Shella (15 page)

“I heard about you,” he said. “Not your name. I heard about you for years.”

“Not me.”

“Oh yeah. You. I earned my name. I’m never wrong. I saw death through a little round circle of glass so many times, until it got so I could see it through concrete. You and me, we’re the same. Brothers in the blood. There’s men who hunt for trophies, go out into the woods in a Jeep wearing pretty clothes and blast a deer through a scope. They stalk, but they don’t see. You and me, we hunt for meat. Meat to eat, meat to live. It’s how we live. It’s how the pack hunts.”

“I don’t have a pack.”

“I know. But you don’t do it for fun.”

“Fun?”

“They call themselves professionals. You know, the greaseballs in the fancy suits, dogs on leashes, do what they’re told. They don’t have a pack either, they just think they do. And when the bracelets come on, they start to sing. Rats run in packs too, but they don’t live for the pack, they live for themselves. There’s psychos too. They like the taste. After a while, they get to need it. You’re one of us, you just don’t know it.”

“I’m not anything.”

The waitress came back, cleared off the Indian’s dishes. He held up his empty glass, looked over at me.

“I’m okay,” I said.

The girls were circulating around the tables, getting the men to buy them watered drinks. They didn’t come near the booths.

“You’re looking for a woman,” the Indian said. Like it wasn’t a question.

“I’m not looking for anybody.”

“You’re not hunting,” the Indian said. “You were hunting, you’d be looking for a man. It wouldn’t take you that long to see if he was in a place. You go in and out, watch the dancers, make sure you see the whole shift. Then you try another place. It’s a woman you’re looking for.”

I thought about it. I’d never find Shella the way I was going. After Monroe …

“If I was …?”

“Nobody knows Uptown like my people do,” the Indian said. “If she’s here, I’ll find her for you.”

“For what?”

“What? For what? What’s that mean?”

“What do you want? In exchange.”

“Does it matter?” he asked me.

I told him about Shella. I can see her better when I talk about her … that’s why I do it in my head. He listened, that’s all he did, waiting for me to finish.

“There’s things you can make different,” he said when I was done. “Lose weight, gain weight. Contact lenses. Cut your hair, dye it a new color. You can cover scars, change tattoos. Buy a whole new face, you got the money.”

“I know.”

“And things you can’t.” Like I hadn’t said anything. “You don’t have a picture, right?”

“No.”

“Show me how tall she is, barefoot.”

I held my hand just between my eyebrows and my hairline, like a salute.

He turned over the menu, just a blank piece of white paper on the back. “Show me the distance between the centers of her eyes.”

I put my hand on the paper, spread my thumb and forefinger, closed my eyes, seeing her face. When I got it right, I opened my eyes. He took a black grease pencil out of his pocket, put a little dot at each end of the space I made. I took my hand away. He connected the dots, as straight and true as a ruler. Folded the paper, put it in his pocket.

“She ever get busted?”

“Yes.”

“More than once?”

“Yes.”

“Felony pops?”

I nodded.

“Ever do time?”

“Not real time. Not since she’s been grown. Ten days here, a week there. Sweep arrests, a stolen car once. Nothing big.”

“Maybe they’d have printed her?”

“Sure.”

“We can’t look past Uptown,” the Indian said. “Don’t come back here.”

I tried other places around Chicago. Music bars on Rush Street, fancy joints near the lake, dives on the South Side.

When I got back early one morning, the Indian was waiting in my room.

I didn’t ask him how he got in—I’m no good at it, but I know it’s easy to do.

“She’s not in Uptown,” the Indian said.

“Thanks anyway,” I told him, but he didn’t get up to go like I expected.

“If she was printed, I know someone who could find her.”

“Who?”

“A crazy man. He’s a trader. Never pays money for work. We did something for him …”

I just looked at him, waiting.

“…and he made good. Did what he said.”

“Somebody told me that once … that they could find her.”

“It’d work the same way as a job—he’d have to pay up front.”

“You work for him?”

“No.”

“What’s in it for you?”

“There’s something we have to do. Not you and me, we … my people and me, okay? There’s places we can’t go. Where you could just walk in.”

“And I do this work, this work for you, and then I get to see this guy, right?”

His face was sad, like I told him somebody just died. “No,” is all he said.

I waited in that room. He lit a cigarette, smoked it all the way through. I didn’t move.

He ground out his cigarette butt on the windowsill, took a deep breath.

“I’ll take you to him. He’ll ask you some questions, make sure you’re the right man. If he makes the deal, he’ll find her for you. Wherever she is. Then you do it. Whatever he wants. When you finish with him, you do this thing for us. Then it’s done.”

“And he’ll find Shella for me?”

“He’ll find her. No promises what he’ll find. She could be in jail, could be dead.” He looked over at me. “She could be with a man,” he said, like that was worse.

“I know.”

“And you get it up front. But if he finds her, you owe him. Straight up.”

“And you too.”

“Me too.”

I told him I’d do it.

I didn’t look around Chicago anymore. Just waited on the Indian. Stayed in my room. There was no TV, so I listened to the radio. It was mostly hillbilly music. I kept it turned down low, next to my head. They played this song once, I never heard the name of it. A man’s going to be hanged in the morning, so his woman goes to the warden. She gives him her body so he’ll call the hanging off. But it happens anyway. She did it for nothing. I thought of Shella—how she’d do that.

It made me sad, being cheated that way.

One morning, there was a soft tap on my door. I opened it. It was one of the gay guys who lived together at the end of the hall. His partner was standing just behind him, suitcases on the floor. I didn’t say anything.

The guy who knocked was wearing an orange tank top, a fat, soft-looking man, mostly bald.

“We’re moving out,” he said.
“Just
wanted to say goodbye.”

“Goodbye,” I told him, watching. They never spoke to me before.

“You should go too,” the man said.

I didn’t say anything.

“Show him,” his partner said. “Hurry up.” His partner was small, dark-haired. He was wearing a white silk shirt, like a woman’s blouse. He had makeup on his face, eyeliner.

“You never hassled us,” the fat man said. He took some slivers of steel out of a leather case, walked next door. He
played with the lock for a second and the door came open. I looked over his shoulder.

The room smelled ugly. Fast-food cartons all over the place, on the floor, everywhere. In one corner there was a high stack of magazines, up to a man’s waist. On the wall, there were pictures. A woman on her knees, ropes around her hands behind her back, ropes around her ankles. She was wearing a blindfold. All the pictures were like that. Most of them were slashed, like with a razor. One woman’s face had a black X across it. The windows were sealed shut with duct tape. Everything smelled like rot.

“The cops’ll be here soon,” the fat man said. “Don’t open the closet.”

I turned around to leave. The little guy with the eyeliner on his face was standing in the door, facing out. He had a pistol in his hand, held close by his leg.