Hard Case Crime: Choke Hold

by Christa Faust

  Hank took more pills and lay down on the bed with a damp washcloth over his eyes. Cody went out to investigate the snack machine but when he didn’t come back after fifteen minutes, I left Hank dozing and went out to look for him.

  I found him out on the breezeway, working his charms on a young, kittenish thing from one of the other rooms. Bleached hair cut into a trendy, uneven mop. Pouty pierced lip. Lots of smeary eyeliner. She was intricately tattooed, a little tipsy and obviously smitten, listening enraptured to his highly embellished story about drug dealers trying to kill him.

  “Cody,” I said. “A word?”

  The girl retreated into her room, but made a big show of not closing the door all the way.

  “Don’t be jealous, baby,” Cody said with a wink. “She means nothing to me.” He looked across the street at Hank’s truck and his face turned dark and serious. “Look, I need this. I’m going nuts here. I just need to...not think for a little while.”

  I understood, probably better than he would ever know.

  “You don’t mean anything to me either, kid,” I said. “Not like that, anyway. But I’d really rather you stay alive, okay? So by all means, have at it. But do me two favors. First of all, stay out of sight.”

  “Right,” he said. “Sorry.”

  “And second, keep your mouth shut about what’s happening. I’m serious. Don’t tell anybody about what happened with Lovell. Not even semi-fictional variations on the story. Just tell ’em you’re going to Vegas to be on All American Fighter. That should be more than enough to get you laid.”

  He nodded. “Fair enough.”

  “Go on, willya,” I said, gesturing towards the girl’s partially open door. “Go get her, Tiger.”

  Cody grinned.

  “Cool,” he said. “Don’t wait up.”

  He swaggered off to his tryst looking so much like his father that I felt that little twisting hook inside my heart again. I wondered what was going to happen to that kid. Even if he made it to Vegas in one piece, even if he beat the odds, made it as a fighter and became a huge star, would he spiral inevitably down into addiction just like his father? Would he have what Hank had referred to as a “good corner,” not just to help win in the ring but to help him navigate the corrupt fight game and avoid being taken by all the scumbags and users out there looking to eat ambitious little boys for breakfast?

  I stood, looking out into the nearly empty parking lot and the dusty desert emptiness beyond. Thinking of the fight game and the adult film industry. Strange how similar they seemed. Young men fighting to become this ultimate over-the-top expression of manhood. Young female porn stars striving to become the ultimate expression of feminine allure. A few made it and became big stars, but most got chewed up and spat out, crippled by addiction, chronic pain and daddy issues before they hit thirty.

  Daddy issues. Man, that’s a big one. Some of us beat them and some of us didn’t, but there’s no question that most of us had them to one degree or another. Daddy doesn’t love his little girl and she becomes a porn star. Or maybe he loves her too much, the wrong kind of love. If Daddy doesn’t love his little boy, does the boy become a fighter? Obviously that wasn’t true in every case—nothing is that simple—but the comparison felt painfully apt for me and Cody. I pictured ten-year-old Cody, lonely and rudderless, while Vic was off selling crystal meth to girls on the downside of the business. Then I thought of my own father, the utter contempt and disgust on his face as he stood there holding a videocassette in one hand, the other slowly closing into a fist.

  We each seemed to have found a way to fill that Daddyshaped hole, Cody by caring for his mother and playing nursemaid to Hank and his headaches, me with my girls, my agency.

  I missed my girls. I missed all their silly drama and bad decisions. I missed being there to help them avoid the pitfalls of the adult industry and teaching them how to walk away with a decent nest egg. It had felt good to help people, something I hadn’t had much opportunity to do on the run. I realized then that it wasn’t just my promise to a dead man keeping me stubbornly stuck with Cody. It was lonely to have no one to look out for but myself.

  I shook myself out of my reverie. Here I was, after warning him to stay out of sight, standing on the breezeway with a bullseye on my forehead. I turned around and headed back to our room.

