Hard Case Crime: Choke Hold

by Christa Faust

He handed me a business card that looked like a Slayer album cover, then turned away and left without another word.

  There was a mirror leaning against the vinyl partition on the other side of the narrow enclosed space. I didn’t look in it as I left.

  28.

  The women’s bathroom was full of giggling, gossiping talent. They all got quiet when I came in. I ignored them, bending over the sink to splash water on my face. I still didn’t want to look in the mirror.

  One of the girls, a curvy brunette with a sleeve of tattooed orchids, sidled shyly over to me and opened her purse. She looked familiar. Raven? Roxy, maybe? For a weird moment, I though she was gonna ask for my autograph. Instead, she pulled out a small bottle of Listerine and offered it to me without comment.

  As much as I hated dealing with all the bullshit in the industry, that small kindness made me miss it with a hollow, hopeless ache. I didn’t just miss the business, I missed my life. I missed the person I used to be more than anyone else I’d lost. Was I really gonna be able to start over somewhere in South America? Make a new life? Find a new person to be?

  I couldn’t think that far ahead. All I could do was concentrate on getting Cody out of harm’s way, like I’d promised. I accepted the mouthwash and took a slug, swished it then spat it out and handed the bottle back. She gave me a wink and teetered away on ten-inch plastic platform heels.

  I found Hank and Cody standing by Marco’s booth.

  “Everything okay?” Hank asked, looking like he wanted to fold me up and put me in his pocket.

  “Fine,” I said, willing it to be true. “Cody?”

  “Sure,” he said. “I mean, it was cool, but it was kinda weird too, knowing all those people are watching. I’ve messed around with a video camera before, but never so other people could see it. Anyway, Cherise said I did pretty good.”

  “Glad to hear it,” I said. “Now I have a plan to get us out of the country, but we have to go back to the Four Queens for a few hours. As long as none of our pals see us leave and follow us, we should be safe there until I get word from Damian.”

  We wove a zigzagging path across the show floor, working our way towards the back exit, but got stuck waiting while the aisle was blocked by a smiling fan having his photo taken with three girls in Phat Azz t-shirts and booty shorts. That’s when I spotted the Croatians.

  They had finally made it through the crowd of eager fans and were standing over by the Vixen booth. They were the only men in the room without big dumb smiles on their faces. They hadn’t noticed us yet, but that wouldn’t last if we didn’t get the hell out of there, pronto.

  A squeaky Asian girl with huge implants started tossing DVDs into a large cheering crowd, causing a convenient distraction between us and them. I took Hank and Cody by their respective arms and indicated the Croatians with my chin. The three of us silently reversed direction and headed for an unmarked door on the far left of the hall.

  The door led to concrete fire stairs. The only way to go was up.

  When we reached the next level, the steel door on the landing led to an ugly, utilitarian hallway nothing like the tacky flash and glamour of the hotel’s public areas. We passed a freight elevator and a seemingly abandoned room service cart before we hit a dog leg in the corridor. I’d lost all sense of direction and had no idea where we were headed, but figured we’d have to find a way out eventually. Preferably before we ran into any kind of security personnel who would want to know what the hell we were doing in there.

  We followed the twists and turns until the hallway deadended at another large steel door. The door led us to the main casino floor, just ten feet away from the hall where the auditions for Team Kenner were taking place. I kept Cody turned away from the AAFC signs and led him swiftly towards the exit.

  We got lucky and were able to grab a cab right away. I explained about Damian on the way.

  “Brazil?” Cody said. “I don’t know.”

  Hank, on the other hand, seized on the idea immediately.

  “Yeah, that’s great,” he said. “Getúlio Azevedo’s an old friend of mine. You can sharpen your jujitsu at his dojo for a few years, get a few local wins under your belt and then after this business has died down, you can come back to the States ready to kick ass and take names.”

  “Man,” Cody said. “It’s all kind of overwhelming.”

  “Don’t worry about the big picture right now,” I said. “The first step is getting on that plane.”

