It was one of those wild nights in late November. The driving rain hammered the roof of the Maxima. The wipers banged back and forth smearing water across the windshield: a mini tsunami that swished first one way and then the other. I leaned forward over the wheel and squinted out into the blackness, struggling desperately to keep the car on the road.
Chattanooga in winter is always a nightmare, but this was a particularly hard storm and only the lightning that lit up the road every now and then provided any relief from the strain of driving in such a mess. I should have had the wipers replaced months ago, but I say that every time there’s a storm.
The car slowed, veered to the right as it hit deep water.
I’d be better off in a frickin’ boat, I thought, as I dragged the car back into the center of the road.
The white lines on the side of the road were inundated, six inches under water. The broken white line at the center appeared and disappeared with each gust. I should have pulled over and waited it out, but patience never was my forte. Anyway, it wasn’t my first time driving that route; I’d driven it so many times I could do it with my eyes closed... Sure you can, you dopey SOB.
Any other time in such weather I’d have taken a cab, or an Uber, but there was a nurse’s convention in town and availability, like the visibility, was zero. Those nurses have no problems dealing with people with their guts spilling out, but ask ’em to walk a city block in the rain, even with an umbrella, and they’d laugh at you. Besides, the cabbies would much rather grab those fares than my grumpy ass. Oh yeah, I’d called, but the dispatcher told me the wait would be at least an hour and a half before they could get to me. Screw that. As I said, I don’t have that kind of patience.
A small branch splatted across the windshield, startling me enough to make me swerve a little; again, the tires slammed into the deep water at the side of the road, slowing the car, dragging it even further to the right as I fought the wheel. I let up on the gas and dragged the heavy car back onto the center of the road. It was no weather to be driving and I should have known better, told Ronnie, “No, not tonight.”
I’d been having a quiet night all to myself. The condo was warm and dry, and that’s where I should have stayed. But my curiosity had gotten the better of me.
I had my feet up on the coffee table, NCIS on the TV, a double-decker burger with fries from Maxi’s half eaten, and a glass of Heineken still untouched when my iPhone buzzed.
I picked it up, flipped the lock screen, and growled, “Yeah, Ronnie, what do you want?”
“Harry, you need get down here—”
“Whoa!” I interrupted him. “What’s up?”
“It’s poker night, damn it, and we need another player, and you’re it.”
Ronnie Hall was a long-time friend of mine. I’d known him for more than sixteen years, since before he’d gotten out of high school. He’s smart, really smart. He won a scholarship to the London School of Economics where he earned a master’s degree in finance and his idea of putting that education to good use was… Well, there were few things Ronnie loved more than making money, especially when it involved playing poker.
“I'm at the Sorbonne,” he said. “Come on.”
I groaned. Ronnie went to the Sorbonne every Wednesday hoping for a hot game and trying to hustle whatever new kid walked through the door looking for a challenge. Sad thing is, he’s not that good. I do enjoy watching him get his ass handed to him, sometimes.
The Sorbonne? It’s not what you think. It’s a classy name for a sleazy “night club,” and I call it that with deep reservations. It is, in fact, a less than lovely den of ill repute, the last refuge of every low life that can afford the price of a watered drink… and for many of Chattanooga’s fashionable elite who enjoy slumming and… even mingling—yeah, that’s my polite way of saying it.
The joint, to use the vernacular of the forties—not that I’m old enough to remember such verbiage; but I do watch a lot of movies—is owned by one Benny Hinkle, a fat little bastard who would steal the watch from your wrist without you ever knowing it was gone.
“Nah, I don’t think so, Ronnie. Not tonight. It’s storming and—”
“Awe come on, Harry. There are new faces at the table but there aren’t enough people to play. I need you, man.”
“What about Laura?”
“No, it’s busy in here tonight, so she’s working; must be the weather. Come on, Harry. These two kids are guaranteed to be easy marks.”
