Cracked (16 page)

“Danny. Where are you calling from?”

I trusted Darren with every fiber of my heart and soul. True, I didn’t want him to get in trouble like I was in, but that was out of love.

But I did not trust whoever else might be listening in on the phone. Someone in that house had bonked me on the head twenty-four hours ago.

“I can’t tell you, Darren,” I said. “Trust me, I would if I could.”

“Don’t even think about doing this, Danny. There’s nothing to prove here. We know Fred killed Ginger. You can’t find the boys by yourself. It’s up to the authorities now.” He sighed. He sounded exhausted. “There’s a lot of people here. It’s good. They seem really on it.”

“What about what we talked about on the plane?” I said. I realized I was speaking too loudly. Cocaine. A couple of women pushing strollers glanced at me, and I rolled my eyes, as if I was talking to my wayward boyfriend.

“That still holds,” Darren said quickly. “Danny, that holds more than ever. But for now, as our brother-in-law is in the wind, I want you back here at the house.” I hesitated. Maybe I should just go back to the house, hang out with Darren for a couple of days, recuperate. Physically and psychologically. I had an en-suite, and Darren didn’t know I had drugs with me. I could escape and get a bit high here and there, tell him I was sleeping. It would make sense; my twin sister had been killed and my nephews were missing. Not to mention I had had a physical ordeal. Sleeping a lot would be what a real person might do. And maybe it would help to be around Darren. There wasn’t anyone who loved me more than he did.

No one alive, that is.

But in reality if I went back to the house, there would be no quality time, or chance to get high. In very short order I would be arrested, charged with assault and battery on a police officer. I sort of hoped that I would be given a pass, and wondered if there was a legal loophole that involved temporary insanity due to bereavement and drug withdrawal.

Besides. I realized that I felt safer hiding in plain sight than I would at Fred and Ginger’s house. And I wanted to finish what I started. Let my instinct guide me.

“Danny?” It was Darren’s voice again.

“Darren, I love you. When you talk to Skip and Laurence, you tell them I love them too. Okay?”

“What are you going to do,” he said, sounding resigned. “You remember your promise.”

I thought for a minute. “Darren, I don’t trust this phone, where I am right now,” I said carefully. I hoped he understood that I didn’t trust who might be listening at his end. “It doesn’t feel lucky. Do you know what I mean?” Silence on the other end for a few seconds. “No,” he said, slowly. “I don’t.”

“I might be feeling lucky again in a couple of hours,” I continued. Jesus. Was it me on coke, or was he being slow? Probably me on coke. “Before I come back, I need to feel lucky.”

“Okay,” he said. “Okay. Hey, Danny?”

“That’s me,” I said.

“Don’t take any wooden nickels,” he said.

That’s what the old lady at the hospital had said to me an hour and a half ago. All the hairs on my body stood up. Creepy.

“Why did you say that?”

“I don’t know. It’s an expression, you know. A figure of speech? Meaning, be careful? Stuff like that?”

“You’ve never said it before,” I said.

“Whatever, freak,” Darren said. “Hey, Danny – I hope you’re feeling lucky in a couple of hours. Like you said.”

Don’t blow it, Darren. “Yup. Talk to you later,” I said. I hung up.

And unless my brother was on a totally different planet than I was, he would be meeting me at Lucky’s Bar and Grill in two hours.

I went back into the restaurant to have another glass of wine and kill an hour. My foot was also hurting – the Tylenol Wanda had slipped me was wearing off, or wasn’t that strong to begin with. My salad was long finished, but I asked for another menu, along with another glass of wine. I figured I should have some protein, if I was going to go around beating people up. Or worse. I ordered a medium-rare cheeseburger and fries. The appetite was coming back, despite the couple of bumps of coke. I changed the chardonnay to a Shiraz and settled in. I debated becoming an alcoholic instead of a crack addict: it would be cheaper, and more socially acceptable. I was quite enjoying my little wine buzz.

And it helped me put pain and fear and worry off to the side, and concentrate on what I had to do. Once my nephews were safely back with us, and Ginger’s killer or killers were dead, I could break down and mourn. Preferably with Gene, and a room full of crack. And not until then.

