Two hours later Lula missed a street in the rain, and before we could make a correction we were down by the river, weaving our way through a complex of high-rises.
“This is getting old,” Lula said. “Bad enough straining my eyeballs looking for some dumb car, but now I’m lost.”
“We’re not lost,” I told her. “We’re in Trenton.”
“Yeah, but I’ve never been in this part of Trenton before. I don’t feel comfortable driving around buildings that haven’t got gang slogans sprayed on them. Look at this place. No boarded-up windows. No garbage in the gutter. No brothers selling goods on the street. Don’t know how people can live like this.” She squinted into the gray rain and eased the car into a parking lot. “I’m turning around,” she said. “I’m taking us back to the office, and I’m gonna nuke up some of them leftover hot dogs and then I’m gonna do my filing.”
It was okay by me because riding around in the pouring rain in slum neighborhoods wasn’t my favorite thing to do anyway.
Lula swung down a line of cars and there in front of us was the Chrysler.
We both sat dumbstruck, barely believing our eyes. We’d painstakingly covered every likely street and alley, and here was the car, parked in a most unlikely place.
“Sonovabitch,” Lula said.
I studied the building at the edge of the lot. Eight stories high. A big cube of uninspired brick and low-energy window glass. “Looks like apartments.”
Lula nodded, and we returned our attention to the Chrysler. Not especially anxious to investigate.
“I guess we should take a look,” Lula finally said.
We both heaved a sigh and got out of the Firebird. The rain had tapered to a drizzle, and the temperature was dropping. The cold seeped through my skin, straight to my bones, and the possibility of finding Cameron Brown dead in the trunk of Jackie’s car did nothing to warm me from the inside out.
We gingerly looked in the windows and tried the doors. The doors were locked. The interior of the car was empty. No Cameron Brown. No obvious clues…like notes detailing Brown’s recent life history or maps with a bright orange X to mark the spot. We stood side by side, looking at the trunk.
“Don’t see no blood dripping out,” Lula said. “That’s a good sign.” She went to her own trunk and returned with a crowbar. She slipped it under the Chrysler’s trunk lid and popped the lid open.
Spare tire, dirty yellow blanket, a couple grimy towels. No Cameron Brown.
Lula and I expelled air in a simultaneous whoosh.
“How long has Jackie been seeing this guy?” I asked.
“About six months. Jackie doesn’t have good luck with men. Doesn’t want to see what’s real.”
Lula tossed the crowbar onto her backseat and we both got back into the Firebird.
“So what’s real this time around?” I asked.
“This Maggot’s a user from the word go. He pimping Jackie and then using her car to deal. He could of got a car of his own, but he uses Jackie’s because everybody knows she a ho, and if the cops stop him and there’s stuff in the trunk he just say he don’t know how it got there. He say he just borrowed the car from his ho girlfriend. And everybody knows Jackie do some drugs. Only reason anybody be a ho is ’cause they do drugs.”
“Think Brown was selling drugs here?”
Lula shook her head, no. “He don’t sell drugs to this kind of folks. He pushes to the kiddies.”
“Then maybe he has a girlfriend upstairs.”
Lula rolled the engine over and pulled out of the lot. “Maybe, but it looks kind of high-class for Cameron Brown.”
By the time I dragged into my apartment at five o’clock I was thoroughly depressed. I was back to driving the Buick. My pickup was at a Nissan service center awaiting repairs after Blue Ribbon Used Cars refused responsibility, citing a clause on my sales receipt that said I’d bought the car “as is.” No returns. No guarantees.
My shoes were soaked through, my nose was running and I couldn’t stop thinking about Jackie. Finding her car seemed totally inadequate. I wanted to improve her life. I wanted to get her off drugs, and I wanted to change her profession. Hell, she wasn’t so dumb. She could probably be a brain surgeon if she just had a decent haircut.
I left my shoes in the hall and dropped the rest of my clothes on the bathroom floor. I stood in the shower until I was defrosted. I toweled my hair dry and ran my fingers through it by way of styling. I dressed in thick white socks, sweatpants and sweatshirt.
I took a soda from the fridge, snatched a pad and pen from the kitchen counter and settled myself at the dining table. I wanted to review my ideas on Mo Bedemier, and I wanted to figure out what I was missing.
I awoke at nine o’clock with the spiral binding of the steno pad imprinted on the left side of my face and my notebook pages as blank as my mind. I shoved the hair out of my eyes, punched 4 on my speed dial and ordered a pizza to be delivered—extra cheese, black olives, peppers and onions.
I took hold of the pen and drew a line on the empty page. I drew a happy face. I drew a grumpy face. I drew a heart with my initials in it, but then I didn’t have anyone else’s initials to write next to mine, so I went back to thinking about Mo.
Where would Mo go? He left most of his clothes behind. His drawers were filled with socks and underwear. His toiletries were intact. Toothbrush, razor, deodorant in the medicine chest over the bathroom sink. That had to mean something, right? The logical conclusion was that he had another apartment where he kept a spare toothbrush. Trouble was…life wasn’t always logical. The utilities check hadn’t turned up anything. Of course that only meant that if Mo had a second house or apartment, it wasn’t registered under his name.
The other possibility, that Mo was snatched and most likely was dead somewhere, waiting to be found, was too depressing to ponder. Best to set that one aside for now, I decided.
