Hard Case Crime: Choke Hold

by Christa Faust

  “Yeah,” he said. “But you don’t want anything to do with a dangerous guy like that.”

  “I don’t really have a choice, do I?”

  “Well, sure you do,” Lenny said. “See, I might be willing to intervene on your behalf, given the proper motivation. Duncan was like a brother to me and he spoke very highly of you. Very highly.”

  I could see where this was going long before Lenny leaned in and said, “He told me you can just about suck a man’s heart out though the tip of his cock.”

  I sighed, already resigned to what I was going to have to do to get that passport, but since Hank was standing behind and to the left of me, I didn’t see him tensing up like an angry cobra. All I saw was a burst of sudden movement as he shot in and knocked Lenny’s lecherous grin right off his face.

  Lenny dropped liked he’d been shot, crumpling sideways and bouncing his head off the corner of the desk on the way down. He was out before he could even think of going for his gun.

  The second he was down, I reached in and snatched the heavy AutoMag from his armpit. His legs were twitching like a dreaming dog and he was making a funny kind of looselipped snoring sound.

  “Hank,” I said. “He could have killed you.”

  “Well, I wasn’t about to stand here and let him talk to you like that.” Hank knelt down beside me, hauled the lolling Lenny up by the holster strap and shook him. “Ain’t got no more dirty talk now, do ya?”

  Lenny made some wet, non-verbal noises like a passedout drunk, eyelids fluttering and head rolling from side to side. Hank gripped Lenny’s hand, twisting it around and folding it up towards the wrist. One of Lenny’s mumbled half-words sharpened into a yelp of pain. Lenny’s eyes went wide but still not entirely aware.

  “You want to talk about something,” Hank said. “How about telling the lady where she can get her passport?”

  “Fuck!” Lenny said and was about to say it again, when Hank twisted his wrist up higher, eliciting another screech.

  “I swear,” Hank said, “If I hear one more word out of your filthy mouth that ain’t an address, I’m gonna start breaking fingers.”

  I stepped back and drew a bead on Lenny’s sweating forehead with the AutoMag.

  “You better do what the man says,” I told him.

  “All right, all right,” Lenny said, suddenly sharp again. “Jesus. The guy’s name is Earl Wyman. Lives just off the old golf course at Sierra Sands. 4515 East Nine Iron Drive.”

  “That’s more like it,” Hank said.

  I set the AutoMag on Lenny’s desk, yanked an extension cord from the wall and used it to hogtie him. He wasn’t even remotely flexible and I struggled to get his hands close together behind his hairy back. The thin cord dug deep into his wrists, his fingers going cold and blue before I was even finished tying his ankles.

  “I’m gonna find you,” Lenny was saying, twisting up on his side with flecks of spit flying from his lips. “See if I don’t, you fucking bitch!”

  Hank hauled back and kicked him hard in the chest, just below the right pectoral muscle. Lenny went white, let out a breathless grunt and would have curled up like a fetus if he hadn’t been tied up.

  “What’d I tell you about that kind of talk?” Hank asked. “Now unless you want me to kick your liver into the next county, you’d best mind your manners.”

  He cocked his leg back like he was about to make good on the threat and Lenny cringed and squealed, squeezing his eyes closed.

  “Oh God, Jesus, don’t,” he wheezed. “Please God.”

  We left Lenny begging and dry heaving in his office. On the way out I spotted mousy Layla standing in the living room with a plastic bag full of beer cans. Lenny was calling out to her to let him loose. She looked at me sideways through her hair for a moment, but made no move to help Lenny. She just bent down and continued picking up the beer cans.

  13.

  The Sierra Sands golf course seemed abandoned, sad and neglected, its once improbably lush greens being swiftly reclaimed by the desert around it. There were a few large, upscale homes in the area, but more than half were either for sale or in foreclosure. Nine Iron Drive was a long swath of stillborn potential, plot after empty plot waiting for homes that would never be built. Down near the dead end of the street stood a single orphan house.

