Disintegration: A Windy City Dark Mystery Read online

  She places her right hand directly on my wound and pushes. I moan, stars shooting across my vision, a halo of dingy yellow ringing her head, her eyes filled with the Milky Way, vast and dark, sprinkled with diamonds, her mouth parting ever so slightly. Blood oozes out of the gaps between my stitches and she places her bloody handprint on my chest, on her thigh, on her breast as she slowly rocks back and forth. I can’t breathe. If this is how I’m going to die, so be it. She places her hand on my wound again, coating her palm with blood, as she grinds me deeper inside her.

  “Punch me in the face when I come,” she says.

  Chapter 61

  “Get up.”

  I’m shrouded in a gray gauze, a stabbing pain in my side, and a female form hovers over me. She’s wearing a silver robe, short and silky, with Chinese lettering and a jade dragon wrapping around her. Lotus flowers run down the sleeves. Her left eye is shrouded in purple, puffy and tinged with red.

  “Hey, buddy, time to get up.”

  As I pry my gluey eyes open she drifts into focus. It’s mostly dark outside, and the candles are all out. I’m still naked, and the cream sheets are splattered with blood, partial handprints on my body. She stands with her arms crossed, her long black hair wet, her features dulled. She looks like an angry little girl.

  “What’s going on?” I ask.

  “It’s time for you to go.”

  “What, no breakfast? No uncomfortable chatter over toast?”

  “No. You need to go.”

  “Did I do something wrong?”

  For a moment she pauses and takes a deep breath. She sighs. A grin slips over her face.

  “No, you were great. It’s not that. But this is a place of business, I have things to do, and I need to get some more rest, and I can’t do that with you here.”

  “I understand.”

  “Stand up and I’ll clean you off.”

  “What?”

  “Just stand up,” she says. “Don’t be shy now, I’ve seen it all—touched it, licked it, stuffed it inside me.”

  I ease off the bed, groaning, and stand next to the nightstand, one hand keeping my balance. She bends down to a large copper bowl with a sponge in it and starts to clean the blood and dried fluids off my body. I’m oddly touched by her gesture, the warm water with a hint of lavender, shadows scrolling across the wall as a car drifts by outside in the snow. There’s a dull pain at my side, and I look down.

  “Sorry, just checking out your wound. It’s fine. I wouldn’t do any bull riding for a couple days.”

  “Yeah, you either.”

  She looks up at me and for a second I see the girl behind the dominatrix. She came here from a small town, someplace in the Midwest, Iowa or Indiana. She had one boyfriend in high school and he was a jerk—a redneck asshole that treated her like dirt. But he had a car (a pickup truck, actually) and he spent money on her now and then. When she left him to go to college, Columbia College here in Chicago, he freaked out, got drunk, wrecked the truck and screwed her best friend. She never talked to him again. In college, she met a wide variety of artists and had her first lesbian experience. She started sleeping with boys too, when she realized she had all the power. She took film classes and started to write, she sculpted erotic media of mixed metals and clay, barbed wire wrapping around breasts, rebar impaling large mountains of clay, with vagina caves on either side. She dropped acid, got her first tattoo (a Celtic heart), and started getting rough in bed. When one of her professors got her high and paid her to spank him, she realized she had a gift. And could earn.

  Or something like that.

  Standing up she runs the sponge over my chest, cleans my face, her eyes big and soft, filled with a sad wonder. The room is quiet but for a brushing of snow against the windows, shooshing over the beveled glass.

  She dries me off and points to a pile of my clothes, folded on the nightstand. I get dressed in silence as she retreats to the master bath to pour out the bloody water. She stands in the bathroom, her back to me, and she looks so small. I don’t know whether to pity her or fear her. I ache in places I shouldn’t, and bits and pieces of our marathon night flash through my head, body parts framed in moonlight, her silhouette, her mouth gasping, her strong hands, sweat running down her back, the sheets damp with our exertion.

  I’m dressed and ready to go when she comes back. She pulls the sheets off in one violent motion and tilts her head to the stairs.

  “Out,” she says, grinning.

  If she wasn’t so fucking hot, so vulnerable, I’d be offended.

