Trust Me

by Paul Slatter

  Chendrill stood silently for a while, then after twenty minutes had passed he moved to the other side of the house and did it again. There was no one there—no rabid dog to warn a sleepy guard or someone coming back from the store.

  He walked back to the kitchen door at the rear and pushed the bottom with his foot. It was firm. Then he tried the centre with his shoulder. It was the same. He moved to the windows with air conditioners sticking out the tops of each of them, all of which were cold and dry, and he pushed the frames beneath. There was no give there either, the home was secure, overly secure if that was possible. He was at the right place. He waited some more and thought about how he would do it if it was him. The Americans watched everything along Zero Ave and to come back and forth with a van would only create more scrutiny.

  Chendrill moved himself back into the woods and found his way through the bush towards the barn and again stood with his back to it. Chances were high that the place operated after dark when it was running, although it wouldn’t surprise him if it ran 24/7. He looked back at the trees and saw a small lane that ran into a gully where it was protected from both sides with a treed canopy above. The width was just the right size for a passenger van or an SUV. He walked to the side where the lane met the barn and studied its cedar shingle side. It all looked the same and weather worn, old dirt splashed up from the heavy rains that came in the winter. There wasn’t anywhere to turn or park if you came to the barn from this side. Chendrill walked to the barn’s end and began to push his foot into the bottom of the shingles to see if it would give. He moved along towards the centre, pushing hard on each shingle until one eventually gave slightly, as did the next and the next until he reached the other side of what could only be a hidden garage door.

  Chendrill stepped back and looked at the frame. He moved in again. Crouching down, he felt along the underside of the bottom line of shingles. In the centre, he found a small piece of wire with a bolt attached. He gave it a pull, snapping it downward, and felt the garage door give at the top and the spring system take over as the shingle wall came out slightly then lifted itself up with ease.

  Chendrill pulled the door up another couple of feet and bent his big frame under, stepped inside and closed the large door behind him. The inside of the barn was dark, lit only by a window at the top and whatever light managed to squeeze its way through some joists.

  He walked to a door and opened it slowly and saw a steep, thin dark passageway which sloped down, dropping away towards the house. Chendrill looked for a light switch but could not see one. He pulled out a penlight from his pocket and started the walk downwards into the darkness, the small light illuminating only the wall and ceiling that surrounded him and the floor a few feet in front of his feet. He reached a corner where a ladder dropped down from above through a large plastic tube. With the distance I’ve travelled, by now I must be under the house, Chendrill thought as he raised his flashlight and counted the rungs on the ladder as it towered above—twenty-five. He would be roughly 20 feet under now. He looked at the tunnel that was now to his left. The pitch was steeper as it dropped further down under the ground and although the width was the same, the ceiling was lower. The whole tunnel was lined with rotten plywood and strong beams, with a small unlit bulb every 50 feet.

  Chendrill headed further into the tunnel, descending lower and lower and feeling the drips of water that had found their way through the cracks as he did. By counting the lamps and judging the degree of the pitch, he worked out he must have been roughly 75 feet deep by the time he reached a line crudely drawn in paint which could only have been the Canadian - U.S. border above. He carried on in the darkness, feeling the air get thinner and colder as the tunnel leveled out and swung to the right and then carried on straight and began to slightly rise again for what he could tell was another 1,500 feet, the small light from his penlight paving the way.

  He reached a door, then a staircase, and began to climb up towards what he could see was daylight. At the top was a window high above a heavy metal door with a metal bar along its centre. Chendrill stood at the top and listened, there was no movement on the other side, only silence. Slowly he pushed the metal bar and opened the door.

  He walked into another barn not to dissimilar from the one he’d entered the tunnel through on the Canadian side of the border. Except that in this one there was a van with Washington Farm Produce written on the side.