  The house looked as if it had been plucked, Dorothy-like, from some nice retirement community and dropped here by a fickle tornado. It had a generic faux-Spanish style with a terracotta tile roof, peach stucco walls and a cute little succulent garden out front. There was a kitschy wooden sign shaped like a saguaro cactus that READ CARR & WYMAN. Not exactly what you’d expect from a dangerous criminal.

  I sat for a minute in Hank’s truck, taking stock of the situation. I reached into my go-bag, checked the Sig over and then handed it to Hank.

  “I really don’t have any idea what to expect,” I said, taking the tiny Warthog for myself and wishing I had kept Lenny’s AutoMag. “Obviously we’d prefer to settle this without violence, but that didn’t work so well with Lenny so I figure it’s better to be prepared.”

  As we walked up the crushed gravel path to the front door, I took a moment to consider how to explain to Hank that if the best way to settle this turned out to be a blow job, then he’d better be ready to back off and let me do it.

  The man who opened the door was in his mid-to-late sixties, short and very tan with large, clunky black glasses dominating his small, triangular face. He had a jaunty red bandana tied around his neck, a large gold pinky ring and a glossy, chestnut toupee.

  “Can I help you?” he asked, blinking owlishly through his thick glasses.

  “I’m...” I paused, trying to figure out what to say. “I’m a friend of Duncan’s.”

  “Ah,” he replied. “I thought I recognized you. You’d better come inside.”

  We did. There were no armed guards. No attack dogs. No visible security of any kind. Just a pleasant, comfortable living room with a fat, sleeping cat perched on the back of the sofa. The walls were covered with intense, almost photo-realistic paintings of dusty, weathered cowboys. When I looked closer, I saw the signature. Wyman.

  “Normally,” the man said, “I don’t deal directly with the clients. That was part of the agreement. However, under the circumstances... It’s awful, isn’t it?”

  “Awful,” I agreed. “These your paintings?”

  “Why, yes, they are,” he said with a pleased flash of teeth too perfect to be natural. “That’s my real work. I just do this other thing... Well you see, my...”

  He looked up at a photo on the mantel of two smiling young men in cowboy hats, circa 1975. There were no other family photos.

  “My...my wife passed away recently,” he said. “There were a lot of bills.”

  “I’m so sorry,” I said.

  I’d realized by then that a blow job wasn’t gonna be an option. Not from me, anyway. I wanted to tell Wyman he didn’t need to lie to me about the gender of his dead partner, but before I could come up with a tactful way to say it, he changed the subject.

  “Your friend there has quite a face,” he said. “You can see stories in that face. I’d love to paint him.” He turned to Hank. “Any chance I might convince you to sit for me some time?”

  “Paint me?” Hank smiled. “With all due respect, sir, I think you need some new glasses.”

  “I don’t paint pretty faces,” Wyman said. “I paint real faces. A pretty face is boring, meaningless, like a toothpaste ad. Trust me, I ought to know. I worked in advertising for thirtyfive years and when I retired I swore I’d never paint a pretty face again.”

  “Well,” Hank said. “I ain’t pretty, that’s for sure.”

  “Come on into the studio,” Wyman said. “Let’s get that other business taken care of.”

  We followed Wyman down a hallway and into his studio. I guess I was expecting something more old school. Oil paints and canvases and brushes and easels and all that. Of course those things were there too, bu
t the majority of the large room was dominated with several top-of-the-line computers, a bank of huge monitors and an enormous laser printer. Several pro-grade cameras, both digital and analog. A tilted Wacom Cintiq displayed a half-completed drawing of a granite-faced Mexican man with a pistol. All these things were interesting and intriguing, but my eye went instantly to a semi-transparent glassine envelope sitting on the desk. Inside the envelope was a distinct navy rectangle that had to be a passport. My passport.

  “So,” I said as casually as I could. “What do I owe you?”

  Wyman frowned.

  “Nothing,” he said, handing me the envelope. “Duncan paid in full up front. It’s been ready and waiting for him to pick up for over a week.”

  I laughed before I could help myself. Fucking Duncan. That figured.

  “However, if you’re feeling generous and could spare a few minutes,” Wyman said. “I’d love to take a few quick photos of your not-so-pretty friend.”

