researching for half an hour before giving up and leaving the room.
When he arrived at first floor, he stopped. It was there when he saw the old man and the young girl, and now he heard a soft cry from one of the rooms, down the hallway. Maybe he was wrong. He hesitated for a moment and finally walked toward the source of the sound.
Room 105 was, of course, closed. There wasn’t any sound at now, and Cutfield put his ear next to the door, trying to hear more.
“I said you were quiet, little slut!”
Those words were followed by the sound of a slap. He stepped backwards before running over the weak door, almost went off the hinges when he crossed. Inside, the elder dropped the belt he was holding, and stood watching the intruder.
He was wearing long underwear and a white tank top. The respectable elder fantasy Cutfield had perceived less than an hour, had given way to a clear impression of dirty old man, especially considering the half-naked little girl who was sitting on the bed, facing him. The detective just glanced at the girl, although he could notice the fear she exuded.
“Who the hell are you? What do you think you’re…?”
Cutfield didn’t answer. He just went next to him, punched in his stomach, and pushed the old man to the ground. He would not stop there.
At this time, he thought the girl went away from there. Although absorbed as he was kicking the geezer, he could not swear to it. He stood, sometime after the man ceased to move. He adjusted his tie and left the room before the noise could alert clients of the motel. Unfortunately, the receptionist had heard the brawl, and he was coming up the stairs.
“What’s all of this, up here?” he asked loudly, while running toward the 105. “I don’t know what kind of places you usually go, but…”
When looked inside the room, he stopped his talking. The elder, alive or not, was lying over a big crimson puddle. The girl wasn’t at sight (maybe she warned to the greasy clerk) and the complete scene made Cutfield feel satisfaction for a well-done job.
“I… I’m gonna call the police”, the man said, throatily. Cutfield didn’t flinch.
“Yeah, I’m sure you’ll do that. Or maybe you won’t, if you are thinking about your clientele.”
The fat bastard looked inside one more time, next to Cutfield and finally at the stairs. He didn’t say anything.
“303”, Cutfield said. “The girl, last night. What do you know about her?”
“I don’t know anything about what happens in the rooms, OK? I’m only renting rooms, but I’m not responsible for whatever my clients could make inside.”
Without second thoughts, the detective threw his fist into the face of the receptionist. He fell to the ground, raising his left hand over his face, and almost begging for his life.
“Don’t fuck with me, asshole! If you do not want to end up like that motherfucker there, you’d better tell me everything you know!”
“I needed the money “he started to say, without standing up. “I don't know if the girls were hurt.”
The girls?
“How many times, you bastard? How many times did you have let that to happen?”
He looked at his fat fingers, which were looked like sausages, trying to count with them. The answer wouldn’t like to the detective, or at least that was the clerk’s thinking because he took a while to give the answer.
“Nine”, he whispered. “I’m sorry.”
Cutfield kicked his head, making him pass out. Nine girls. Nine bodies. He took his gun and pointed to the head of the fallen. It will be so easy to blow up his brains and escape from there… but Landers did know that he was here, and that dumbass would make everything to divert attention away from the mayor. Damn it, he didn’t want to be the scapegoat. Besides, the porky would be of help, if living. He will have time to send him right to hell.
He realizes his hat was down in the ground, maybe fell when he punched the old pederast, or while he was talking with the fatty. Who cares. He took it and put in on before started walking to the stairs and eventually left that den.
That Blonde Girl
He there were able to examine two of the bodies, in addition to Christine's. The marks on her breasts were almost identical, but showed some differences that deserve to be considered. They consisted of two concentric circles, with an inscribed square, and a triangle circumscribing the outside. Within the square there were more cuts, different in each case, forming something that he hadn’t yet been able to discover.
Anyway, it was unlikely that he could find out something at the moment, in that bar where he was finishing his second glass of Bourbon and the answer won’t be also in the exuberant blonde who looked in his direction, at the far end of the bar. A hooker, no doubt, but that did not care to him. He paid the two cups he had drunk and approached to her.