  When I pushed the door open, Hank was sitting up in bed, washcloth in one hand. He looked up when he heard me come in.

  “How’s the head?” I asked.

  “Better,” he replied. “Where’s Cody?”

  “He met a girl,” I said. “I figure he’ll be safe in her room for an hour or two.”

  “His momma ain’t been dead six hours and that boy can still charm the panties off the Virgin Mary,” Hank said. “ ’Course, he’d have every right if he were a little bit relieved she’s gone. You don’t know how hard it’s been on him, taking care of her all these years when she shoulda been taking care of him. Now this.” He shrugged. “Guess I can’t hardly blame the boy for wanting a little female distraction.”

  “What about you, Hank?” I asked. “What do you do for female distraction? You got a girlfriend?”

  He grinned, shaking his stone idol head.

  “Nah,” he said. “Too ugly, I reckon.”

  “Come on now,” I said. “You can’t tell me you don’t get all kinds of offers from those lonely MILFs that bring their kids in to your grappling classes.”

  He shrugged, looking around for some place to put down the wet washcloth. There wasn’t anywhere, so he just held on to it.

  “Not really,” he said. “I mean, I ain’t got time for that kind of thing, what with training and teaching and all.” He looked down at the washcloth. “How about you? You got somebody special?”

  “Me?” I smiled. “I don’t have time for that kind of thing either, what with trying to avoid getting killed and all.”

  He laughed, then turned quickly serious.

  “What happened to you, Angel?” he asked.

  I wanted to tell him everything, but I had no idea where to begin. I’d spent so much time trying to forget that it all seemed foreign to me now, like the plot of a movie I’d heard described but never seen.

  “Some men hurt me,” I said eventually. “I hurt them back.”

  “So you said,” Hank replied. “A vigilante.”

  “Right,” I said. More silence, and then: “But there was this one guy...”

  I turned and walked over to the window, peering through the curtains at the gas station. I could see Hank’s truck, but not Chuy. He must have been off trying to “find” the part.

  “I should have killed him,” I said. “But I didn’t. At the time, he seemed like a small part of the big picture, and so I left him in the hands of others. They decided to let him live. It was stupid of me, I know that now. Too late of course. He was deported as soon as he had healed enough to fly. I hoped I’d never see him again.”

  “And now you find yourself on the other end of the vendetta?”

  “Maybe,” I said. “Or maybe he’s just doing his job, hunting me down on behalf of the boss I testified against. Doesn’t really matter which.”

  Neither of us said anything for about a year. Hank twisted the washcloth back and forth in his fists. I didn’t want to talk about the past anymore, so I came forward and sat down on the bed beside him. I took the washcloth out of his hands, letting it drop to the floor.

  He turned to me but couldn’t hold my gaze for more than a second. His big shoulders were hunched and tense. I kissed him.

  At first he was stiff and frozen against me as I tried to open his mouth with my tongue, moving my hands across the hard, tectonic plates of his muscular back. Then, without warning, he lunged into the kiss with a sudden, violent ferocity so intense that it scared me a little and made me wonder if maybe I’d made a terrible mistake. But that kind of crazy animal lust is contagious and pretty soon I was beyond wondering about anything at all. This was what I had wanted all along
.

  I could just cut to the blowing curtains at this point and let you fill in the blanks, but this wasn’t a scene out of some romantic chickflick. Real life isn’t always so pretty and perfect and the truth couldn’t have been farther from my fantasy of what it might be like with him.

  He couldn’t stay hard.

  When it finally became obvious that despite all my clever professional tricks, it just wasn’t gonna happen, he pushed away and sat on the edge of the bed with his head in his hands.

  “Hey,” I said softly, reaching out to touch his shoulder.

  He shook off my hand and stood. He pulled on his jeans and left the room, shoeless and bare-chested.

  When a half hour had passed and he still hadn’t come back, I wrapped the sheet around myself and stuck my head out the door.

  He was standing three doors down, squinting at the room number and pounding his fist against his temple. His face was blotchy and damp like he’d been crying.

