Chapter 13
I’d been in line outside Club Custodela since 19:30, dressed in my best clubbing clothes. My bright blue sequined top, which revealed a lot of skin, paired with a tiny black skirt, low-heeled black boots, and a navy blue purse made me blend in very well with the other bubbling people waiting for the club to open.
I was at the end of the line, only a few steps away from the front door, exactly where I wanted to be. From here, I’d be able to see everyone as they came in and out of the club.
Time ticked by slowly. In an attempt to stave off the overwhelming boredom, (though how anyone could have been bored with all the noise of the crowd, the cries of the vendors trying to sell their goods, and the preclub opening projections being broadcast must be hard to imagine. However, if you’ve been to one of these preopening events, you’ve been to most of them because they were all the same. Sure, the actual goods sold might have varied slightly, and the projection might have been unique to the club you were outside, but the atmosphere was the same. In fact, I didn’t know how the line standers and the vendors stood it day in and day out. Myself, I could only take so much noise and hubbub before just tuning it all out.) I passed the time refining my search parameters.
I was just deciding which percentage of titanium I should put for the planets crust (0.5% or 0.75%) when the front doors opened. Ten bouncers, all muscular, tall, and mean looking stepped out. They reminded me of the security surrounding a chief magistrate or a president. No nonsense and always on the job.
The clock on my phone said it was 20:15, fifteen minutes past when the doors of the club should have opened. Why were they so late?
The crowds by this point had been exponentially growing in restlessness, far surpassing the impatience they’d been displaying though the hours of wait they’d endured.
People were shoving in line in hopes of obtaining a better view of the club front doors, as if just being able to see them would enable the doors to open sooner than they would have otherwise.
Those not shoving were grumbling to their companions and continuously looking at their phones and watches. I could just imagine that they were complaining to their friends that the doors should have opened a long time ago and comparing times as to how much of a delay had already occurred.
The vendors did their best to calm the impatient and irritated masses, hocking their goods even harder than I’d ever seen them do so before. They seemed oblivious that their actions were increasing the frustration these people were feeling for how many times did you have to tell someone you didn’t want another pot sticker before the pot sticker vendor left you alone? Did it take five times, or ten? What about twenty? At thirty times, were you justified in attacking said vendor just to get him off your back?
(I wasn’t immune to this impatience and frustration. In fact I felt it even more keenly than the rest of the crowd because I knew what was at stake. I knew that if something went wrong with this drop I’d never have those jewels, or the satisfaction of knowing Meredith was out of my hair. This worry, however, didn’t stop me from loving the irony of the situation. Latens was always harping on how I, or Meredith, shouldn’t be late when here was a club he probably helped run, or at least had some influence with, and it was opening late on this very important night. Was I the only one who saw the huge hypocrisy in this situation?)
To the great respite of the crowd, so much so that you could actually hear them collectively exhale in relief, the front doors separated like the parting of the Red Sea.
And with the opening of these doors, came out the reason for the tardiness. Two men, obviously not bouncers, confidently walked out the front doors of the club. They were complete opposites from one another. Where the first man was very tall, the other was barely taller than me. The first was on the heavier side, while the other one was so thin I feared I’d be able to see his bones. The former dark, while the latter was fair. One lighthearted, the other serious. (Or at least that’s how I perceived it from the flickering expressions passing across their faces as they scanned the raucous crowds which were salivating to get inside.)
The first man, the one who was tall, heavy, dark, and lighthearted, carried a briefcase at least a foot deep, much deeper than normal briefcases. How many jewels could you carry in such a case? If they opened the case, would the sparkling of the gems blind you?
I yearned to be blinded by their beauty, but I had to wait. Meredith would be here and then this show would get on the road.
I began my current search for the Planet of Riches before putting my phone away in my purse and turned so I kept the two men just within my line of sight.
