Part 17:
Don't Bother Waiting Up For Me
It was 2:00 a.m.
Dan Fortis drove through
the seedy underbelly of Los Angeles in his beat-up Honda Accord, looking for
information. He had spent the better
part of his four years at UCLA doing investigative journalism for a local
underground newspaper, so it seemed like a good idea to tap into those old
skills when it came to the story at hand.
For the better part of the
last seven days, he had been cruising the streets, digging for dirt and paying
off foul-mouthed scum for any info they could give him about Gus Monroe and his
comings and goings the days before the shootings. He’d managed to learn a few vague things about
what Gus was up to the weeks leading up to that fateful night. But nothing that was going to crack the case
wide open, win him a Peabody Award and the corner office on the fifth floor
that he so desperately desired.
Pulling the car over to
the side of the road, Dan signaled to a woman dressed in a leopard-skin halter top
and black hot pants to come to the car to talk. Pasting a phony smile on her crimson-colored
lips, she sashayed over to his car, leaning down through the open window,
gagging him with the smell of cheap, dime store perfume.
“What’s up, baby?” she
drawled, her eyes wide and darting.
“Did you know a guy named
Gus Monroe?” Dan backed up from the window, glancing in his rearview mirror for
any signs of cops that might bust him for “solicitation.”
“Baby, I’ll know whoever
you want me to know.”
Dan reached for the police
file photo of Gus that had been running in all of the national papers for the
last week. “This guy.” Dan tapped on the picture. “Did you know this guy? Or do you know anybody who would know this
guy? Word on the street is that he
frequented this corner for some action.”
Grabbing the paper from
Dan’s hands, she looked it up and down, tossing it back through the window into
his lap. “So what if I did know that
guy?”
“What can you tell me
about him?” Dan reached for his billfold,
sliding out two crisp ten-dollar bills. One thing he learned was that it didn’t take
much for these types of people to turn on their own kind. They would stab their own mothers in the back
for few bucks to buy themselves beer, cigarettes, or drugs.
“He was a moron,” she said,
glancing over Dan’s car at a white Lincoln Continental that slowed down to
check out what was available. A woman in
all red stepped out of the shadows across the street. “Damn, man, you totally made me lose that
John. He would have probably gave me at
least fifty bucks.”
Reaching in his wallet,
Dan slid out three more ten-dollar bills. “Okay, look, I’ll match his price if you can
give me some more info on Gus Monroe. Who did he hang out with?” Everybody Dan had talked with up until tonight
had pretty much stuck to the story that Gus was a real loner. Pulled off most of his jobs on his own and
kept to himself.
“He hung out with some guy.”
Sitting up a little
straighter, Dan smiled. “He hung out
with a guy?”
“Yeah, some big guy with
muscles and a square face. Kind of okay-looking,
in a creepy sort of way.” Popping her
gum, she knelt down a little lower, resting her chin on the car door. “Gus always wanted to impress the guy, so he
brought him to me a few times for some fun. Paid for the guy and everything.”
“What was his name?” Grabbing for his notepad, Dan wrote down the
vague description she had given him of the man.
“I dunno; I can’t remember.”
“You slept with the guy,
and you can’t remember his name?” Dan said with a small laugh.
“Hey, they don’t pay me to
remember their names.”
Tossing the rest of the
money out the window, Dan smiled. “Too
bad. There was another fifty in it for
you if you could have come up with his name. But thanks anyway, miss, you’ve been a big
help,” he said as he started to pull away.
“Hey, wait!” she yelled,
dropping to her knees to pick up the scattered bills on the pavement.
Sticking his head out the
window, Dan waved around a fifty-dollar bill as enticement for her memory to
make a sudden return.
“I think he said his name
was Mo.”
***
When Nick awoke the
following morning, he expected to see A.J. at his bedside, but instead, he was
greeted by the sour face of his mother, sitting in the chair, thumbing through
a magazine and humming some random song from the 70s that he couldn’t quite
remember the name of.
“Mom?” Jane blinked twice at the word like Nick was
speaking Japanese and then glanced up.
“So?” was all she said to
him, her eyebrows arched high over her heavily-lined eyes.
“So?” Nick shrugged in confusion.