"Searching for something, honey?” Cutfield asked, leaning on the bar. The blonde smiled, showing her white gleaming teeth.
"Isn’t that what everybody does?” was her reply. "I'm waiting for a friend."
The detective wondered if that would be true, or she just was being narrow. He asked for another whiskey, watching her, trying to figure out her thoughts.
"I've had a shitty day," he said, holding the glass with his right hand, as if about to make a toast "and still, I cannot complain. Others have had a worse day."
He first remembered the unfortunate Christine, and afterwards in the vicious old bastard of the 105. Then, he smiled and took a sip from his cup, leaving the glass halved. The truth is that he had more eager to keep drinking than going to bed with the blond hottie. For now.
He put the glass down and looked attentively at the female. She wore a dress of a color that blended into blue and green, and would probably cost more than what he earned when solving a case, and that was not a little. If it was a slut, she was a deluxe. Luckily, he had enough money on him; he had recovered his ten bucks, and he also claimed some interest for the inconvenience.
The blonde, who had already finished her drink, took a sip from Cutfield’s glass.
"Bourbon, right?"
"It's the only thing I drink," he admitted.
She returned the glass to him, and the detective drank it at once. It was late, and it did not seem to him that he was going to achieve anything with the blonde. It was time to go home, rest and spend the next day watching over the motel. He was convinced that those paying to the greasy, sooner or later would return to do the same with more girls. Furthermore, he also wanted to find out more about the cuts, those same and different symbols. He wanted to do some research that night, but now he was feeling very tired. Too much tired.
"I know a quieter place where you can relax," said the blonde suddenly. "Shall we?"
She placed her hand on his leg. The day sucked, but the night was emerging much better. So, why he felt that uneasy feeling? That last whiskey had gone bad, he had to admit it. He needed to grab the girl to keep from falling, as they left the bar.
It happened in a fleeting moment. Cutfield stumbled and fell to the ground, while almost caused the blonde to fall. One of the straps of her dress slipped, showing a perfect tit ... and one more thing, too: a necklace with a hanging engraved. It lasted a second, maybe less. It was enough to the detective for seeing it.
Two concentric circles. A square. A triangle.
He had been drugged somehow. And now, he was on his way to the fucking slaughterhouse. Little it helped to know that, since he was unable to make his body to react.
Narcotics and Associations
Although he opened his eyes wide, was only able to glimpse shadows and fog. The hazy light around him was clearly indicating daytime (or else he had gone to heaven, which was very unlikely), and he wondered if just a few hours or several days had passed since his encounter with the blonde demoness.
“He’s awakening.”
There was a man’s voice. No, it wasn’t. More likely, a teenager’s one. Somehow, that sound made his vision a little more clarified, now being able to glimpse who had ju
st spoken. Indeed, it was a boy of no more than twenty, wearing a little cap over his messy brown hair. Cutfield got the impression he was wearing a working overall, but he was still unable to focus properly.
"You, fucking bastards..." he said, in a whisper. He heard a laugh that did nothing but irritate him even more. Little could he do, however, as he was tied to the chair.
"Mister Cutfield" another voice said; a female voice he acknowledged, "I regret having to use this approach to bring you here."
The tone of her voice was sincere, but that mattered little to Cutfield. Maybe the bitch regretted what happened, but even a tenth of what she was going to regret.
"Then let me go, sweetheart. A couple of kisses and everything is forgotten."
He had almost completely recovered his vision. He was in a well-lit room; by appearance, a cabin. Where he had been brought? The girl, who had changed her blue dress for a menswear, was in front of the boy.
"You're investigating the murders. We need you," the blonde said, ignoring his earlier request, and addressing him with the same familiarity she spoke to him last night. "Girls who are dying are of our association."
"Your association? What the fuck was that all about?"
"They have tortured and killed our comrades. They are warning us that they won’t stop, Cutfield."