Which was Latens? Was he the lighthearted one with the briefcase? Something inside told me it was. Atrox, I’d come to imagine, was a much more serious minded person. But if the other man was Atrox, what was he doing here? I’d thought he was on some other planet.
Maybe I was wrong. The person carrying the jewels could be a bodyguard while the short man was Latens. Neither of them could be Latens, for Meredith would never know if the person she was meeting indeed was Latens.
A woman carrying a very bulky pocketbook strode confidently toward the club. I had to do a double take for Meredith had never looked so free and fun loving, while at the same time appearing so professional.
Her hair was curled in ringlets which bounced with every low healed step she took. Her dress lacked any of the reflective surfaces normally worn by partiers, but was still low cut and short enough she’d have been able to get into the club had that been her plan.
She walked right up to the two men, but before I could see any more, the women behind me shoved forward. The line into the club had begun to move and my lack of movement had upset the women behind me.
“Move,” one of the women ordered as the gap between me and the person before me grew. I took a few small steps forward to appease the vapid masses, my eyes glued on Meredith and the men.
I was too far away to hear anything and that was unacceptable. Digging into my bag frantically, I acted as if I was getting a phone call.
I put the phone to my ear. “Yes? What? You’ve got to be kidding me?” I ran a suddenly agitated hand through my hair. “But this is my first night off in –” I stopped speaking and began nodding my head. “Fine, I’ll be there in a little bit.”
Hanging up my phone, I stepped out of line and walked toward the trio. Meredith was opening her pocketbook, tilting it so the men could see inside. I stopped under a light by the front door. I was now just barely within earshot of them. I don’t think they noticed me, but to be certain they wouldn’t care about my presence, I got on my phone again and began to type. To anyone looking at me, I appeared to be engrossed in my phone.
“Is it all there?” the tall man asked, all the humor which had been in his face gone.
“Of course it’s there,” Meredith said in her superior nasally tone. “And the package?”
“Complete,” the shorter man assured her.
“I will be the judge of that,” she said. “Where can I inspect the merchandise?”
“There is a room just inside the club.”
“Then let’s go.”
The men turned and gestured for Meredith to walk before them. It felt reminiscent of an old movie where a famous movie star was ushered into a fancy restaurant by her date.
And I wasn’t the only one to notice such star treatment. A group of five tall men, who by their looks were from a very different part of town than those which the local mafia controlled, pushed forward as if to follow Meredith and the men into the club.
“You’ll have to wait your turn,” one of the bouncers said, holding up a hand.
“We’ve been waiting a very long time. She has not.”
“You still have to wait.” Two more bouncers joined the first one.
My senses were beginning to tingle. This was starting to look like a standoff between the Jets and the Sharks. If cooler heads didn’t prevail, things wouldn’t be pretty.
r /> And if they did start to fight, how would Meredith get out with her jewels? Was there a backdoor to the club? I couldn’t remember seeing one, but you never knew with these places. There could be any number of ways out which weren’t known to the general public.
I began to panic a little. What if Meredith got away from me? How would I ever know where she hid the briefcase?
“No! You will let us in now!”
“If you can’t wait calmly and quietly, you’ll have to leave.” More bouncers had arrived, making the fight now fair, if indeed there was going to be a fight.
“We paid good money to get in and we’re not leaving.” The men behind the lead talker cracked their knuckles. They were ready for a fight.
This was not what I needed. Without acknowledging the fight to be, I walked away from the club, even as my mind spun. What do I do now?
But I didn’t even have time to think about a contingency plan because the fight broke out faster than I’d expected.
Flesh hit flesh. Bodily fluids flowed through the streets. People screamed and scrambled away from the chaos.
That was enough for me. I wasn’t sticking around to see more.
I started running around the side of the building when I saw my opening into the club. With people pouring out of the club to see the fight, nobody would notice me slipping in.
