Chapter Thirty-Three

Eli

The sun bled down into the horizon as I rifled through Nina’s common haunts.

At Masters Heights, the U-Haul full of Nina’s things was still parked.

I pushed through the revolving glass door and marched past the doorman on my way to the bank of elevators. I still remembered the location of her apartment from helping her move her things. I didn’t have the key to her door, but I didn’t need it. I needed to be able to knock and to hear her voice tell me that she was there, and everything was fine.

I stalked past the doorman, and his voice called out from behind me, sounding uncertain and nervous.

“Excuse me, sir? Are you here to visit someone?”

I froze. I suppose the grizzly beard and the distressed jeans might’ve given me away as a visitor rather than tenant. Well, fuck. I still had that gun in my belt, too, so I hoped he didn’t notice its bulge when I turned around to face him.

“Hello,” I said, forcing a painfully friendly smile onto my face. If I didn’t play nice with the doorman, I’d never get up to that suite. I had to nod and sign the guest book like any other pansy pedestrian, for Nina. “Yes. I’m here for Nina Gusteau, on the twelfth floor.”

“Ah, yes, Nina,” the doorman replied. “I’ll sign you in, if you could wait for a moment. I’ll need a copy of your license, and I’ll also need to buzz up to Nina and make sure she’s home and accepting visitors. It’ll take one second, sir.”

I ambled back toward the doorman, examining him critically without meaning to. Still, he was familiar. I pulled out my leather wallet and flipped it open, flicking my driver’s license into his hands.

“Are you and Miss Nina friends, or acquaintances, or…?” he asked as he filled out the ledger.

I examined him even more critically. Who was this punk, anyway? “Do I know you?” I spat, even though I meant the question.

“Um.” The doorman’s eyes flashed up to mine, and then it clicked. Yes. Eric. About a year ago, this poor son of a bitch got a flat tire on the bad side of town. I got him jacked up and helped him pop the spare onto it until he could get himself to a decent garage, and not the street in front of Toasty’s. His eyes lit up as they fixed on mine, too. “Oh, yeah! You helped me with my car last winter. It went totally flat while I was in Toasty’s.”

“Hey, man, how’re you doing?” I gave Eric’s hand a vigorous shake, and he passed me my license back. “Could you tell me if you’ve seen Nina at all today? We were together last night, and when I woke up, she was gone.”

Eric looked me over and slanted his mouth to one side, like there was something he wanted to say. He couldn’t say it. “Maybe… she didn’t want to stay?” he suggested.

I glowered at him. He had no idea who he was talking to. “I appreciate the vote of confidence, kid, but she’s my girlfriend. It’s not like that. It was weird for her to be gone, and I haven’t been able to find her all day. Her phone’s off, too. Look… I’m worried. And I think I have a reason to be worried. We’re involved in an investigation.”

Eric nodded and called up to Nina’s apartment. Even though there was no response, he looked me over and let me through.

I knocked on the door, and only silence answered.

After bolting out of Masters Heights with a shouted goodbye to Eric, I headed to Paper Treasure, even though that was probably even less secure than her old apartment. I knocked. I peered through the windows. The sign said Closed. The lights were out. There were still some books on the floor from the last time Nina had been in there.

I ran my hands through my hair and pounded one foot into the cement, as if it had some answers to give up, if I roughed it up a little bit.

“Fuck… Fuck!” I roared to no one in particular. To the sky.

Across the street, a little girl paused to stare at me, and her mother tugged at her hand, hurrying along. Like I was the crazy one in this world.

I marched back to Toasty’s on foot. As I approached the building, my stride transformed into a lope, then a jog, and then a run. My heart began to soar with this unfamiliar sensation: hope.

I should’ve checked Toasty’s first! Even though we fled this building in the middle of the night last night, it was still the place where Nina was likely to feel safest. It was my home. It was her new place. It was fortified. Her father would need to be careful before infiltrating it. It wasn’t a property that he owned, like all the others where she no longer felt safe.

Even as I ran toward Toasty’s and pulled out my keys, unlocking the back door, I knew deep down that she wouldn’t be there. It didn’t make any sense. She would have told me. She wouldn’t have left her laptop and taken my coat. What happened to her this morning? None of it made sense.

I shoved into Toasty’s and slammed the door, barreling up the stairwell toward the second floor. “Nina?!” I called, even though I knew. That fluttering sensation in my heart was already gone, replaced with something cold and still. “Nina!”

Margot’s door opened, and her head poked out. She was thankfully no longer in a revealing piece of lingerie but now wore the robe and slippers I was so accustomed to seeing her wear.

“Boy,” she snapped at me with a displeased yet still maternal quality. “Lois actually had the god-darn gall to tell me that she was right to back out of our bed and breakfast idea!” She shuffled toward me, shaking a finger and launching into her rant with no regard for the panicked expression in my eyes, no regard for my heavy breathing or the way I was already trying to look around her body and farther up the staircase. “She said I’m a terrible businesswoman! I said, at least I paid the dang money! At least I did that much! I was willing to take the chance! And do you know what she said to that, Eli?”

