Rigged (10 page)

“I’m okay,” Elsa said. “The doctors are really good here. They do a lot of cutting-edge research, and they make progress every day,” she said, addressing the proverbial elephant in the room.

“Have they figured out any options other than surgery?” he asked; they couldn’t afford the surgery, even if he sold the house and all his worldly belongings.

The smile faded away from Elsa’s face and melted out of her voice. “There’s still time, Mark,” she said. “I’ll be okay.”

At that moment, Perez wished he had opted for a regular phone call; videoconferencing made it a lot harder to hide how scared he suddenly felt.

“I know you said you’re busy, and I understand, but when do you think you’ll be able to come and visit? I miss you.”

“Soon. I switched shifts, so I should be able to make it down there this weekend, just five days from now,” Perez said, smiling and trying to focus on the positive.

Elsa smiled back at him. “It will be nice to see someone other than my sisters.”

Perez let out a laugh. He could only imagine three Latina sisters swarming around, chatting away and worrying over her like it was some sad holiday gathering. He hoped they wouldn’t be around when he got there, or he wouldn’t get a word in edgewise. At their wedding, each of her three sisters had rambled on and on in their toasts and speeches, at least twenty minutes apiece in a mix of Spanish and English. They were sweet and loving, but they reminded him of Hamill on a double-dose of caffeine for twenty-four hours a day. He hadn’t seen his sisters-in-law since his wife had been admitted to the Mayo two months earlier. Two months, Perez thought to himself. Had it only been that long? Why did it feel like that was a lifetime ago?

Perez stayed online for another half-hour, talking with Elsa. They talked about how cold the weather was in North Dakota and made plans to take a trip back to Chicago to see old friends after she recovered. They even discussed vacationing in Mexico or some other warm place and visiting Elsa’s mother and father, who were in their eighties. Perez talked without thought; his mouth gave answers to questions as his ears heard them, but he wasn’t really there. He watched his wife, a frail, faraway woman, in her angelic white hospital gown, valiantly struggling to put up a front of strength and courage. He wanted to scream, to cry, or even to see her cry just so they could let go of those façades, those never-will-come-true dreams and plans, and stop pretending that she wasn’t dying. He wanted the world to stop with the naïveté, to finally just be honest and make sense. Why was
his
wife in that hospital bed? Why can’t the damn gang-bangers and dope-pushers be poor or dying of some terminal disease? Why can’t they be the ones worrying about paying the mortgage? Why can’t good, hardworking, honest, loving people automatically be granted money and a chance at life?
There were many things Perez wanted, but none more than he wanted to see his wife in person, to hold her and kiss her outside of a hospital room on a warm, sunny day, to see the sun catch the almost red highlights in her hair, to see the small wrinkles that had started to form at the corners of her eyes when she smiled, when she really smiled.

“It’s getting late, hon’,” Perez finally said. “I’m sure you need to get some sleep.”

“I could say the same to you, young man, from the looks of that luggage under your eyes,” Elsa said.

Perez forced a smile. “I’ll try.”

“I love you,” Elsa said.

“I love you, too,” Perez answered.

The image switched off and Perez was left in the dark room, lit only by the light of his laptop screen. He slowly closed the lid with a
click
and made his way to the bedroom. Perez loosened his tie and pulled it over his head, then hung it on a hanger with a half-dozen others. He took off his suit coat and hung it as well.

The bed creaked and groaned almost as much as Perez himself did when he sat down. He removed his holster and took out his sidearm, ejected the magazine, cleared the barrel, and set the gun and clip down separately in his bedside table drawer. Eventually, Perez willed himself to lie down alone in the darkness. His pants were still on, but he lay there, staring at the ceiling, his eyes wide open as he watched ghosts dancing around above him; memories haunted him, mostly at night, when he felt the most alone. Sleep seemed like torture, for he was alone, at the mercy of his own mind. He draped his arm across his face to block out any hint of light, but Perez was nowhere near sleep. Even at that late hour, he wondered if there was anything going on at the station, something he could busy himself with.

