The Devil's Dream: A Nightmare (13 page)

Joe saw Patti’s eyes. Deep in his head those eyes burned all the time, unable to turn off. Eyes that knew what pain felt like, eyes that said, “Oh, God. This is it. This is everything. It’s all over and there is nothing I can do.” Eyes that said without a single word that someone was slitting their throat open and that blood was starting to poor down to the floor.

Whatever desire had built up inside Joe died.

“I’m really not looking for fun, ma’am. I’m looking for information more than anything.”

Sally laughed. “Babe, I’m not an Encyclopedia Britannica. This isn’t college unless you’re looking for some physical education. That’s the game I play, not whatever one you’re trying to. So if you’re not interested, let’s go ahead and part ways with no hard feelings.” She didn’t move from the bed, didn’t uncross her legs to stand, only smiled at Joe.

“That’s three hundred dollars over there in the envelope. It’s yours just for walking up here. That cocaine, that’s yours if you want it, and if you don’t, that’s fine too. I don’t need sex, and if you’re not someone that can help me, then I’ll just move down the list of girls. If you can help me find what I’m looking for, I’ll give you ten grand, cash.”

The woman’s head tilted slightly to the right, but her smile didn’t disappear. She wasn’t an amateur at this from the looks of it. Joe saw she wasn’t fazed by what he said, although she might not be enthralled either.

“Ten grand. Not an outrageous sum, but nothing to sneer at either. What are you looking for?” She asked. “A girl? Because I can go ahead and tell you, honey, I’m not in the business of giving up anyone’s name for money. If they’re working girls, they’re working girls because they want to be. Pray to God that she comes home because He’ll act faster than I’m going to.”

“No. Not a girl. I...well, I don’t even know how to say it, really.” Joe didn’t think, he just walked over to the dresser and put his nose to one of the lines of cocaine. When he stood up he was no longer looking at the prostitute, but at himself in the mirror. He didn’t look in mirrors much anymore, and this was why. He could see the bones move at his temples when he opened and closed his jaw. His cheekbones were stark and the bags under his eyes dark. He didn’t really want to see what he looked like when he took his shirt off. He’d caught glimpses, but that was all. To stare at it like this? He might have to ask himself some hard questions, like was he in danger of dying?

“I’m interested in human trafficking.”

“The what?” The woman asked, stretching her words out slowly.

“I don’t want to purchase anyone. Nothing like that. But, I want to know how it works, in the United States.” He still didn’t turn around. Joe didn’t know if he’d rather face her or himself as he talked about this.

“Are you a cop?” She asked, the smile gone and her voice hard.

“No. I’m not a cop.”

“What would make you think an escort would know about sex slaves? Do I look like I’m dressed as a slave? Do you think that you can stop me from walking out of here or something?”

Joe let his chin drop to his chest and closed his eyes. “No. I don’t know. I need to find out more information and the only group of people that came to mind were prostitutes. I’ll give you another five hundred dollars on top of that three if you just point me to someone that might know something.”

Sally stood from behind him and walked to the dresser. She picked up the envelope and slid it into her purse as easily as Michael Jordan shot free throws. “You’re an idiot, you know that? Even asking about something like this could get you killed.”

Joe didn’t open his eyes. “If I had a choice, I wouldn’t be asking.”

“How long are you going to be here?”

“Another day, maybe two.”

“I might come back. If I do, have the five hundred ready. If I tell you something you find valuable, have half of the ten grand ready. You got that?”

Joe looked up, finding her eyes in the mirror. “Yeah, I got it,” he said, his mouth hanging open slightly on the last word.

“Alright,” Sally said and left the room with the three hundred dollars in her purse.

* * *

M
atthew stood inside his lighthouse
. The moon had risen outside and that was the only light shining. Very little of the moonlight managed to filter down through his machine, past his bodies that were growing in number. He didn’t face the bodies tonight, instead Matthew faced the wall, his eyes open, but seeing nothing. He was having a fairly in depth conversation, even if he wasn’t completely aware of the parameters.

You raped someone today,
Rally said.

Did I?
He asked.

Don’t you remember?

If I could, I wouldn’t want to,
Matthew said.
Are you real?

I suppose I’m as real as the other voices you’re hearing, however much that means. I think I’m becoming more real as the time passes though, just as those other voices are.

What’s happening?
He asked.