I had been idly glancing through a copy of the
Los Angeles Times
that someone had left behind, but I put it down and looked at the women lunching around me. One of them caught my eye – she looked like I did, a few years ago. When I was fit and strong, and teaching a women’s self-defence class at my local Y, in addition to having six or seven clients that I trained every week. When I ran three or four miles every other day.

Before my split from Jack, and the orgy of low living that had followed.

I tried not to think about Jack, and I was pretty sure that he was doing his level best to not think about me, either. After I had left him, he stayed in Toronto for about a year before packing up and taking a job in Bermuda, then Grand Cayman, then back to Bermuda. He was a risk analyst for a very high-end hedge fund, the kind that you needed four or five million to get into. I had loved the contradiction of him: the street fighter with a Ph.D. in mathematics. He wasn’t pretty to look at, but that’s always been my thing. I’d take the late great James Gandolfini over the Brad Pitts of the world, any day of the week. Show me a barrel-chested guy with size-seventeen neck who reads good books in his spare time, and I’m on my back like a bug. Or I was, until my sex drive went the way of my bank account.

Thinking about men made me think about Miller. Harry. What was happening there? The last days had been chaos and hell, but somehow my mind kept going back to Miller, the unexpected interlude in the hospital, the rumpled, vaguely sexy mess of him. And him a cop, no less. I knew it was a coping mechanism. I’d always been like that – even before drugs, I got through trauma by thinking about, and doing, totally random and inappropriate things.

Then I remembered Gene. I motioned to the waitress that I’d be right back, and limped back to the payphone to try him. Note to self: buy a phone card.

Again, I tried my place first, and Gene answered on the first ring. He sounded anxious. He must be waiting for D-Man, I thought.

“It’s me,” I said. “Sorry. Nothing outside for you yet.”

“Thank God,” Gene said. I heard the pop of his Zippo. He inhaled deeply on the other end of the line. “What the fuck is going on down there?”

“Nothing much,” I said. “And by that I mean, someone I was partying with was murdered last night, while I was three feet away. Plus, someone drugged me, and not in a good way, if you know what I mean. Oh, and someone came out of my sister’s shower and knocked me unconscious. And today? I punched out a detective and left her in a ladies’ room.” I put my forehead against the cool phone. “It’s good to hear your voice.”

“Oh, wow, you too,” Gene said. “I can’t really take in what you just said yet, but are you at this moment okay?”

“I am, at this moment, okay. I am having a few glasses of wine and a cheeseburger, then I’m meeting Darren for drinks.” I neglected to mention that I was going back to the bar where some sinister female drug dealer had sold me poisoned crack.

I filled him in, briefly, about Fred and the boys. I sounded remarkably calm.

“Oh.” I could hear him smoking furiously. His manner of smoking always reflected his state of mind. Which, by the sound of it, was agitated. No wonder. “Danny. Something weird is going on here too. I don’t want to trouble you, but…”

Oh fuck. “Gene. Tell me right now. Wait. Are you high?”

“I was,” he said. “Our friend gave me credit. But I am very much not, right now.”

“You okay?”

“Danny, someone called here. A woman,” he said. “For a second I thought it was you.” I stopped breathing and waited for him to continue. “I was asleep. You know?”

I knew. His sleeping was legendary. After a bender, he could sleep for thirty hours.

“Anyway. She asked for Danielle. Not Danny. I said you weren’t home. Then she said she knew that, but she wanted to try anyway. She asked me to pass along a message to you. She made me write it down.” I could hear him leafing through what I was sure would be a holy mess on my coffee table. “She said, ‘Tell her I’m taking the twins on a trip.’ Then she said to tell you, ‘You’re it.’”

“I’m it?”

“You’re it,” he said. “Danny. I gotta go. D-Man is on the other line. Call me back, okay? Please. I’m not going anywhere.” And he hung up.

The twins. Ginger’s boys. This was the woman who had kidnapped the boys.

My mouth went dry and I kept my hand on the phone, trying to think past the pounding of blood in my ears. I fished around in my own wallet for Miller’s card. He had written his personal cell number on it. Surely he wouldn’t be able to trace where it was coming from, but even if he could, this was more important. I squinted at my own writing, but when I got through, it went straight to voicemail. Maybe he was catching up on sleep himself.