  “Hank,” I said softly.

  He jumped at the sound of my voice.

  “I...” He looked back at the door of the room he was standing in front of. “I forgot the room number.”

  “Please,” I said. “Come back inside.”

  He did, and I double locked the door behind him. I peered out through the curtains at the empty breezeway, then walked back over to the bed and pulled the covers over my legs.

  After a while, he came slowly over and sat on the edge of the bed, facing away.

  “I’m sorry about before,” he said.

  “Don’t be,” I told him.

  I was about to tell him it was nothing, but he cut me off.

  “It’s been like this for about seven years now,” he said. “It was on and off at first but ever since...well it just kept getting worse and worse. I’m fine when I’m alone, but I can’t...It’s like I start to panic and then I think...I don’t know. I just can’t. I used to keep on trying, thinking it’d be different with the right woman. But...well, eventually I just gave up.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “It’s like...” He hung his head. “You’re so pretty and I get scared...I don’t want to hurt you.”

  I kept my mouth shut and put my hand on his shoulder again. This time he didn’t shake it off. I could see goosebumps flare up across his back.

  “You’re not mad?” he asked.

  “Of course not.”

  “Normally, women seem to get pretty annoyed about it,” he said. “Sometimes they’ll tell me it doesn’t matter, but then they suddenly get real busy and stop returning my calls.”

  “I’m hardly what you’d call normal,” I said.

  “That makes two of us,” he said. Then: “Can I ask a favor?” Almost too soft to hear.

  “Sure,” I replied.

  “This is gonna sound stupid,” he said. He still wouldn’t turn around to face me.

  “Go ahead,” I said.

  “If you don’t mind,” he said. “Could you just...well, I swear I can’t remember the last time somebody had their arms around me for more than ten seconds and wasn’t trying to break my wrist or punch me in the face. You don’t have to do nothing else, I just...I want to remember what that feels like.”

  “How do you know I won’t try to punch you in the face?” I asked.

  He laughed all in a rush, like he’d been holding his breath.

  “Well,” he said, finally turning to look at me. “I guess that’s just a chance I’ll have to take.”

  I pulled him close to me and lay back so that we were side by side. He closed his eyes and leaned his head against my neck. I’m not much of a cuddler, but I did my best for him, figuring it was the least I could do after everything we’d been through together. I ran my palm up over his prickly scalp and down the back of his neck and he made a soft little noise like a hurt dog. He was holding on to me so tightly I could hardly breathe and I was intensely aware of every point of contact between us. I never did get off during our failed attempt and was still painfully turned on, feeling like I might go crazy from being so close to something I couldn’t have.

  And, to tell the truth, all that raw, powerful emotion pouring off him like sweat was scaring the shit out of me. I needed to grab the reins, to take control before things got totally out of hand, but I couldn’t. Sex just wasn’t an option and I was utterly out of my element.

  I noticed he was no longer afraid of eye contact. And now that he was really looking at me, I could see I was in trouble. I could see that he was falling. Hard.

  “Angel,” he was saying against my neck. “That’s just what you are. An angel.”

  His breath was hot on my skin, his thick fingers combing awkwardly through my hair. I was starting to feel anxious and uncomfortable.

  “Look, I know I ain’t no kinda prize,” he said. “Broke down, used up, no good in the sack and can’t even think straight half the time. But...” He looked up at me again, eyes clear and pale as rain. “If you’ll have me, Angel, well...then maybe I ain’t a lost cause after all.”

  “Hank...” I started, but trailed off.

  Now I was the one who couldn’t make eye contact. I had no idea what I was supposed to say. Sex is my superpower, but when it comes to real intimacy, I’m like a clueless teenager. This had gone way too far, way too fast, and I was in way over my head.

  I was almost relieved when armed men kicked in the door.

  24.

  Two guys, similar as brothers. Conservative dark hair, aquiline profiles and silenced handguns. Both wore gold chains and track suits, one white and one navy blue. When White Track Suit spoke up, his heavy Croatian accent confirmed what I already knew in my nauseous, twisting gut.