  Chendrill walked up to the side of it and looked inside. Against the dash were receipts and work gloves and empty blueberry boxes stuffed on the passenger seat and in the center. He tried the driver’s door and it opened and reached inside for the receipts and pulled them out. In amongst them was an invoice from the farm with the farm’s details written at the bottom in stylish lettering.

  Chendrill moved to the barn’s side door and opened it slowly and stepped outside. To his left he could see Canada far in the distance to the north and the backs of the camera towers that waited patiently and watched.

  You fucking smart asses, Chendrill thought as he looked around the place and wondered who had dug the thing in the first place. Whoever it was had spent time digging deep and going that extra mile with a shovel and making his life easier; only it wasn’t a shovel, it was a small diameter tunnel boring machine stolen from a mine up at Williams Lake, along with a tractor that worked the field right on the border as the mole dug for the three months it had taken to reach the property they’d bought cheap via a numbered company just over half a mile south on the other side.

  How many people had been through here? Chendrill wondered. It would be a lot. But knowing Rasheed and his ways, he’d have done it in spurts so as not to allow gossip.

  An hour later, Chendrill was back on the other side and sitting in the front seat of the Aston. He put the car into drive and pulled away from the side of the laneway he’d tucked the Aston into. Now he had the means—all he needed was to get this prick of a loan shark down that tunnel and have the border guy wipe some oil off of his toes and meet the guy coming out the other end as agreed and he’ll have killed two birds with one stone. But life was never going to be as simple as that for the great Charles Chuck Chendrill, even if he was now a rich man.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Mazzi Hegan had packed up, cleared out of his old love nest, walked away from his old sword swallowing life and had left it all behind. He was gone and in what seemed the blink of an eye Dan was in, and thanks to Sebastian’s generosity in death, he was the proud owner of a gay palace complete with leather sofas, glass coffee tables, power showers, and murals.

  Dan hit the button on Mazzi Hegan’s music system and listened as The Pet Shop Boys blared out. The silver suit that went with the undies and fitted tight on Mazzi also fit Dan well. He looked at the four Korean dancing troupe girls sitting on Mazzi’s leather sofa and smiled. Then he said, “So what do you think of the new pad, you like it?”

  They did.

  The place had four bedrooms, all en suite, which he now owned and hadn’t noticed the last time he’d been over and had his nose broken by a man bag. He looked again at the note sitting on the dresser and read it over for the fifth time:

  Dan – Keep what you want - Throw the rest to the wolves.

  And ‘wolves’ meant the people in need, Dan supposed. All the clothes, silk suits, as well as the furniture it seemed—and the half-eaten bath loaf. Most of the clothes were super gay though; in fact, all of the clothes Mazzi Hegan had left behind were just that. He could imagine what would happen if he was to drop off a few bags here and there for the guys and girls living on the streets to find. And the next day, he’d see a bunch of the downtown homeless population wandering about in tight lycra string vests that say ‘I Swallow’ but what the hell. Clothes were clothes.

  Looking to the group of girls sitting there chatting in Korean in the hope that they might put on one of the t-shirts and find some inspiration in the over the top subliminal messaging, he said, “There’s clothes as well if you need them.�
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  They didn’t—they could see what he was wearing and were cool. The leader, Myuki, said, “Your clothes are too big, not fit.”

  “These clothes aren’t mine, they belong to the guy who lived here before, Mazzi, you met him?” Dan quickly said, putting them straight, and followed up with, “Same with the drawings on the ceiling in the main bedroom.”

  Then he watched as the girls looked at each other and laughed, and heard Myuki say, “We think that you!”

  Dan smiled, he’d given the dance troupe a lightning tour and only opened the door quickly for the girls to see what had once been Mazzi Hegan’s bedroom and he hadn’t seen anyone glance up to the ceiling to see the drawing, but now by the way they were giggling, they obviously had. He said, “Yeah well, I ain’t that hairy.”

