Concrete Underground by Moxie Mezcal (desktop ebook reader txt) 📖

bailout, and led her outside to the Porsche.

"Nice ride, where'd you get it?"

"Max," I said, plugging my phone into into the deck and switching it to MP3 mode. "He put me on the payroll."

From the speakers, the late great Lux Interior wailed: Well come on, little mama, let's tear this damn place up.

I drove us back to Lily's and brought Columbine up to speed on the blackmail plot, Lily's disappearance, and Max's job offer.

"So you sold your soul to the devil. Nice," she teased as we got out of the car. "So much for being all hardcore independent, anti-corporate, punk-as-fuck journalist."

"It's only selling out if I back down and don't publish whatever dirt I find on Max in the process," I countered.

"Just keep telling yourself that," she said in a playfully mocking way as she typed in the code to open Lily's gate.

"It's still so strange to think that Lily is mixed up in all this," she continued as we walked upstairs. "I mean, she's certainly got reason to hate Max, but she's not really the blackmail and conspiracy type. She's my friend and all, but frankly she just doesn't have enough imagination."

"Hold on, what did you mean about having reason to hate Max?" I asked.

She replied, "Well they had a pretty messy break-up. I don't think she ever really got over him."

"What? I didn't even know they dated."

"Dated? They were engaged," she squealed. "How did you not know that?"

I shrugged. "So what happened?"

"He was a beast to her. I'm not even sure why he proposed to her in the first place, other than just to torment her. The way I understand it is they had a fling, she got clingy, and he retaliated by stringing her along and slowly breaking her spirit. The amazing thing was that she was willing to put up with his abuse and his cheating, and in the end he still had to be the one to call it off. I was there when it happened. We were at a party, and someone asked if they had set a date for the wedding yet. He just shook his head and said, 'No, I don't think that's happening any more. Marriage just isn't my style.' Lily was standing right next to him; her jaw dropped."

"Fuck that's harsh," I marveled, shaking my head.

Once we got upstairs, we saw that the front door was hanging open with the wood around the knob splintered as if it had been kicked in.

We went inside and saw that the condo had literally been torn apart from top to bottom, the furniture overturned and disassembled, shelves emptied, and even the couch cushions had been hollowed out.

We found more of the same as we made our way through the rest of the rooms. Every kitchen cabinet and drawer had been tossed, every closet emptied. In the bathroom, they had emptied out all the bottles of shampoo, lotion, and all those millions of other unfathomable bottles women have. Inside her bedroom, the mattress had been ripped open and turned inside out. They even tore apart the stitching in her clothes to make sure nothing had been hidden inside the lining.

"Jesus, what happened to this place?" Columbine asked.

"Someone was in here looking for something," I replied.

"It must have been something tiny, like a needle in a haystack. Look," she said, holding up a Zippo lighter that had been siting beside an incense holder. It was taken apart, as if something might have been hidden inside.

"I doubt we'll find any clues as to where she's gone here," I grumbled. "But we might as well give it a shot. You check up here, I'll go look around in the back."

"What, you mean snoop around?" Columbine asked, and I remembered that this must be harder for her since Lily was her friend.

"Look, she could be in danger. We can't pass up any clues that would help us track her down before something bad happens." As soon as I said that, my mind involuntarily flashed to the image of Saint Anthony drenched in blood.

We split up, and I started giving Lily's bedroom a cursory search but wasn't really sure what I was looking for. The most interesting thing I found was her lingerie drawer, which had been yanked out of the dresser and dumped upside-down on the floor. I had to satisfy my male curiosity; she actually had some pretty hot stuff. I picked up a red lace corset, and underneath I found a framed photo of Max and a vibrator. I picked up the latter and opened the battery compartment, but there was no Ariadne Key in there.

"Eww, way too pervo," I heard Columbine say behind me.

I stood up, chuckling. "I'm just trying to be thorough."

She rolled her eyes distastefully. "Well if you're done, I've got something to show you that might actually be important."

She led me out the the bathroom and pointed out a puddle of shampoo on the floor. Someone had stepped in it, leaving a man's footprint with a Burberry imprint stamped from the sole of the shoe.

"Well that's definitely not Lily's," I said, holding my own foot up to the print to compare. "It's a little smaller than mine, so I'd guess a size nine or nine-and-a-half."

We were interrupted by the sound of the front door opening. We ran back out to the living room and found a middle aged man in a cheap suit standing just inside the doorway.

"What are you doing here?" he demanded.