“So, are you going to tell
me what the hell is going on?” she asked, dropping the magazine to the floor
beside her chair.
“What do you mean?” Nick shifted in the bed, wincing from the pain
in his gut as he tried to sit up.
“It’s all over the news,” she
said, reaching for the remote and clicking on the overhead TV. But at that moment, the story of Nick and
Brian and Howie wasn’t all over the news; instead, there was a story about a
security guard disappearing from his graveyard shift at the Bellhurst Storage
Units. “Well, it has been all
over the news.” Jane sighed, clicking
off the TV. “Tell me the truth: were you and the saintly Brian buying drugs?”
“I was shot, so my stomach
hurts, and I've been in a coma for like a week, so I’m a little tired, but
other than that, I’m fine… thanks for asking,” Nick mumbled.
“Were you and Brain buying
drugs?” Leaning down, she grabbed Nick’s
face in her hand, digging her long, pink fingernails into his cheeks.
“Mom, knock it off.” Nick pushed at her hand. “No, we weren’t buying drugs.”
“How do you know?” she asked,
her stupid questions making Nick’s head hurt.
“I… I don’t know,” he
replied honestly.
“If you two little shits
were out there buying drugs, and that is why Brian and that other guy were
killed and Howie is missing, then you are going to be in deep shit.” She paced the room, looking back at Nick with
raging disapproval.
“Mom,” Nick started, but
she quickly cut him off.
“You better hope to hell
you get your memory back, Nick, and you better hope you get it back fast,
because if it turns out that somehow this whole thing was your own fault, and
it goes to trial, the press is going to eat you alive.”
***
Mo scrubbed at the
security guard’s uniform with a wet towel, pissed at himself that he had not
aimed the knife high enough to keep blood from splashing all over the collar. He knew he should have just choked the guy to
death instead of using the knife.
As always, the stupid news
media had been Mo’s biggest help with figuring out which way to go next with
his plan. After his little “chat” with
Sergeant Cox in the hospital alley the night before, Mo returned to the bowling
alley to catch up on the news coverage of the Backstreet Boys case. Leaning against the back wall, a cold glass
of beer in his hands, he watched some loser news weasel informing the public
that, due to Nick’s current condition, the cops had been tossed out of the
hospital until Nick was able to be questioned. Which meant that the hospital would hire some
stupid-ass security company to watch over St. Nick, getting rid of the LAPD
guarding his doors. So it seemed only
fitting that Mo pay a little visit to the Bellhurst Storage Units to get
himself a fancy security guard uniform that would look so nice on him when he
paid Nick a friendly visit to give him his best wishes for a speedy recovery.
Inside of the closet where
he was now sharing close quarters with a corpse, Howie tried not to move or
breathe, his mind wandering as the stench of blood permeated the musty air.
Mo had dragged the body
into the room sometime after sunrise, throwing open the closet door and waking
Howie from his deep sleep by leaning down and dragging him by the wrists out of
the closet.
“I brought someone to see
you,” Mo said, pointing to the body crumpled in a ball on the floor beside
Howie.
“Shit,” Howie moaned from
beneath the gag. He could see that the
neck of the person had been punctured, fresh blood coating the man’s neck and
shoulders. Was it Nick? Howie swallowed
hard, fighting back the nausea that pitched around in his gut as Mo rolled the
body over, face-up.
“Fooled you.” Mo laughed at the classic look on Howie’s face
when he realized the dead man before him was not Nick. “You thought I brought your buddy to keep you
company, didn’t you? Nope, sorry to
disappoint you. I killed this guy
because I needed his uniform, but I guess he can keep you company, too.”
Howie watched in confusion
as Mo stripped the dead body down to its boxer shorts, tossing the clothing to
the pile in the corner of the room, before dragging the guy into the closet. He then stooped down to tighten Howie’s gag,
pulling off a second strip of electrical tape that he secured over the top of
the first piece that held the gag in place, making it nearly impossible for Howie to
breathe.