  He’d texted them just after he’d felt ‘Marshaa’ had outstayed her welcome and in an attempt to get her to leave he’d asked her if she’d help him clean the bathroom and watched her entourage arrive and whisk her off 5 minutes later in a limousine. Not that Dan had actually known where the bleach and rubber gloves were in his mother’s home, but it had been a good idea at the time as the supermodel was getting all cuddly and beginning to get on his nerves.

  Then not long after, the girls had met him in a pizza joint just off Main Street. Dan there wearing the silver suit he still had on, being stared at with tomato sauce on his chin and the Korean girls all sitting squeezed in together on the opposite side of the table hardly eating. Dan asking as he ate if any of them had family on the other side of the fence and if so what did they watch on TV. The girls not understanding until he’d said DMZ and then they got it. But no, no family over there on the north side. They said as a group, “They not have clothes like you in the north.”

  Dan doubted they did, but from what he’d seen on the internet, he’d have fit right in on a Friday night in downtown Seoul.

  Dan said to the Korean girls as they sat neatly together on the sofa of his new penthouse, “So if you want to move in and stay here you can.”

  The girls looked at each other, then around the place. Then looking back at each other, they all spoke again together for what seemed like an age as they pulled their long dark hair away from their faces and unconsciously twirled it with their fingers. Then one said, “Can we dance here?”

  Dan thought about it for what must have been a second and said, “You worried about the neighbours?”

  They were, the place they were staying just on the edge of town had already had enough of the routines they’d been rehearsing over and over at all hours of the day and night. They nodded.

  Dan smiled and, looking to the floor beneath his feet, wondered what the people below had heard and gone through on Friday nights since Mazzi Hegan had been living there. Looking up, he said, “I’m sure they’ve heard worse.”

  Dan turned back to the music system, and cutting Westend Girls in half, he flipped through some more of Mazzi’s collection. Abba, Sister Sledge, Kylie Minogue, Madonna, Diana Ross—for fucksake, he thought and wondered if it would ever end.

  Then he heard one of the girls call out just as he hit the button for Lady Gaga.

  “You have K-Pop?”

  Not me, Dan thought but could not be bothered to say ‘No K-Pop, no.’ He thought back to a video he’d seen on the internet earlier that year when he was watching dance moves and had ended up watching Gangnam style. Then dug deeper. There was a boy band called DNA, there were seven in the band. The lead, he remembered, went by the name of Rap Monster. He flipped through the screen and stopped at Rap, then hit a little folder next to it and the words ‘Super Fucking Hot Korean Guys’ came up. Dan clicked on it and as soon as he did, the TV clicked on and DNA were on the screen, all looking cool in jeans and baseball caps and from what Dan could tell none of them had yet needed to purchase a razor.

  Delighted, the girls got up and moved to the center of the room and seconds later were dancing in exactly the same routine as the boys on the screen. Dan watched the girls as they slowly put their own feminine spin on the routine, Myuki taking the lead and the other girls—Chun Lee, Chun Si and Chun Me—following.

  Dan hit another button and another K-Pop song started up which sounded almost exactly the same, but the girls did not miss a beat. Then he hit another, and another as the girls looked to him and smiled. Then he flipped through and hit Frank Sinatra and they stopped.

  Myuki looked at him and asked smiling, “You not like K-Pop?”

  Truth was, Dan didn’t, but he had a feeling it was going to grow on him.

  **************

  Daltrey took a deep breath and stepped in through the front door of the strip club and smiled at the bouncers as they eyed her up as she passed through. The place was dirty, she thought, as she felt her feet stick slightly to the carpet and the stench of spilled booze hit her nose. Chendrill having arranged it with an Angel he knew for Daltrey to work there no questions asked. The guy owing him a favor from years before when Chendrill had left his name out of a drug deal that had gone south and two Vietnamese had been found, each with a shotgun hole where their stomachs used to be.

  The same Angel who now ran the strip club just as surprised as the guys from Ho Chi Minh when the guns appeared, as all he’d been asked to do was unlock a gate.

