Adieu warm sunshine, p.5
Adieu Warm Sunshine, page 5
"Ask a reporter," Vash typed.
Sunny did one better. She Googled.
"I don't think that's a thing," she typed.
"Maybe not," he said behind her.
She rolled her head back and squinted at him.
"Hello to you, too," he said.
"I'm making a list."
He sat down in an office chair beside her and studied her list. "Are you sure it's not a crazed fan?"
"I mean, the odds are slim. What are the general criminal motivations?"
"Money, bad blood, anger, greed. That's not how it works."
"Broken Windows theory?" she said, just to jab him.
"Fuck that shit. No. It could be anything from poor diet to a complex societal system. Want a lecture from my Criminology professor?"
She shook her head and tapped her list with a pen.
Vash asked, “Besides, why do you think it's crime? What are the other types of missing persons?"
"Tell me, Mr. B. A. Criminal Justice."
He took her pen and wrote down "Accident" and circled it. "There."
"Like a car accident? Being hit by a bus? Falling down a man hole?"
"Sure. Tripping and hitting her head."
"But we've canvassed the hospitals. No one's checked in as her. Or looked like her."
"So as time progresses, the chance that it was an accident decreases." He drew a dipping curve on her paper, taking up a lot of space. She frowned.
He wrote "Runaway."
She stretched in her chair but didn't say anything.
"That's the prevailing theory," he said.
"I know."
"That she just got up and left."
"I know."
"Like adults do."
She exhaled forcefully.
"Substance abuse is a major reason."
"Jesus, Vash, I know."
"We have to talk through this. It might help us find her."
"We don't know anything about her home life."
"But we know she's working a low-wage job in an expensive city with stifling roommates, a poor work environment, and possibly a drug habit. She could be halfway to California by now."
Sunny stabbed the words Runaway and Accident back and forth, leaving little dots. Satisfying little dots and thuds against the desk.
"All of these could be motivation," she said, running down the list again.
"A crazed fan or the mafia or anyone could have made her take a long walk one day."
"Off a short pier. I know."
"It happens all the time."
Sunny closed her eyes.
Vash said, "It can even be triggered by change in the environment."
"Happier times that confront a reality. Or overstimulate. Or shatter something. Expectations."
"Sure." Vash touched her shoulder. She looked over at him. "But don't you think you're being a little arrogant there?"
"So, statistically, Runaway is most likely."
"Followed by Accident."
"But in our case, we don't think so," Sunny said. "So what's the most statistically unlikely?"
He pursed his lips.
"Don't look at me."
"What's your whole job?" he asked.
"Robbery Division."
"Your other job."
"Banker."
"Seriously? Banker?"
"Investment banker. Do you need me to look at your portfolio?"
"Can you spell 'portfolio'?"
"Can you spell 'kiss my ass'?" But she relented and wrote down the least likely answer of all of them. "Terrorist."
"Now we're getting somewhere," Vash said.
"Yes, into the realm of stupidity. Did you notice she's white?"
"Like a terrorist can't be white," he said.
"And young."
"Prime age, statistically speaking."
"We said the statistics were wrong."
"Fine. She's white, young, and presumably liberal-leaning."
"Presumably. We saw her Facebook."
"Jewish?" Vash asked.
"I don't think so."
"Vegan?"
"Definitely not."
"Find any literature in her apartment?" Vash asked.
"Nope. But I suppose I could ask the roommates again."
"If she was making bombs in the living room, they would probably know."
"Wouldn't you?" she asked.
Vash grinned. He got up and opened Pamela's paper file. "I have the full list right here. We've ruled out domestic abduction, disability, misadventure, dementia, human trafficking, suicide, and... Yes, it's on here. White slavery."
"Different than human trafficking?"
Vash squinted. "Apparently that's migrant-related."
Sunny shrugged.
"Shouldn't you know about smuggling people? What's your specialty?"
"Iran."
"Exactly."
She rolled her eyes. "Go on."
"So we have joining a cult, getting a better job, fleeing genocide, or seizure by government officials without due process."
"All of those sound stupid, Vash."
"So maybe she was randomly kidnapped."
Haunting visions surfaced again of Pamela tied up, scared, and alone. She tried to clear them. "If we had seized her, wouldn't we have known?"
"You tell me. We checked all the booking stations in the five boroughs and Jersey."
"I'll 'reach out to my contacts.'" She made air quotes.
"You do that."
"What will you do?"
"I'll work on some open cases. Just in case someone, you know, asks what we're doing."
She stuck out her tongue.
He flicked her off.
They leaned over their computers and got to work.
Chapter Four
Pamela screamed when they took her. She screamed and screamed, but no one came. No neighbors heard. They had to have heard. See something, say something. All that about Kitty Genovese had been debunked long ago. And still no one came to save her.
They gagged her with duct tape and put a hood over her head, just like in the movies. They took her purse, which was oddly comforting. To have her things with her.
She felt them drag her outside, down the stairs, which she walked down—not to be compliant but to keep her ankles from hurting. And then down further than she'd been before, into the basement, the smell wet and musty, and then somewhere else. She was tired of walking. Then the smell of concrete. A parking garage. She hadn't known there was a parking garage so close.
