Tom Piccirilli - The Last Deep Breath

“I already know. It was a bit part on a sit-com. It aired a few weeks back. I saw it. She was pretty good. But she’d already gotten a reputation as someone who wouldn’t show up on time and might not show up at all. Once you’ve got that rep, you’re through.”

It was practically word for word what Harvey had told him. “You knew she was a junkie.”

“Everyone did. And not a coke fiend or a pill popper. Those we know how to handle. But you get a meth-head or a crack-head or a needle shooter, and it’s all over.”

“Where did she buy her product?”

“Product?”

“The H. The heroin.”

“How the hell should I know?”

He’d crossed the country just so he could learn almost nothing.

He left the Chevelle on the street and started walking with no idea of where he was going. He didn’t have an apartment anymore. He would have to get a hotel room or crash with T.S. He could still feel the dust of the desert stuck in his lungs. He coughed and couldn’t get rid of it. Grey looked up and he was back at Premium Friends.

He stepped in and the Asian madam immediately barked something. She had a good eye and remembered him from three months ago when he’d stirred trouble. The two bouncers moved in but they did it slowly, with a real wariness because there were some other johns moving in and out of the parlor room where the girls were lined up and drinking cocktails. Grey tried to smile pleasantly but could guess he was probably only grimacing.

A strange sense of vertigo hit him. His head was dizzy but his legs didn’t waver. He felt rooted and light on his feet as he moved to the first bouncer, spun, and brought an elbow up high to the no-neck’s temple. The guy dropped like a dead rhino. The madam yawped again and the second bouncer unsnapped two buttons on his jacket and reached inside a shoulder holster for what looked like a snub .38. Grey didn’t give him time to pull it. He danced over, head still fogged and kind of whirling, lashed out and punched the prick in the throat. It was a cheap move he’d learned in the Army, but an effective one. The guy went to his knees choking. Grey reached in and grabbed the .38, then clipped him on the back of the head with the barrel. A gout of hair, scalp, and blood flew through the air and the guy fell flat on his face and didn’t stir.

The beautiful thing about New York is no one ever wants to get involved. The girls fled to the back rooms. The johns bolted out the door. No one was going to call the cops. Grey grabbed the madam and held her up against the front counter where she welcomed clients.

His head cleared. He’d had the answer the whole time but just didn’t know it.

All that had been in Ellie’s purse that day was the heroin, the needle, and the business card.

Ellie hadn’t worked here.

This was where she scored her heroin.

If you want to find a junkie, go to a drug dealer.

He asked the woman, “Who runs this place?”

She tightened up, shut her eyes, hugged her elbows. “I don’t know. I don’t know anything.”

“You’re in a position of responsibility. I think you do know something.”

“No no. I just set up the dates. That’s all.”

“Open your eyes.”

“No no.”

“Open.” She squinted at him. “You report to someone. I would like to know who that someone is.”

“No, no report.”

“Yes, report. Get him on the phone.”

“No, no phone.”

”I’m really enjoying our talk,” he said. “But seriously, it’s time to get the show on the road, lady.” He cocked the .38 and held it up to her forehead. “Give me a name.”

The gun alone didn’t scare her, but she took a look into Grey’s face, saw that he’d come to the end of his road and played out his entire string, and that was enough. She whispered something.

“Again,” Grey prompted.

“Mr. Jericho.”

“Full name.”

“Benson Jericho.”

“And where is he at the moment?”

A silky voice came from behind Grey. “I’m right here.”

Grey turned.

He thought, Is this the end? Am I there yet? Is Ellie around the next corner?

He took two steps forward and stood practically toe to toe with Jericho. The man was younger than might be expected. He didn’t look like a whoremaster and drug dealer. At this level it was all big business, and he projected the cultivated persona and attitude of the wealthy and cosmopolitan businessman. Refined with expensive tastes. Silk suit to go with the voice.

Grey took a breath. Jericho’s cologne, face cream, exfoliates, and hair product all smelled like money.

He thought, This man has an enormous backstory. This is the kind of role a serious actor could set his teeth into. Jericho. You’d run the lines and think off the page, like Kendra had said. No matter what the dialogue was you had to figure out, Did he hate his father? Was he bullied as a child? Was he allergic to strawberries. Jericho. Grey looked and saw him flayed open, his whole life leaking out. When he was a kid his old man drilled holes in bowling balls. Looked like Jericho was going to wax lanes his entire life, but raised himself from some one stoplight town and managed to swing a serious scholarship to a prestigious school. Not Ivy League but close. Started off selling weed but quickly moved up to the harder stuff, had a whole network in place by the time he was nineteen. Had the charm to pimp a few of the cheerleaders at school, made money with Internet amateur porn. Made a bundle and moved to the city, put the girls up in a nice place and gave it a five-star name. Premium Friends. Didn’t really need to get his hands dirty except on a few occasions. At least one girl probably thought she was getting cheated and threatened to go to the cops. Jericho cuffed her to the bed and tortured her with pressure points, raped her, and promised to kill her parents if she ever said anything. She fell back in line and was probably one of the happiest whores in the place. The heroin came in from the Asian woman’s family somewhere in Thailand. If anything ever went wrong he was at least four connections away from customs. Nothing ever stuck to him. He thought of himself as a gentleman bandit, an entrepreneur of pleasure and desire.

Grey kept the gun pointed directly at Jericho’s belly.

“You don’t need that,” Jericho said. “Give it to me.”

“Eva Rains. Ellie. Where is my sister?”

“I’ve been waiting for you,” Jericho said. “I’ll take you to her.”

Maybe one of the bouncers doubled as a chauffeur because Jericho drove his own Mercedes over to a hospital on the Upper West Side. Grey had given him the gun and followed without another word and they’d both kept silent the entire ride uptown. As they pulled in to the medical center Grey swallowed down a groan.

Pax had been right. Grey had gone about this entire thing backward. He should’ve checked the morgue and the hospitals the day that Ellie sneaked from his bed. But he’d been so blinded with his need to find her that he’d gone out of his way not to discover the truth.

“Are you Pax or Grey?” Jericho asked.

“Grey.”

“She talked a lot about both of you. You’re the one she ran to.”

Grey said nothing. He thought, What could she have said? She hadn’t seen either of us in more than ten years. Would she just tell the same old stories of the abuse they’d suffered at the hands of the Wagners? He had questions to ask but couldn’t seem to quite form them.

They parked and walked into the building and Jericho nodded and said hello to a nurse working the front desk. He’d been here plenty of times before. They knew him on sight and gave him sweet smiles.

Grey followed, the lights of the corridor burning as brightly as the desert sun. He had to shade his eyes.