  Within a week, Chendrill knew who had been shot and why and had little sympathy for the two Asians who’d decided to come into his town to spread poison. The Harleys of the two trigger happy bikers put under cover for the next seven years as they did their time in Kent Maximum Security prison. Just as Chendrill had been under cover when the Angel who now had risen in the organization had spilled the beans.

  Daltrey found the back room and a locker left empty by a girl who had worked there before and had fallen in love, but would be back soon. The place was clean enough in amongst a sea of depravity and full of chairs and mirrors made dusty with body talc. Then the manager came in wearing a thick gold chain and bracelet, and without as much as a hello said, “You done this before?”

  She hadn’t, except for a joke, playing stripper and lap dancer, but the person sitting on the chair with the lights off had been a girl who wished she was a boy. She said, “Yeah.”

  The manager looking her up and down before telling her she gets two songs per lap dance and no more and half of what she brings in goes to him, and no fucking or sucking guys off for extra.

  Well you don’t have to worry about that, Daltrey thought, as she then heard the guy say without looking back as he was leaving, “Unless it’s me—and you don’t want to work afternoons on a Monday.”

  Daltrey watched the man leave then said to herself as she turned back to her locker, “Yeah, I’ll get right on that you sweaty fucking asshole.”

  She looked at herself in the mirror, her long blond wig covering her damaged scalp and makeup hiding the rest. Fucking Chendrill, she thought, what the fuck had he gotten her into? Get to know Suzy, the other blonde working the room, the same girl with the big breasts she’d seen over in the corner with her hand too far up the inside leg of a business man who should have known better. Get to know her, her and the Italian with the rings who was apparently here all the time, if she could—the guy dating Suzy, or kind of. What was Chendrill looking for? From what Daltrey could tell, he really didn’t know yet himself. She did know though that the man now could buy the club outright tomorrow and bring the bulldozer in the same afternoon. But where would the girls with daddy issues and cocaine habits to feed go then, she wondered. After all the devil you know is sometimes better, and how bad could it be?

  She stepped outside and looked up the stairs to where she’d be taking Williams that evening, and a stream of his nerdy friends whom Chendrill had lined up for a free evening out on him. Each one armed with a code word that would indicate all was okay and Daltrey could go through the motions of sitting on their dicks—the code being Hawaiian shirt, of which she wasn’t sure whether it was a joke or whether Charles Chuck Chendrill thought he was
being cool.

  She stripped off most of her clothes and walked, scantily dressed in lingerie, into the main throng of lights and loose women and sad men, feeling the eyes on her as she went, the girl up on the stage prancing about in her high heels. Where the fuck was Williams? she thought as she wandered about smiling like she was loving being there in this stinking shithole in her sexy outfit, some men smiling back, others too drunk to care. The DJ hidden away in a little booth talking bullshit, telling everyone they were lovely people and introducing the next dancer, saying, “Put your hands together ladies and gentlemen for the… Lovely… Asmanda!”

  Asmanda? Daltrey thought as she watched the girl climb the steps and step out onto the stage, cross it, then, with a turn and a double back step, come forward again. Asmanda wasn’t a name. Then she realized she didn’t have one for herself, how fucking stupid was she? She was going soft. Soft in the brain, she thought. Yeah, she’d given it a bit of thought and knew she would cross that bridge when she got to it. Chendrill had told her he’d told them her name was Maggie Cross, but she couldn’t use that with the sad fuckers in here. Fuck. Suddenly Asmanda didn’t sound too bad. She looked about, Mell, Shell, Bell… Belle, yeah that would do—Belle as in beautiful. Then as if right on cue she heard a guy say to her, “Hey—baby sit down.” And turning she saw a fat guy with a bald head and porky fingers sitting there looking up at her. Reaching out he grabbed Daltrey’s hand and pulled her down next to him. Then asked, “What’s your name?”

  “Belle.”

  The guy smiled, and holding onto his beer at the same time said, “Oh, you’re from Quebec?”