His mind finally was also becoming clear. Maybe that's why the spark came to it; something he had not noticed when he met the blonde. However, now it was obvious.
"Christine is ... was your sister."
He was affirming. There wasn’t a need for the girl to nod, but she did.
"My little sister. She was a year younger than me, and only six months ago she came into the association."
He knew he was not going to obtain information from that association yet. He decided to play along, even without being persuaded by the arguments he was hearing.
"You say you need me. Why now? Why haven’t you asked the cops for help?"
"One of ours heard your conversation last night with Roger. She told me immediately."
Obviously, Roger was the name of that fat ugly guy attending the motel. He kept listening.
"We suspected something was up there, but we were unable to find anything. The girls left the motel without company, and it wasn’t ‘till hours later, the killings happened."
"Why would anyone want to contact them, let them go and later kill them?" Cutfield wondered again for himself. "It makes no sense."
"I don’t know," she replied. The detective thought he noticed a change in her tone; she was hiding something, or perhaps blatantly lying. "But if you find out who met with them, you’ll find their murderers."
She was playing with him, he could feel it. And he hated that someone tried to deceive him. Besides, she had not told him anything he did not already know, or something that he really cared a shit.
"Look, honey: either you tell me something new, or this conversation will have been a complete waste of your time, my time, and the time of all your fucking association."
She seemed to think about very carefully before responding.
"It's likely someone is blackmailing Mayor Hylan. You should to investigate that path."
The blonde waved her hand and suddenly a strong arm grabbed him from behind and put a damp cloth over his nose. Darkness came almost immediately.
A Nightly Thinking
When he woke again, his first thought was he hadn’t known the name of Christine's sister. He would ask her for it the next time because Cutfield was convinced that he would meet that fatal blonde once more.
He was at home, lying in his own bed. It was nighttime. The detective thought he would find out the next day if only a few hours had passed since his brief kidnapping, as he thought. Now, what he needed was to take something solid; he had not eaten anything prior to drinking those whiskeys in that hole in the wall where he met the girl in the blue dress, and his stomach seemed to want giving up the body and look for sustenance on its own. He stood up and headed for the kitchen.
He made an odd sandwich with some leftover he had and sat down to eat it in the small coffee table, unable to avoid start thinking about his next move. ¿Hylan, blackmailed? He should move to pay a visit to Landers and discover what it was about that. It would not be easy, of course; Landers the jerk won’t tell him anything at first. Not without putting some pressure on him.
Then there was another issue that troubled him: the false claim of the blonde about not knowing why the murderer did not kill the girls at the motel, when he was with them. Did not fit at all, there was no logic in that. Why was she withholding information? What were the affairs of that fucking association? Christine's sister was for the moment out of reach, but the next day he would do another visit to Roger, the fat man of that motel, and he would not be as subtle as the last time.
Still holding the half-eaten sandwich, he went downstairs and picked up the folders in which the information about the first eight victims was. He had reviewed them prior to going to the scene of the ninth murder, and couldn't find anything in those papers. However, he now had something he had not at first: he knew which the relationship between each of the dead girls was. If he could rely on what the blonde had told him and that was unclear.
Some of the girls were born in the city; others didn't. All of them had crossed the thin line between adolescence and adulthood, and were really beautiful, or at least they were before suffering the abuse and torture that ended with their lives. And they all, the nine, had received a visit at the motel of Roger.
Maybe it was the effect of the drugs they had used to numb to it; his head began to throb hard and a sharp pain started to seize him. Without putting back the folders in their place, he went to his room and quickly fell asleep after lying down.
Blackmail
"Where were you yesterday?" Landers inquired in a low voice, speaking in a tone that bugged the detective. "I remind you that you're going to obtain a good tip if you solve this case without involving Hylan, so I expect from you a total willingness."
Some customers of the little cafe turned towards them curiously. Cutfield waited until they ceased to look at them before saying anything to the assistant.
"Both you and your Hylan can go to take in the ass, Landers." He put his palms on the table, rising slightly off the seat. "If you want total availability, hire a whore."
