Lovely Death Read online

  Nick stared into the open storage compartment and saw that it was empty.

  “Where is it?”

  Layla slapped him, not unkindly.

  “Don’t worry about it.”

  “You do realize we’re in Chicago, right? I could probably buy a new .45 at that Conoco station over there.”

  Layla shook her head and snorted. “The deadliest things in that place are those frozen burritos you seem to be so fond of.”

  Nick stared at Layla. Her baby blue eyes were almost electric in the glow of the dashboard instrument panel. Her short, sharp nose cut an exquisite silhouette to frame her full lips against the darkness of the tinted windows. From this angle he could not see the bruises on her face. She was stunningly pretty. He imagined that she could probably see less of his beat up mug too in this nighttime lighting.

  He didn’t know why he did it, but he kissed her. It was as unexpected for Nick as it was for Layla, but she did not pull away. Instead, she leaned into it, wrapping her arms around the back of his neck as her tongue slipped past his lips and into his mouth. It had no nameable taste, but there was a faint hint of fruity lip balm that passed to Nick’s taste buds as they locked lips.

  The way she ran her fingers through his hair, and the way the soft skin of her lower back felt as he caressed it made his dick struggle to find extra room in his jeans.

  But the encounter was cut short by Layla, who backed away, wiping at her lower lip. She stared into Nick’s eyes for a moment, and there he saw a kind of sorrow. She looked away, reached for the keys in the ignition. She pulled them out and tucked them into her pocket.

  “I had an idea while you were out.”

  “Yeah?”

  “Yeah,” she said. “But I’m going to need a cell phone.”

  Nick honestly had no idea where his phone was. It was possible the thing was still floating around in the backseat somewhere, but he wouldn’t have staked his life on it.

  “Or a phone book,” she said, reading his expression. “Which is why I stopped by the gas station. I hope you don’t mind, I gave the attendant fifty bucks out of your pocket for it.”

  For the first time Nick noticed the thick yellow telephone directory sitting on the floorboard of the car.

  “Wow,” he said, “blast from the past. I didn’t know they even still made those things.”

  Layla shrugged. “We had one in the bar in Spokane.”

  “Did you at least get me a burrito?”

  “Asked the man who already barfed once tonight?”

  Nick remembered that he had just thrown up, and had promptly kissed this poor girl. The fact that she hadn’t even mentioned it practically made her some kind of saint.

  Layla ran a fingernail along the square spine and flipped the meaty tome open near the middle. She riffled through the pages, shook her head, and dug through a few more. After almost a minute of this, Nick watched her trace the tip of her index finger halfway down the page and mouth something to herself as she read.

  “Alright, here we go. Now we’re in business.”

  “What is it?”

  Nick could see that she had found the ‘Vo-Vu’ section, and when he followed her finger to the tiny ad at the bottom of the page he read the listing.

  “Voodoo?” he said, in equal parts surprise and embarrassment. “Come on, Layla. Really? You really think a hoodoo priest who reads Kentucky Fried Chicken bones to tourists is going to be able to help us? This is serious shit.”

  “Not a priest,” she said, slightly offended. “A priestess. Elisa Bindu. And what? You have a better idea? Look at you being all skeptical all of a sudden. Trust me, I’ve seen just how serious the shit really is.”

  Nick’s heart sank. For a moment the reality of it all had slipped away, softly sidelined by the residual effects of Layla’s taste on his lips. But the connotation was clear. He knew damn well what terrible things she was talking about. And to that there was nothing he could say.

  Layla sensed from his sudden silence that she was losing him.

  “Where’s 95th and Ashland?” she asked.

  “Jesus Christ,” Nick said, after his brain had processed her question. He shook his head. “Layla, that’s the South Side. Back of the Yards, if I’m not mistaken.”

  “Is that a bad thing?”

  Nick looked from the night sky to the long shadows that lay in wait outside the relative safety of the streetlights. He exhaled loudly. “Where’s my fucking gun?”

