Mike Faricy - Russian Roulette

“Hey, I could be wrong, maybe, but it sure seemed that way. You should probably give her a call? Your client.”

After leaving Bon Vie and promising Amy I wouldn’t return for a while during their lunch hour, I phoned Kerri. Or at least I tried to.

The phone rang three times, then flipped into an official message center.

“The number you have reached, six five one, blah, blah, blah, has been disconnected. No further information is available at this time.”

I phoned Aaron, and as usual left a message.

“Aaron, Dev. Hey I’m among the walking wounded today. I’ve got a couple of questions I thought you might be able to help me on. Give me a call when it’s convenient, thanks.”

He phoned back right away. Right away for Aaron, meaning the same day.

“So let me guess, you’ve taken it upon yourself to find out who tried to put a bullet into your fat head, and you’ve run into a dead-end or two.”

“Thanks for returning my call. Yeah, sort of. How’d you know?”

“Well, for starters, the list of people who know you and don’t want to shoot you would probably be a lot shorter than the ones who do. Then there’s the matter of a brief, and I emphasize brief, conversation I had with Detective Crowley in homicide. He assured me in no uncertain terms that you were of no help. I think ‘worthless fuck’ was the actual description. I, of course, was unable to disagree.”

“Crowley, that was his name?” I said making a mental note. “To tell you the truth that whole interview is just sort of a hazy blur.”

“Why would it be different than the rest of your life? What do you need?”

“I’m not sure. I tried to phone my client earlier in the day…”

“Kerri Mathias?”

“Yeah, the number I have for her has been disconnected.”

“And this is news?” Aaron said sounding genuinely surprised at my reaction.

“Ahh, well, I don’t know, I thought I could at least get in touch with her. She is my client after all.”

“Yeah, well you’re the great super sleuth, find her.”

“Which is why I called you.”

“I’ve already checked, nothing. Not so much as a driver’s license for a Kerri Mathias, at least in Minnesota.”

“Property records, auto, nothing?”

“Oh Jesus Dev, let me just drop everything and look for your client. Come on. You know if you’d spring for an office instead of conducting business out of a half dozen bars maybe you’d meet a better class of client, at least someone who was occasionally straight with you. The way you describe this deal, it almost sounds like she gave you a roll in the hay for a down payment.”

“Well,” I paused.

“Oh man, I knew it.”

“Okay, okay I get it, Aaron. You’ve got a point. Look, let me just say you didn’t see the woman, okay. And then there’s the matter of a couple of adult beverages.”

“You idiot.”

“Point taken.”

“So what do you want, not that I’m agreeing to help?” Aaron said.

“Well, for starters, I’d like to go through your photo books, see if I come across Kerri, or maybe the sister.”

“Are you sure you’d recognize them? You know they still have their clothes on in all our mug shots.”

“I’ll do my best.”

“I’m busy now, look, come on down tomorrow morning around ten-thirty. It’ll take a good two hours to go through our books, the Vice stuff. I’ll round up what I can on your pals the Lee-Dee boys. Maybe we’ll get lucky. By the way, bring your wallet, you’re buying lunch.”

The following morning Aaron popped his head out into the hallway where I was waiting.

“I’m on something right now, take a seat for about fifteen minutes,” he said then quickly ducked back into the office area. There was nowhere to sit in the hallway so I leaned against the wall for twenty-five minutes until I thought my head would explode from the blinking fluorescent light overhead. I fled back down to the main floor in search of the cafeteria or at least a machine with lousy coffee. My luck held. I found the cafeteria and the coffee was lousy. I sat by myself at a table and stared absently out the window at a nondescript brick wall across the street. Twenty minutes later Aaron called to me from the doorway.

“Didn’t I tell you to wait for me upstairs?”

“You did, sort of, actually you told me it would be about fifteen minutes and to take a seat, that was an hour ago. There was nowhere to sit, unless I used the floor, and I shouldn’t have to remind you I’m still recovering from my wound. Besides, I always like to have some coffee here so that any cup I have, anywhere, for the rest of the week tastes better than this rotgut.”

“Yeah, you’re braver than I am,” he said shaking his head at my coffee cup.

We rode a crowded elevator up three floors in silence. Walked down the hallway toward the still-blinking fluorescent light, then turned and entered a large room of cubicles. Aaron’s office was in a distant corner.

His desk was piled with files, his computer hidden beneath yellow and pink post-it notes. A family photo of his parents and siblings, two brothers and three sisters from about 1995 hung on the wall.

“Make yourself comfortable, toss those files on the floor,” Aaron directed. He pointed to a government-issue gray vinyl and chrome steel chair opposite his desk that looked like it been there since the Korean War.

“I got three books of shots for you to go through, take your time, see if anything clicks. You want a water or something instead of that battery acid you’re drinking?” He asked, pushing three large albums across the desk toward me.

I’m aware that having a mug shot taken isn’t quite like the photo portrait experience. That aside, I was examining the images of a lot of really rough-looking women. Most of them had been booked on prostitution or solicitation charges. The obvious question was who would be desperate enough to pay these women in the first place? The hand-in-glove combination of no education and poverty seemed a likely component in their background. A lot of health and life-style issues came across. Prime among them alcohol and chemical abuse. The occasional black eye, missing teeth, battered face. A number of identifying characteristics consisted of stabbing scars, bullet wounds, and homemade tattoos with misspelled words.

So much for the fairy tale of erotic escorts in million-dollar condos or making all sorts of money just lying on your back enjoying yourself. The vast majority of the women I was looking at were old before their time. If life hadn’t already spit them out, they were certainly being chewed on.

I found no one remotely resembling redheaded Nikki Mathias, nor her sister, Kerri. After an hour and a half I closed the third and final album, then returned to the second album where I had marked a page.

I opened the album and stared at three images of the same black woman. Her skin seemed to be the color of coffee with the slightest bit of cream. Her physical description listed among other things, a silver front tooth and a heart-shaped, homemade tattoo on her left breast. The tattoo was described as “Homemade, of a bluish ink in the shape of a heart with the initials DB + DB”. he sported what I assumed was a chemically induced grin, her silver tooth prominent along with an eighth-inch gap between her front teeth. Her name was listed as Da’nita Bell and I guessed she might hiss as she pronounced certain words and just maybe called me Devil the last two times I spoke with her on the phone.

“What about this woman?” I asked turning the album around so Aaron could see who I was talking about.

“That’s Kerri, your client?” he looked at me more shocked than surprised.