Changing direction, I pushed my way against the flow of traffic. I felt like a fish trying to swim upstream only to be buffeted by hundreds of obstacles. At times, it felt like the current was too strong and I was traveling in reverse. A few times, I was even thrust toward the combatants, toward the mayhem, but I persevered and finally came onto the other side of crowd.
The entrance hall to the club was dark and cloaked in heavy drapes. If I kept walking, I would have entered the strobe lit music pounding arena where more than one person’s innocence had been shattered.
This wasn’t where they’d have gone. That much I was sure of. There had to be some rooms for business to take place. Even if it was just an office or a break room for the employees, all they’d need was someplace quiet and private.
I saw no doors, no indication whatsoever as to the direction they’d gone, so I went into the club proper. One of the men had said there was a room just inside the club. I was now, technically I guess, just inside the club, so where was this room?
With the darkness, strobe lights, and the general mess left by the patrons when they’d rushed outside, it was hard to see anything clearly, but nothing really screamed “door” to me.
At least five minutes had passed since I’d last seen Meredith and the men. Who knows what could have happened by now. The men could have killed Meredith, she could have killed one of them, or even more unlikely, everything could have gone off without a hitch and Meredith had left via an alternate route. But if that was the case, where were the men? Wouldn’t they be curious about what was happening outside?
None of this speculation, however, was going to do me any good unless I found that room fast.
I strode into the main part of the club/dancing area, but the farther I went, the less I saw. There were no doors, only tables, chairs, a littered dance floor, and those same heavy drapes which did nothing for the look of the club and were oddly spaced around the room.
So odd, in fact, that if they hadn’t been drapes I might have thought they were doorways to other rooms.
That thought made the light bulb in my head go off. The drapes. Of course. How stupid could I be?
I ran up to the nearest one and pulled it back, revealing a door which blended so well into the wall that the only thing which gave it away was the doorknob.
I began to turn the knob when my common sense kicked in. How would I explain my presence if I burst in on them or anyone else for that matter?
I needed to get everyone out of the building. Only then would I be able to follow Meredith.
I spotted a fire alarm halfway down the wall. It would be so cliché if I pulled it, but did I really have any other choice?
I yanked down the alarm and at once the strobe lights stopped, the house lights turned on, and the music died. Every door in the building opened, pushing the drapes out of the way. Rain began to fall.
Rain? I looked up and saw the sprinklers spewing cold, fire-quenching water from the ceiling.
As I stood there like an idiot, looking up at the sprinkler, a man ran out of one of the concealed rooms and straight into me. I fell to the ground, landing hard.
There was a grunt from the man before he reached down and picked me up as if I weighed nothing. I looked into his face as I regained my breath.
It was the short man who had been with Meredith. His already serious face had turned grim, but he wasn’t panicking as most people did when they heard a fire alarm.
“Let’s go,” he grunted again, dragging me out of the club. Every step he took splashed through puddles of water, but none of the drops seemed to touch him. He was so graceful and mesmerizing in his confidence that I forgot to resist his manhandling.
I was rudely brought out of my trance when he shoved me out the front door and into the crowd.
“Watch it!” I cried, grabbing the nearest person to stop my fall.
The woman I was holding onto complained I’d wrinkled her shirt but I didn’t care. The very rude squat man had disappeared back into the club, closing the front doors behind him. Didn’t he know that with the fire alarm going off, everyone should leave the building? He mustn’t have been as bright as I’d thought.
Dripping wet, I pushed through the crowd to the sidewalk across from the club, angry at myself. Not only hadn’t I seen the trade go down and hadn’t followed Meredith to her hiding spot, I was now going to have mafia thugs mad at me because I hadn’t sent the email.
The email!
I frantically searched for my phone, pushed the button I’d created which would send the email in an hour, and sighed in relief. The email might arrive a little late, but it would at least arrive.
But what was this blinking message on my screen? I enlarged the message. “Target has traveled outside their normal area.” Target? What target?
Meredith, of course! I could have slapped myself for not remembering I could track her from my phone. How stupid was I?