Chapter 11

Dee Dee had just started her routine on the main stage when Charlie walked in the front door of the club, but she was already down to only a scant pair of panties and high heels. He smiled when he heard Kingdom Come’s “Janine”; she remembered. She moved slowly with the music, and all eyes were locked on her. Charlie sat at one of the high-top tables around the dance floor and watched her. He liked Dee Dee, she was a nice girl—about as nice as they came, as far as strippers were concerned. He’d learned from experience girls who took their clothes off for money weren’t always the most trustworthy of local resources. Drug problems and daddy issues tend to make a mess of even the most well-laid plans. He knew Dee Dee probably had her own issues, but she was sweet and didn’t ask him a lot of questions, and that went a long way with Charlie.

The music played over the club sound system with only a light crackle. The normal hum of conversations and catcalls all seemed to turn down a notch as Dee Dee moved. She moved like that girl in Brazil, and Charlie felt a sudden desire for some rum.

“Her body, full of life, got me mesmerized. It shook me very hard. For the money she had asked…”

Charlie watched the crowd watch her and wondered if they heard the music at all. When he realized she’d probably rendered them all deaf, he had to smile.

“She’s putting on a mask, is loving you for cash! I told her, ‘Please watch out.’ She started laughing loud…”

Charlie wondered if Dee Dee heard the words, if she was really present when she danced, or if her mind was far off. She didn’t make much eye contact as she moved. Her eyes were either closed or looking upward as she swung casually around the three brass poles at the corners of the stage. It wasn’t the kind of acrobatic routine he’d seen from other exotic dancers; her routine was more like a seduction, and the crowd ate it up. Charlie liked Dee Dee because she knew how to play.

When a waitress came by, Charlie ordered a Coke, then sat patiently, politely turning down other girls who stopped by to offer him lap dances. He told each and every one of his seductively dressed suitors that he was waiting for Dee Dee. One of the girls said he would have to get in line, and Charlie immediately saw what she meant. As soon as the song was over and Dee Dee collected her clothes and tips, there were more than a few men clustered near the stage, waiting to get private dances from her. She disappeared behind folding mirrored doors, and when she reappeared to even more awaiting fans, she was dressed in a short lace skirt that didn’t even cover her underwear, and her lacy bikini top was just as revealing. Her eyes looked warm but faraway; she was on the clock, yes, but she was hiding behind an inch of makeup and eye shadow.

“That’s why one shouldn’t rely on strippers,” Charlie said to himself and shook his head. Strip clubs only really work if a guy can act like Christopher Columbus and, all evidence to the contrary, think he’s the first one to discover a new territory. Dee Dee was a pretty girl, and it was stupid of him to think she wouldn’t have any love interests around town somewhere. If nothing else, it made Charlie think about who Dee Dee was when she wasn’t off the clock and where she spent those hours. He let out a little shiver as he watched Dee Dee usher a sixty-plus-looking rig worker upstairs for a private dance. Maybe it was working on U.S. soil that made it all feel like a vacation or some cute boy-meets-stripper story, in which the boy makes an honest woman of her and, somewhere along the lines, just so happens to turn meth dealers into pink mist. It was a nice fantasy, a wonderful piece of fiction to imagine, but Charlie knew better than to get lost in his own stories. He needed to stay on point.

Charlie thought about Perez and how he’d reacted to his news about the tumor. He recalled Nikki flirting with him at the station. Then he thought about the twenty bucks he lost on the heart-punching bet he’d made with his physics friend.

“All right, let’s welcome Divine to the stage, folks…” the DJ said over crackling loudspeakers. Another Top 40 song started, sending Divine’s body parts into a frenzy of shakes and sashays that had the crowd whistling and screaming.

Charlie thought about the last eight years of his life, most of which he’d spent overseas. After all that time, he now found himself in North Dakota, on the trail of guys who’d killed someone he hadn’t seen in ten years, a girl he hadn’t even thought of for almost that long. The one thing he’d learned for sure was that he was very good at running. He was good out in the sticks, working on his own. He made smart decisions that worked. He reconned and planned and did things with precision. Even on his worst day, he was a dangerous man who was capable of dangerous things. He wasn’t good at thinking about the person he used to be or what his life was like before he’d gone dark. That life felt less real than any cover he’d ever used.