"Fuck you, what are you doing here?" I shot back.

He reached into his jacket pocket and pulled out a police badge. "Detective Isaac Axelrod."

"Oops," Columbine mumbled behind me.

I took Axelrod by the arm and led him outside to the hallway. "Look, we were looking for our friend who lives here," I explained. She didn't show up to work, and she's not answering her phone. The door was busted in when we got here, so we came inside and found all this."

Axelrod nodded, but I got the distinct impression he hadn't listened to a word I said. "You don't know anything about any disturbance here last night, do you?"

I shook my head. "What kind of disturbance?"

"Not too sure. We got some reports from neighbors about some screams, excited voices, that kind of thing. Were you here last night?"

"No," I said.

Axelrod took down my contact information and told us we'd better clear out. I ran back inside to tell Columbine we were going. On my way out I made a detour to the restroom, intending to take a picture of the footprint with my phone. However, when I got there the shampoo puddle had been smeared, erasing the print.

As we got back into the Porsche, Lily's phone started ringing again. I looked down at the caller ID and saw it was the same number that tried to call earlier when I first found it.

I tossed the phone to Columbine. "Answer it."

She put it on speaker. "Hello?"

"Is Lily there?" a gruff male voice asked.

She looked at me questioningly. I toyed with the idea of having her impersonate Lily, but Lily had a very distinctive voice, high-pitched and shrill, that would be nearly impossible to duplicate. So instead, I shook my head.

"No, she's indisposed at the moment, but can I take a message?" Columbine chirped cheerfully while flashing me a what-the-hell look.

"Just tell her to call me back when she gets a chance," the man replied. "Jeff from the art department. Give her this number that I called from." Then he abruptly hung up.

Columbine handed me back the phone. "What was that about?"

"It's Lily's," I explained. "I found it in her office this morning. Look through her recent calls and see if anything jumps out at you."

"This seems like an invasion of privacy," she protested weakly, but scrolled through the numbers anyways. I watched her from the corner of my eye and noticed her stop scrolling abruptly, a flash of surprise in her eyes. It was gone in an instant, though, and she said, "I don't see anything really; they all look just like work related calls. She didn't exactly have a thriving social life."

I shrugged. "Was worth a shot. So, can I ask you a question?"

"Shoot," she replied with a smile.

"Why did you destroy the footprint?" She deflated visibly, sinking into the seat and turning away from me. I continued, "You know whose shoe that was, don't you?"

"I know someone who wears Burberry shoes in a size nine," she said. "That doesn't necessarily mean anything."

"Who?" I pressed.

"My father," she said.

"Oh," I muttered, practically able to taste the salty rank sweat of my foot in my mouth. "It's a fairly common shoe size, could be a coincidence."

Columbine tried to smile, but the shape her lips ended up in just looked spiteful and sour. She held up the phone for me to see and tapped the screen. "See this number? That's my father's house. She had a dozen calls from there in the past two weeks. You think that's a coincidence?"

A brief but uncomfortable silence passed between us, which Columbine finally broke by saying, "I'm going to go talk to him, ask him what's going on."

"You don't have to do that," I objected.

She nodded her head resolutely. "Look, it's possible he's innocent, but there's got to be a reason he's calling her so much. Maybe he has some idea where she went."

"Fine," I conceded. "Just be careful."

17. Invisible Ink

After dropping off Columbine, I headed over to the Casbah and settled in at the bar to wait for Nick.

"Gotta hit the head, Mags," I said upon entering and dashed straight to the bathroom. "But I expect you to have a double waiting for me when I get out.

A couple minutes later, I was settling in at the bar and tossing back the glass Maggie had left sitting at my usual spot.

"When are you guys gonna get that condom dispenser fixed?" I asked, jerking my thumb back towards the bathrooms as Maggie refilled my glass.

She chuckled. "Like you need to worry about that. You can't get your sock pregnant, honey."

"Ooh, I think I felt that one from all the way over here," Nick called out from the front door. He pretended to wince in pain at Maggie's barb as he walked up to the bar, but the balled fist in front of his mouth didn't do anything to hide how much it made him smile.

He hopped up on the stool beside me and swung his hand like he was going to pat me on the back, but then sharply jerked it up and landed a resounding slap on the back of my head.

"Ow, what the fuck?"

He stuck his index finger right in my face. "Your little performance today got me in a lot of trouble. You need to tone your shit down. Why are you so bent on driving away the few people left who actually still give a shit about you?"

I shrugged. "Look, I know sometimes I can go over the line. And