  Down the stairs, a mint-green wallpaper gives the sensation of water, with tiny florets, bulbous shapes in ornate scrollwork, and an inverted die cut of an ancient pineapple shape. It’s elegant, and if I squint I swear there are tiny skulls where the lines meet.

  I turn to her, and she frowns, her arms full of our dirty laundry. I lean over and kiss her anyway, and she’s chaste now. I open my eyes and her pupils scatter, darting around, and I feel her anxiety.

  “I’m going. Don’t worry, no trouble from me.”

  I kiss her again, and she responds, gently pushing back.

  “Now go,” she whispers.

  I grab my coat off the hook and pull it on. It’s going to be cold. My hat is in one pocket, my gloves in the other, and I turn the locks and open the door.

  “See you around,” I say.

  “I’m sure you will.” She grins again.

  Out the door and the cold slaps me in the face, and suddenly I’m flashing back to the bathroom from last night, bending her over the sink. The door clicks shut behind me and she disappears down the hall. In tiny type, in the center of a metallic oval is the name Isadora. There is no phone number, no website or email, just Isadora. Wonder how she gets clients. Maybe she’ll send me a bill.

  I shuffle down the stairs and turn right, back up Damen. A high fence runs around her property but I take a glance toward the backyard anyway. Between a crack in the boards I see her, outside. She must be freezing. She is standing over a large oil drum, flames spitting out of the top. She tosses the sheets in, and the flames leap higher. She peels off her silk robe, and her pale skin shines in the dark space, her wet hair glimmering in the light of the moon, the yellow of the streetlamps. She is a goddess for a moment, her curves perfection, stopping me in my tracks. Then she is gone. And my heart starts up again, and I can breathe. And I wonder what I’ve started.

  Chapter 62

  I’m retracing my path from last night, trudging through the snow. It’s really late, or really early, depending on how you look at it. The sky is a rusted gray, a hint of blue at the edges, crisp and deep. As I get close to Thomas and my right turn back home, I walk by the spot where we scuffled last night. There’s no blood as far as I can see, the steady fall of snow covering whatever evidence there once was. I don’t see any sign of our foe, and then as I’m about to turn the corner, I see two boots, just the tip of them, poking up out of the snow.

  “Shit, we killed him,” I mutter.

  It looks like he tried to crawl up the street, maybe back to the alley he came from, maybe back to the Innertown Pub for help. He didn’t make it. Just under the surface of the snow is the outline of his body, dull and dark. He must have finally collapsed on his back, staring up at the power lines, shiny icicles like a display of daggers, hovering over his head.

  There is a bloop behind me and a flash of color. I turn my head to see a cop car rolling to a stop. Goddamnit.

  “Hey, buddy, everything okay? Something catch your eye?”

  His window is down, and he’s dressed in dark blue, one elbow leaning out the window, headlights pushing on up the street, exhaust belching out the back muffler.

  “All good. To be honest, I was thinking of taking a piss, and was looking for something a little bit more private.”

  “Why don’t you take that on home, okay, pal? You’re a big boy, right? Can you hold it?”

  “Sure, Officer, no problem.”

  I stand in front of t
he body, hoping that I’m blocking his shoes, but afraid to look down, to draw any more attention to the lump in the snow.

  “Kind of late to be out wandering.”

  “Well, you know,” I say, “met a lady, and well, now I’m heading home.”

  “Ah,” he says. “I gotcha.”

  He turns to his partner and mumbles something.

  “You live far, buddy? Want a lift?”

  A lift. No. I don’t want that. I don’t think these are the guys who were at my apartment before, but all the same, I’d like to keep my distance.

  “I’m cool, the fresh air is good for me, clearing my head up.”

  “Okay,” the cop says.

  He eyeballs me a bit more, looking me up and down. He squints his eyes a bit, looking down at my boots, and when I glance down there are drops of blood on both of them. It’s faint, but I can see it. Can he? He opens his mouth to say something, and a nest of vipers swirls in my gut. A ripple of pain shoots through my stab wound, and my face scrunches up just a bit. I’ve given myself away.

