The Freshman (Kingmakers)

by Sophie Lark

  I glide through the crowd, introducing fame-hungry models to sleazy producers, brilliant videographers to marketing reps. Every connection is a new favor in my pocket as I hook people up with exactly what they need.

  I hype Iggy up, too. He hates performing, gets nervous every time.

  “It’s not even a concert,” I tell him. “People are just here to hang out. There’s no pressure.”

  There’s a metric fuck-ton of pressure. More pressure than the San Andreas fault. But it won’t do Iggy any good to hear that.

  Everything is flawless. ‘Till I spot another uninvited guest.

  She’s standing over by the bar, sipping a glass of my extremely expensive stolen champagne, wearing a minidress that used less fabric than an oversized handkerchief. I can see at least six different men hovering around her, waiting for their chance to swoop in, while she chats up the Cub’s newest pitcher.

  The pitcher looks like he took a pop fly to the head. He’s staring into Sabrina’s eyes with a dazed expression, failing to bring his straw to his lips as he tries to take a sip of his cocktail and pokes himself in the nose instead. Sabrina stifles a giggle, biting the corner of her lip.

  I shove my way through the crowd and grab her by the arm.

  “Excuse me,” I say to the pitcher.

  He shakes his head, coming out of his trance.

  “Hey!” he says. “We were talking!”

  “She’s gonna talk you right into Cook County jail,” I inform him. “She’s sixteen years old.”

  The pitcher’s jaw drops.

  Sabrina scowls at me, an expression that only manages to make her look more beautiful. My cousin is fucking dangerous.

  “Let go of me,” she says, coolly.

  “Not a fuckin’ chance. You’re gatecrashing.”

  “Oh, please,” she tosses her long, dark hair back over her shoulder. “You’re letting anybody in here. That dude gave up three home runs to the Sox on Thursday.”

  I keep dragging her toward the exit.

  “Yup. Everybody’s welcome except you.”

  “Why not?”

  “‘Cause I don’t want Uncle Nero to cut my fucking head off.”

  Now Sabrina’s really pissed.

  “Are you serious?”

  “As serious as antibiotic resistance.”

  “Miles!”

  “Sabrina!” I’ve taken her all the way outside to the ivy-choked alleyway next to the factory. “Look, I get it. You hate being treated like a kid and you just want to dance and have a couple drinks and make those dudes embarrass themselves for your amusement. On a normal night, I wouldn’t have a problem with it. But I’ve got a lot riding on this and I can’t keep an eye on you at the same time.”

  “I don’t need you to babysit me!”

  “Yeah, yeah, I know — you can take care of yourself. Go do it at some other party, ‘cause your dad’s already pissed at me.”

  I whistle to catch the attention of a cab dropping off another load of partygoers.

  Sabrina cocks an eyebrow at me.

  “You did steal his car.”

  “I borrowed it for a photo shoot. And I brought it right back again.”

  “With sand in the engine.”

  I shove her in the backseat of the cab.

  “Goodnight!” I say, slamming the door in her face.

  Whatever Sabrina shouts back at me is lost in the pounding bass emanating from the charcoal factory.

  With a sigh of relief, I turn back to the party.

  I love my cousin, but her dad is a barely-civilized psychopath and my night doesn’t need any more complications.

  Besides, I’ve got to focus on Iggy. I can hear The Shakers winding down, which means he’s up in just a couple of minutes.

  I head back up to the roof, backstage to the little dressing room I set up for him. Iggy’s pouring over his lyrics sheet, which looks like the journal of a madman, full of inky scribbles, crossed-out lines, and tiny arrows pointing to revisions.

  He looks up when I enter, pushing his shaggy hair back out of his eyes and giving me his slow, sleepy grin.

  “The band sounds great,” he says.

  “You’re gonna sound better.”

  “Not too many people out there?”

  “Nah,” I lie. “Barely any.”

  In the bright stage lights, Iggy won’t see any different ‘till he’s already done.

  “That’s good,” he sighs.

  Iggy’s normal speaking voice is so soft and slow that the transformation to his rapid-fire rapping jars me every time.

  “If your album charts the way I think it’s gonna, the contract with Virgin is a sure thing,” I tell him.