  Twenty

  Sandra had not once crossed Nick’s mind since he’d been in the city. Granted, both his psyche and his body had been recovering from the grievous invasion of the Black Tar Man, but it was only as Nick guided the Cougar south along Ashland Avenue towards one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods that he had considered it. Despite the fact that he and Sandra had not spoken in months, she had been the reason for his coming here. She had been the final destination—the only destination—in his psychological map. And now, he’d been here nearly a full hour before she’d even crossed his mind.

  Part of him wanted to pull the car over right then, plug her address into the dashboard GPS, and go to her. But it all seemed foolish now. Perhaps it had been the intervention of the key, or maybe it was the result of stress and mental trauma, but whatever the case, Nick could now see that part of him in a new light: the part that had yearned so badly to see the woman who’d put a stake in his heart. She was no good for him. That was a fact. She was hardly any good for herself. And that conclusion was not made in spite. It was a reality. From an outsider’s perspective, it was blatantly fucking obvious to see that she existed only to serve her own success. She had latched onto Nick and his fervent determination just long enough to ride his dream rainbow to the top. And once she’d securely gotten where she’d always wanted to be, she had dropped him to the ground like a sandbag tossed out of a hot air balloon.

  She had gotten just what she wanted from him.

  It was a familiar story. As he cast a glance at the former bartender sitting in the passenger seat biting her nails, Nick realized he and Sandra were more similar than he’d known. They were both confidence artists, just running different rackets.

  “I’m sorry,” Nick said.

  “For what?”

  “I’m sorry for dragging you into all of this.”

  Layla looked at him for a moment without saying anything. He could feel her eyes roving over his solemn face. She slowly nodded her head. “It’s all gonna work out.”

  And though the words were simple, he felt that she meant them, that she somehow believed everything was going to be alright. It didn’t really make him feel any better, but it was good to hear it. Even if he was able to somehow shake this devilish curse from his soul, there was almost no chance he wouldn’t see prison time for the misdeeds of his body snatcher. He felt pretty sure of that.

  Layla offered half of the skeleton key to him. He shook his head, paused, and pinched the end of it for a few seconds. Nothing happened, but he supposed that was probably a good thing.

  The road became increasingly worse the further south they traveled. The Cougar bounced over potholes as the blocks passed by in dozens. The journey took almost twenty minutes. The former Sears tower stood like a vast sentinel in the distance, a landmark above all landmarks, slowly fading from view on the left as they passed it. Through stoplights and across railroad tracks, the street continued onward, unraveling from faded brick buildings of business districts to single story houses and back again. Layla had never been to Chicago before. She had never witnessed such a sprawling continuity of urban development, and could not help but stare at the seemingly endless stretch of concrete jungle on this, just one of many of the city’s broad thoroughfares. Pedestrian traffic swelled and faded depending on the neighborhood. After they crossed a crumbling industrial bridge, the surroundings flattened out somewhat and Layla saw a huge sign demarcating the Union Stock Yards. It was the place made infamous by the late Upton Sinclair in his classic book
The Jungle. Layla had read part of it in a high school History class and remembered it now. It was disgusting, and some of the slaughterhouse imagery brought to mind Leonard Harrow, which was fitting. This was, after all, the famous domain of the South Side Skinner.

  After that, the thing Layla noticed first was the pedestrian traffic. Even at night, now approaching eight o’ clock, the foot traffic was high. The garbage in the gutters and on the sidewalks was noticeably more prevalent too. The cars that lined the streets were mostly beaters and the few storefronts that weren’t shuttered or vacant were dismal looking mini-marts and pawn shops that promised low rates for advance check cashing.

  Nick slowed the car at a stoplight and kept a sharp eye on his mirrors. At the curbside, his ride had drawn the attention of a few young black guys, all wearing matching white tee shirts with leather biker vests pulled over them. Patches with monogrammed logos of bright green dragons had been stitched carefully onto the backs.

  Layla shifted uncomfortably in her seat, looked back to Nick.

  “So, I, uh, don’t mean this to sound racist at all. Because I’m not a racist…”

  Nick nodded, eyeing one of the street corner kids who was pointing at the car and had begun to approach. He walked toward the car with one hand pointing and the other holding up the front of his pants.

