Blvd. of Blood

Book 3, chapters 7–9

(Upcoming appearances: May 10, 12–3, Branford Book Festival, Main St., Branford CT | June 1, 12–5, Skullastic Book Fair, American Legion Post 16, Shelton CT | July 15, 6–7:30, author talk, Hagaman Library, East Haven CT)

This is a serialized “thriller” novel. Continued from here. Table of contents for ease of navigation here.

(The story so far: Colin Lang has asked is boss Mr. Arnoux for time off ostensibly so he can minister to his ailing mother at Sunset Grove but actually so he can perpetrate some horrible crime that is the whole reason for this book on April tenth. Would-be hacker Sp!der has been trying to uncover the identity of Colin’s partner in crime, Bernard Feldstein, and now Bernard’s friends, having fallen for Sp!der’s sexy sock puppet Ilyana, may have given him just what he needs.)

7.

Hunter Arnoux spent all weekend brooding about what he referred to as opportunity. “Opportunity” was his pet term for a crisis, because of something he’d once read, or more likely heard. He was afraid of an opportunity.

The opportunity was one Colin Lang. Like most people, Arnoux considered himself a good judge of when someone was lying; unlike most people, Arnoux had a proven track record. Something in Colin’s excuse about seeing his mother stuck in Arnoux’s craw—especially the part where he asked to go and then put it off. Why would someone so worried about his mother that he wanted a week off from work not “jump at the chance” of leaving right away? Why would Lang want to “put one over” on Hunter Arnoux? There was only one possibility.

Colin Lang was applying to other jobs.

It made sense! Arnoux didn’t really understand how someone with the obvious drive and charisma of a Colin Lang had been overlooked for more promotions for so long. Arnoux would prioritize correcting the oversight—was he not an overseer? But certainly a proactive achiever like Lang would start “taking the law into his own hands.” Arnoux should have done something to grease Lang’s palm long ago. You Snooze You Lose read the poster in Arnoux’s private office; and Arnoux had snost and lost.

He’d just have to deduce what companies Lang was shopping himself out to, and somehow “poison the well.” Such a deduction would have been practically impossible, except “the walls have ears” and Arnoux remembered the scuttlebutt about Lang and a certain Miss Carol Wernick.

At this point, Arnoux silently reminded himself that saying “poisoning the well” was considered antisemitic, so he shut the whole thought process down.

Until Monday. On Monday his little plan took effect. He casually visited the third floor and casually walked past Carol Wernick’s desk.

“Oh,” he said. “Carol…Wernick? Right?”

Yes, of course, so he introduced himself.

“We’ve actually met several t—” she began, but Arnoux had a spiel prepared.

“You know my boy Colin Lang, don’t you?” he said.

“Yes, we’re…dating?” She clearly looked afraid. Probably thought he was a narc, come to “harsh her buzz.”

“Lang. That’s not a Chinese name, is it?”

“No, he’s not Chinese.”

“He took a week off, you know. Do you know where he’s going on vacation?”

“He…he’s looking after his mother. He didn’t really go anywhere. I mean, she lives in Salton, but he’s just commuting.”

“Oh, come now, Carol, Carol. We both know he’s not going to Salton. We both know what’s really going on.”

But no amount of cajole or bluster could worm anything else out of her. Arnoux harumphed back to his private office. He sat in his large chair, “literally stewing.” He would prove that there was no mother, no charitable visits. This was not Philadelphia, the city of maternal love: this was Cottinend, and Mr. Arnoux would not be fooled! He pressed the speaker on his phone.

“Cathy, get me Sunset Rest Funeral Home in Salton. Ask for Colin Lang; he should be there visiting his mother, presumably a Mrs. Lang.”

“I’m sorry, sir, did you say Sussaruss Utero in Ellen?”

“Sunset Rest! Sunset Rest Funeral Home! Ask for Colin Lang.”

“Asher cling clang?”

In a rage, Hunter Arnoux actually picked up the phone, like a goddamn plebeian, and spelled out very slowly the precise details of what he needed. It turned out that there was no Sunset Rest Funeral Home in Salton, but there was a Sunset Grove Senior Living Facility, and obviously that was what he meant.

While he waited, the stupid phone against his ear, to be connected and proved right, he said, “You cannot have a hunt without a Hunter.”

“Hello,” a voice said at last. “This is Colin.”

Arnoux was completely flummoxed. “Colin! Colin, hello! This is Hunter Arnoux. I completely expected to reach you there. I was just wondering, the Meniscus file—did you save it on the J: or K: drive?”