I think you’re dying, Matthew. I can’t say for certain, but I think that you’re simply falling apart. If I had to guess, I’d say your brain will stop working, and I mean including basic functions like your heart beating. I think you may just forget to keep breathing sooner or later, and that’ll be that.
Rally sounded like she had when she told him they were getting a divorce. There wasn’t any real emotion in her voice then, she simply let it be known that she thought he was losing his mind and that she was leaving because of it.

But I’m not done. I have to finish this.

Do you think I was done when you killed me? Think that I had marked off everything on my bucket list?

That was different,
Matthew said.

How?

I loved you.

You showed it,
Rally said.

What am I supposed to do now?

You could give up. If I was alive, that’s what I would tell you. Just let it go. The world knows. You’ve proven yourself. They know who you are and they’ll never forget your name. Why end it for them?

Matthew said nothing for a minute.
For you. For Hilman. That’s why.

Is this about us, Matthew? Is this even about you anymore? Whatever’s growing inside of you—me, Morgant, the old woman—it’s quickly becoming about all of us too. Hilman is a memory from twenty-five years ago. He’d be in his forties now if he still lived. You’re fighting this war for a son that would have a son of his own right now. Why push it? Why not go somewhere and stop all this? Live out the last few days in whatever peace you can find in this body? Do you like raping women while they’re unconscious?

Again, silence from Matthew. Finally,
there’s no more peace here, Ral. There won’t ever be any peace here again.

Rally went silent then, leaving Matthew to the blankness of his mind. After a few minutes, he blinked a couple of times and then turned around to realize he was in the lighthouse, surrounded by bodies hanging on his machine.

T
he television was
on but no sound came from it. Joe stared at the bag of cocaine he held, ignoring everything else in the room. He had a general idea that the time was late, but hadn’t looked over at the clock next to him in a few hours. He was content staring at this white bag, looking at the tiny particles that he consumed and which, ironically, then consumed him. He’d sold his soul for this stuff, he guessed. Gave up what little family he had left to sniff it and run around chasing after a ghost.

The prostitute hadn’t come back yet and he didn’t know if she would. Maybe she showed up with cops in tow and maybe Joe ended up getting clean in a jail cell. If that happened, he was looking at probably a twenty-year stretch just for asking about sex slaves. The only way he would see Brand again was if the man showed up during visiting hours. Joe wasn’t sure how he felt about that possibility; he was tired. The past three years weighed on him, especially after talking to Larry. He needed sleep for sure, and he thought he might find some tonight as long as he didn’t put anymore of the white stuff into his face. This was about more than sleep, though. He was tired of chasing, tired of running after a man he couldn’t catch. He was tired of looking for Matthew Brand, tired of the constant struggle.

This adventure didn’t start when Moore died; it started years before that, when he told Larry he was moving out.

“Why?”

“I want to start using cocaine, and I doubt your wife will approve.”

Larry looked at Joe like he was insane, tried to argue a bit, but Joe’s bags were packed and a taxi arrived the next day.

That’s when all of this began, around the time Dillan went missing and Joe woke up from the darkness and pain. The pain still existed although dulled by the dopamine released from the coke, but the darkness seemed to vanish. He had purpose again. In the beginning this had all felt different. He had energy, had motivation to search. Tracking phone numbers, hiring investigators, searching different areas of the country, looking into multiple bank accounts, crossing lines of legality. The first year was a shotgun blast of ideas, fueled not by gunpowder but the cocaine his dealer supplied. Endless nights and endless days, and eventually, he knew Brand was alive and active. That was enough. That was enough to keep Joe going.

Larry called and the two of them spoke, but they didn’t see each other. He wasn’t sure exactly what his brother would do if they were to meet up, but he didn’t want to take any chances. His brother could, conceivably, try to get him committed, and Joe was much too busy to enter rehab. It was funny, really, lying on this hotel bed and thinking about the good ole days as those when he first started using and searching for Brand. Purpose. That’s what he had back then. Patricia’s eyes and his baby’s smile, all on his mind, all the time. Now, when he saw his wife’s eyes, they were only full of pain—and his son never smiled anymore in his head. Instead, he saw his child’s massacred corpse on the metal morgue table.

All of this had been for them.