“Miller,” I said. “Danny Cleary here. Tell Detective French I’m sorry. Really sorry. I just had to get out of there and take care of some things alone.” I told him exactly what Gene had said. “Tell the RCMP or the Toronto police or whoever that they have my permission to put a tap on my phone. Not that my permission is probably needed. But if you hear hints of any illegal activity not pertaining to this case, can you give it a pass? Or do whatever you have to do.

“But please. Find that woman. Find the boys. I’ll be in touch.” I paused a minute. “And by the way, that was fun.” I’m such a romantic. I hung up. I quickly called my own number back to warn Gene, tell him to maybe go back to his own place for a bit until this all blew over. I got my own voice on voicemail. Gene must have run downstairs to pick up from Bruno. He couldn’t check my messages, he didn’t have my password. I would call him back.

I went back inside, where the waitress was putting my food on the table. I wolfed it down as though it would be my last meal. I was kind of hoping that it wouldn’t be. I found myself wanting, more than anything else, to call Jack. I needed Jack. I missed Jack, especially after the thing with Miller the night before. I felt like I had betrayed Jack, despite separating so long ago. But when his head was on straight, when he wasn’t fighting his own demons, he was the best person in the world to help others fight theirs. But time wasn’t on my side; I had to keep calm, keep my wits about me and think.

I kept my food down. This was a good thing, after all the shit that had been in and out of my system recently. The red wine and red meat seemed to perk me up, too. I could never understand how vegetarians had any energy whatsoever. Of course, not eating for days at a time while smoking crack had had the same effect.

I limped through the mall and found a funky store which had relatively cheap, costume-y clothes in the window. Inside, I picked up a blonde wig and tried it on. It was the color of my natural hair, but it was long. I tried it on.

“Wow,” the teenaged salesgirl said, smiling at me. “You rock that wig.” She played with her nose ring, which looked new. And sore.

“Do I? Do I rock this wig?” I laughed. It was cheap, so I bought it. When the salesgirl put it in a bag, I stopped her. “Wait,” I said. “I’m going to wear it out of here. Freak out my girlfriends.”

“Well, you look like a different person, that’s for sure,” she said, handing me my change.

“That’s the idea,” I answered.

I slowly made my way around the huge shopping centre, trying to figure out where there might be a cab stand. It was Southern California, though, so they were few and far between, when they did exist. I finally asked at a mall information booth, and they pointed me in the direction of the valet stand outside the restaurant where I’d just eaten. Figured.

On my way there, I passed a kitchenware store. On an impulse, I entered and bought a knife. A small one, but sharp. It wasn’t meant for the purpose for which I might need it, but I figured it would do the trick. Having it in my purse made me feel a few degrees better. I knew I had to stop spending money, but a little peace of mind seemed like a good investment at the moment.

“Do you know where the Sunny Jim motel is?” I asked the cab driver. He was a skinny white guy in a torn death metal t-shirt. I was pretty sure he’d know the general area.

“Uh. Yeah,” he said. He turned right around and looked at me. “You sure you want to go there?”

“Actually, I’m going up the street from there, but I lost the address,” I said. “I’m directing a photo shoot over there. I don’t know that neighborhood.”

“I didn’t think so,” he said, clicking on the meter. We listened to Skid Row most of the way there, with one Metallica tune thrown in. I always did like James Hetfield’s voice. The driver was surprised when I sang along.

“Women,” he said, smiling at me in the rear view. “They can always surprise you.”

“Don’t you forget it, buddy,” I said, tough-girl friendly. I realized that I’d missed interacting with people, after all this time holed up with Gene doing crack. And another out-of-body moment: was I really conversing with a person, and smiling, and not screaming?

The driver dropped me in front of Lucky’s. “You know this place?” I asked him.

“Nah,” he said, making change for me. “The chick and I, we stay in and play video games mostly. I’m a recovering alcoholic,” he said.

“Really? Well. Good luck with that. Working the Twelve Steps?”

He nodded. “I’m on step eight. Making amends,” he said.

“That would be a hard one.”

“It is,” he said. “You have yourself a good day, miss.” Miss. Put on a blonde wig, and the ma’am was out the window.

* * *

Lucky’s was the same as it was the day before, but missing at the bar was one female drug dealer. And Dave wasn’t here, either. I was hoping he would be. I wondered if he knew about Dom yet. I wondered if anybody here knew about Dom.