It was always hard to resist poker night with Ronnie. He’s a funny guy, and fun to watch. The Sorbonne? Yeah, I even enjoyed that too. I’d spent many a night there working the job and even though the music was loud and inevitably awful and the drinks even worse, I somehow felt at home there. Yeah, I know: crazy, but true... And I still spend more time there than I probably should. My excuse? I like to keep up with what’s going on in this fair city’s underworld, and there’s no place I know where I can do that better than the Sorbonne, which is probably why I gave in to Ronnie’s plea that dark and stormy night.
Anyway, Wednesdays always seemed to draw in a certain type of street mongrel, the ones who have nothing better to do on a Thursday morning than sleep in after a night of causing trouble and, even though I was no longer a cop, it was, as I said, my habit to keep an eye on them.
My name, by the way, is Harry Starke. Up until a couple of months earlier I’d been a cop, a sergeant homicide detective for the Chattanooga PD, and a damn good one, even if I do say so myself. So what happened? Well I quit. Why did I quit? A number of reasons… the main one being one too many run-ins with the Chief of Police, a martinet named Wesley Johnston; an arrogant SOB if ever there was one.
Another reason: I never was much of team player, and office politics… you can have ’em. And besides, it wasn’t like I needed the money so, finally, I told him to take his job and shove it... More than ten years on the job, a Master’s degree in Forensic Psychology from Fairleigh Dickinson, and once again I was at a loose end... Not!
The shadow crossed in front of the car so fast I didn’t have time to stop. I hit the brakes hard and swerved into the mud at the side of the road.
Looking out through the deluge it was difficult to make out the figure coming towards the driver’s window, but as it came closer I could see it was a girl, just a kid.
Instinctively, my hand went for my gun and rested on the grip as she approached. Her hair, dark, bobbed, was plastered to her head and face. The raccoon eye shadow smeared above her eyes had run in rivulets down her cheeks. And she looked scared, really scared, that much was obvious.
What the hell is she doing out here alone in this kind of weather? I thought as I rolled down the window a half-inch.
“Get in the back,” I yelled at her, and flipped the lock so she could open the door.
Okay, so I’m a little protective of my car and didn’t want the front seat ruined. She was soaking wet, shivering like a newborn puppy. I cranked up the heater.
“There’s a towel and a blanket on the floor back there,” I said over my shoulder. “Get yourself dried off.”
She did. I could hear her teeth chattering over the noise of the hot air blowing out of the heater vents.
“What the hell were you doing out there in this mess?”
“My car broke down.”
I sighed and shook my head; she’d just lied to me. It wasn’t just the way she said it, but I knew. There were no cars on the road a mile in either direction, not back the way I’d come nor in the mile we’d traveled since I’d picked her up; I would have noticed.
“Not got Triple A?” I asked, looking at her in the rearview mirror.
She didn’t answer, but the look on her face said it all. Her lies weren’t getting her anywhere with me and she knew it.
“Where are you going?” she asked.
Her voice was soft, refined, and didn’t match her disheveled appearance. A flash of lightning momentarily lit up her face and she squinted: she looked older than I’d first thought. Her pretty face was drawn with stress and streaked with ruined makeup. I figured her to be around twenty-one, twenty-two, and on her own.
Why do these kids wear that black crap around their eyes and on their fingernails? I thought, staring out through the windshield and the rain. It makes them look so hard.
“Where are you going?” I said, glancing up at the rearview mirror.
She shrugged, wiped her eye with the back of her hand, streaking the black crap even further. Then she took a deep breath, closed her eyes, shook her head and said, so quietly I could barely hear it, “Wherever you’re going, I suppose.”
“You sure? I’m going to the Sorbonne. It’s a bar. You know it?”
She didn’t answer.
“I’ll take you there and you can have someone come and get you.”
Her eyes looked down at the floor and then out the side window. She seemed to be deep in thought.
She finally spoke, “Yes, I know it, and that will be fine… thank you.”
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