Except now, with Brand out in the open, Joe didn’t know if he wanted to go on. His brain felt ragged. All the plans, all the great ideas, all the ways he had been able to track Brand before—to at least know the man was alive, they were abandoning him. Three years of constant drug usage would do that, he supposed. Is this what Sampson had felt like, turning that huge wheel, blind and bald? Wanting to give up and at the same time just once more to have his strength of old? Joe’s strength had never been that of Sampson, but his refusal to tire had allowed him to succeed when the FBI simply gave up.

He dropped the bag of cocaine down next to him.

“What do I do?” He asked the room. No one answered him because no one was around.

Joe heard the knock on the door and sat up.

“Hello?”

“Sally, darling,” came the answer. Joe looked over to the clock and saw it was two in the morning. He stood and went to the door, looking through the peephole and seeing only her in the hallway. Joe opened the door and took a step back.

“Hi.”

“I’m here, have my cash?”

Joe walked back into the room and picked up one of two envelopes on the dresser, the thinner of the two. He handed it to her. “Five hundred in there.”

Sally put her purse on the nightstand and sat on the edge of the bed. “I know someone that will talk to you. That’s all I know. I don’t really even know if this person will kill you, but I do know it’s going to cost you more than ten grand. He wants ten to talk, and I want my ten for making the introduction.”

“Who is he?” Joe asked, still standing.

“He is, I suppose, in the know. What do you understand about human trafficking? Anything at all?”

Joe absently picked up the bag of cocaine on the bed and pushed it into his pocket. “It’s primarily in Asia and undeveloped countries. Poor families might sell their children into it. Many are simply kidnapped. That’s about it.”

The woman looked at her nails for a second. A dark red, perfectly done. “This is just my own personal curiosity, believe me, the guy meeting you will know everything he needs to know about you, but why are you interested in this? You doing some kind of documentary, because if so, you seem pretty clueless about anything that’s going on in it.” She looked at him. “You don’t have to tell me, it’s the money I really want, not your life story.”

“I’m kind of out of options, I guess,” Joe said. He walked over to the window and pulled back the curtains a bit. “I need to find someone and I can’t think of any other way to do it.”

“Darling, if you plan on meeting up with this guy to tell him that you want to find a friend of yours in his business, save your money and your breath. You won’t come out of the meeting alive.”

“No. I’m not looking for someone that might have been sold.”

“Ahhh,” the woman said, dragging out the vowel.

Joe turned his head. “What?”

“I don’t know what he’ll tell you when you guys meet, but I do know more about the business than I probably should. It’s not just in Asia and shit countries like the media portrays it. It happens here, not daily, but probably monthly. Girls come up missing, and it’s not because some serial killer got them or they quit the business. They’re kidnapped, drugged, and sold just like everywhere else in the world. It’s not rampant, because if too many girls started showing up missing, someone would take notice. There are people that set them up too, of course. Escorts that befriend new girls, get them on the drugs, then call the men that come and pick them up. It’s a nasty business.”

Joe let the curtain swing back into its place and turned around to face Sally.

“When I say monthly, I mean, there might be one girl a month who doesn’t show back up to work, and most of the time it’s because they got some legit jobs or managed to convince a John to marry them. Sometimes though, it’s the other.” She stopped and looked back at her nails. Joe didn’t know why she kept staring at them, maybe it was a habit. Her way of fidgeting when she was speaking about something she didn’t want to talk about. She certainly looked more confident staring at her nails than if she had been wringing her hands together. “Listen to me going on and on. You want to hear this, I’m going to need another grand on top of everything else. That means you’re going to twenty-one grand when it’s all done.”

Joe had forgotten about his exhaustion. Forgotten about the years behind him. Forgotten about his earlier question to an empty room. “Sure,” he said.

“I’ve been all over the country doing this job. I’m leaving in another few months to head to warmer climates, because the winters in Boston are no joke, at all. So I have friends in just about every major city you can think about. We talk. Not every day, but we talk. Something’s happening now, and it’s a little unnerving. Girls are being taken, men too, much faster than ever before. Five missing from Los Angeles right now. Five. That’s five people that had apartments, friends, a business, basically, and they’re gone. No one knows where they are. No one has heard from them. One a month, that makes sense, most people don’t want to make a living out of this. Five though, in one city, in one month? You can’t even make a phone call to get in touch with them? That’s not right. Another four in Phoenix. I don’t know about all the cities, but I know that nine women aren’t here that were here last month.” She paused and placed her hand on her skirt, looking up at Joe. “You here trying to figure out what is happening to them?”