“I saved it on my desktop,” the voice said.

“Just so. Perfect. Enjoy your…mother.” He hung up quickly.

“I’ll be good goddamned,” thought Arnoux. “An honest man!”

8.

Carol thought her run-in with Mr. Arnoux was nothing more than a confusing, amusing little story she’d tell Colin and laugh about later. But then, when she called him after work, to see if he’d be home soon, to see if she could swing by, he sounded strange. He suggested that he needed some time to process his emotions and think about what he’d have to do about his mother.

“Are you breaking up with me?” Carol asked, sitting in her car.

“What? No. I just need a few days alone. I’ll call you on Thursday or Friday, that’s all.”

The request almost seemed reasonable, and Carol could see herself asking for something similar if her own mother had been having problems. But for it to come after Arnoux’s insinuation. What if Colin wasn’t going to Sunset Grove? What if his mother wasn’t suffering cognitive decline? She’d sounded fine on the phone with Carol!

“Can I…can I call you?” She knew it was wheedling. Did she hear him sigh over the line?

“It’s just that…”

“I mean,” she said, “in case something comes up. A work emergency.” She tried to recover some of her dignity. “Perhaps I’d have to call your mother’s room at Sunset Grove?”

There was hesitation, and he stressed that he wouldn’t get to his mother’s until quarter after ten, but he did give Carol the direct number, which was something.

Carol made dinner for one and sat in front of the TV with it and vowed she wouldn’t call or even think of Colin until the end of the week. She was already seething with self-contempt because she knew it was a vow she would break.

9.

Sp!der should have seen the message earlier, but so many gentlemen sent randy messages to Ilyana Petranova that two days went by before he suspected one of those messages had a more serious import. He was scrolling through her Twitter notifications after an after-dinner snack when it hit him. Everyone wants to bang Ilyana and everyone thinks she wants to bang them—who writes saying Ilyana wants to bang a third person? Nardo at the Pizza King on North Street is who.

On a hunch he quickly googled it up, and indeed, Cottinend had a Pizza King on North Street. Plenty of other places did, too, but this was the best lead he had so far. All he needed to do was call the Cottinend Pizza King and ascertain who Nardo was. According to google they were still open for another two hours.

Several ways to play it, Sp!der thought, psyching himself up for his first phone call in weeks. He could play it smooth and worm the information out of them before they even knew what was happening. Or he could play it forceful, masterfully overpower them. They’d have no choice but to tell him what he needed. Or he’d lie, pretending to be a…a contest chairman. “We need Nardo’s full name and address to process his claim.”

Sp!der decided on smooth and dialed the number. He breathed deeply as it rang, calming himself. Smooth.

But then a woman’s voice answered, and instead of hello she said, “Pizza King. We’re not taking any more orders tonight.”

Sp!der was immediately flustered—at least in part by the sudden realization that because of time zones Pizza King would be closing in less than ten minutes; but also because it was a woman’s voice. Abruptly he switched to masterful. “Listen here!” he barked. “You will tell me the full name of any Nardo or Nardos that work at this establishment.”

“Get lost, asshole. I’m blocking this number.”

Sp!der began to explain that there was no point in blocking this number; he would simply route his calls through a server in Estonia and it would appear as a different number each time. But before he got very far into the explanation she’d hung up.

“I probably should have lied,” Sp!der thought, as he redialed. Time to take a different tack. But to his horror, he shunted right to voice mail. His number really was blocked. How could they do this to him? He had no idea how to route a call through Estonia!

One thing, he could call John Oberman and get him to go to Pizza King. But then he wouldn’t be delivering the answer all tidily wrapped. The fame and the glory wouldn’t be his. He needed to call Pizza King back!

Sp!der huffed up the stairs. “Ma! I need to use the phone!”

“Go ahead, sweetie. It’s free.”

“I mean long distance.” The landline was locked for long distance after Sp!der had conducted a brief flirtation with a woman from the Philippines. She turned out not to be, in fact, a woman, but the part about the Philippines was true, and it only did not turn out worse because Sp!der had already lost his credit card privileges after an earlier flirtation—that was when his cell phone had been blocked for international calls. After the Philippines debacle his mother had gone ahead and blocked not just international but all long distance calls from the land line. That was five years ago, but still only his mother had the code.

“Who are you going to call?” his mother shouted from the other room, her voice half-drowned out by the soundtrack of musical “stings” coming from the television. It was some CNN mockumentary. Sp!der had his own news sources, and he was about to tell his mother off for listening to propaganda news, and for saying who instead of whom, when he remembered that he need her help. Furthermore, he needed to answer the question she had just asked.