  I shrugged.

  “Hank?”

  “I don’t have to take my clothes off or nothing?”

  “Certainly not,” Wyman replied.

  “Then I don’t see why not,” Hank said.

  While Wyman shot close-up photos of Hank’s face displaying a variety of emotions, I looked over my passport. I was surprised to find a matching driver’s license tucked in between the pages. Both it and the passport were works of art. Soft, slightly worn around the edges but not overly so, like they’d been in my purse forever. The passport was dated a little less than three years ago, and in that time I’d apparently had five trips outside the States. The UK, Costa Rica, the Bahamas and twice to Mexico. My new name was Janet Miller. I worried briefly about Hank being able to remember a new name, but figured Angel sounded enough like a pet name that it wouldn’t really raise eyebrows.

  “Okay,” Wyman said to Hank. “Now how about regret.”

  “Regret?” Hank asked.

  “Just think about something you wish you hadn’t done,” Wyman said. The flash went off. “Perfect! That’s fantastic!”

  I turned back to Hank and saw the expression that had made Wyman so happy. I wondered what Hank was thinking about.

  “Great,” Wyman said. “Could I just get a few quick shots of your hands?”

  Hank held out his hands, crushed knuckles up. He looked over Wyman’s shoulder at me. The camera flashed.

  “Now fists please,” Wyman said.

  Hank obliged.

  “Those fists tell as many stories as your face,” Wyman said, holding up the camera and checking over the shots on the small digital screen. “Beautiful. Thank you so much for taking the time to indulge an old fart and his silly hobby.”

  “No problem,” Hank said.

  “You picked yourself a good man,” Wyman said to me. “A real man. You know Hollywood is full of beautiful empty men, but real men are an endangered species.”

  I smiled.

  “Thanks for this,” I said, holding up the passport.

  “I suppose my short-lived criminal career is over now,” Wyman said with a rueful smile. “Or maybe I’ll try my hand at counterfeiting. I do a mean Ben Franklin.”

  He showed us to the door.

  14.

  The drive to Mexico was sweltering inside Hank’s un-airconditioned truck. Despite my recent shower, I was already feeling grimy and unlovely, drenched in sweat with desert dust in my hair. Hank was sweating, too, in the passenger seat, but it looked sexy on him. He was so ugly it went beyond ugly and became hot somehow. I just seemed to be getting more and more into him, the more time we spent together. It was this huge illogical, purely physical thing that I needed like a fucking hole in my head with everything else going on, but I just couldn’t seem to stop myself from staring at him. It was a real struggle to keep my eyes on the road.

  “Where are you from originally, Hank?” I asked, just to say something other than I’ll die if you don’t fuck me right now.

  “Reidsville, North Carolina,” he replied. “Left when I was seventeen and ain’t never been back. How about you?”

  “I grew up in Chicago,” I said. “Then moved to Los Angeles and never went back.”

  “Do you miss it?” he asked. “Chicago I mean.”

  “I miss the city,” I said. “But not my family.”

  “I hear that,” he said. “I sure don’t miss all my good-fornothing cousins and uncles and in-laws back in Reidsville. My momma died from cancer just three months after she lost her job at the Lucky Strike factory. With her gone, there weren’t no reason to stick around.”

  After we’d chewed up some more highway, I said, “Tell me about Lovell.”

  “Lovell,” Hank said, shaking his head. “Well, he’s half Indian, or claims to be. To be honest, you just never know what’s true or what ain’t with Vernon Lovell. I’ve been working for him about four years. He was pretty much the only person who would give me the time of day after...well...when I got out.”

  “Got out?” I frowned. “From prison?”

  Hank nodded and looked away out the passenger window, then pulled a pill bottle from his hip pocket and dry swallowed a pair.

  “What for?” I asked.

  “Assault,” he said without meeting my gaze. “It was stupid, just lost my temper and then three years of my life were gone. But truth is, I deserved a lot worse for what I done.” He looked up at me, suddenly standoffish. “Reckon you don’t want nothing to do with me now.”