  “Get up, Angel,” he said. “Put on clothes, please.”

  Navy Track Suit closed the door behind him, or as closed as it could get with its now splintered frame and twisted lock. The two of them stepped into the room, standing between the door and the small alcove that led to the bathroom. White Track Suit used his gun to gesture to my fallen bra, in case I may not have understood.

  I moved to the foot of the bed and got slowly to my feet, reaching for my scattered clothing without taking my eyes off the two men. Behind me, Hank was pulling on his shirt on the other side of the bed, tense and bristling. My go-bag was on the table against the wall, just out of reach. A desperate tightness was closing down my throat, making it hard to breathe.

  I had gotten into my shorts, bra and shoes and was hunting for my tank top when I saw Hank lunge forward out of the corner of my eye. He grabbed the edge of the mattress and flipped it up, using it to shove the Croatians backward into the little alcove by the bathroom.

  “Go!” he shouted, but didn’t need to. I had the go-bag over my shoulder and was already halfway out.

  The Croatians began shooting through the mattress. Hank let go and leaped back. I pulled out the Sig and motioned for Hank to make a break for the door. As he did I put a few rounds into the mattress, causing the Croatians behind it to dive into the bathroom. I followed Hank out the door.

  Out on the breezeway, Hank gave the doublewide snack machine beside our door a heroic shove, veins standing out in his forehead. The machine slid, blocking the door to our room.

  “Where’s Cody?” Hank asked.

  I pointed to the door of the girl’s room. “Maybe we should...”

  I was about to say maybe we should leave him there, lead the Croatians away from him to keep him safe, when a chair came crashing through the window to our room. The Croatians would be out on the breezeway in a heartbeat. Even running, there was no time to make it to the staircase at the far left, and the now broken window of our room was between us and the center stairway. I grabbed the doorknob of the girl’s room, hoping Cody had been too horny to remember to lock the door. Lucky for us, he had.

  Cody had the girl on her back on the bed, clutching one of her slender legs to his chest and trying to stuff all five of her pink leopard painted toes into his mouth while nailing her
into next week.

  When we burst in, he let out a surprised grunt, muffled by toes. The girl squealed and rolled away, covering her cute little tits with her tattooed arms. When she saw the gun in my hand, she screamed. Hank grabbed her and put a hand over her mouth while I shut the door.

  “What the...?” Cody asked, making no attempt to cover himself.

  I hissed at him to be quiet, finger pressed to my lips.

  Cody was smart and shut up quick, his eyes wide as swift shadows passed on the other side of the cheap curtains. Shouting echoed in the stairwell.

  Then, nothing.

  “Get dressed, willya?” I whispered. “Before you put someone’s eye out.” Then to the girl: “You too, honey. Got a car? We need to get the hell out of here.”

  Hank took his hand off the girl’s mouth.

  “Codeeeeeee,” she wailed.

  “It’s okay, Madison,” he said. “Keep your voice down. We aren’t gonna let anything happen to you. Just get dressed.”

  “Do you have a car?” I asked again. “Or don’t you.”

  “ ’Course I do,” the girl stage-whispered, wiggling back into her tiny jean shorts and halter top and grabbing a huge zebra-striped hobo purse festooned with jangling chains.

  Hank stepped over to the door and listened, then cautiously pulled it open. Nobody shot him so I figured it was safe. Together, the four of us moved in a tight little knot out onto the breezeway. I could hear footsteps in the stairwell on the far end, but I couldn’t tell if they were going up or down. Staying close to the wall, we walked quickly around the corner to the center stairs. It looked clear at the bottom. I went down first, then Cody and Madison. Hank took the rear.

  Those center steps seemed to be primarily for use by maids and led not to the front of the building but around the back where the laundry machines and housekeeping supplies were kept. To the right of the landing was the back door to the office, propped open with a forty-ounce beer bottle. I opened the door and slipped inside, motioning for the others to follow.