Hard Case Crime: Choke Hold

by Christa Faust

  The dimly lit back room of the office area had been set up as a sort of personal living quarters. The front, public area was visible through a beaded doorway. A shabby velveteen sofa with a crumpled blanket stood in for a bed. Flickering television. Dorm refrigerator. Scarred coffee table with a surprisingly high-end laptop sitting open and positioned to be reachable from the sofa. Its screen whirled with random swooshes of color.

  When Cody and Madison came into the room, one of them must have bumped against the low coffee table because the screensaver on the laptop disappeared, revealing an open browser. In the center of the lurid pink webpage was a large surveillance photo of me with Cody on one side and Hank on the other.

  I bent down for a closer look. The website on display was something called PornSighted.com and featured candid cellphone photos of porn stars in the laundromat, grocery store or Starbucks. My photo was labeled “Double Dare?” Under it, a breathless caption:

  chick that looks just like angel dare just checked into the motel where i work, rented 1 room with 2 guys! have a bet going - need a ruling, dare or not?

  The name, address and phone number of the motel were automatically stamped on the bottom right of the image, along with the date and time.

  I was ready to kill the clerk, but it turned out the Croatians had beat me to it. Looked like they were pretty enthusiastic about it too, but I didn’t feel that bad for the bastard. He should have minded his own damn business.

  I thought Madison was gonna go all screamy again when she saw the clerk’s body on the office floor, but she didn’t. She just clung tighter to Cody as they inched around the edges of the spreading stain, her eyes wide.

  I peered out between the blinds. No sign of the track suits, but there was a third guy standing beside the open door of a Japanese import, smoking a cigarette. He was a little younger and not as attractive as his two friends. Dirty blond with a wide, moony face and a sullen expression, he gave off a distinct little-brother-made-to-wait-in-the-car vibe. He was craning his neck to look up at the second-floor breezeway like he was hoping to catch a glimpse of the action he was missing. The car was running.

  “Madison,” I said. “Which car is yours?”

  “It’s the black Nova there on the end,” she said.

  “Fine,” I said. “Keys.”

  The girl started digging through her huge purse.

  I looked out again, saw the Nova. Good news, it was on the end of the lot closest to us. Bad news, the little brother was between us and it.

  “Hurry up,” I said over my shoulder.

  “I’m looking,” she said. “I can’t find anything in this damn purse.”

  She turned the purse upside down, dumping its contents on the carpet. Makeup. Tampons. Cellphone. Crumpled receipts. Sparkly purple wallet. Giant white plastic sunglasses. Change. Pills. Candy. No keys.

  “Shit,” Cody said. “Remember we were using that little pink vibrator?”

  “Dammit!” Madison said. “You’re right.”

  “What the hell does that have to do with keys?” I asked.

  “The vibrator,” Madison said. “It’s on my keychain.”

  “The keys must still be on the nightstand.” Cody said. “I’ll go back up and get them.”

  “No,” I said. “Bad idea. We need to stay together.”

  “Y’all just get ready to run,” Hank said, easing the door open. “Watch for my signal.”

  Then he was gone.

  I looked out through the blinds but couldn’t see him anywhere. It was like he’d disappeared the second he passed through the door. I watched the little brother with a slippery knot in my belly, waiting.

  A minute passed, then another. Nothing happened. Then the little brother fell forward with a surprised expression and a breathless whoosh, disappearing between two cars. No one started shooting and seconds later, Hank stood up in the little brother’s place, motioning for us to come out.

  “Get in the back seat,” I said to Cody. “Keep her close and go as quickly as you can.”

  The two made the dash for the car. I sucked in a big breath and followed.

  Once I was out the door, I spun and aimed the Sig up at the breezeway, scanning for signs of movement. Nothing at first, but then just when I was about halfway to the car, the door to Madison’s room opened and White Track Suit stepped out.

  I squeezed off a shot in his direction, aiming for the door-frame and hoping to scare him into ducking back into the room. His shiny white track pants blossomed red just above the left knee and he let out a furious string of Croatian profanity. I sprinted for the car. Navy Track Suit had come out shooting at that point, tossing up puffs of grit and sand all around me.