  When we got back to the suite, Cody was like a zombie, shell-shocked and silent. He went into the bedroom he’d claimed and closed the door without comment.

  Hank started after him but I took Hank’s arm, shook my head.

  “Let him alone,” I said. “He needs time to process everything that’s happened.”

  “Okay,” Hank said. He turned in towards me and put an arm around my waist. “What about you? You gonna be all right?”

  “I have no idea what that even means,” I told him. “But don’t worry about me.”

  “You know,” Hank said. “You’re the bravest person I’ve ever met.”

  Was I brave? Or just so numb and broken that I didn’t care what happened to me anymore?

  Hank sat on the sofa and pulled me down with him, folding me into his arms. My immediate instinct was to turn the embrace sexual. To take the wheel and move things back into my area of expertise. Sex for me has always been so easy. Men are simple mechanisms, comforting in their predictability. But with Hank, my bedroom black belt was meaningless.

  And this other thing, this complex, slippery emotional bond forming between us, it felt like drowning. I kept on telling myself that it was his thing, not mine. That I was just being polite, trying not to hurt his feelings. I needed it to be that way to keep my armor whole, to stay safe and focused.

  But my heart was speeding in my tight, airless chest. There was something profoundly comforting and asexual about his touch, that weird mother hen vibe that seemed so strange coming from someone as tough and ugly as him. I wanted to push the alien comfort away like a little kid who doesn’t want medicine.

  And just like that, for the first time in two long years, I was bawling my eyes out. Crying for Vic, for all my dead friends. Mostly for myself, for my lost life. Hank just held me, whispering gentle nonsense to me in that gravelly Southern voice. Telling me that he would never let anyone hurt me again.

  He pushed back my damp hair and kissed my face and I couldn’t stop myself from pulling his mouth down on mine. I felt a hot pulse of hunger that swiftly dissolved into melancholy. He broke the kiss and held my head against his chest. His hands were shaking.

  “I’m sorry,” he said softly. “I wish...”

  I was going to say it’s okay, but stopped myself.

  “You know, I wasn’t always like this,” he said. “It’s partly this thing with my brain, and all these meds sure don’t help, but I know I bring it on myself too. It’s like... Like I don’t deserve to be with a woman, after what I done.”

  “What do you mean?” I asked. “Why would you think that?”

  “She was such a little thing,” he said, eyes fixed on nothing. “Wouldn’t make flyweight with a roll of quarters in each pocket. We’d been together for about a year when it started. She’d get real mad about...the problems I’d been having. Like it was some kind of reflection on her looks or her female talents. I tried to explain that didn’t have nothing to do with it, but she wouldn’t listen.” He paused. Frowned. “ ’Course, she went ahead and got herself a piece on the side. Another fighter. A real man, she said. Threw it in my face just like that. Laughing at me.”

  I pulled away and sat up, eyes narrowing as he continued.

  “I only hit her the once,” he said. “But that was all it took. A coma, the doctor said. She didn’t wake up for four months.” He looked down at his hands. Clenched them, trying to steady the shaking. “I felt like some kinda monster. Still do, to tell the truth. It’s like any life I might have had ended in that one st
upid second. Even though I’m out now, I feel like I’m still doing time in my own head.”

  A cold knot formed under my sternum, making it difficult to breathe. I couldn’t look at him.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?” I asked.

  “Reckon I was afraid you’d hate me for it.” He looked at me. Looked away. “You do, don’t you?”

  I didn’t answer. I couldn’t.

  “Angel,” he began, reaching for me. The shaking in his hands was getting worse.

  “No,” I said. I pulled back and stood. “No, Hank, I’m sorry, but I need a minute here.”

  I had been willing to accept everything else about him: the pills, the brain damage, the jealousy, the violent outbursts. But knowing that he was the kind of man who could put his girlfriend in the hospital, well, that was something else. Something much more personal.

  I flashed back to my father, reaching across the dinner table and casually hitting my mother in the face, knocking her glasses into her spaghetti. My father had broken my jaw when he found out about my videos. I felt nauseous.