  “You sure you’re okay?” the cop asks again, tilting his head.

  I open my mouth to answer and a voice crackles out of the radio.

  Car 11 we have a 211 in progress, alarm has gone off at…

  “There’s something about you I don’t like,” he says, spitting on the ground, the smile disappearing. The car lunges ahead, spinning its wheels, and they shoot forward, heading north, engine revving as they break the silence of the night, lights flashing, fading away. I take a breath.

  I turn and head east on Thomas, off of Damen, and take back streets the rest of the way home. I keep an eye on the streets, wary that they’ll come back to ask more questions. I don’t quite fit in with the hipsters in the area, too old to be some punk kid. My face is riddled with stubble and I have an air about me. I tense up and go cold when I’m about to get violent, and he read me like a book. The cop knew that I was thinking of running, that I had something to hide. He just wasn’t sure what it was.

  I’m home in no time, key in the front door of the building, a mist of flakes drifting through the streetlamp glow, up and down the street, an abandoned wasteland. There’s an audible crack, followed by more cracks and creaks, and a large tree branch across the street falls with a heavy thud on an aging red Accord, the ice tinkling to the ground, the car dipping, an alarm going off, the night suddenly alive with noise, a whoop and a harsh beep, repeating, the car covered in bark and ice, the windshield cracked. Jesus. I don’t need to be here for this, so I slide in the door and close it, fast. Up the stairs and I pass Guy’s, not a peep. When I get to my door there is a yellow Post-it note.

  Thanks, bro.

  I turn my head to his door and stare. What did I offer him last night? What did I tell him?

  Nothing, I hope.

  I key the locks, and open them in rapid succession. I’m exhausted. The minute the door opens, Luscious is at my feet, mewing and spinning in circles. I’ll sleep good tonight.

  Chapter 63

  I’m standing in my kitchen, a cold beer in my hand. It started as simply being thirsty, stressed out from the walk home and the cops, my mind wandering to Isadora. I was happy. Honest. But I just can’t stay that way. I open a beer, and one becomes three, and three become six as the sun starts to come up, and I’m laughing to myself, laughing about something that Isadora said to me, and the guilt washes over me, suddenly and with a brutal finality. How dare I? And her voice creeps in, like it always does when it’s really quiet, when I’m surrounded by peace, she creeps in, my wife.

  It’s the last part of the message that haunts me.

  The setup is bad enough, her voice, the kids in the background screaming, the laughter, it’s what I heard every day, and it peels a layer off my heart every time I hear it. But it’s the next part that breaks me down. I don’t think I’ve heard it sober, including the first time. By the time I got out of the hospital, it was days later. There was a funeral to plan. Funerals. Her family was there, as was mine, but I couldn’t see five feet beyond my face. I could hardly walk, my back was killing me, and reality didn’t mean much to me. They gave me a back brace and shot me full of drugs and told me to get some bed rest. But I had to identify the bodies, there were papers to sign, I had to go to the funerals, I couldn’t just disappear.

  But I did. I did disappear. I listened to the message, and I started to drink, on top of my meds. It was a nasty cocktail, and I liked it. I was abusive to my family, I passed out and broke things, I screamed at my parents, said horrible things, and in the end they left me alone. I pushed them away.

  I did identify the bodies. But I can’t think about that now. I’ve gone numb again, and I’m tracking every drawer in my apartment, trying to remember if the razor blades are all gone. Did I throw them out after the last time—did Holly? Is there a box of them buried in the back of a drawer behind thumbtacks and Scotch tape or maybe they’re buried under socks in the back of the armoire? I don’t know. But I feel like hunting.

  The tape is cued up now, to the second part. My right hand hovers over the button, my left hand holding a beer. I take another sip, and then I drain it. And then I push that fucking button once again. There is silence for a minute, a crackling over the tape that I’ve played so many times, wearing it down until it will stop working someday, just split in two, and then I hear her voice.

  Chapter 64

  “…oh my God, what happened, where am I, Taylor? Robbie? Oh my God, say something, talk to me, I can’t see…”

  Chapter 65

  I seem to have found a razor blade, and it still does its job. I run it up my left forearm, a thin pink line erupting from the skin, the flesh parting, and the blood dots out. It forms a tiny river of velvet and I’m ready to go upstream again, to retrace my steps, but deeper this time, all it takes is a little push.

