“Yeah, I’m pretty sure. But they’re all asleep right now.”
“Listen, you know how, like, if a nuclear bomb were going to drop on our heads any second, kissing our asses good-bye couldn’t wait until morning?”
He chuckled. Who said the Hulk didn’t have a sense of humor? “You’re funny.”
“Yeah, well, think of me as an armed nuclear warhead. I really can’t wait until morning.”
“So, you want to see her now?”
Damn, he was fast. “Speed of light, buddy. Are you a stone genius?”
He frowned at me, trying to figure out if I was making fun of him.
I leaned forward. “And afterwards, maybe you and I could hoof it to the café over there and have a cup?”
“You’re not my type.”
Damn. It happened. What was a girl to do? “Fine, will you just let us in?”
“My type is more … green.”
“Oh-Em-Gee, mister.” I took out my last twenty. “You’re breaking me here.”
He plucked it out of my fingers and opened the door. “You’ll have to sign in, and I need a copy of your PI license, then I’ll take you to her.”
Five minutes later, Cookie was nudging a sleeping woman wrapped in a gray blanket on one of dozens of cots scattered throughout a huge gymlike room. “Mimi?” she said, her voice an airy whisper. To help Mimi understand that we came in peace, Cookie borrowed the Hulk’s flashlight and held it under her face. I didn’t have the heart to tell her she looked like the Ghost of Christmas Past. “Mimi, honey?”
Mimi stirred, looked up through heavy lids, then let rip the loudest, most bloodcurdling scream I’d ever heard in my life. From a human being, anyway. The homeless people around us did everything from jump out of their skins to continue snoring.
“Mimi, it’s me!” Cookie said, shining the light straight on her face. Which really only made her look more like the Ghost of Christmas Present as it smoothed the fine lines of age and gave her skin that soft, nuclear-irradiated glow.
Mimi’s legs had shot up in the air, and I had to admit, as a fight-or-flight response, it just didn’t make much sense. Then she scrambled to the side of the cot and fell to the floor.
A man tapped my leg from behind. “What the hell is going on over there?”
“Exorcism. No need to worry, sir.”
He turned over with a harrumph and went back to sleep.
Mimi poked her head above the mattress. “Cookie?” she asked, her voice much softer than before.
“Yes.” Cookie hurried around to help her back onto the cot. “We came to help you.”
“Oh, my god, I’m so sorry. I thought—”
“You’re bleeding,” Cookie said as she fished a napkin out of her bag.
Mimi touched her upper lip, then dabbed at her bleeding nose with the napkin Cookie handed her. “This happens when my life flashes before my eyes.” She paused and stared straight ahead a moment. “And I may or may not have peed my pants.”
“Come on, sweetheart.” Cookie helped her stand, and I rushed to Mimi’s other side. For the low cost of a twenty spot—this time from Cookie’s wallet—we borrowed one of the offices in which to talk to her.
“You got a set of lungs, girl,” I said as I raided a small fridge for a water. I handed it to her when her nose stopped bleeding.
“I am so sorry about that,” she said, waving a hand in front of her face. “I was disoriented. I just didn’t know who you were.”
“Well, it didn’t help that Casper the Flashlight Ghost was all up in your face.”
Cookie scowled. “Mimi, this is Charley,” she said.
“Oh, my gosh.” She tried to stand, but her legs didn’t hold and she toppled back into the chair.
I reached a hand over and took hers. “Please don’t get up. I’m not that special.”
“From what I hear,” she said, holding my hand in hers, “you’re every bit that special. How did you find me?”
Cookie grinned. “That’s what Charley does. Are you okay?”
After a few minutes of introductions and the lively tale of how Mimi ended up in a homeless shelter that involved a drunken taxi driver and a small but containable fire, we moved onto the more important part of the story, why she was in a homeless shelter.
“I just thought no one would look for me here. I thought they wouldn’t find me.”
“Mimi,” Cookie admonished, “Warren and your parents are worried sick.”
She nodded. “I can live with that. Better worried sick than dead.”
She had a point. It was late and my head was on the verge of exploding. I decided to fill her in on our suspicions and go from there. “Stop me if you’ve heard this one.”
She frowned up at me.
“One night in high school, there was a party. A girl named Hana Insinga snuck out of her house and went to this party, and the next day she was reported missing by her parents.”
Mimi looked down when I said Hana’s name.
I continued. “Some people remembered seeing her there, some didn’t. Some said she might have left the party with a guy, some said no way, she didn’t leave with anyone.”
A soft hitch in Mimi’s breath had me thinking I might be on to something.
“And now, twenty years later, everyone who saw Hana leave the party with a boy is dying one by one. Does any of that ring a bell?”