  Hank was behind the wheel by the time I dove into the passenger seat. He reversed out of the lot and floored it. The car took a few hits to the body, but the tires were unscathed. I guess I got lucky when I took out White Track Suit. He was obviously the better shot of the two.

  We left the motel in the rearview mirror.

  “You okay to drive?” I asked Hank.

  “Reckon I’ll be all right for a little while,” he said. “So long as we don’t run into no cops. Then again, if we do run into the law, me driving without a license is the least of our sins.”

  “Who the hell were those guys, Angel?” Cody asked.

  “Those guys are my problem,” I replied.

  “Bullshit,” Cody said, sitting forward and putting a hand on the back of my seat. “They saw all of us together. Whoever they are, they’re our problem now. We have a right to know.”

  “Fair enough,” I said, but then didn’t know how to continue.

  I looked out the window at a lot of black desert nothing then down at my hands.

  “Okay, look, it’s like this,” I said. “Couple years ago, I testified against a very bad man. A man who was importing Eastern European women to the States for use as sex slaves. That man went down for what he did, but he has friends.”

  “Whoa!” Madison said. “Angel...? You’re Angel Dare! Holy shit, I can’t believe I didn’t recognize you right away. You’re my hero! You’re like...like the Crow of porn.”

  I tried not to laugh, but couldn’t help it. I wondered if she’d seen Phoenix Rising.

  “Y’all want to tell me where we’re going?” Hank asked.

  “Madison?” I asked. “Is there somewhere we can drop you off, somewhere safe?”

  “Can you give me a lift to Havasu City?” she asked. “I’m booked to dance the afternoon shift tomorrow at Peachy’s and I’ve got an aunt there I can stay with until I get things sorted out. Just get on the 95 north and when we get closer, I’ll tell you which way to go, okay?”

  A stripper. Why didn’t that surprise me?

  “You bet,” Hank said.

  He reached across the seat, took my hand and brought it to his lips, flashing that big boyish grin like there wasn’t a thing wrong in the world. Like we’d won. I tried to smile back, but the effort was weak and hopeless. I knew the guys who were after me weren’t gonna give up that easily. I took my hand back and started cleaning and reloading the Sig.

  25.

  We dropped Madison in front of a pink southwest-style home on the dramatically named Thundercloud Drive in Lake Havasu City. Cody walked her to the door and there was an interval of earnest necking, whispered promises and exchanging of phone numbers before the door was opened by a sleepy woman in a fuzzy white bathrobe. The woman ushered Madison inside with a resigned expression that made it clear this sort of thing happened all the time. Cody offered to drive and Hank was happy to let him.

  “You want to lie down in the back seat, Angel?” Hank asked.

  I did. But even as tired as I was I still couldn’t find sleep. Hank and Cody were talking softly about the show, about Matt Kenner and the fight game in general. They might as well have been speaking Croatian.

  I had finally drifted off when we arrived in Vegas. The neon woke me up. No matter how many times I’d been to Vegas, it al
ways seemed so improbable. All that glitter and flash, yet perpetually unfinished and overrun with cranes. Like nothing could ever be big enough. It was barely 3 AM.

  “We should check in somewhere,” I said, rubbing my eye. “Try to grab a little sleep before we head over to Kenner’s.”

  “I want to get there early,” Cody said. “Seven at the latest.”

  “No problem,” I said. “We’ll set an alarm.”

  Cody pulled into the parking structure for the Four Queens. He wanted to get his own room, but I felt it would be safer to stay together. I won by agreeing to a suite with a separate bedroom. I was glad the starstruck mechanic had given me my money back.

  Once we dragged ourselves up to the suite, Hank headed into the bathroom. Cody stood by the sink outside the bathroom door, splashing water on his face and looking into the mirror. His unshaven face was very pale, eyes deeply shadowed. I walked over, unwrapped a glass and filled it from the tap.

  “You okay?” I asked, after downing the water.

