the army. He must have been the only soldier in the history of the armed forces who ended up giving out a back rub to a hooker as she poured out her deepest, darkest secrets. He knew the narrative off by heart now: a missing or abusive father followed by a quest to rediscover him in a litany of equally vacant men.
At what felt like an appropriate break in the story — Tiffany had just lost her daughter to social services, which sent her into a tail-spin of ketamine abuse — Lock excused himself from her company and eased off his bar stool, ostensibly heading for the men’s room.
‘You want me to hold it for you?’ she said with a smile, remembering the bottom line in places like this.
‘No thanks, but I really do appreciate the offer. You’re a good kid.’
She slid down the bar to sit next to Ty.
Beyond the door marked ‘gangstas’ for the men’s room and ‘ho’s’, presumably indicating the ladies’, there lay a short stretch of dark corridor which dead-ended with three doors. One led to the men’s room, the other to the ladies’, which classily doubled as the dancers’ changing area, judging from the sound of rap emanating from behind it; the third, up a short flight of stairs, was marked ‘No Entry’. The sign made it a no-brainer.
On the way, Lock unholstered his Sig, chambered a round and then decocked it using the lever on the left of the pistol grip. Then he holstered it again. It left him ready to go. He did it every time he was about to walk through a door when he didn’t know for sure what lay on the other side and there was a chance it was something bad.
At the top of the stairs he stopped, took out his Gerber, and eased a section of painted-over wire away from the door frame. Cutting through it, he jammed the wire into his pocket before pushing open the door.
A solitary desk lamp cut an arc through the gloom. The smell was of stale sweat and cigarette smoke. An overweight elderly woman with her hair up in a bun sat behind a desk. She fumbled for the panic button.
Lock held up the sliver of wire he’d cut out from around the door frame. ‘It’s not working.’
There was a phone on the desk, but the woman made no move for it. She seemed remarkably composed, as if an armed man storming her office was an everyday occurrence. Lighting a fresh cigarette from the dying embers of the previous one, she sucked down on it, browning the filter with one drag, seemingly resigned to whatever was coming next.
‘What do you want? I’m busy.’
Lock reached inside his jacket and pulled out the picture of Natalya with her parents. He laid it on the desk in front of the woman. She glanced at it, then looked away.
‘So?’
‘You know her?’
She eyed him suspiciously. ‘Who the hell are you?’
‘She’s dead. But before she died a little boy she was looking after was abducted. I’m trying to find him. And you’re going to help me.’
‘I don’t know what you’re talking about.’
He was getting nowhere fast. Sooner or later someone would realize that a customer who’d gone to the men’s room hadn’t reappeared. Then one of the gorillas would come scouting.
He pulled out the letter of reference, placed that on the desk alongside the photograph and pointed to the signature. ‘This is you, isn’t it? You’re Jerry.’ He could see that right now she’d deny being in the same room as him, so he kept going. ‘Now, you can either answer my questions or I can turn this over to the FBI.’
‘It’s my name, but I didn’t sign it. My name’s spelled with an i not a y.’ She picked up the letter and took her time studying it. ‘She worked here. Until, maybe. .’ She paused, making an effort to recall. ‘Five months ago. Then she left.’
There was a knock at the door. Then, a man’s voice. One of the bouncers. ‘Hey, Jerri, we need you downstairs.’
‘Answer him,’ Lock whispered.
‘Give me five.’
They listened as the man clumped back down the stairs. Then they heard him push open the door to the ladies’ room and bark something to one of the dancers.
Jerri dragged on her cigarette as Lock rifled through the files on her desk.
‘Listen, if I treated Natalya so bad, why did she come looking for her old job back?’
Lock looked up from the filing cabinet. ‘What?’
‘Didn’t know that, did you?’ Jerri said, a smirk passing across her face.
‘When was this?’
‘Let me think. A month, six weeks ago.’
‘Did she give a reason?’
Jerri blew a smoke ring and shrugged. ‘She didn’t say. But it’ll have been a man. Always is.’
‘She mention anyone in particular?’
‘Some guy called Brody, I think.’
‘Could it have been Cody?’
‘Yeah, might have been.’
‘Cody Parker?’
‘She just called him Cody.’
‘Did she say anything about animal rights?’
‘Animal what?’
Lock took that as a no.
‘You ever meet him?’
‘He might have picked her up once or twice.’
‘Was he older? Younger?’
‘Than her? Older. Listen, our five minutes is up. They’ll be coming back up here and there’ll be trouble.’
Right on cue there was another knock at the door. This one more insistent.
‘Jerri?’
Before she had a chance to respond the door opened and one of the bouncers got a face full of gun.
‘Relax,’ said Lock, ‘I was just leaving.’
The bouncer blanched. ‘OK, man. I ain’t gonna try and stop you.’
Lock pushed past him and headed down the stairs, taking them two at a time. In the bar, Tiffany was perched on Ty’s lap.
‘I gotta go,’ Ty told her.
She threw her arms around Ty’s neck. ‘Will you call me?’
‘Sure.’
Ty fell into step with Lock. Behind them they could hear the bouncer screaming into his cell phone as he careered down the stairs. ‘Yeah, he’s got a gun. I need someone here now!’
In the office, Jerri lit a fresh cigarette and cradled the phone against her shoulder. ‘I don’t know,’ she said, blowing a perfect smoke ring and watching it slowly dissolve in front of her face. ‘But if I were you, I’d start closing this thing down fast.’
Thirty-five
‘So we had him and we let him go,’ said Ty, pacing to the window of Lock’s living room and faking a punch at his own reflection. ‘If they’ve harmed that kid. .’
Lock sat on the couch, his head in his hands, the tips of his right fingers worrying at his scar. ‘It might not be Cody, y’know.’
‘Ah, come on, Ryan. He knew Natalya, then magically she pops up as Josh Hulme’s nanny.’
‘Au pair,’ Lock corrected him.
‘Whatever.’
‘I guess we should call Frisk. Hand this back over to the Feds. People might not have wanted to cough up