  “We’ll find out soon enough,” Iggy says.

  My phone buzzes in my pocket. I pull it out, seeing a message from Anders:

  Poe rolled up with three dudes, but I told him to fuck off. Think he left.

  Good. I knew he couldn’t resist showing his ugly mug, but I’m glad Beckett and Anders were intimidating enough to dissuade him. If he comes back, we’re gonna have a much less-friendly conversation.

  “Problem?” Iggy asks.

  “Nope,” I say, tucking my phone back in my pocket. “You ready?”

  Iggy folds up his lyrics sheet and stuffs it in his pocket. I know he’s already got it all locked up in that insane brain of his — he just likes to look it over to reassure himself.

  The crowd whoops and cheers as The Shakers take their bow.

  “Sounds like a lot of people,” Iggy says, mildly.

  “You got this,” I reassure him.

  I walk him to the stairs leading up the backside of the stage. The sound engineer clips on Iggy’s mic and gives him the hand-held as well. The opening bars of “Deathless Life” begin to play. Iggy squares his shoulders and I see the transformation wash over him — his eyes narrowing, his lips tightening, his fingers gripping the mic.

  Then he bounds up the stairs and starts shouting with the speed of an auctioneer:

  They said I was buried

  Desiccated and dead

  I’ll climb up out the grave

  Break the stone on ya head

  I’m breathless and reckless

  Continually climb

  Drink the glass to the bottom

  And eat up the lime...

  By the time he reaches the chorus, the whole rooftop is shouting the lyrics along with him. Iggy will know that the factory is packed, a mass of people breaking every possible fire code, but it won’t matter by now, he’s in the swing of it.

  I told my boy Kelly to video the whole thing. I’ll send that to Victor Kane tonight and I’ll be damned if he doesn’t sign the contract on the spot. Iggy’s going to L.A., where he’ll be free from his bloodsucking relatives.

  Right as I’m reveling in triumph, my phone buzzes again.

  I pull it out, seeing Sabrina’s number.

  My cousin wouldn’t call just to beg to be let back into the party.

  I lift the phone to my ear, already sensing what I’m about to hear.

  “Your bouncer needs a lesson in manners,” Poe says, in his three-packs-a-day rasp.

  “He never passed the etiquette test in the employee training manual,” I reply.

  “Not you though, huh?” Poe sneers. “You’re all jokes.”

  “I’d call that a quip at best.”

  “Let’s see how funny it is when I strangle your cousin and dump her body in the alley.”

  I let out a slow breath of air. “Not a good idea. You know who her father is?”

  “I don’t give a fuck who you little shits are related to,” Poe hisses. “Get down here and leave your fuckin’ bouncers in the warehouse.”

  “It’s a factory,” I correct him. “But alright. I’m coming.”

  I’m annoyed that I have to leave in the middle of Iggy’s performance. Even more annoyed that they dragged Sabrina into this. She probably hopped out of that cab the second it went round the corner. She’s always be
en a magnet for trouble.

  As I pass Beckett and Anders guarding the door, Anders says, “Something wrong, boss?”

  “A small inconvenience,” I say.

  I could give Anders shit for not calling me when Poe showed up like I told him to do, but this was coming one way or another.

  “Wait twelve minutes,” I tell Anders. “Then come around to the alley.”

  He nods slowly, his eyes fixed on mine. I can tell he’d rather follow me right now, but he’ll do what I ask.

  “Alright, boss,” he says.

  “Twelve minutes.” I tap the Breitling on my wrist. “Use the side door.”

  Anders takes a quick look at his own watch to confirm the time and jerks his head in the affirmative.

  I pass the long line of people still waiting to come inside, all gazing enviously up toward the roof where Iggy’s ass-kicking performance is ongoing.

  Then I turn the corner to the narrow alleyway where Poe waits with his three goons.

  The alley is actually quite pretty, the factory wall carpeted with a thick mat of hanging ivy and the opposite side bordered by an ornate wrought-iron fence. The narrow space funnels the sound so that Iggy’s concert sounds much further away than it actually is, and I can hear my own footsteps echoing on the concrete.

