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“You’ve changed, Lucian. She’s a poor excuse for Monique, but you’ll realize that eventually. Good luck finding her. I’m sure once you see the squalor that spawned her you’ll understand what I was trying to tell you.”
Lucian’s jaw cracked as he breathed harder than a bull through his nose. Never again would he see Slade as anything more than a prick colleague. He was done.
Chapter 30
Simplification
Strategy of exchanging pieces,
which can amplify an opponent’s advantage and strengthen their endgame
The scent of burning refuse permeated the frigid air. Tramps huddled over burning garbage cans stared as the limo slowly crawled by. Faces looked the same, vacant eyes peeking from dirty visages, hopelessly staring at the world moving around them. They’d been trolling the bowels of Folsom for days, with no sign of Evelyn.
It had begun to snow. December barreled in like a stampede, clearing the streets, leaving a hollow wake. Every night on the news there were posted advisories about the frigid temperatures. Lucian secured the permits for St. Christopher’s yesterday and the crew was gutting the school and church at that very minute. He hired a night shift in order to get the job done as quickly as possible and get the shelter up and running again.
They took the corner slowly so that they could scan each body huddled in the cold.
“Stop.” The limo halted abruptly and he climbed out. “Evelyn . . .” His words fell away as a young woman, similar in height and build, stared up at him with dark eyes and a toothless mouth, nothing like Evelyn’s. “My apologies. I thought you were someone else.”
Turning, he noticed several curious eyes on him. “I’m looking for a woman named Scout. Do you know her?”
“I may know her,” an older man with a lazy eye and discolored beard jaggedly grown in over a ruddy, scarred face said. “What’s it to you?”
His nose was made up of one pocked divot after another. His coat was worn and moth-eaten. Lucian could smell him from several feet away. Reaching in his pocket, he withdrew his phone and a few cards.
Dugan stood at the hood of the car, shivering. Flurries coated his shoulders. “Here, Dugan, take this.”
Lucian handed Dugan his belongings and stripped off his Armani wool trench. Walking over to the man claiming to know Evelyn, he held out the lined coat. “Here.”
The man eyed him skeptically.
“Take it. It’s supposed to drop another ten degrees tonight. You need it more than I do.”
He snatched the coat and quickly shrugged it on. It was too large for him. “What you want with Scout?”
“I don’t wish to cause her harm if that’s what you’re wondering. I just need to know that she’s safe.”
The man’s mouth worked, shrinking into a pucker over his toothless hole. “She comes to see Pearl now and then, but Pearl ain’t been ’round much. Moved on some time ago.”
“Pearl?” Lucian’s fists dug into his pockets and his body jerked with shivers.
The man nodded. “Yessir. Pearl used to take care of us men here, so long as we get her a fix when she done her job.”
Dread moved through him like eels in a swamp as his brain worked out what the man meant. Fuck. He needed to get to Evelyn.
“Do you know where I can find Pearl?”
He shrugged. “Lots of people know Pearl. She sick now. No one wants anything from her no more. Like I said. Moved on some time go.”
Lucian nodded and mumbled a thank-you. Even the warmth of the limo did nothing to warm his blood. “It’ll be getting dark soon, sir,” Dugan announced as he pulled away.
“Keep driving.”
They returned to the hotel sometime after two a.m. There was no telling where the needy went after dark. They had driven over every dilapidated road and looked in every dark alley, but found no one who could help them find Evelyn or this Pearl character.
The poignant reality he’d witnessed tonight was enough to haunt him for the rest of his life. The fact that these were people, human beings, living like rats among the gutters disturbed him to no end. Not because of their filth or pitiable circumstances, but because of their hardships, their hunger, and the bitter pain in their eyes. Such hopelessness.
Lucian awoke before dawn and stood on his balcony looking over the dark streets. A wash of light followed the swoosh of the random car cutting through the slush covering the pavement. Patras’s walks had been maintained by the hour and were pristinely cleared for pedestrians while the rest of the world was two steps behind.
The low groan of plow trucks making their way down the city streets in a grid pattern brought about a familiar sound of winters past. The thick marble railing along the balcony was caked with at least six inches of white death. The reality that people died last night from the cold and precipitation made it impossible to focus on the ordinary mundane worries of his typical existence. It all seemed suddenly small.