They put her into a car, or an SUV, and yanked off the duct tape and kept her eyes covered.
She cried.
#
Sickness came. Churning, spinning nausea, Pamela's stomach twisting even though she pressed it with her handcuffed hands. She vomited. It didn't help. Up and down, round and round.
A boat. A ferry? Were they taking her to Staten Island? Somewhere to dump her in the sea? She couldn't cry, her tears expended, her stomach too tight.
Pain in her arm. A needle that was gone by the time she jerked away. The nausea subsided.
The rocking continued. Gentle now. Up and down.
Almost pleasant.
She screamed. And screamed.
No one stopped her.
That was terrifying.
#
The hood was removed. She blinked against the light above and found herself in a tiny, narrow room, like an airport bathroom, handcuffed to the wall, sitting in a folding chair.
A man in a suit stood in front of her. He was blurry. She kept blinking.
"Are you the cops?" she asked.
The man stared at her.
"Am I under arrest? What did I do?"
He didn't say anything.
She searched her mind for sins, for crime. It had to be the heroin.
"Look, I never sold. Just bought."
"Mexican mud," he said, and she nearly sobbed with relief that he spoke.
"Yeah." She coughed against the lump in her throat.
"Who's your dealer?" he asked.
"If I tell you, do I get to go?"
He raised his eyebrows.
The rocking continued. They were still on a boat. They could turn around and take her home.
"Is that it? That's all you want?"
"Do you frequent Pepper's Bodega?"
"I, uh, frequent many bodegas. And Duane Reedes. Do they all have names?"
"This one is at 142nd."
"I've never been up on 142nd. Except in passing."
"You spend a lot of time in Brooklyn?"
"Where I live."
The man nodded. "And Manhattan."
"Where I work."
"And you have access to Times Square."
"Everyone has fucking access to Times Square. Don't you watch New Year’s?" Fear made her babble. If she could just say the right combination of words, she'd unlock the door.
"Do you go downtown on New Year’s?"
"How is this relevant? No, I don't. I did maybe once. It sucked."
The man nodded. "Who is your dealer?"
Pamela had a cold thought. If she told them her dealer, then they would kill her.
"Who are you?" she asked.
"You can call me Julien."
"Who do you work for?"
He stared down at her.
"I buy drugs from my stage manager, Derek Little."
"Thank you for confirming that, Ms. Costis. We appreciate truthfulness."
"You knew? Well, fuck you, then. Can I go?"
Julien stood up. "I'll make a note that the suspect is cooperative. Someone will take you to your room."
"What room? What?"
He went through a door and disappeared.
She pulled at her handcuffs. They were on tight. She leaned against the wall and cried again until she had to pee. Then she began to scream.
#
A young woman—her age, blonde, green-eyed—in a uniform with no patches, asked her questions as she was put into a bedroom that had a bathroom off to the side, an actual bed, and not much else. She was on a yacht, she decided.
"Are you a vegetarian?" the woman asked.
"What? No," Pamela said.
"Any dietary restrictions?"
"No dairy." Did they actually care?
"Cheese?"
"No dairy."
"Okay. Undress and change into these clothes." The woman indicated clothes on the bed.
"No."
"Change into clean clothes when you want to, then. There they are."
"Don't I get a phone call?"
"Do you have a lawyer?"
"No."
The woman looked skeptically at her.
Pamela felt herself blushing. Faint rage was all she was capable of. Terror and screams had drained from her. But the urge to attack this woman, to strangle her and kill her and try to escape, was overwhelming. She clenched her fists.
"If you are deemed to be an enemy combatant or a prisoner of war, you will be assigned counsel and appear before a judge at that time."
"What am I now?"
"You are a person of interest in an ongoing investigation."
"What ongoing investigation?"
"Julien can tell you more."
"Fuck Julien."
"You'll meet with him again in the morning." The woman left the little room and then shut the door and locked it from the outside.
"Where am I?" Pamela asked. "Am I even near New York?"
No one was there.
Pamela sat on the edge of the bed and didn't think about anything at all. She let her mind go blank, her body fall into stupor.
The woman brought food without saying anything. A bologna sandwich, no cheese, no mayonnaise. A packet of mustard on the side. An apple, a banana, and two chocolate chip cookies, along with a bottle of water and a can of coke.
"Interesting," she said. Like she was a documentarian.
She ate because she was starving, because she was intrigued to see if she'd be poisoned, if that was preferable to whatever hell they'd placed her in, because she wanted to be strong for her escape. Women on TV had to escape these situations on their own—no man, at least, was going to rescue her. But she knew a cop...
Was Sunny in on it? Pamela stretched out on the bed, looked at the painted ceiling. They had had such a great time; Sunny seemed to have had as much of a sense of confused wonder as she. But how did Sunny know to pick her up?
Their eyes had met.
They had made love.
They had even argued at 3:00 in the morning.
"What are you going to do when you aren't a dancer anymore?" Sunny asked.