  “Some people like to believe that segregation doesn’t exist anymore,” Nick said. “Those people have never been to Chicago. Most of the neighborhoods are pretty mixed, racially and socioeconomically. But the West and South Sides, not so much. There’s a lot of hate here, still. And on a lot of blocks, even the daylight won’t keep you from getting shot just for being white and in the wrong neighborhood. In the summertime, this square mile probably sees at least a hundred gunshots a day. Maybe two. And the cops are only called if somebody gets seriously fucked up. People die here every single day. Believe it.”

  Layla crossed her arms, letting out an audible sigh of relief when the light turned green and the car started moving again.

  “You spend a lot of time in the ghetto, or what?”

  “I spent a lot of time in this town because of my ex. And I like to just get in the car and drive. It’s amazing the things you can see in your own back yard if you’re willing to take a look.”

  “This place scares me.”

  “Just the facts of life,” Nick said. “Will it always be like this? I’d like to think not. But for now, this sure as shit isn’t Spokane.”

  Layla watched a mother in a Chicago Bulls jacket shuffle her two little daughters halfway across the street, waiting on the median for a semi-truck to pass. They darted the rest of the way across, where the mother stopped in front of a closed shoe store and began yelling in the faces of a pair of men hanging around in front of it.

  Nick watched the GPS, saw that it wanted him to take a right in three blocks.

  The building bearing the phone book address was a two-story, yellow brick job with wood-framed casement windows. Graffiti marked the door, but had been weathered down to almost nothing on the faded wood. There was no signage on the small standalone building. It was bordered on one side by an alley, and on the other by the thirty-foot-tall concrete pylon of an elevated train track.

  Nick pulled the Cougar in front of the place, parking at the curb. It was just around the corner from Ashland, a block to the east on 95th Street. There weren’t many other vehicles moving along this stretch, like there were on the main drag.

  There was shouting coming from somewhere nearby, followed by the raucous sound of laughter. And then more shouting. Layla watched as Nick inspected the pistol she’d retrieved for him earlier.

  He dropped the magazine out of the grip and looked at the notches on the side. Nine out of ten bullet indicators were visible. It was almost full, save for the one round he’d ejected on that roadside so far back in their journey. As he eyed the empty spot, he could not help but let his eyes drop to see the faint bulge in his pocket. It may have been his imagination, but Laura’s gift seemed to warm itself up against his leg as he gave it attention. Even though the thing called to him, urged him silently to put it where it rightfully belonged, he left it where it was.

  Nick slid the polymer magazine back into the pistol grip and gave it a shove until it clicked into place. He pulled the slide action rearward, and released it with a metallic snap, chambering a live round. He saw Layla’s shoulders jerk involuntarily at the suddenness of it, and gave her what he hoped was a reassuring nod.

  “Alright, let’s do this.”

  When he stepped out of the car, he waited for Layla to climb out, before manually depressing the automatic lock button on his door. They shut their doors and took to the sidewalk. Very obviously, Nick reached around slowly and tucked the pistol into the back of his pants.

  Layla zipped up her jacket, while Nick let his hang loose in the evening breeze.

  The air smelled of comfortable garbage, an incense familiar to any major city, but likely intensified by the fact that the alley beside them was full of dumpsters.

  Nick and Layla approached the door quickly, neither wanting to dawdle on the street for long. They reached the threshold, eyeing the battered and splintering layers of wood ply exposed on the heavy door.

  Nick knocked three times, firmly. He turned to inspect the street around them. Aside from a handful of teenagers across the street at the opposite end of the block, it was relatively quiet. A City of Chicago police camera sat stationed twenty feet in the air, marked by a bright blue signal light. It was housed in a bulletproof plastic box, further indication that the two of them needed to be inside as soon as possible.

  “The place is dark, Nick. I don’t see any lights on.”

  Indeed the windows were dark. But they were heavily curtained too, so Nick held onto hope. Again, the sound of shouts sounded from the other side of the block. They were a man’s this time.

  Nick exhaled deeply and knocked again. “Come on. Please open up.”

  He now saw a couple of young guys walking down their side of the block, their matching hoods and biker vests unmistakable clones of one another.