  “My mom must have tried to kill herself a dozen times since I was old enough to count,” Cody said. “Maybe more. And every time they would pump her stomach or stitch up her wrists, part of me would be glad she was okay, but another part...” He looked up at his reflection, then at me. “I just want to have my own life. Does that make me a bad person?”

  I didn’t have an answer for him. I set the glass down on the counter.

  “What are you gonna do after you drop me at Kenner’s?” he asked.

  I didn’t have an answer for that one either.

  “Are you scared?” he asked.

  That was a no-brainer.

  “Yes,” I replied.

  “Me too,” he said.

  He tried to pull me in for another one of his hugs.

  “Knock it off, kid,” I said with a smile. “Haven’t you had enough for one day?”

  “Nope,” he said, reaching playfully for me again. “Come on, there’s plenty to go around.”

  I swatted his big hands away and rolled my eyes.

  “Jesus,” I said. “Don’t make me shoot you.”

  “I’m just playing,” he said. He smiled, tipping his head towards the closed bathroom door. “You like him, huh?”

  I frowned. “Hank? Sure, why?”

  “I mean, you know... You’re into him.”

  “What?” I turned away. Where the hell had that come from? “Of course not.”

  “It’s cool,” Cody said with a cocky shrug, like I could deny it all I wanted but he knew the real score.

  He reached out and put an arm around me, leaning his cheek against the top of my head.

  Hank came out of the bathroom. He froze for a moment in the doorway, backlit so I couldn’t see his expression.

  “Get your fucking hands off her,” he said.

  I was so flabbergasted by Hank’s sudden profanity that I had no idea how to respond. The next thing I knew he’d grabbed Cody and hauled him off me.

  He had a fistful of Cody’s shirt twisted up under his chin and the other hand was cocked back, ready to let him have it.

  “Hank,” Cody said, his own hands up but open. “Hank, listen to me. You’re not thinking right again.”

  “The hell I ain’t,” Hank said.

  He swung that fist at Cody. Cody wrenched himself out of range, leaving behind a torn handful of shirt.

  “Hank, stop it,” I said, backing away. “This is nuts.”

  Hank stepped in with another swing, this one clipping Cody on the jaw as he danced backwards and sideways. Cody grabbed the desk chair and shoved it between him and Hank.

  “Jesus,” Cody said, hands still open, placating. “Would you just fucking...”

  Hank threw the chair out of his way with such force that it lost a leg when it slammed into the far wall. Cody’s head turned involuntarily towards the noise of the chair’s demise and Hank let him have it hard.

  That one was right on the money. Cody’s head snapped back and he staggered, dropping to one knee.

  “Motherfucker!” Cody spat, all patience gone now, temper boiling over as his hands coiled into fists.

  He lunged at Hank. The two of them went down rolling, trading wild punches and knees to the body. I wanted desperately to do something to stop them, but felt utterly powerless in the wake of this testosterone-fueled madness. Until Hank grabbed that broken-off chair leg. At that point, I felt like I had no choice.

  He was straddling Cody on the ground, holding the leg high while Cody cowered below, covering his face with his hands. I dove in and grabbed Hank’s wrist.

  “Look at me, Hank,” I said, face inches from his and fighting for eye contact. I knew I didn’t have a hope in hell of overpowering him or restraining him physically. I had to find another way to stop this. “Come on, now, look at me. You don’t want to hurt Cody, do you?”

  Hank finally turned to me but it seemed to take a second for him to really see me. Then he looked back down at Cody, made a wordless sound of anguish and dropped the chair leg. Cody squirmed out from under him, flushed bright red and bleeding from a cut above his left eye. Hank slammed his fist into his own temple.

  “Fuck!” Cody said, touching the cut and wincing. “Go take your crazy pills, you fucking nutjob.”

  “Cody, please,” I said. “Give me a minute.”

  Cody looked down and nodded, his face a warzone of conflicting emotions. He got his feet under him and retreated silently into the bedroom. Hank stood, his back to me.

  “Hank,” I said as softly as I could manage.

