The Curse Servant (The Dark Choir Book 2) (27 page)

He paused by a large glass door with the word
Mayor
stenciled. He opened the door and gestured me inside. We marched past a receptionist. She was new. Last time I had set foot in this office, I wasn’t prepared for a conversation with this man.

I still wasn’t.

We walked into his office, and he gestured to a seat in front of his carved wood desk.

“Well, Curtis can say what he wants about you. I don’t think you’re the outsider he sees you to be. If you don’t mind my saying, you seem to care.”

“I try not to be completely intolerable when I can afford not to be.”

He chuckled as he reached into his desk. “Where are you from, Dorian? Originally.”

“New York City.”

“Trust fund child? Your parents anyone I might know?”

I shook my head. “I’m the only Lake you have to worry about.”

He produced a pamphlet from his drawer and slid it across the desk to me.

“Well, Dorian Lake, I want you to know that I heard you. About people losing their city? Property owners like you don’t have a lot of options, and part of that is our fault. But really, the market drives these things. We can try to divert it with smart policy, but in the end, you can’t stop the river from flowing.”

I took the pamphlet, not really reading it.

“I know. It just feels like a living tragedy, is all.”

“It really does, sometimes. Mind if I ask you what McHenry offered for your properties?”

“In all due respect, Mister Mayor,” I answered, “that’s really none of your business.”

“Fair enough. So, you’ve decided to sell?”

“I can’t figure out a way to say no just yet.”

“Who are you going to sell to?”

I cocked my head. He wasn’t a stupid man, but I wasn’t quite getting the question.

“I think you know, sir.”

“I know McHenry made an offer, but I’m asking who you’re going to sell to.” He tapped at the pamphlet. “My second year in office, we spearheaded a campaign with Representative Lachner.” He pointed again to the pamphlet.

I looked down and read the large print on the cover.
PROPERTY OWNERSHIP ASSISTANCE ACT.

Sullivan continued, “There are significant tax credits in place for rental owners who provide non-brokered sales to their tenants. Plus Federal assistance via the FHA. It was our pride and joy that second year. Problem is the people who benefit from this the most are the ones who are the least likely to have ever heard about it. That’s been my curse since I took office.”

“I know a thing or two about curses,” I offered as I scanned over the pamphlet.

“So, anyway. You want me to put you out of a job? I did my part already, Mister Lake. Choice is yours what you do next.” He stood up. “It was good chatting with you. Hope you stick around for the election.”

I stood up and shook his hand.

By the time I left the building, I had an address in my pocket for Amy Mancuso, and a pamphlet outlining the details of selling my properties to my tenants.

What’s more, I now possessed a small insight into what Julian saw in Sullivan. He was a good man. And he deserved to win this election.

I wished I could have given him my undivided attention, but I had a young girl to save first.

he sun had shifted to the dark, harsh tones of early summer evening when I reached Reisterstown Road. Amy Mancuso lived in a jumbled apartment complex crammed into the back corner of a mall parking lot. I sat in my car observing the apartments, trying to get a vibe off the place. I was dropping in completely unannounced, and though I was pure in my mission, there was always the off-chance that Amy had a Rottweiler or a coked-out boyfriend with a gun waiting for me in that apartment.

Besides, I didn’t have a pitch rehearsed. I just needed to talk. I had always received more credit for my disarming charisma than I ever felt was warranted. Perhaps it would get me through this?

I mustered the courage to step out of my car and marched up the peeling metal stairs to Amy Mancuso’s apartment. After a few knocks, I heard some shuffling. Someone was home at least.

When the door cracked open against the chain, I found one of Amy’s eyes staring back at me.

“Yes?” she wheezed.

“Miss Mancuso? My name is Dorian Lake. I don’t know if you remember me.”

She squinted at me, then shook her head. “What do you want?”

“We met only briefly. Last week. You had an episode while canvasing for Mayor Sullivan.”

Her eye went wide, and she shoved the door closed.

“Amy?” I called through the door. “It happened again. To someone else. A little girl.”

She responded with a muffled “Go away!”

“I just want to talk about it. Try to help this girl.”

I took the ensuing silence as a refusal.

“Amy? Listen to me. I know about the drugs.”

My voice rang in the tiny breezeway connecting her front door acoustically to her neighbors.

The door cracked open once again. “Who are you?”

“I told you. My name is Dorian―”

“Are you going to tell Rolando?”

I steeled my face and took a gamble. “I don’t want to.”

Her eye fluttered, and she pushed the door closed. The chain scratched before the door opened full to me.

“Come in.”

Her apartment was a snow globe of clutter, mostly dishes and plastic toddler toys. The smell of cheap incense lingered in the air, and I spotted a tiny brass try of ash on her mantel.

She waved me to her couch before dropping her weight into a ratty recliner, pulling a blanket over her lap. Her face was pallid, dark swaths wreathing her eyes. Her hair was pulled back into a pony tail, several fly-aways clouding around her forehead.