  Poe has one of his idiot friends stationed at the opening of the alley, a rat-faced motherfucker in an oversized leather jacket. He smirks at me as I pass. Poe and his other two goons are holding Sabrina down at the end of the alley in front of a padlocked gate.

  The biggest guy has Sabrina’s arms pinned behind her back, a position that pulls her tiny dress up even further. His friend — a stocky dude with teardrops tattooed on both cheeks — is standing slightly behind her so he can enjoy the view. If he wasn’t so busy staring at her ass, he might notice the glint of metal on her upper thigh.

  Sabrina locks eyes with me. There’s no hint of fear or remorse in her face. Just pure, burning fury.

  It doesn’t appear that they roughed her up, so maybe Poe isn’t as stupid as he looks.

  He does look plenty stupid. He’s a walking cartoon character — his blocky, rectangular head sitting on a neck of exactly the same thickness, so it forms one long pillar from skull to shoulders. His fade is shaved so high that his pouf of gingery hair perches on top of his head like a toupee. Add to that a drooping mustache and Bugs Bunny teeth.

  Still, it would be a mistake to find him comical. Poe is no stranger to violence. The most dangerous man is one who has nothing to lose.

  Poe is a six-time convict, petty drug-dealer, and fentanyl addict who’s about to lose his last meal ticket. He’s going to cling to Iggy until his fingernails tear off. Unless I put a stop to this once and for all.

  “You’re fuckin’ disrespectful, boy,” Poe hisses. “You throw a party for Iggy’s album and you don’t even invite his manager?”

  “You’re not his manager,” I reply. “And you’re right, I don’t respect you. You’re a leech. You’ve been bleeding Iggy dry since he posted his first song. You don’t do fuck-all for him.”

  “I do everything for him!” Poe rasps, outraged. “Who helped pay his mum’s rent after his dad died? Who bought his Christmas presents?”

  “You threw them fifty bucks here and there so you could use their house to stash your drugs,” I snort. “And the only Christmas I remember seeing you is the one where you had an ankle monitor and you needed a permanent address for your parole officer.”

  If anybody paid Iggy’s rent it was my dad, who helped Iggy’s mom land a job as a PA at City Hall after his father dropped dead from a stroke at only forty-eight years old.

  “I don’t have to explain myself to you!” Poe howls, his face turning the color of a turnip. “You think you can take my nephew away? Well I got yer fuckin’ cousin. So you can tear up that bullshit contract with Virgin-fuckin-whoever-the-fuck, or I’ll tear her pretty little face off instead!”

  “That’s not happening,” I say. “Iggy’s leaving. You’re staying here. It’s already decided. But I’m willing to discuss terms. We can all walk away happy tonight.”

  “Fuck yer fuckin’ terms!” Poe laughs in my face. “Look around you! There’s four of us and one of you.”

  “No need for this to get ugly.”

  “Oh, we’re way past ugly,” Poe sneers. “You think you’re making’ a deal here? I’ll shoot this bitch in the face just to set the table!”

  He yanks a battered .45 out of the waistband of his filthy jeans and points it at Sabrina, cocking the trigger. Sabrina’s nostrils flare. I figure I have about two more minutes before she does something crazy. Which aligns nicely with my own timeline.

  Poe doesn’t want to see the carrot — it’s time to bring out the stick.

  “I’m glad you brought up firearms, Poe,” I say.

  I’m slowly walking forward so that I can position myself between Poe and Sabrina. Poe doesn’t care — he’s fine with pointing his gun in my face instead. He turns his body, arm outstretched, so that his back is to the ivy-covered wall and Poe’s two goons are behind me.

  “It’s hard to get rid of a gun,” I say. “I mean, really get rid of it. You can file the serial numbers off, chuck it in a river. But it’s still there, just waiting to be found. And sometimes you don’t want to throw it in the river. The damn things are expensive. Sometimes the temptation to keep it is just too strong...”

  “What the fuck are you blabbering about?” Poe says, mustache twitching.

  “Iggy and I have been friends a long time,” I say. “Like that Christmas we were just talking about...I spent half the holiday at his house. You probably remember...”