“Okay buddy, you’re in
next.” Grabbing Howie under the arms, Mo
hauled him up to his feet, walking him back towards the closet. Howie struggled against Mo’s weight, trying to
break free of the horror that was unfolding, but Mo just laughed. “Howard, look at you. Do you really think that you are any match
for me? Hell, you aren’t even a match
for that dead guy right there.” He
pointed to the still and twisted body on the closet floor. “Now, c’mon, your new friend is lonely, so get
in there and keep him company.”
Picking Howie up off of
his feet, Mo hauled him, kicking and flailing, to the closet, where he
proceeded to shove him inside, making him fall in a heap on top of the dead
security guard, before shutting and locking the closet door behind him.
“Hey Howard, how you doing
in there?” Mo asked, banging on the door to the closet. “I was feeling bad that you were so lonely. I hope you like your new friend.”
Laughing, Mo shed his
clothing, pulling on the uniform that was slightly small in some places but,
overall, would do just fine.
“Okay, well, I’m going out
for awhile,” he said, pounding twice on the closet door on his way out of the
room. “Don’t bother waiting up for me.”
***
It was lunchtime, and
instead of digging into his wife’s leftover meatloaf and mashed potatoes,
Sergeant Cox sat in his office, staring at the corkboard where he had posted
each and every detail about Nick Carter’s case for the last eight days. Shaking his head, he tossed his pen at the
board in frustration, as his phone began to ring.
“What.”
“Sergeant.” It was Corbin, one of the officers he had
posted outside of Nick Carter’s hospital room. “The hospital administration is ordering us to
leave the hospital grounds.”
Sighing, Sergeant Cox
rubbed at his throbbing temple with his free hand. “I figured they would pull that. Fine, do what they say for now and get back to
the station. I’ll put you two back on
street patrol until we can figure something out.” Slamming the phone down, he pulled Bill Connor’s
phone number down off the corkboard and dialed.
“Yes, this is Mr. Connor.”
“Listen, Connor, you’re
making a big mistake taking my guards off of Nick Carter.”
“Hello, Sergeant Cox. I appreciate your concern, but Nick Carter’s
family does not want this turned into any more of a circus than it already is. In light of his medical condition and the fact
that you don’t seem to care what your interrogations can do to his health, his
family does not feel comfortable with you or any persons employed by you to be
in contact with their son at this time. You may take the matter up with their lawyer
if you’d like. I have his number right
here.”
“Who is going to be
watching the kid?” Cox hissed through clenched teeth, wishing he could put that
sissy hospital dumbass in a headlock and pummel him until he screamed like a
woman.
“Not that it is any of
your concern, but we have hired some extra security men to guard his room. When and if he has his memory return and he is
able to talk to you without there being a threat posed to his health, the
family will notify you.”
“Fuck you, Connor!” Cox
shouted into the phone, just as Officer Park walked through the door.
“And a good afternoon to
you as well, Sergeant Cox,” Mr. Connor
said, before slamming down the phone.
***
Leighanne walked through
the door of Nick’s hospital room, a huge vase of yellow roses in her arms, a
smile on her face.
“Hi Nicky,” she said,
looking for a place to set down the flowers.
“Hey.” Nicky?
She had never called him Nicky before.
“How are you feeling?” She finally set the vase of flowers down on
the floor, before sitting in the chair by Nick’s bedside.
“I dunno,” he answered
honestly. His chest was tight, his head
foggy like he had been sucking on helium, and his body throbbed all over,
making him wish that he could just go back into the deep sleep of the coma.
“I brought you these.” Leighanne motioned in the direction of the
flowers as she spoke. “I thought they
might make the room more cheerful or something.”
Nick looked around the
room, trying to settle his eyes on anything but Leighanne’s face.
“Did you want some water?”
she asked, looking over her shoulder to the glass of water on the counter.
Nick shook his head. “You hate me, don’t you? I’m sure that everybody hates me, so it’s okay
if you do, too.”
“Why would anybody hate
you, Nick?”
He smiled sadly. “Because I’m alive.”
“Brian did what he had to
do, Nick. It was his choice to make, not
yours. He wanted you to live.” Tears spilled down her cheeks as Leighanne
said the words.
“How do you know that for
sure?” Nick whispered, reaching out for her hand.
“Because he told me so,” she
said, lacing her fingers through his and squeezing his hand tightly.
***