"Hm?" Pamela had been nuzzling Sunny's stomach in a half-doze, exhausted and limbless.
"Well, you can't be a dancer forever. Do you have a degree?"
"Wait. Hold up." Pamela lifted her head and glowered. "Look, Mom. I get these questions all the time."
"And?"
"And I'm a dancer. That's what I am. When I get hurt, when I get old, I won't be a dancer anymore, but that's what I am now."
"Have you thought about teaching dance?"
"Shut up. Just shut up."
"I'm just worried—"
"Everybody's fucking worried," Pamela said. "I have the best job on the planet right now. Let me at least enjoy it for a little bit."
Sunny was silent for a moment. "Maybe we're all just jealous."
"Yeah?"
"You should be more like us. Losers."
Pamela grinned. "I'm a winner."
"Prove it."
Pamela lowered her head and all annoyances were soon forgotten.
"I'm just a dancer," Pamela said out loud to anyone who was listening.
The cramps and runs to the bathroom that started, paired with listlessness and despair, soon betrayed her. She wasn't just a dancer. She was a junkie. They had caught her and put her in a cage.
#
Sunny sat in Starbucks, typing on her iPad, ignoring the looks of people who wanted her chair. She took a sip of her coffee. Warm and filled with chocolate, perfect for November in New York City. Bryant Park was a block away. Too cold to sit out there, though. Not like she was getting any younger.
Vash leaned his elbows on the table. "Hey there."
"How the fuck did you find me?"
"You're Geotagged on that thing," he said, pointing to the laptop.
"Oh, right."
"Only when you're on official police business." He peered at the screen. "You spelled 38 special wrong."
"Shut up. Why are you here?"
He glanced around furtively and then lowered his voice. "I pulled Pamela Costis."
Her heart leapt into her throat. "Yeah?"
"Someone filed a missing persons report on her. Brie somebody. But—" he paused.
"Yeah? I read the report, I talked to Brie."
"Fine then. You know it was quashed?" he asked.
"What?"
"Someone quashed the missing persons report. It didn't go to Missing Persons. No BOLO. No investigation."
"Who?"
"Homeland Security," he whispered.
"Why?"
"I don't fucking know why, Sunny."
She gripped her coffee with a trembling hand.
"Do you know why?" he asked.
"No idea."
"I believe you."
"Why do I care if you believe me?" she asked.
"Because you're a fucking spook, Darling. Did you kill her and hide the body?"
"No! Goddamnit. Don't call me that."
He pulled out a folded sheet of paper. "Here's all that's left in the system."
"Thanks." Sunny said. She took it but didn't open it.
"Hey, Sunny, remember our conversation? All that morality bullshit?"
"Yeah?"
"I think you should find her."
"Really?"
"No one else is."
Sunny looked up from her laptop. Vash looked gray and gaunt. He met her gaze, hesitantly.
"Vash, I didn't do anything to her. I swear."
"But how many others—"
"She's just a dancer. On Broadway, for fuck's sake. She's just a dancer."
"How many of them were just something?" he asked. "Before they were nothing at all."
"You think there's some goddamn conspiracy? Even after knowing me for so long?"
Vash put his hand over hers on the cup. "I look the other way, Darling. I do it for you. Because I think it's funny. Because I might get shot if I don't. But someone's getting hurt this time." He looked at the paper. "Someone real. Going by your words, someone innocent."
Sunny swallowed.
Vash shook his head and stepped back. "I never thought it would be you that got hurt."
"Vash. Khan. Come on. I have your back."
"Have everyone's back."
#
Vash shaved his chest in the shower, the water sluicing through the shaving cream, the razor leaving long, clean marks. When he was done he trimmed his armpit hair and his pubes with an electric wet shaver, and then he rinsed again and got out of the shower.
His feet on the bathroom mat, he shaved his face then used oatmeal moisturizer. All of it helped to overcome the fact that he was brown when he tried to pick up women. Even brown women preferred white men, preferably in suits, with buzz-cuts, who looked wealthy and virile. Vash tried to look rich at least for the night, before they discovered he was a cop.
He would have already convinced them that he was different, that he wore a suit to work, and it would take them a long time to realize that he cared about the job most of all. The job was his family legacy. Getting out of a corrupt system in Kashmir to a less-corrupt-might-as-well-be-perfect New York City mattered to his good soul, which had a lot to make up for.
Being an only child didn't help, either. He needed to find a nice girl, and he needed to care about her. It seemed impossible, he mused, strapping on his fake Rolex. But it seemed like Darling had done it. If she could, anybody could.
He certainly judged her as less morally worthy than he. Yet he thanked her for taking the harder jobs, for getting her hands more dirty, for getting the work that he wanted done when he couldn't do them himself. They made for great partners, which made him feel guilty yet happy at the same time. Maybe she was the reason he couldn't land a good woman.
His phone vibrated, and he picked it up off the towel.
"Ready for the big lights?" Sunny had texted.
"More than ever," he replied.
They were going to see Lodoïska together, and then they were going to interrogate the shit out of Derek Little.
And then Vash, if he played his cards right, was going to go home with his own dancer.