Charlie’s reminiscence was interrupted when he caught sight of Dee Dee coming back down the stairs from the private rooms with a grinning septuagenarian on her heels. He promptly did his disappearing act just to see her take another, younger, kid to a couch along the side wall for a dance. The guy couldn’t have been more than twenty one, and it was clear that he had a fresh face underneath all that oil-drilling grime. He had a Cheshire cat grin as Dee Dee instructed him to sit on his hands before she straddled him on the pink plush couch cushion.

From the corner shadows of the club, near the DJ, Charlie mulled things over. There were things to do and people to see. While the show was fun to watch, Charlie had a full checklist of things to work on, and he knew there was no justification for him to waste his time watching Dee Dee blue ball the rig workers. He also didn’t like feeling like a pervert for watching the girl on the stage clap her butt cheeks together.

According to Charlie’s watch, it was nearly two in the morning. With Dee Dee on the clock, he didn’t exactly have a place to crash, and the money he’d stolen off of Dick and Clarence, the meth dealers he’d incinerated, had started to run thin. He thought he might hang around the club a little longer, maybe get a dance from Dee Dee just for the hell of it.

Unfortunately, Dee Dee didn’t see Charlie, and when she decided she’d had enough of the night and the crowd started to thin out, she disappeared behind the mirrored stage. She’d told him that the girls changed back there, then exited through the back door to avoid any sketchy customers who might want more than an eyeful or a private dance.

Charlie ordered a shot of whiskey at the bar and shook his head when he was told it would be $12.50 for just the rail pour. He paid and gulped down the shot, which burned like sin. “Damn Canadians,” he complained as he set the glass back on the bar. Just as he turned to go out the door, he saw Dee Dee coming out from behind the mirrors again. He felt himself move toward her for just a moment before a familiar face stepped between the two and got Dee Dee’s attention. It was one of those Wheeler boys from the bar, with dark purple and yellow bruising around his nose and eyes. It upset Charlie in an irrational kind of way to see one of those boys get a dance from Dee Dee, but he told himself that there was nothing to it. She was a stripper, just doing her job.

As much as it stung, Charlie still couldn’t seem to walk out the door. He watched Dee Dee lead the Wheeler up the stairs and he waited there until she walked down. Both of the Wheeler boys looked pretty lit, and they gave each other a kind of nod that Charlie didn’t like one bit. It shouldn’t have come as a surprise, as guys so willing to get in a bar fight with a total stranger couldn’t be counted on to make good decisions. So Charlie waited. He knew the club was probably equipped with security capable of handling a couple of slow-witted thugs, but Charlie was in no hurry, and he could wait it out for another hour or so.

It didn’t end up taking a whole hour for the Wheelers to make their move, and when they did, Charlie followed with keen interest. They made it look subtle, at least as subtle as the two idiots could. They hung around the stripper exit out back, not too close, pretending they were just trying to have a smoke. Charlie watched as Dee Dee stepped out the back door; she looked adorable even in jeans and an old sweatshirt, her hair in a loose ponytail. He was glad to see she hadn’t opted for those ridiculous skinny jeans that tended to make a mess out of a woman’s natural curves. She still had her stage makeup on, but she looked like an innocent college student, working her way through med school. She said goodnight to the wide-bodied doorman, who didn’t seem to notice the Wheelers; if he did see them, he’d simply disregarded them, because he closed the door and left Dee Dee alone in the parking lot.

“Hey,” Charlie heard the one that got the dance say. “Dee Dee, right?”

Dee Dee turned and didn’t look too happy to see him. She didn’t say anything in return.

“I was just wondering…er, uh, I mean, my brother and I was wonderin’ if you ever do private shows? You know, like bachelor parties?”

Dee Dee looked around and turned like she wanted to head back through the door, but the Wheelers were already in front of it. “I don’t want any trouble,” she said, fumbling with her purse.

They both tried to look innocent, as if the accusation had offended them. “Hey, we don’t want any trouble either. Really, so…”

The first one grabbed Dee Dee’s purse away, and it fell to the gravel; a small can of pepper spray landed next to it. “Why don’t you just make this easy?” the purse snatcher asked, a short, fat slob of a man.