Superstalker: A Lady G Thriller

Chapter 19 - Tunnel Vision

"And how do we play that?" I said, having a pretty good idea what was next, Gaga not moving away from the tunnel door.

"It wouldn't hurt to check it out," she said, "see what we've got."

Like I said.

I watched her take a step toward the darkness, said to her back, "You don't want to wait till we've got the cops here?"

"The better we know the setup, the better input we'll have." Her meaning the plan to sandbag Sickblade. She took out her phone and turned on the flashlight and pointed the beam into the gloom.

I took out my own phone and did the same. "At least let me go front," I said, and stepped around her like the loyal bodyguard she was paying me to be.

Ten steps in I caught my foot on some bump and almost fell on my face. "Careful," she said, me feeling like an asshole. The floor was a mix of cinders and dirt and grit that had accumulated over the years. I scanned my light over the concrete walls, no graffiti, its glory days yet to come.

Knowing Gaga was back there trying to get a feel for how she wanted to play the Sickblade thing, I started realizing that whatever she came up with was likely to conflict with me trying to use him to get a line on who killed Tanya, though I'd pretty much had to put that on hold. Realized that all I could do was wait and see what her and the cops came up with and take it from there.

While we made our way I tried to think what it would be like carrying cases of booze through here to Belasco's speakeasy, stuff that maybe some of my ancestors had trucked down from Toronto or Montreal, the Canadians not into prohibition. Or maybe my people had mixed it themselves in their bathtubs. And then, knowing the nature of that business, which wasn't too different from running drugs these days, it hit me that some of them could be lying right under our feet now, for diverting or diluting some of the goods.

And like she read me, Gaga said, "You feel anything?"

"Like what?"

"Like ghosts. Folks buried here."

The dark air around us took on a chill. You there, uncles?

But it wasn't my ancestors who made an appearance.

It was Sickblade's avatar.

Or whatever that glow ahead of us was.

# # #

Stuart Sherner didn't get to be Commissioner of the NYPD by being dumb. But sometimes, like with everybody at some point, there'd been lapses. And his biggest one by far was letting himself fall for the hooker, Tanya. And on top of it getting her pregnant.

He drove his SUV, his personal vehicle, past the old whorehouse where she'd lived, where she'd worked undercover for the department, and where that big bald guy who looked familiar, Curly something, was going up the steps now, probably for a two-on-one given the size of him. Seeing the place made Sherner feel all the dumber, for having a fuck-fest with that trash who tried to shake him down.

Not to mention that here he is on the brink of one of the biggest jobs in the world, master of the intelligence universe, and it's in the hands of the trash's brother.

The kid having that fetus.

Dempsey had told him he was sure of it. Could see it in the kid's eyes when he went to his hole in the basement here. Saw it in the nurse's eyes, the one supposed to have gotten rid of it in the first place. The thing had to be in that house somewhere.