[Same day, afternoon, 6:22 PM]
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I pushed open the doors to the Brickstone Apartments. It gave off a kind of old-timey feel, purposely devised to give it that kind of style as if it had been around for decades despite the fact it was standing for a few years, about seven to nine since it opened. The walls were composed of red and brown, exposed wooden support beams, and an unlit fireplace at the waiting center of the lobby. They likely hadn’t lit it in about a few weeks, noting its lack of smell of charcoal. Approaching the counter, even that seemed a bit rustic–a mahogany desk with a clock ticking behind the clerk.
The only slightly annoying thing about being an old-timey building, was the fact there were no elevators and Sarah happened to be on the 5th floor. The higher floors the less costly, I guess. The only reason I knew that was because my own apartment building was much the same way, lacking an elevator but not because of the theme of the apartment. It was just cheap.
It took about five minutes for me to reach the fifth floor without running up those winding steps, waving to whoever else was tasked with walking up the monstrosity of steps. Arriving at the utmost floor, I checked for the slip of paper given to me. ‘521.’ It took a few more tiring steps, but nothing as strenuous as those stairs. All that was left to do was knock and wait.
“Sarah, it’s me, Noah from Jung’s cafe downtown. Your mother told me what happened, I’d like to talk. Is that fine?” I asked, looking up to the peephole of the door as I awaited a response. Taking a moment to look around, there hadn’t been much traffic on the 5th floor. People did live up here, but there were far too few actual residents willing to do this much footwork to their rooms with other rooms and apartments or motels in the area. Sarah herself didn’t leave the apartment much either, likely starting since the disappearance. Noted by the lack of any muddying on the wooden floors of the apartment. She has just been holed up in there. I could hear her almost scurry to the door in about a few seconds before getting the chance to knock again.
Sarah opened the door in a rush, hair all messy and a robe haphazardly thrown on. “H-Hello! Is there anything about?– ... Oh, Noah.” She blurted, her face immediately going from a sense of urgent panic to a depressive frown. “Oh, it's you.” She got out, the bags under her eyes widening a fraction before she turned her head back to me. “I didn’t mean it like that. Sorry, things aren’t the best right now. I’m. I’m looking like a mess and… and… Max is…” She began to get shaky, tears still dried in the corner of her eyes as she tried to brush the new ones away as they appeared.
“I know. Your mother talked to me about what happened. May I come inside?” I asked, Sarah looked at me, almost in a state of worry as she glanced back to her apartment.
“I didn’t have time to clean. Everything that has happened. And…”
“It’s fine, I can help clean up a bit then. I wait and clean tables for a living. Literally.” I chuckled, walking into the door as she stepped aside. I could feel she was going to retaliate or say something, but she ended up just allowing it and I continued my non-verbally permitted trespassing of her abode. I found myself picking up scraps of paper, plastic bags. All chip bags filled with glass shards, and whatever else I could find, moving them into the only trash bag I could find in one of the cabinets.
Sarah just stared at me as I cleaned. Rightfully confused with my appearance and willingness to clean up her apartment without any catch. She seemed to stand there after closing the door to her apartment, minutes before she finally spoke up. “Noah, not to sound rude. You’re being a big help… but, why’re you here hun?” She asked, her hazel eyes giving me a quick look, her curly black hair now concealed by a bonnet to restrain those messy locks.
“Oh, sorry. Got a bit too into cleaning. I wanted to help out a bit. For you and Grenda. It seemed like the least I could do for how much you’ve both contributed so much to helping us.” I turned to her and smiled, stuffing another pile of tissues into the trash bag. Though, and rightfully so, it wasn’t enough for her. She wasn’t suspicious, well she was, but probably for the reasons I could think–a waiter at some cafe comes over and just volunteers to help clean the place without any heads up. Even if she trusted me, I would’ve been just as apprehensive at the whole situation, but she seemed too distressed to question it to its entirety.
Her mood quickly changed as I happened to pick up a lunchbox from the floor, from relatively distraught to full-blown almost on her knees in a fit of sobs.