I took a seat on the couch, which sunk more than I was prepared for. I steadied myself, resting my hand on something cold and hard. It looked like one of those plastic blocks young children hammer through matching holes. I tossed it onto a small pile of toys at the end of the couch and cleared my throat.

“This won’t take long.”

She nodded, her mouth drawn in at the corners.

“That day, when you had your attack, I wondered if you could tell me a little bit about how it happened.”

“Don’t remember much.”

I gave her a grin. “Well, let’s give it a shot, maybe warm up your memory? How did it start?”

She shrugged and pulled her feet under her lap, tucking the blanket around her legs.

“Then, maybe you could back up into the day a little? You were volunteering for the Sullivan campaign.”

“Yeah.”

“How’d you start your day?”

She sighed and looked up to the ceiling. “They picked us up in a parking lot over by the Bargain Zone on Reisterstown. It was me and maybe three others. They took us in a minivan to the office, and gave us our materials. Yard signs, clipboards, papers. I didn’t want to do the door-to-door stuff. I would have rather just hammer signs into lawns, but I was one of, like, two people there who spoke English. So they put me on door-to-door.”

“By Loyola?”

“Yeah, I think so. Lots of expensive houses. Sure. That was it.”

“Did you run into anyone strange or suspicious?”

“Nah. Mostly housewives with Botox. There were a couple of men at home.”

I wondered if one of those men wasn’t McHenry’s mercenary. “Tell me about them.”

“Uh, well, one was in a bathrobe. Kind of a creep. I dropped off the pamphlet and got the hell out of there.”

“Who else?”

“There was this one guy in a suit. Looked like he was in a hurry. Nice car. I caught him walking out the front door. Got real pissy with me. Said Sullivan was a socialist or something.”

“Did he give you anything? Touch you in any way?”

“No. Wouldn’t even take the pamphlet. Just drove off.”

“I see.” I leaned back and tapped my chin as I stared at the fireplace. There were several pictures of Amy and a very young boy standing in a line. “Cute kid.”

For the first time ever, I saw her smile. “He’s rotten.”

“Is he asleep or something?”

Her smile faded. “With Rolando.”

I assumed Rolando was the child’s father, and it wouldn’t have helped my situation to ask her to confirm that. It was better if she assumed I knew more than I had a right to know.

“So let’s move forward. At some point I think you had an encounter with a dog.”

“Right. A little dog. Some toy poodle or one of those designer dogs. Little monster lost its mind on me. Went for my ankles. See, I’m usually pretty good with dogs. I’d have one, but Trey is allergic.”

“What did you do?”

“I tried to run, but that bitch let go of the leash. Thing was on me.”

“Which bitch?”

“Some upper class twat in a track suit. She was yelling at me. Just pissed me off that she was blaming me for her dog turning into a piranha.”

“You hit the dog?”

“No. I got out of her yard, and it stopped.”

I stared at Amy, and her face dropped a little. Her eyes searched out the design on the blanket on her lap.

“Your coordinator remembers it differently.”

“Who?”

“The person who brought you back to the campaign office. She said you hit the dog.”

“No. I kicked it. That’s right. I did.”

Her eyes moved up and down, searching for memory. I was pretty sure she wasn’t making this up. “I don’t blame you.”

“A lot. I… I think I hurt it.” Her eyes drew closed. “I didn’t feel right. I was panicking.”

“Did you feel like you were in control of your body?”

“Yeah. Maybe. It was my brain. Kind of foggy like when you’re trying to think about something, but you can’t because your thoughts get fuzzy? It was like that. I couldn’t finish a thought. I was just kicking. And screaming. I couldn’t figure out why I was screaming.”

“Do you remember your coordinator picking you up?”

She shook her head. “I woke up, kind of, in the office. Ever wake up and not remember when you fell asleep? You were there, and Mister Bright. I remember feeling like I hated you. Like you were responsible for all of this. Then it went away. Like a dream after you wake up. Everything felt real, then it felt like a dream, then I couldn’t remember it.”

“Tell me more about this brain fog. Did you feel like something was inside your head making you kick that dog?”

“I guess. My head hurt. It was like blacking out.”

“But you felt fine before then? It came on out of nowhere?”

She squinted and wiped a tear from the corner of her eye. “No, I was starting to feel sick. Like the flu or something, only quicker. Thought maybe it was food poisoning. Actually, it felt like withdrawal.”

I leaned forward and folded my fingers together. I had to be delicate, here.

“Amy? Did you think it was withdrawal?”

“I didn’t know what it was.”

“Did you have a reason to suspect withdrawal?”

She shrugged.

“Amy, I’m asking you if you took drugs in the days beforehand.”

Fresh tears streamed down her cheeks. “It was Rolando’s weekend with Trey. He missed a month out of town. I didn’t have any time.”

I held up a hand to calm her down. “I’m just trying to figure out if this was something the heroin did, or if it was something different. Has anything like this happened to you before?”