  “Angel, please,” he said, voice breaking, showing me his calloused palms. “I know what I done was wrong but...”

  “Look,” I said, but trailed off. I was so torn up and twisted inside that I couldn’t find words. Hank reached out to me again and I flinched away. Raw anguish flared in those pale eyes for an endless moment before he closed them and turned away from me.

  He got his feet under him and stood, suddenly unsteady as a drunk. Veins pulsed in his temples, sweat beading on his hairline.

  “Hank?” I said.

  He didn’t reply, just staggered into the bathroom and kicked the door closed. Seconds later, I heard the irregular gush and splash of vomiting.

  Maybe I should have gone after him, but I couldn’t. I just sat there. I had no idea how I was supposed to feel about all this. I had no idea how to feel about anything anymore.

  29.

  I needed something to do with my hands, so I checked and cleaned my guns again, even though they were both already clean. I was done by the time I realized I had bitten my lip hard enough to make it bleed. I felt nothing.

  Putting the guns away in my bag, I spotted Cody’s notebook. Curious, I pulled it out and starting leafing through. It was just what he’d said. Snatches of writing, song lyrics and such, mostly about a lone, misunderstood warrior who wants love but only knows how to fight. Angry, cliché-ridden, but still weirdly poignant poems about his mother’s mental illness. Training notes about how much weight was lifted and what was eaten. An unfinished letter to Thick Vic that I couldn’t bear to read. I’d gone about halfway through when that unlabeled disc fell out into my lap.

  I shot a look back at the closed door of Cody’s bedroom. Hank was still in the bathroom. I knew it was none of my business, but curiosity got the better of me. I popped the disc into the player under the huge TV and picked up the remote.

  I wasn’t shocked that it turned out to be a sex video. I’ve messed around with a video camera before, he’d said. I wasn’t even particularly surprised to see that Cody’s co-star was Mrs. Truly Richland, the kickboxing teacher from his MMA school. The surprises came later.

  The lighting was harsh and unflattering. Cody’s hair was longer, falling into his eyes. He had more acne and no tattoos. He looked disturbingly young. And for good reason—if he was only eighteen now, he must’ve been, what, seventeen when he shot this? Sixteen?

  And even though he was legal now, something about watching that video made me feel like a pervert for having fucked him myself. He was still so young. My ex-boyfriend’s son. So what if he’d started it? Was I really any better than Truly?

  “Hey!” Cody’s voice exploded from behind me. “That’s private!”

  Just as he spoke, the younger, onscreen Cody delivered his pop shot and the screen went black. I reached for the remote to shut it off.

  “I’m sorry,” I said. “I didn’t...”

  Before I could hit the stop button, the screen lit up again. It was Truly again, but with a different co-star this time, an even younger redheaded kid. The scene began with the two of them hoovering up fat lines of coke before the action started.

  “What the fuck?” Cody asked, coming over to sit beside me with a bewildered expression.

  “Didn’t you know this other scene was on the DVD?”

  Cody shook his head. “I only got it a couple hours before I came to meet my dad. I didn’t have time to watch past the part with me and Truly.”

  We watched the screen. The new kid was having wood problems.

  “How old were you when you shot this?” I asked.

  “Oh I don’t know,” he said shrugging and looking away.

  “I’m serious, Cody.”

  “Sixteen,” he said. He looked up at me, then away again. “Well...fifteen, I guess.”

  “Fifteen?” I said. “Jesus. How about this kid here?”

  “That’s Justin,” he said. “He’s sixteen now, but he looks way younger in this video.”

  “If this was made at around the same time as yours, he’d be thirteen,” I said.

  “Wow,” Cody said. “I had no idea she was filming other guys too.”

  The scene with Justin ended and another one began. Truly’s new co-star was Latino. He didn’t have his bleached blond hair yet but I recognized him instantly. So did Cody.

  And just like that, it all made sense.

  “How did you get this DVD?” I asked Cody.