“Margot,” I told her, gentle but stern. It’s the tone you always have to take with women of a certain age when their stories wander. “Margot—”

“She said that she was still sore about the beauty parlor we never started, because I never went to get licensed as a small business owner, and that she couldn’t trust me anymore! Couldn’t trust me! So, I said—”

“Margot.” Forget gentle and stern. I gripped her shoulders and physically moved her body out of my way.

Her mouth flapped in total disbelief, and she glared at me. “Boy!” she hollered, swatting at me as I passed. “I don’t know who the hell you think you are—”

“I’m looking for Nina!” I called over my shoulder to her, pounding up the remaining steps. “Has she been here at all? Have you seen her?”

“Well, no,” Margot said, following me and forgetting her anger from two seconds earlier. “But women are like that sometimes. I know when I was her age, I jumped in this van at Woodstock and went to Arizona! There was this lavender farm there—”

“Margot, she disappeared from our hotel room and left all her things behind,” I told her, my tone serious and severe. “I think that she might be hurt.”

Saying the words aloud made them more real for me, and my throat grew tight. I swallowed. I hadn’t even let myself truly consider the likelihood that she would be hurt. I kept telling myself that she was JP’s princess, and that JP would never hurt her. But JP gave his own wife—my mother—a fractured skull that killed her. Nothing was sacred to him. He would kill her. He might kill her.

“Well, you know, this is a coincidence,” Margot said, as if we were still having pleasant conversation.

“Margot, if you start talking about that lavender farm or your goddamn sister again, I swear to God—”

Margot glowered at me. “When I was visiting my sister last night,” she yelled up at me, “I saw my nephew for a little while, and he said that he works at Sprint now. All those little screen devices that young people carry all the time can be tracked. Does she use ‘Sprint’?” Margot said the word like she wasn’t sure it was even a real phone company. “Do you want to see if Nathan would track her phone for me?”

“Yes!” I pumped my fist into the air. “Hell, yes, Margot. That’s what I’m talking about.”

I waited with a crawling sensation all over my skin, on the verge of praying aloud for Nephew Nathan to have some news for us.

“All right, give me a minute,” Margot said, ambling back down the staircase and toward her apartment. I followed at her fuzzy slipper heels.

She pushed open her apartment door, and I entered without thinking much about it. After fixing so many leaky sinks and patching so many bathroom tiles, I was too familiar with this entire building, and it was hard to feel like any room didn’t belong to me.

I guess, in that way, I am like JP. But JP felt a sense of ownership because he purchased things. I felt a sense of ownership because I worked my ass off on them.

Still, Margot glanced back at me with her constant mild annoyance. “Sure, come on in,” she said, plucking her corded landline from where it was hung—by me, when she first moved in eight years ago—before punching in some numbers and asking to be allowed to speak to Nathan. “Nate, boy,” she greeted sharply the instant he came on the line. Her tone with him was remarkably similar to her tone with me, and probably anyone else younger than forty-five. “I need your help. My landlord has lost his girlfriend, and he’s got to get her tracked. I know you can do that kind of stuff now—”

There was some murmuring on the other side of the line, and my jaw clenched. Come on, Nate. Be a good boy for Auntie Margot!

“Well, I know that,” Margot said, scoffing at him. “But—” She hesitated again as he continued to speak. “And I know you got this job—” He started speaking again. This time, his tone didn’t set right with Auntie Margot, and her eyebrows knotted bitterly over her eyes. “You listen to me now, Nathaniel,” she commanded him. Even to me, she seemed to double in size when she used that rapacious tone. “If it weren’t for me, you wouldn’t even be in this god-darn world, do you hear me, boy? Lois did not even like Donald until I said that I thought that he was cute, even though it was half of a lie, and there they are, married with a baby in the baby carriage. You owe me, Nathaniel, and I owe my landlord. It’s the one I told you about! It’s Eli, who beat up those two muggers. Two muggers, Nathaniel, and he beat them up for me! Now you will tell Eli Connelly where his girlfriend’s phone is, or so help me god, boy, I will undo your existence. You know I have that power!”

There was silence on the line for a moment, then another series of murmurs. These were much less spirited than the ones that came before.

“That’s right,” Margot said, nodding firmly. She placed her hand over the receiver and looked to me. “What’s her name, child?”

“Nina Gusteau.”

“Gusteau,” Margot answered. “Nina Gusteau.”

Another moment of silence, and then more murmurs.

“The phone has a signal,” Margot reported. “It’s currently at an address on the northeastern outskirts of town.”

Redman Corporation Headquarters.

I knew the location before she needed to say another word. Even though she kept speaking, giving me the full address, I didn’t need to hear it. My entire body drenched in a cold sweat. My heartbeat resonated in my ears.