He sat down again, still observe him.
"I've got new information. Good one" he said, finally. "Before continuing, I must know something."
"Shoot, Cutfield."
(I would love to do it, you bastard. Put a bullet right between your eyes.)
"Who is blackmailing Hylan?"
Landers did not expect that. His eyes moved nervously, peering around as if a fly was flying over the table. Cutfield avoided a smile, even though it was hard not to do it seeing the way he was behaving.
"How do you know ... Well, never mind. We don’t know who they are, Cutfield, or what they want."
He put a cigarette in his mouth and pulled out a match. Maybe Landers didn’t know who the blackmailers were, but certainly he knew what they wanted of the mayor. It was expected that motherfucker lied to him.
"We’ll make the whole thing simple: if you tell me what you know, I won’t go to the press to talk about Hylan and Christine."
He lit the cigarette while waiting for an answer from Landers. It was very different from the one he expected.
"Now you come up with that? This is much more serious than adultery, do you understand that? So dedicate yourself to do the job for which I pay, and leave me the affairs of the mayor."
It had not even crossed his mind that blackmail was not precisely for the infidelity. Hylan was being threatened with anything else. Even so, the information had come from the blonde, and that indicated a connection between Christine, the nine deaths, and the blackmail to the fucking mayor of New York.
Landers stood abruptly causing his cup to wobble, spilling some coffee on the table,
and he started to leave the cafeteria. The detective had to grab his arm hard to avoid it.
"Hold it right there, Landers! According to my sources, those who are blackmailing the mayor are the same that killed Christine Stonewell. Gimme a fucking clue, dammit!"
The man calmed down a bit and without sitting down again, he spoke to Cutfield.
"They are demanding him money" he confessed. "Big money. They have given time until tonight to deliver it. Otherwise, they will go with the story to the media. It’s a serious subject, Cutfield, that would end the political career of Hylan, and could even lead him to jail."
Those were more details than the detective thought he could get and did not want further research into that. He did not care what the hell would have done Hylan. It did not matter if those were political shenanigans, drug issues, or any other shit like that; the interesting thing was that he would pay them, and he would do it that very night.
"You'll carry the money, right? After all, you're his lapdog."
"Fuck you, Cutfield! But yeah, I'll deliver it." He put his left hand on his own cheek, pinching it a little. Before Cutfield could do the request, he said: "Why the heck should I let you come along with me?"
"You know how blackmail works," he said. "If they get what they want, they will demand more."
They arranged to meet at six in the same cafeteria. The delivery was to take place, of course, in Chinatown. Cutfield had enough time during the day to put pressure on Roger and get more data.
At least, he thought that.
A Reddish Rat
It was hard to find out what had occurred. He had to visit several stores until he could find someone willing to disclose what happened during the previous day at the luxurious motel.
"Police, police," The shopkeeper gestured as if that would improve their pronunciation or poor management that he had of the language. "Police Car, dead man. Knock, knock!"
Cutfield scratched his head. He had no idea if chubby Roger had been shot by the police, if they had found him already slain, or if he would have died falling down the fucking stairs. One way or another, it was pretty clear he could forget to obtain anything from that fatso.
He turned his back to the Chinese shopkeeper without thanking for his little help and decided, being already in the area, to go and see some of his old confidants. Surely, many would already be dead or have disappeared, but he didn’t have any better ideas to spend the afternoon until the time of his appointment with Landers. He walked the streets of the district parsimoniously, without being rushed. A couple of times he thought he saw one of his informants, and both times was wrong. When he was about to enter into a bar and get something to eat, Alec appeared before him.
"Hey, redhead!" he shouted on sight. Alec turned around, immediately regretting it.
"Hey, detective Cutfield" the Irishman said, forcing a smile, "long time no see."
"I was going to get a bite. Join me; I have to ask you about some things."
Alec knew that refusing would not be good for his health; Cutfield would not hesitate to