  “I took it from Truly’s office,” he said. “We got into this big stupid fight. She wanted to be my manager and I didn’t think that was a good idea. It’s like she wanted to own me, like I was a fighting dog or something. She was acting all clingy and psycho, and doing way too much blow. I wasn’t even that into fucking her anymore, and I definitely didn’t want her in charge of my career. And I sure didn’t want her to have this DVD, because I thought she might get all vindictive after I became famous and find some way to use it against me.” He paused. “It was her, wasn’t it? She sent those guys to the diner.”

  “Kinda looks that way,” I said. “I bet she’s got the combinations to all the lockers at the school too, doesn’t she?”

  “Fuck,” Cody said. “Of course she does.”

  So there it was. I could have told her you can’t own a dick like Cody’s any more than you could have owned his father’s. Thing is, she clearly wanted more than just his dick. She wanted to own his fists too. And if she couldn’t have them, no one could.

  “That fucking bitch,” he said. “This is all her fault. Everything.” He shook his head. “Hank told me it was stupid to fuck her but I didn’t listen.” He looked up, frowned. “Hey, where is he anyway?”

  I nodded towards the bathroom door and told him a slightly edited version of what had happened between me and Hank.

  “You didn’t know about the domestic violence conviction?” Cody said. “Fuck, it was all over the boards when it happened.”

  “Must have missed it,” I said.

  “He’s real torn up about it,” Cody said.

  “That doesn’t excuse what he did.”

  “Of course not,” Cody said. “But he would never do it again.”

  “Hell,” I said. “He attacked you just this morning.”

  “That’s different,” Cody said. “Guys fight sometimes. It’s not the same thing at all.” He shook his head, adamant. “I know him. He would never hurt you.”

  “Look, I’m not gonna have a debate about this right now.” I turned away and wrapped my arms around myself. I hadn’t spoken to anyone about the violence in my family since I’d left Chicago more than twenty years ago. I hadn’t been able to tell Hank; there was no way I was going to get into it with Cody.

  “I should see if he’s okay,” Cody said. He knocked on the bathroom door. “Hank?”

  Silence for a second, then a barely audible croak: “Gimme a minute.”

  Cody shot me a worried look. I looke
d at the clock. It was just after noon. Still way too early, but I couldn’t stand the waiting.

  I picked up the phone and pulled Damian’s card from my pocket. Dialed. A recorded female voice came on.

  “Please enjoy the music while your party is reached.” Awful Brazilian death metal blared in my ear.

  Then, Damian: “Yeah?”

  “Hey,” I said. “It’s Angel. We need to get out of this hotel now, so I won’t be reachable by phone. Can we just meet you at the airport?”

  “Yeah, um...” I could hear him smoking. “Here’s the thing. I’m just not shooting any MILF titles right now. Why don’t you check back with me in a few months and I might have something for you.”

  I had to take a second to bite down on my temper. “That’s fine,” I said. “But we still need that ride today.”

  “Either of your two friends eighteen?” he asked.

  “Actually, yes, one is,” I said. “But they’re both guys.”

  “Yeah, that’s not gonna work.” He sucked smoke, held it, then coughed. “Call me in few months.”

  “No,” I said, trying not to let my desperation show. “There’s no deal unless...”

  “Oh, hey,” he cut in as if I hadn’t been talking, “did your friends find you? I gave them the name of the hotel you’re staying at. Four Queens, right?”

  Sick, icy plunge in my belly.

  “What friends?” I asked.

  “That scary cougar and...”

  I hung up.

  “We need to get out of here,” I said to Cody.

  There was a knock on the door.

  30.

  Cody and I looked at each other, frozen for a moment.

  Then, through the door, a female voice: “Cody?”

  Truly.

  “Cody,” she said again. “Open the door. I just want to talk to you.”

  I looked back over my shoulder at the bathroom door. Cody reached into my unzipped go-bag and pulled out the Sig.

  “Cody, don’t,” I said, but it was too late.

  He walked to the door and pulled it open and before I could blink, he had a tattooed arm around Truly’s neck, the muzzle of the Sig against her temple.