Joe sniffed, mucus or coke, he didn’t know. “I might be. Or I might just be really misled right now.”

The woman smiled. “The white stuff will do that to you. Oh well, time’s short. Do you want to meet this guy or do you think it’s better you turn around and go home? My six grand is coming off the top either way. The other five you owe me I’ll collect if you make it out alive. If you don’t, I suppose I’m sorry for getting you killed.”

“Yeah, I wanna meet him,” Joe said.

* * *

“
H
ey
.”

Joe heard Larry sigh over the phone. “Didn’t we just talk? Unless you’ve changed your mind, I’m not sure what else we have to discuss. I’m trying to get ready for work.”

What time was it at Larry’s? Five in the morning?

“I wanted to talk to you, I guess. Just for a few minutes,” Joe said.

“About what? You coming home? Giving up this nonsense?”

“No.”

“Then what is there to talk about? I can’t convince you how bad of an idea this is. I can’t convince you that cocaine is killing you. I can’t do anything except watch you destroy yourself, and to be honest, I’m not sure I’m going to do that anymore.”

Joe stood in front of the mirror, naked now. His bag was packed, on the bed, with pants and a shirt laid next to it. Larry was right; the drug was killing him. Joe looked at his ribs practically poking through his skin. If there had been any rough ridges on his bones, they would certainly have punctured his flesh by now. His arms had once held at least a semblance of muscle. No longer. Now Joe was a skeleton with a thin layer of skin wrapped around him.

“I haven’t even seen you in a year,” Larry said. “These calls are the only way I know you’re alive, and they really don’t add anything to my life. They take a lot away, because every time we talk, I realize that you’re gone forever. You’re not coming back. You’re incapable of coming back.”

Joe didn’t think Patti would recognize him if she saw him now. Maybe his face, but certainly not this body.

“So. What do you want?” His brother asked.

Tears were in Joe’s eyes, distorting his vision, but he looked on into the mirror. “I’m going away. I’m taking a chance. I guess a pretty big one. I think I might know how to get to him, but I’m not sure. I don’t think I’ll be able to call anymore, so I wanted to talk to you one more time.”

“Jesus Christ, Joe. Why? Why do this?”

Joe asked himself the same question last night, before the prostitute returned.

“Is it going to bring back Patricia or your boy?”

No. Nothing would bring them back.

“Because vengeance isn’t enough of a reason to throw your life away. It just isn’t. What about me, Joe? Do I have no say in this? Does me losing a brother matter at all to you, or is this only about you and your obsession?”

Joe sat on the bed, his frail body barely sinking into it. Larry wouldn’t have a brother anymore. That was something Joe hadn’t considered. He knew that he didn’t have a wife or son anymore, but never thought what it might be like for Larry to no longer have any direct family. Their mother passed two years ago, and only the two of them were left—of course there were aunts, uncles, and cousins who never called. What of that? Was he willing to leave Larry alone with his wife in order for a chance at finding Brand?

“I can’t stop,” he said into the phone, the tears overflowing onto his cheeks. “I can’t. I can’t come home. I can’t live with you guys. I can’t be normal again, Larry. Whatever normal was inside me is gone, it’s dead, and I can’t bring it back.” Joe sobbed into the phone, his hand coming up to his forehead. “I want to. I want to live with you guys and get my feet under me and get off this fucking drug, but I can’t. It’s too late. Brand. That’s all that matters anymore. I don’t sleep because I don’t want to see Patricia. I don’t want to see her dying. Do you understand that? I don’t want her to die anymore, and so I use and it keeps me from seeing it.”

He cried into the phone, words not coming, and his brother silent on the other end.

“I want to die, Larry. That’s all I really want, to be done with all this. But I can’t, I can’t just kill myself because then Brand got us all. My father right down to me. No one would be left in my whole family that he didn’t try to kill. So I’ve got to find him, or at least try, and hopefully I’ll die while I’m doing it. Hopefully I don’t have to use coke anymore and hopefully I don’t have to be afraid to close my eyes. Hopefully I can finally sleep, and the only path that I see taking me there is this one. It might get me close to him and it might kill me, but both are fine.”

Joe breathed heavily, his left hand wiping at his eyes. There was nothing else to say, nothing else to explain.