  “Assault,” I repeated, then laughed and shook my head. “That’s nothing. I would have gone down for multiple murder if I hadn’t agreed to testify against a bunch of scumbags who were importing underage Eastern Bloc girls for sex. I’m a cold-blooded killer, Hank. A ‘vigilante.’ I’m hardly in a position to judge other people’s sins.”

  Hank’s eyes went wide.

  “Vigilante?” he repeated.

  “Yeah,” I said. That’s what the headlines had called me. Pornstar Vigilante. Dirty Harriet. Lady Killer.

  “I knew you was tough from the minute I laid eyes on you, but murder?” He shook his head. “That’s really something. Whoever they were, I’ll bet those guys deserved it.”

  “More than anyone I’ve ever met,” I said.

  We drove in silence for a sweltering minute. Then:

  “Wanna tell me about it?”

  I looked over at Hank, then shook my head. That was a can of worms that didn’t need opening.

  “Some other time,” I said. “Right now, I want to hear more about Lovell.”

  “Right,” he said. “Well, when I first got out, I got myself into a fight with one of Lovell’s boys. The kid wouldn’t back down, kept on pushing me.” He looked away. “Ended up putting him in the hospital. Lovell said he didn’t see any reason to involve my parole officer in the matter, provided I was willing to go to work for him.”

  “So that’s how you started teaching at Richland’s?”

  “Well, yeah. Lovell made Truly hire me on at the school so I had a legit-type job to keep my P.O. happy, but that’s not the real work I do for Lovell.”

  I didn’t say anything. I just drove until he was ready to continue.

  “It’s collection, mostly,” Hank said with a shrug. “Anyone owes Lovell from the fights, I have a talk with ’em, make sure they pay up.” He wiped the palms of his hands on his jeans like they were dirty. “I hate doing it, but if I don’t, Lovell’d have me back inside before I knew what hit me. Lovell’s got the local law deep in his pocket. It’s like one of them catch-22s, because the more I do for him, the more he’s got to hold over my head.”

  He was looking at me out of the corner of his eye, gauging my reaction. I drove without comment for a good minute before I spoke.

  “Look, there are no good guys here,” I said. “You do what you have to.”

  He nodded. That was the last of the conversation until we hit the border.

  Crossing the border turned out to be no trouble at all. The new passport worked like a charm. Te
n minutes later, we were in Mexico and on our way to Cody’s fight.

  15.

  We had been driving through dusty Mexican nothing for so long, I would have gotten white-line fever if there had been any lines on the rutted dirt road. When we passed a dead car, it seemed way more exciting than it should have. A sad cluster of cement-block houses seemed like a bustling town. After the sun went down, I started to see pairs of bright, reflective eyes watching from the scrub brush on the sides of the road.

  Then finally lights in the distance. Strobes in gaudy headache colors and way too much neon, like an impossible fever dream after the sensory deprivation of the dark desert. Our destination turned out to be this weird lost fragment of Vegas imprisoned behind barbed wire. A maximum security Señor Frog’s.

  A razorwire fence ran all the way around the place with a sliding gate standing open. The front of the long, narrow building was all molded to look like rock, with fake plastic orchids sticking out at random intervals and several small waterfalls spilling into scummy plastic basins full of greenish American pennies. A big throbbing red sign read CLUB OASIS and flickering neon women shifted their glowing hips robotically from side to side.

  “Is this a strip club?” I asked, frowning at the bored-looking guy with body armor and an AK47 who waved us into the fenced parking area.

  “It’s an anything-you-can-afford club,” Hank replied. “But the real action’s in the back. Come on.”

  A red-vested pit crew of seven took over Hank’s rickety truck the second we got out. Hank generously tipped everyone in sight, including the guy with the AK47, and then offered me his arm and escorted me to the main door.

  The door was also made to look like stone, but felt like Styrofoam over sheet metal. More conspicuously armed guys greeted us inside when we entered, frisking me for a good three minutes before waving us through a red velvet curtain.

  On the other side of the curtain was a short, obsequious man with no chin, a tight tuxedo and near perfect English. He fawned over Hank, calling him “Señor Hammer” and then leaning in to say that he had ten bucks on Hank’s fight.