I went into my tracking program and brought up the map of Meredith’s current location. She was about a mile from the university, getting closer as I watched the screen. She was probably on a trolley to be moving so fast.
No, where she was headed wasn’t going to help me find those jewels. I needed to know where she’d been. I pulled up a static map and laid Meredith’s path for the day onto it.
She’d had a very busy day, I saw at once. Normally she stayed by campus and from what I’d seen she always went to the same places every day. Class, home, campus restaurant, campus grocer, etc.
Today, it looked like she’d traveled around half the city. I couldn’t search all that territory for a briefcase. If she had indeed kept the jewels in the briefcase, I wouldn’t have. What if the thugs she’d bought them from had placed a tracking device in the case? Then they’d be able to track them, and her, and that’s the last thing she wanted.
No, I’d have put them in an ordinary shopping bag which nobody would look twice at.
On top of Meredith’s movements, I put the trolley map and saw that about half of her traveling had been via trolley. Well that made sense, I thought sarcastically to myself. The high-speed trolley was the only way ninety-nine percent of the population was able to go long distances.
I needed to start thinking and not panicking. Panicking wasn’t going to get me those jewels.
Every location that corresponded with the trolley I deleted from the map. This left me with a few places earlier in the day, the club, and every place she’d been after I’d lost her. Fortunately for me, neither of the earlier locations showed up later on so I ignored them.
Zooming into the immediate area, I studied the map, trying to orient
myself. I wasn’t as familiar with this area as I was other parts of town, but I’d bet it wasn’t all that different. All the shady parts of town had back alleys, dingy doorsteps, vagrants, hookers, and gang activity. No area was immune except the gated suburbs and even they were beginning to get more gang activity within their white towers.
Once I knew where I was, I started walking in the direction Meredith had gone, ignoring the screaming of the fire trucks, the flashing of the police cars, and the arguing voices.
I’d only gotten past the fire trucks, however, when a cop grabbed my arm. “Miss, we were told you were inside the club when the alarm went off. We need to talk to you.”
I gritted my teeth. Those jewels were slipping through my fingers every second I delayed. I did not have time to talk to this berry.
“Officer,” I said in my kindest, sweetest voice, “I wasn’t inside the club. I was at the very end of the line and then that horrible fight broke out and there were all this pushing and shoving. You must have me mixed up with someone else.”
“Then how did you get all wet?” He had me there. I’d forgotten I was soaking wet and probably looked like a drowned rat.
“When the fire alarm went off, some jerks started spraying their water bottles all over the place and it went all over me. And this was my best outfit.” I turned up the whine, hopefully making it painful for anyone trying to listen to me. “It’s ruined! I’ll never be able to wear it again! I –”
“Sorry to have stopped you. The witnesses must have meant someone else. Night.” The berry turned around and walked back to the crowd which was still hovering near the crime scene. One of the bouncers had evidently been killed in the mayhem.
But the dead and disfigured weren’t my problem or interest, so I continued down the road next to the club, trying to find the location Meredith had exited with the goods.
I kept one eye on my phone, while the other was on the lookout for thugs who were combing the street for targets. I knew how they think. A young woman, alone, soaking wet just screamed, “VICTIM.”
My phone suddenly vibrated, letting me know that within five yards of my present location Meredith had walked.
There was nothing here, however, except for the building walls, a potholed street, and one single, solitary tree. She couldn’t have come out here. The wall was solid. Could my phone mean she’d been inside the club, on the other side of the wall?
I squinted at the screen, trying to see how close I really was to where she’d been but no matter how large I blew up the map, I didn’t get any more information.
Let’s say she did leave the club through the solid wall, where had she gone from here? I turned my back to the wall and began to follow the path my phone told me she’d taken.
But I quickly found that her path didn’t make a lot of sense. I had zoomed in as far as I was able and saw the tiny curves and turns she’d made which had no correlation to the world around me. Some of them didn’t even make any sense.