And this was a pickle for Sp!der. He could hardly say he wanted to call a pizza parlor in New York state. He could hardly explain why he needed to do this. He stood there with his mouth open, one hand on the useless phone, while his mother shouted,

“Who’s it, Mickey? Who you calling, Mickey?”

And then he had a brainwave. “Ronnie, ma!”

Veronica was his cousin, which meant she would have to take a call from him. Actually, that wasn’t true; her house phone had caller ID, and she would never answer a call from Sp!der’s cell; but if he called from the landline, Ronnie would assume it was Sp!der’s mother calling, and pick up. The fact that Sp!der’s mother knew this added a dollop of plausibility to the plan. And it wasn’t even a lie. His mother would go through he phone bills; she would see he called Ronnie’s house.

“Oh, how nice, going to call your cousin,” Sp!der’s mother said as she shuffled into the room. While Sp!der ostentatiously turned his back, she typed in the passkey. Then for good measure she dialed Ronnie’s Florida number and handed the phone to Sp!der as it started to ring. Then it was back to CNN with her, to learn to see the world through corporate media’s eyes.

Fortunately Ronnie and not her idiot husband answered. “Auntie Carmen? What’s up.”

“Ronnie? It’s me, Michael. Don’t hang up!”

“Agh! Give me one good reason why I shouldn’t hang—”

“Because I need a favor,” Sp!der said.

“That’s not a very compelling—”

But now Sp!der was just lying to family. This part he had practice in; this part was easy.

“Look, you’d be doing a good deed. I have a friend, a young woman, and I’m afraid she might be in danger.”

“You do not have a friend who is a young—”

“She’s not so very young. She was a neighbor back when I lived in upstate New York. She plays Warhammer 40k.” Sp!der could hear it, he could hear Ronnie drawing breath to say, “I have no idea what that is,” so he powered through before she could. “She met this guy, and she only knows his first name and where he works; and I just need to learn his last name so I can do an internet search about him, make sure he’s not some kind of criminal.”

“Why on earth—”

“Come on, she’s been hurt before.”

“Why on earth,” Ronnie said again, “would you be doing this for a girl, assuming she’s real.”

And this was where Sp!der had her. He knew he could count on her contempt. “Ronnie,” he said, “have you ever heard the word friendzone?”

It took a little more, but finally she produced a gurgling sigh and said, “All right.”

“Great! I can give you the number.”

She fumbled for a pen and jotted it down. “What time to they close?” she asked.

He looked at the microwave clock. “Uh…yeah, they’re already closed.”

“Fine, I’ll do it tomorrow. What’s his name?”

“Nardo at Pizza King in Cottinend. It’s right near where we used to live. Do you remember that house? You and Greg came—”

“Mickey, I’ve got to go. I’ll text you his name tomorrow.”

“No, wait!” Sp!der knew that John had said no texts, no emails, but that wasn’t what he was worried about. He just didn’t want to give up the chance for another phone call. “My phone bricked, you need to call this number.”

“Fine, fine.”

“Have a great—”—but she had already hung up.

Sp!der stood for a moment, wondering idly if he’d pork his cousin, like maybe if she wasn’t his cousin. After weighing all the pros and cons, he decided she was probably getting too old. He headed back downstairs. He wished he’d had more time to stress to Ronnie how important her mission was. Nevertheless, he was feeling proud of the work he had done. He should call Oberman and tell him that the case was almost closed. But, much as he hated to avoid a phone call, he knew if he got through to Oberman, Oberman would just grill him on all the details, on why the case was almost closed and not fully closed. He’d use his cop techniques to get the truth from him, and the truth made Sp!der look a little bit like an idiot.

Therefore: Sp!der started texting Oberman, in direct contravention of Oberman’s explicit instructions. He started texting while still on the stairs, missed the last step, and almost bobbled his phone. He plopped down in his swivel chair before he finished the text, which was, he thought, vague enough not to violate Oberman’s directive.

He wrote: “The cat is in the bag. More news tomorrow.”

Only after he sent it did he realize that cats came out of bags, not into bags, and he meant that the investigation was in the bag. He felt embarrassed to have sent something so stupid.

“I mean it’s all figured out except the final confirmation,” he wrote then.

And Oberman texted back, “Call me.” So Sp!der shut off his phone.

It was April ninth.

(Continued here.)