He’d taken her, and he brought her to his lair. Everything that I said was right. They were in the process of relocating all the files.

He’s destroying all the evidence. He’s destroying all the evidence, and he’s got the girl. He’s going to get away with it, Eli. He’s going to get away with everything, like he always gets away with everything. Because there is no goddamn justice in this world.

My jaws tightened. My fists tightened.

Not unless you make the justice yourself.

Distantly, Margot hung the phone back into its cradle on the wall. I could barely hear her. I was already ten miles away. I was already standing outside of Redman Corporation headquarters, gazing up into the dark windows, wondering which one held Nina captive behind its tinted glass.

“Eli?” Margot asked, penetrating my thoughts. “Is everything okay?”

“Yes, Margot,” I lied, touching her shoulder briefly and giving it a squeeze. She wasn’t a touchy-feely woman like Bethel was. She frowned up at me, and I forced a smile that was supposed to be reassuring but probably looked either sad or scary. “Everything is going to be all right.”

Across from Toasty’s and one block southward was a crumbling apartment building that made the apartments above Toasty’s look like rooms at the Waldorf. Linden Rodborough lived in the bottom unit. The Vietnam veteran with post-traumatic stress disorder and no living relatives. Last winter, Hinton got hit with a blizzard that piled drifts five feet against all the doors and windows. I struggled down to these apartments and shoveled the walk for the building. I also brought Linden hot meals until the snow was cleared away. I had excess, and I knew that no one was going to take care of him if I didn’t.

I knocked at Linden’s door, and almost a full minute passed before someone answered.

“Who is it?” Linden barked on the other side of the door.

I cracked a small smile. This was Linden’s process when there was a knock at the door. Check the windows. Check the peephole. Hide the valuables. Check the peephole again. Ask who’s there.

“Hey, Mr. Rodborough, it’s Eli from—”

A series of multiple locks crunched and shrilled as they were all slid to the side. Linden muscled the door open, even though he had arms like twigs now. He grinned up at me and gestured for me to come inside.

“Eli, my boy, the son I never had.” He closed the door behind me and slid every lock back into place. For once, I was grateful for the extra measures his paranoia brought with it. “What are you doing all the way down here today? I don’t need anyone to shovel my walk. The stupid city came down last night and sprinkled salt before the snow fell. Competence, am I right? It’s an improvement!”

“I actually need your help, Mr. Rodborough.”

Linden’s brow creased, and he nodded, sobering up. “All right,” he said, stroking the meager gray hairs on his chin. “Anything you need, son. And I do mean that.”

“I’m not going to hold back,” I warned him, and he nodded again, listening. “There is this woman. You remember me talking about her? The one who wouldn’t let me give her a ride home that night. I spent the rest of the week worrying about her. She walked through Montclair at night.”

“Of course.” Linden wheezed out a little laugh in spite of the sobriety of our conversation. “Your little girlfriend.”

“The love of my life,” I corrected him.

“Well, then.” Linden resumed his more serious stance. “What happened?”

“The truth is, Mr. Rodborough, I’ve been spending the last four or five months chipping away at the criminal group in Montclair.” Linden kept nodding at the same pace, as if this was no great surprise. “Nina is the daughter of the kingpin, and she had turned against him and was helping me with my investigation.”

Linden’s eyes turned to me, rapt, and he stopped nodding.

“She was completely under her father’s control, and when she broke away, she also had to leave her home. She moved in with me, and he sent men to my door to intimidate us. We ran and got a room at a motel for the night. I fell asleep, but she must have stepped outside at some point. She disappeared… but I found someone who could track her. And they told me that she was in her father’s office right now.” I pursed my lips together and nodded slowly, impressing to Linden the gravity of all this information. “He’s killed before, Mr. Rodborough. Even women. Even people he has loved. I have to go to her. I have to rescue her. And I have to take him down, once and for all.”

Linden placed his hand on my shoulder and rubbed it back and forth in understanding and support. “Sometimes your own way is the only way. What do you need from me?”

“Anything you got,” I replied. “Anything that might help me at all.”

“Yes, sir. I think I’ve got a few things that might help you out. Come with me.”

Linden led me back into what I could best describe as an arsenal. I didn’t even have enough hiding space on my own body for all this stuff, or the technical know-how to use even half of it without blowing myself up. But I did snatch a pair of night-vision goggles.

“Take these, too. Put ‘em in your boots,” Linden advised me, pressing the handles of two wicked-looking hunting blades into my hands. “You never know when you might need the element of surprise.”

With the goggles around my neck, the knives in my boots, and the gun in my belt, a heaviness settled over my body while I traveled down to the garage to pick up my restored Kawasaki baby.

And as I peeled out of that garage and off toward Redman Corporation, another heaviness settled on top of me, but it had nothing to do with physical weight.

I’m not a religious man, but I sent up a prayer that she was still all right.

The sky overhead was a murky dark gray, and soon, it would be black.