  Poe narrows his eyes at me, finger curled around the trigger of his gun. I don’t love that he’s holding it that way. He’s jittery enough to shoot me by accident.

  “Iggy and I had just started smoking weed. I think we were fourteen, fifteen maybe. We had to find somewhere to hide his stash, so his mom didn’t give us shit. We ended up taking down the air vent and putting our baggy in the ducts. Funny, though...we weren’t the first people to hide something in there...”

  Poe has a sense of where I’m going, but he doesn’t quite believe it.

  “You had just gotten out of jail after knocking over the 7-11 on Kedzie with a couple of your buddies. Somebody shot the cashier...oops. He died two days later. Cops thought it was you, but they couldn’t prove it from the security tape, and they didn’t have the murder weapon. You hid the gun. But you didn’t hide it very well. Uncles and nephews think alike I guess, ‘cause Iggy pulled it out of the wall.”

  “Bullshit,” Poe hisses. He’s shaking his head, but he takes a step back all the same, so he’s almost pressed up against the ivy.

  “I’m afraid not,” I say, quietly, “‘Course I didn’t know what that gun was at the time, or where it came from. But when you started demanding that Iggy pay you a forty percent commission...I dug up your old case file. I checked what caliber bullet they dug out of the cashier’s neck. And I remembered what we found that Christmas. Only took me an hour to visit Iggy’s house and check that vent again.”

  “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Poe says. His jaw is stubbornly set but he’s sweating.

  “It was still there. A .357 Magnum revolver with a scratch across the grip. From how dirty it was...I kinda think you didn’t even wipe your prints off.”

  “So the fuck what!” Poe shouts, defiantly. “Doesn’t mean nothin’.”

  “It means a lot,” I say. “Looks to me like the only evidence the cops need is that gun. They know you were at the gas station that night. They just couldn’t prove who pulled the trigger. There’s no statute of limitations on murder, unfortunately...”

  Poe’s grip on his gun is none too steady. He’s looking back and forth between me and the gangly asshole who’s holding onto Sabrina. I’m hoping my leverage is enough that we can end this thing peacefully. But I’m also keeping Poe’s goons in my peripheral, counting
down the seconds left on that twelve minutes...

  “You’re a fuckin’ liar!” Poe shrieks. “You ain’t got any—“

  He’s cut off mid-accusation by the heavy metal door that hits him square in the back. He didn’t see it right behind him, covered over by the ivy. Anders comes barreling through the side door at top speed, hitting Poe so hard that he goes flying forward spread-eagle on the pavement, taking several layers of skin off his face.

  Since I was waiting for exactly that moment, I have the advantage on the other two idiots. I charge the one with the tattooed face, trusting Sabrina to handle the other guy for just a second.

  My dad always told me to attack smart, not hard. When your adrenaline is up, the natural inclination is to come in swinging. You gotta tamp that down if you want to be strategic.

  Fists are overrated — too easy to break your hand first punch. Better to use the knees and elbows.

  I come at Teardrops with a long knee, using the full momentum of my rush to drive my kneecap directly into his gut. Then, when he doubles over, I bring my elbow down hard on the back of his neck.

  Right beside me, Tall n’ Ugly has made the mistake of letting go of Sabrina’s arms. Maybe he thought she’d stand there helpless while he jumped into the fight. He thought he wrong.

  In one swift movement, Sabrina unsheathes the little silver knife strapped to her thigh and she slashes him across the face, opening his cheek from ear to jaw. He claps his hand to his face, blood pouring through his fingers, and Sabrina uses that opening to stab him under the ribs. He drops like a stone, her knife still buried in his side.

  Rat-Face has realized that his guarding of the alley was both unsuccessful and no longer required, so he comes charging at me, trying to pull his gun out of his flapping leather jacket. I throw my cellphone hard at his face, hitting him on the bridge of the nose with a satisfying crunch. I follow that up with a right cross that takes the rest of the starch out of him.

  Meanwhile, Anders is grappling with Poe, who managed to keep hold of his gun despite his brief departure with gravity and the road rash down his cheek. Poe squeezes the trigger wildly, firing two shots up in the air, and one that narrowly misses my ear.