“Oh god.” She happened to cough out. “He forgot his lunch. He didn’t even bring his lunch.” She tried covering her mouth to conceal wails of sadness, only to exacerbate them even further. Immediately dropping what I had in hand to catch her before she fell to her knees.
“Let’s get you onto a solid chair.” I aided her to the couch by the front of the room, giving her a few minutes to collect herself before the sobbing died down.
“I shouldn’t have let him go to school alone. I was so busy… I thought he knew the route there, we’ve walked there together so many times. I just had to not be there to supervise him, and he ended up getting kidnapped.” She hung her head low, placing a hand to her eyes to catch whatever stray tears had been lingering.
“It isn’t on you, these things– wait, kidnapped?” I let out. “I thought he was missing, you know he was kidnapped?”
“Of course I know! No one else thinks I do, but I do! I told those policemen and they’re being reluctant about it. No one wants to deal with it because of where we’re living. For the past few days, I saw the same man outside of this apartment. Just standing by. He never enters or checks in. I’ve never even seen his face outside of here! But… the one day my Max goes missing, and he coincidentally doesn’t show up the next day or the next. They both just vanished at the same time. That ain't no coincidence! I know he took him! I-I even took photos of the fucking creep because I tried to report it to the frontdesk beforehand. He kept scaring so many of the people.” She exclaimed, pulling out her phone and swiping through the images to show him to me.
He was what you’d think if you heard the words “biker gang member.” A white man with a receding hairline, a black tee and leather vest and torn leggings, accompanied by the exposed navel and beer gut with untrimmed and burly arm hair with badly shaven stubbles, a tattoo with two snakes… eels…? Coiling around a harpoon with the words “BOLD'' on both of the eels leading up to their mouth of the serpents. Tying the whole ensemble together with black tinted sunglasses and spiked black boots. Despite the appearance, he had been leaning on a black van and not a motorbike–just smoking a cigarette in many of the photos.
“He’s a…”
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“He’s a filthy criminal and he took my son.” Sarah interjected.
“I was going to try to say he doesn’t fit here, but yeah. That works.” I tried to laugh it off a bit, but I had just enough sense to know it wasn’t the time for something like that. Bad taste. “Can you send me the photos?” I asked. Shortly receiving the images moments after a quick exchange of numbers.
Scrounging the photos for anything I could find left me at a loss. Trying to find every black van in the city was impossible. I zoomed in on the tattoo and typed in the details of it into the search bar. Nothing. I searched the license plate for any information. Maybe crash accidents? Mugshots? Nope, nothing again. From what it seemed, this guy had been the cleanest criminal known to man, the most underwhelming, or he was really good with disguises. Anything and everything had been dead ends, just causing heavier amounts of fatigue from running into ruts. I could only imagine what this stress had been doing to Sarah. Trying to find something, but ending up at the same place as me. Nowhere.
Despite that, I tried to fix my expression, smiling and rested a hand on Sarah's shoulder. I couldn’t do much besides this for now.
“It’ll be fine, knowing who the kid’s mother is, he’ll make it through. They’ll find him before you know it.” I assured her, checking the time on my phone and standing to my feet. It was getting late and I could tell that things were going to get worse for Sarah, but I couldn’t intervene at those times even if I wanted to. She needed space or comfort, not being able to offer the latter it was best to give her the former. She had just waved as the door to her room closed, hearing her slow return to sobbing as I left the room.
With that, I headed out the steps of the door, cycling through the pictures she had sent as I walked down the stairs. I could do more. I needed to do more. I had to.
I gave the clerk another wave as the clerk entered the room, right as Sarah’s words played back to me.
“He’s a criminal.” I remembered, offering the clerk an inquisitive look before approaching her.
If he had been a criminal, or in some kind of gang, there was typically a kind of calling card. At least in shows and stuff. There was that tattoo, but it was likely probably the kind of “in the know” thing you only figured out when exposed to it often. If this van-driving biker was willing to hang out around the building for so long, maybe someone figured out what was up or noticed something. Who better than the clerk?