  The envelope slides under the door and I stop. If I had my senses about me I’d leap to my feet and see who just delivered it. Is it Vlad himself, or is that beneath him now? Maybe it’s something he has Guy do. Vlad picks up some weed, and drops off some info. Maybe it’s Paulina upstairs, it’s always the innocent ones, eyeglasses and buttoned-up blouses, those are the ones wearing the crotchless panties with a pierced clit.

  I shake my head and place the razor on the nightstand. I walk to the kitchen and run cold water over my latest work, there’s always time for this game that I play. I rip off a paper towel from the roll and dab it over the cut, and hold it in place. It wasn’t deep, so it’ll probably stop soon. But the envelope, yes, it’s been too long.

  I head back to the front door and pick it up, moving over to the long, wooden table and the leather chairs. I sit down and open the envelope. There’s a photo and an address, that’s it. Maybe Vlad feels like I can’t handle the truth right now, he’s demoted me to grunt, just the wet work, to see if I’ve still got the chops. The picture is blurry, but it looks like a young man, dark skin, probably black or Hispanic, with dreadlocks and…wait a minute. It’s the kid from the bar the other night, the one at the altar. On the back it has an address, 3246 North Lincoln Avenue, Rear Garden. That’s north, way too long to walk. But there’s more.

  Take Guy. Do it now.

  There’s a rapping at my door and as I turn my head, the knob twists and in walks Guy.

  “Hey, dude, you ready to roll?”

  “Come on in, Guy, why don’t you?”

  “Sorry, it was open….”

  “Why are you here, Guy?”

  He stares at his feet. He’s wearing jeans and a sweatshirt and a ridiculous blue down coat that makes him look like the Michelin Man. I’m surprised he can fit through the door. He’s holding a brown manila package in his right hand like it’s a side of beef.

  “I’m the driver.”

  “What?”

  “You know, the car?”

  “How’s your knee?”

  “It’s fine.”

  “Hey, about last night…” I begin.

 
“No worries, dude, we were fucked up. I’m sure your hand on my thigh was just a slipup.”

  “What?”

  “Kidding. Man, you’re uptight. We’re just dropping off some weed, no need to get all freaky. I know it’s a bit of quantity, so that’s why you’re coming along, the muscle.”

  He doesn’t know what I do. Good.

  “Give me a second, and we’ll go take care of this. What time is it?”

  Hell, what day is it?

  “It’s eleven-thirty.”

  “At night?”

  “Yes, at night, Jesus.”

  I turn to the blinds and drapes that frame my windows. Right, that blackness behind them, that would be the night. I guess it always looks that way to me.

  I’m dressed in minutes. At the last second I lean over to the nightstand and grab my gun. For some reason I feel like I might need it tonight. I check to see that it’s loaded, and drop it in my pocket.

  I turn to Guy and he’s watching me. He nods his head.

  Chapter 66

  We find the great white whale I used to track Cammie just up the street. My old friend, so that’s where she went.

  “So what is this, the company car?”

  “Something like that,” he says.

  Guy unlocks the car and slides in, just barely, and I go around to the passenger side.

  “Reach in the glove compartment, would you?” he says.

  I open it up to find a half-empty bottle of Jim Beam.

  “Good, I did make that delivery,” I say.

  “Swap that with this,” Guy says, handing me the package.

  He takes the bottle, twists the cap off, and takes a couple of slugs.

  “Nerves.”

  He passes it over and I do the same.

  “Drunkard,” I say, and hand it back.

  He up starts the car and we head north. Lights drift by and we cruise up Ashland past grocery stores and bungalows, Green Dolphin Street with neon glowing and a crowd of sweaty young women standing outside in short sparkling dresses, smoking cigarettes, their tanned legs giving off steam. Across a bridge, red metal arches over the river, and I wonder what would happen if I just opened the door and leaned out? Would it kill me? Or would it just break an arm or two, crack my head, and leave me crippled?