  “Fuck,” he said, pointing the young gang members out to Layla. The boys were passing a cigarette back and forth and laughing about something, but there was no indication they had seen Nick and Layla yet. An eighties-era Lincoln rounded the corner, passed the two guys, and slowed to a stop. The young gangsters ambled over to the car, where one of them leaned into the passenger window on his elbows.

  Nick knocked one last time, not taking his eyes from the bass-kicking lowrider a quarter of the way down the block.

  “Come on,” Nick said, turning around and taking Layla by the hand. “Let’s go. Hurry.”

  But they were too late. Nick saw a hand reach out of the car and point toward the stoop on which he and Layla stood. It pointed a finger right at him, and the heads of the two men on the street turned to look. The car’s radio went silent and the two pedestrians stepped away from the vehicle as it slowly pulled forward. The Lincoln came to a halt beside the Cougar. Its two occupants stared at Nick blankly from the front seat. Both were men in their twenties, wearing bleach white tee shirts and bandanas.

  The two on foot made their way to the base of the steps, watching Nick from the sidewalk. One wore a white bandana and a set of gold hoop earrings. The other had an unkempt matte of dreadlocks atop his head and wore a heavy frown.

  “The fuck you looking at, white boy?” came a voice from the Lincoln.

  “You in the wrong motherfuckin’ neighborhood to be sellin’ Mary Kay,” said the one with hoop earrings. “You and your fine little piece of ass there.”

  “I don’t know about that,” said the guy standing next to him. “She look like she in the right place at the right time, you know what I mean.” He flashed a pearly white smile and nodded at Layla.

  “We don’t want any trouble, guys,” said Nick. He was very aware of the bulky hunk of polymer and steel nuzzled against his lumbar vertebrae, but
made no movement toward it. “We’re just here on business.”

  “It’s after business hours, motherfucker,” said dreadlocks, all trace of smile gone. “And I’m the boss of this motherfuckin’ neighborhood. You got business, you get your narrow ass down here and take it up with me.”

  “Yeah,” said earrings. “Why don’t you climb on into my car, sugar. Let’s you and me go for a ride.” This was met by a long whistle from his compatriots in the Lincoln.

  Layla gripped Nick’s arm.

  “Let it go,” Nick said.

  “What?” she whispered.

  “I can’t grab my gun like that.”

  “Nick…”

  Dreadlocks took a moment to step back to the Lincoln. He reached inside and produced a snub-nosed pistol. He let it hang at his side, nonchalantly. “You ain’t got no choice in it, snowflake. Get your ass off that doorstep and come down here. Bring that bitch too. I ain’t gonna ask you again.”

  “I want you to run, Layla,” Nick said. He dropped the car keys into her open hand with what he hoped was a smooth movement. “No matter what happens I want you to run. Stay behind me. Circle the block, get back to the car, and when it’s clear get the fuck out of here.”

  “You listening, motherfucker?! Get your ass down here, now!”

  “I hear you,” Nick said calmly. He took a step down, slowly. Layla reluctantly forced herself to do the same. She could feel the men’s eyes on her and it was all she could do to keep from bursting into nervous tears.

  But then they paused. The sound of rusted hinges rent the otherwise still air. And a voice like matronly thunder spoke from behind them.

  “Nicholas Jenks, Marvin Lewis, Deshawn Washington, and Dee Dee Ellis. I see you all now. There’s still goodness left in most all of you. Get on back to your evening and leave these folk alone. You don’t want trouble.”

  “Fuck you, you old bitch,” spat the young man with dreadlocks. “Who you think you are? You think you safe all hid up in there, that ain’t nobody gonna get at you?”

  “Hey.” Earrings pleaded with his gang brother. His entire demeanor had changed at the presence of the middle-aged woman in the doorway behind Nick and Layla. All trace of menace left his posture, as if he had been reverted to a frightened ten-year-old afraid of getting in trouble by his mother. “That ain’t right, Dee Dee. Let’s get on out of here, y’hear? Forget about these honkies. They got business with the witch, I don’t wanna know about it.”