“Hello, miss, could I ask you something? I was looking around and some friends of mine were talking about this cool tattoo they found. I’m kind of a bit suspicious about it all, especially because I saw some guy around here parading the same thing. I wouldn’t want to accidentally copy someone else’s tattoo because my friends were trying to prank me.” I painfully lied by the skin of my teeth, showing the clerk the zoomed in image of the tattoo that was on the biker’s arm.
The clerk’s eyes widened a fraction, taking a moment to lean in and look around before anything. “Please, don’t get into anything stupid. Especially that– how old are you, dear?” She asked, raising a brow.
“Sixteen.” I replied.
“Thank the lords you’re unaware of this at your age…” She murmured, she tried to whisper it, but it was pretty easy to hear her nonetheless. I just batted my brows and waited for her to continue, she came to the same conclusion that anyone else would’ve. Some random kid walks into a hotel, asks about a gang tattoo and that his friends want him to get it– it was probably that I was going to get it from her eyes unless she told me something more to guide me away from this destructive path.
“It’s the tattoo for an annoying gr…” She looked up to me, as if making sure I was old enough to hear what she was going to tell me. “It’s a tattoo belonging to a gang. They’re called the Pier Poachers. A lot of them have the same tattoo. They’ve been trying to barge into some of the businesses close to the docks for quite a while or in this apartment, places that don’t have that much business and would benefit from more. They’re infuriating, and people have wanted to do something about it, but the police won't interfere. So, whenever we see that tattoo, we get fed up and kindly ask if they’d butt out. Most of the time we need to pay them though. Please, don’t stick your nose into their business, you… you didn’t hear it from me, but I hear they had a—” She paused for a moment, almost as if something in her had clicked back into place, shaking her head in response as she let out a low sigh. It was always so depressing to be left on those cliffhangers, as if that small piece of information would have been something a bit important for me to be aware of before I did anything rash.
I nodded my head, making it seem like I understood how grave the situation had been to settle her nerves. “Thank you, I promise I won’t be doing anything stupid like that then.” I uttered as I began to walk off. That was another lead that had possibly gone sour. Things had just gotten a bit more depressing by the sounds of it. If this gang had been active for a while and people were complaining about it to this extent, it meant that the involvement of any law enforcement that meant actually dealing with the problem was going to be small if not nonexistent. They were a nuisance that no one wanted to deal with and because they weren’t big enough to matter.
The conversation with the clerk wasn’t completely pointless. It actually offered a lot more than they knew. It meant that most of these people had been criminals with some kind of past– even if the police didn’t go around trying to totally shut down the activity of the gang. There must have been some efforts taken at some point, maybe motor arrests or public warrants for arrest. It was a stretch, hoping that someone in a gang conveniently had their criminal past online and a bit of information on them. Yet, as I searched up the license plate of that vehicle I got my answer.
The vehicle belonged to some burly looking guy, Reggie Manson, definitely not the guy in the photo but just as rugged looking from his mugshot. The icing on the cake had been the sight of that eel harpoon tattoo in his picture. The vehicle must’ve been something shared with the other members, something they could all use inconspicuously without having to drive multiple of the same odd-looking vehicle through the streets. Now, just because activity of the gang had been little to nothing in the news, doesn’t mean that the individual members were safe protected from the media as well. It might’ve taken a few minutes of mindlessly scrolling through the search bar before I found anything meaningful…
Reggie Manson arrested outside of a bar in Broxton City…
Reggie Manson arrested for allegedly beating lover during intoxicated outburst…
Reggie Manson under investigation after allegations of blackmailing small businesses…
Reggie Manson arrested outside of Blackstone Motel… bingo!
Blackstone Motel is forced to offer reparations due to noisy tenants.
Blackstone Motel enforces mandatory curfew for late-night tenants.
Blackstone Motel removes curfew following outrage.
Parker Reeves arrested outside Blackstone Motel, suggested association with unlawful distribution.
How many bad things had to happen to one place? It could have just been all coincidental, but any piece of information mattered. Without wasting another beat, I headed through the doors of the apartment and made a dash towards my one and only potential lead.
I was going to need to change what I was wearing beforehand. A pair of jeans and a T-shirt. I didn’t want a gangster knowing my face, right?