Lost and Found

All Roads Lead to Pinch

It took two weeks of chasing pavement through this decrepit shit hole city, sleeping in abandoned cars and rank alleyways, chasing dead leads and whispered rumors, before she found herself in front of the 9 Hotel. She wasn't even entirely sure how she got here, and every time she summoned the memory of her arrival it slipped further away. The city was a triple depth burial, each new corpse of an edifice stacked unceremoniously on the bones of the building before it. Concrete and brick, steel and glass, gargoyles hanging below penthouses. She traveled on foot, leaving her vehicle in the parking garage when the time came to run. Hiding wasn't all that hard once her bright white nurse nikes were soiled with street silt and subterfuge. Get out quiet. Keep to the back streets. Find the 9 Hotel. You'll be safe there. That was all she was told before escaping through the emergency room. She damn sure wasn't going to lead them here, and the clunker was too easy to recognize.

She stood at the hotel's entrance, tall tarnished glass and dirty metal doors for a black and white golden age movie, a dead mall, or some abandoned rotting mega church. Beneath the electric glow of a flickering neon sign hanging above her head. Low red light lit up the rain, sheets of static darting at the cracked sidewalk. A low fog was gathering, glowing in the kind of pitch dark you only see after midnight. Three a.m., witching hour, not another breathing body in sight. She made a reluctant reach for the door, taking a deep staggered breath. Her hand stopped short of the handle. No petrichor. It was one of the only comforts living in this godforsaken city. The smell of the rain during a downpour was the closest to fresh air anyone within the limits would ever get. But not here. It stank of singed skin and sulfur, acrid and rotten. Everything about being here felt wrong. The hair on the back of her neck bristled as she realized someone was approaching behind her.

"You'll be moving out of my way."

She flung around making an awkward scramble for the knife in her pocket. Her light blue scrubs clung to her skin, caked in detritus from weeks of sleeping in filth. 

"Now."

She looked up at a man with onyx eyes and a diamond cut chin, staring down his nose at her with a glass cutting sneer. She raked a hand through her knotted walnut curls and stammered as she scurried sideways. 

"If... could I just... "

The man known as Arthur Pinch reached past her, yanking the door open. She moved again before the glass could make contact with her feet. He paused to leer at her a final time.

"And if you walk into my hotel smelling like a wet dog, I'll fucking kennel you like one."

The doors were closed before she pieced together what she had seen. Brown paper package in nitrile clung hands. Knee length rubber apron hidden poorly by a tailored black overcoat. High rubber boots with thick heavy soles. On one toe, a tiny arc of electric red mirrors, drops of blood belying the volume left behind. Blood like reflections. Blood like promises.

He cleans up nice. 

The intrusive thoughts were getting worse.

Nerisse awakes to an errant ray of sunlight beating against her eyelids. West window. Sundown. Fuckin helios. She fumbles blindly on the bed next to her. Pocket knife, dead watch, crowbar, pliers, pencil, pencil, panties. The fuck is the duct tape. Her fingers wrap around the roll and she rips a piece off with her teeth, slapping it over the bit of black sheet letting the light slip through the window. She rolls over and sits up, grabs a pencil, wraps her dark blue shag into a knot. 

Feels around for the watch and puts it on absentmindedly, upside down. She has little use for conventional time now. There is night, day, and Tuesdays. Twenty four Tuesdays passed since she parked her van among the loading docks behind the 9 Hotel, and she had yet to step foot inside. 

It had to be today. Yesterday and tomorrow are lies and empty promises.

 But this tomorrow would be Tuesday again, and this time she wasn't ready.

She pulls her combat boots on over shredded fishnets, throws on a crumbling bomber jacket over layers of crop tops and tattered skirts. She slips a ziploc half filled with a flight of pharmaceuticals out of her chest pocket, picks an indiscriminate handful, and downs them with half a cup of cold coffee from a mug on the kitchenette. Time to meet the Red Queen.

The walk to the front entrance is an optical illusion. It always took about fifteen minutes, but the steps varied wildly. Less than a quarter mile one day, half a mile the next. She had attempted to count the windows to gauge how many floors there were but always came up with a different answer. Sometimes she counted nine floors, sometimes she counted thirteen. The massive building had decades of mismatched additions and renovations, resulting in a labyrinthine architectural nightmare. 

Navigating it would take time. 

Nothing would be what it is because everything would be what it isn't. 

She approaches the front doors to the hotel and swings one open. Heavier than she expected. Wall sconce bouquets of dead flowers bookend either side of the entrance, roses and lilies in various stages of dust and decay. She pauses a moment to smell one. But only a moment. Momentum. Begin at the beginning, and go on till you come to the end; then stop.

She twirls away from the vase and nearly faceplants as a piercing voice echoes from the intercom.

‘"Would the blue haired miss approach the concierge. Please." The please is a nicety thinly veiling the expectation of immediate compliance. 

She steadies herself, squaring her shoulders, brushes off the front of her jacket. Marches forward three determined steps before seizing. The lobby is a cavernous art deco corpse, bleeding chrome and embalmed in geometric chaos.

"Miss." If patience had been detected before, it was gone now.

Nerisse weaves around a couple pairs of bulky conversation couches, towards the stairs to the concierge desk. Arthur Pinch, holed up behind a teak fortress of wooden panels, glass panes, and brass bars, stands with his arms folded. Motionless, but his eyes are tapping their fingers. She stumbles over her laces up the steps, finds her footing, and offers a crooked curtsy.

"Your majesty."

Arthur is not a man known to be at a loss for words, but for half a breath he debates how to address the honorific. He chooses to ignore it, flipping through a leather bound planner to fill the momentary silence. 

"Would you care to explain to me why you've been parked by the loading docks for six months?"

She smiles innocently. "I'm chasing the white rabbit."

Another junkie. Perfect. "What you choose to do in your hovel does not concern me. What does concern me is your presence on this property. So we'll try again, shall we?" He leans in close to the glass, eyes narrowed. "Why the fuck are you hiding behind my hotel?"

Nerisse is apprehensive, takes a moment to consider her next move. "I've had nothing yet. So I can't take more."

Arthur's eyes brighten as the corners of his lips curl up ever so slightly. Clever girl. "It's very easy to take more than nothing."

Nerisse begins to look nervous. "I think you might do something better with time than wasting it asking riddles that have no answers."

An ear splitting grin. "If you knew time as I do, you wouldn't be wasting it."

Nerisse sighs. "Ships and shoes and sealing wax."

Pinch leans away from the glass with a smirk.

"Cabbages and kings."

She nods, allowing that he's won, and trots back down the steps. 

Pinch watches as she heads towards the bar, dodging tables and dancing with chairs, oblivious of the paths created for traversing between seatings. He picks up the house phone and punches a few numbers. The voice on the other end is female, barely awake, and obviously annoyed. 

"Make it quick, Pinch."

"Always a pleasure, dear," he snickers as Nerisse bumps face first into Balthazar's chest, knocking the hand rolled cigarillo from his fingers. This should be interesting.

"Grim. I have a job for you."