Why had she made a dramatic curve when nothing was in my way? How had she walked through a boarded up building? There was no opening, no way in and out, so how had she done it?
The farther I traveled, the more confused I felt. There must be something I was missing, something so painfully obvious I should have realized it earlier. But nothing came to mind, leaving me no choice but to follow her path the best I could, unsuccessfully searching for where she could have hid the jewels.
I’d been walking and searching for about an hour when I reached a brick wall. I’m not talking metaphorically or psychologically, I’m talking literally. Right in front of me was a very tall, very dominating brick wall, stopping any progress I hoped to make.
“How’d she get past this?” I asked aloud even as I tilted my phone, trying to get a little more light to see the map. Even though my phone was backlit and extremely clear in even these conditions, I was hoping that some other light source would reveal something I was obviously missing. There had to be a logical answer as to how she’d gotten around the wall.
According to my map, Meredith had walked straight through the brick wall and had kept going for at least another thirty yards before turning right and walking to the nearest trolley stop.
But how’d she get through the wall? Had she flown over it or dug a tunnel under? I felt the brick wall, trying to find a trip or hidden door which would magically open and let me through.
Before I could find the way through, I heard the click of boot heels echoing down the alley.
“Look what we got here, Uri,” a tall, leather clad woman said from beside an equally tall and leather clad man. There was a second man standing on the man’s other side. The scars on his face made him look hideous.
“Looks like a lost lamb to me. Are you a lost lamb, lass?” I saw the predatory look in Uri’s eyes, the same look that was in the woman’s eyes. The other man’s eyes were empty of all emotions.
“Not lost.” I moved sideways along the brick wall slowly, trying to gain some distance between me and the leathered thugs.
“You look very lost, lamb. Why don’t you come with Uri and me? We’ll get you warm and help you find your way.” Uri snickered and chills went up my spine.
“No, I’m fine. I’ll be leaving now.” I kept my voice strong. Any weakness on my part and they would pounce on me in an instant.
“No you won’t, lamb. You’re coming with us.” Uri pulled something out of his pocket, but I didn’t wait to see if it was a knife, a gun, or something worse. I turned and ran down the street, which was lined on one side with tall, rundown apartment buildings and the other with the enormous brick wall. I was so grateful I’d went with these low-heeled boots instead of some of the other flimsier pairs of shoes I had been considering. I’d never have gotten anywhere in them, probably being caught within seconds of the start of the chase.
“Get her!” the woman cried. Boot heels clicked on the cement like a galloping horse’s shoes. I felt like prey about to be cut down at any second and to emphasize the point, the gun I’d only had a glimpse of went off.
I ducked my head, looking for another street to turn down or a doorway to hide in. “Don’t shoot her you idiot! We need her uninjured!” the woman screamed.
“Shut up, you cow! We won’t have any merchandise if she gets away! Ez, catch her!”
I heard heavy breathing. It sounded as if it were right in my ear and on the back of my neck. I felt a burst of adrenaline and ran a little faster, but it still wasn’t enough to get out of the scarred giant’s grasp.
His hands grasped my arms, jerking me to a stop. I struggled, trying to loosen his grip, but it did no good. He was too strong.
“Stop,” he growled, shaking me. I felt like a bobble head from the force of his shake, but I continued to fight back. I lashed out, twisting my body first one way than the other, kicking backward, trying to get his shin.
None of my efforts resulted in anything except being shaken more and dragged against his massive body.
Ez picked me off my feet and turned us around so we faced Uri and the woman. The woman came up to me and hit me across the face.
I was barely able to stop myself from spitting and yelling at the woman.
“Don’t bruise the merchandise,” Uri said pulling the woman away from me.
“She’ll be fine,” the woman spat. “Ez, put her with the others. The night’s still young and we have more girls to get before dawn.”
Ez, with me still hovering above the ground, walked me away from the predatory pair.