth their trouble. It was, um… Saturday night. They swept through here and left him up near the others.”
“What happened to his body?”
“Bob and the other men disposed of it just like the others. You can’t leave them lying around. They start to smell pretty quick. They take them up and put them in the dumpster behind the wedding chapel. Nobody really pays attention to what goes in there.”
“Nobody pays attention to any of the dumpsters anymore,” said Xochilt. “There must be half a dozen bodies a day dumped in this town.”
“Now we know that your Martin Forester is dead,” said Dominic. “Unfortunately we don’t know how he was killed and we can’t get any evidence from the body.”
“Well, he was killed by vampires. I can tell you that,” said Bob’s wife. “They sucked him really dry. I can’t tell you anything else about his body, except he had a tattoo of an eye on the back of his neck.”
* * * * *
Dominic dropped Xochitl off in front of the Sin City Detective Agency a little after one. The closed sign was still hanging in the door, making it obvious that Novelyne had not yet returned.
“You know you don’t have to go yet,” she told him. “You’re flight isn’t until eight something.”
“I’ve been meaning to ask you about your sign,” he said, ignoring her comment. “It says established 1976. You weren’t even born yet, were you?”
“No, I wasn’t, as you already know. I ask again; why are you leaving so early.”
“You can’t ask again, because you didn’t ask the first time. You simply said that I didn’t have to go yet. In fact, I do. I have things to do. And they recommend that you get to the airport two hours early.”
Xochitl turned around and unlocking the door, stepped into the office without looking back. Though she was determined not to turn and see if he was still there, she gave up after three minutes and furtively peeked through a crack in the black paint on the window. The black Chevy Cruz was gone. With a sigh, she sat down on the corner of the desk and called Evan Clark’s number. The call went to voice mail.
“Evan, this is Xochitl McKenna with Sin City Detective Agency. We’ve finished our investigation and would like to meet and go over our findings. We’ll also have a partial refund of your retainer.”
Leaning back in her chair and folding her hands behind her head, Xochitl heaved first one combat boot and then another onto the desk and then crossed her ankles. At that moment the door flew open and a greasy looking kid burst in. He had a glassy-eyed look that was exacerbated by the way those eyes flitted about as he struggled to adjust to the relatively low light of the office. From the way his pants were hanging, the Goth detective could tell he had a piece stuck in the back of his waistband. He didn’t reach for it, though he was clearly agitated. His hands and his lower lip both trembled.
“Can I help you?” she asked evenly.
His eyes found her and he stared at her a few seconds. Then he licked his lips and spoke.
“I have a message from Eskimo.”
“Yes? What is it?”
“He says to tell you that your girl isn’t with any of the pimps in town.”
“He’s sure? He’s talked with everyone?” she asked.
“Bitch, he said ‘any of the pimps.’ Now what does that sound like to you?”
“Don’t make me get up out of this chair and kick the shit out of you.”
He whipped the pistol out from behind his back and pointed it at her, though the way his hand was shaking made it about a fifty-fifty chance that he could actually hit her.
“Bitch, I will waste you!”
Xochitl didn’t move.
“Did Eskimo say anything else,” she asked calmly.
“He says you owe him, now!”
“That’s right. I owe him a favor. What do you think he’ll do to you, if you kill me?”
“You’re confusing me!”
“Go tell Eskimo that I got his message. I’m sure he’ll appreciate it. I’m sure he’ll give you that fix that he promised.
The greasy-looking kid made a sound that was about halfway between a moan and a grunt, and then turned and fled out the front door. Xochitl sat and thought, far less concerned with the gun-toting addict than with the information from Eskimo that Daphna Sachs was apparently not working the streets as a teen prostitute. That was good news. But if that was the case, where was she? There weren’t a lot of positive possibilities, unless she had immediately jumped back on a bus for somewhere else.
Getting back to her feet, she made her way through the back room and out into the alley. A minute later, she was entering Robot Slut Tattoo through the back door. The shop’s music system, which usually blared seventies dance music was quietly playing Donovan’s soothing 1965 Catch the Wind. Xochitl found Sid snoring loudly on his couch, having put up the “back in so many minutes” sign with the arrow pointing to 45. She placed the soul of her boot on his stomach and shook it back and forth.
“Hey,” he said drowsily.
“Hey.”
“You saw the sign, right?” Sid asked, as he climbed to a sitting position. “It looks awesome, doesn’t it?”
“Bigger than I thought it would be,” she replied.
“It’s already bringing in business. I was booked up all morning and I’ve got two appointments later today. Tomorrow is completely booked up.”
“Well, that’s good. I suppose I’ll have to schedule appointments from now on.”
“Of course not. In fact, I’ve got time right now. If you agree, I want to rework the skull and bring it up to the standard of the rest of the work.”
He led her back to the chair.
“I imagine this is just so that you can get a good look,” she said, stripping off everything below the waist and sitting down.