  “I’m sorry,” Hank said. “I don’t know what got into me.” He paused. Looked at me, then away again. “That’s a lie,” he said. “Truth is, I know exactly what’s wrong with me, I just don’t like to think about it.”

  He sat on the couch, elbows on his knees. I stood, waiting for him to continue.

  “Doc’s got a fancy name for it,” he said. “But it’s simple, really. I’m getting punchy.” He tapped his temple with his scarred knuckles. “Knocked my brain around so many times that it don’t work right no more. Sure, we’ve all seen it before with older fighters, joked about it even, but I never really believed it would happen to me.”

  I came over and sat beside him.

  “Dizzy, headaches, can’t remember nothing from one minute to the next.” He pulled the pill bottle from his pocket and took a couple. “I get panic attacks, do these crazy, impulsive things and then I get to feeling so low, it’s like I don’t want to live.” He looked up at me. “Do you know, before I met you, I was planning... Well I figured once Cody got with Team Kenner, I’d just quietly check out. Get it over with before I can’t remember my name no more. Now, all of a sudden things are different.”

  He leaned into me and we lay down together on the couch, silent for a minute. His big head was heavy as an anvil on my chest. I’d participated in more non-sexual cuddling during the past six hours than in the whole rest of my life. I felt like a fumbling virgin, imitating something I’d heard other girls talk about but never done myself.

  “With you in my corner, Angel,” he said, “I feel like I can keep on fighting it. I feel like...like maybe I could start over. Figure out how to be a decent man again. The kind of man you deserve.”

  What the hell was I supposed to say? I couldn’t handle that kind of talk on top of everything else that had happened. I was so tired I was near delirious and the last thing in the world I needed was to get myself entangled in a serious relationship with a troubled man like Hank. All I wanted was to deliver Cody safely to Matt Kenner. I figured after that happened I would find a way to let Hank down as gently as I could.

  “We’d better try and get a little sleep,” I said.

  “You’re right,” he said with a heavy sigh.

  I don’t think either of us really slept. Eventually an alarm went off in the other room and it was time to take Cody to Kenner’s.

  26.

  Kenner’s dojo was in a little industrial pocket off the str
ip, behind the Rio. When we arrived, an hour and fifteen minutes early, there was a young woman unlocking a security gate. I asked the cab driver to wait while the woman informed Cody in a nasal monotone that the shooting location for All American Fighter: The Next Generation had been moved to the Sands so they would have more space.

  “Good thing we came early!” Cody said, trying for upbeat, but looking very pale and anxious. It had all been building up to this.

  The cab dropped us in front of the Sands. Cody spotted a sign with the AAFC logo, the words TEAM KENNER and a big arrow. He immediately took off in that direction, pulling Hank and me along in his excited wake. His nervous energy was infectious.

  After several wrong turns, we eventually found the conference room we were looking for. Cody was way ahead of me, so I couldn’t see his face when we walked in, but I didn’t need to. His body language said it all.

  It was a cattle call. The room was enormous and filled with hundreds and hundreds of young men exactly like Cody, all hopeful faces and fight shorts and badly designed t-shirts. Half of them clutching business cards like the one Kenner had given Cody. Kenner himself was nowhere to be seen.

  Hank and I hung back in the large double doorway while Cody went from one brusque headset-wearing person to another, demanding to see Kenner. He was given several more or less profanity-laden versions of “Get in line, kid.”

  “Just calm down and think for a second,” Hank told Cody when we caught up to him. “This ain’t the end of the world. So it’s an audition—you still got a decent shot here, better than most, I’d say. Don’t blow what chance you got by...”

  “No,” Cody said. “No, this is bullshit.” He started pacing frantically. “Bullshit. This is total fucking bullshit. I just need to talk to Kenner.”

  “Cody, listen to me now,” Hank said.

  “You don’t know what he said to me.” Cody stopped pacing and turned to Hank. “He said I was the best. The best he’d ever seen. I’m not waiting in line with all these douchebags. All I have to do is talk to Kenner and he’ll take care of this bullshit. Kenner said...”