by Callie Hart
“No, no, no, come on!”
The other files all have paperwork inside them. Regular information about bail bonds and cheating spouses. It’s just Lex’s that’s empty. What the fuck? There are no papers on Eli’s desk and none on the floor either. No hidden drawers that could be containing the information I’m looking for. It’s gone. Someone’s taken it, and I have no idea who. I suddenly can’t hold it in anymore—I lean forward and the past three days finally take their toll. I vomit, throwing up my meagre breakfast of dry toast and orange juice so violently that it strips my throat raw.
I’m sobbing as I leave Eli’s office. I feel useless. So powerless. Weak.
“I’m so sorry, Lex. I’m so sorry…” She can’t hear me, but I have to say the words. Admitting them out loud makes me own them instead of hiding them away inside my chest, letting them burn me from the inside out. I’ve let her down. All hope of finding her is gone. The very worst part of acknowledging that is the relief. It courses through me like a single exhaled breath, rushing from my head to my feet. There’s nothing more I can do. The responsibility is no longer mine. I am the very worst of people. I don’t even bother to report Eli’s death.
I leave him there to rot.
"You're a scandalous human being." Lacey's laughter is grating the fuck outta me this morning. She’s been riding me all day about the two girls I brought home last night then promptly kicked out at three in the morning when I was done riding them. The woman just doesn't know when to shut the hell up. We've been stuck in the car for the past twenty minutes, and twenty minutes in the car with Lacey is basically twenty minutes in hell.
"How 'bout we don't talk for the next while, huh, Lace?"
"How about you tell me what this guy is done and I'll shut my trap? That sounds like a fair trade."
Lacey's tiny. She was malnourished as a kid and didn't quite get the nutrients she needed to grow, which means her head barely hits me mid-chest. Her long, blonde hair, straight as straight comes, and pale blue eyes give her an angelic look, but the damn girl is anything but.
I'd have left her at home today but the she’s not a fan of her own company. Bad shit goes down when she's left in her own devices and a trip to the hospital is the last thing I need tonight. Not after I've done what I'm about to do.
"Frankie's been bad. That's all you need to know."
"When isn't Frankie bad?" Lace pouts. She and Frankie fucked a couple times, back before she showed up at my doorstep like a stray cat and refused to leave. Since then she's been focused on more delicate prey, namely the female of the species. Most times, I have to be careful about the chicks I bring back to the warehouse. I let 'em out of my sight for ten minutes, Lace'll have their panties around their ankles and her face buried between their thighs. The girl knows no bounds.
But anyway, I think she still got some sort of grind for Frankie. She went quiet for a moment when I told her where we were headed and that doesn't happen too often.
"Just don’t cause a scene, okay? Wait in the car like a told you. I'll be five minutes max." Truth is even I don't have a clue what Frankie's done. All I know is that I've been sent to pay him a visit, and that only happens when someone has grade-A fucked up.
Charlie isn't exactly a lenient man, but he only brings out his most expensive toys for his most expensive problems. Miss a payment on a loan? Charlie sends Sam out to relieve you of a few fingernails. Lose a shipment of coke with the equivalent street value of a five-bedroom house and you get a visit from me. Horses for courses, that's what Charlie says.
We pull up outside Monterello Farm Markets and I slam the gear stick into neutral. It's raining. Surprise sur-fucking-prise. Welcome to Seattle. The windshield turns opaque, blasted by raindrops as soon as the wipers quit. For a moment it’s just me and Lace inside our own little, messed up world. “You hear me, right? Stay in the car.”
She gives me the three fingered boy scouts salute—the one that generally means she’s not feeling all that compliant but doesn’t want to argue. “Gotcha, Boss Man.”
She’s called me that since the day I started paying her to launder my money for me. I could have hired the Jews to do it but they’re already rich enough. Besides, Lacey needs a purpose, even if it is an illegal one.
“Be right back.” I jump out of the car, collect the black duffel from the back seat of the Camaro and head into Monterello’s without looking back. Doubt Lace will disobey me today, anyway; rain’ll wreck her perfectly straight hair. It really is fucked that I know girl shit like that.
Inside, Archie Monterello, Frankie’s brother, stands behind the counter double bagging for an old woman with a stooped back and perfectly styled white hair. Probably a wig. He drops the bag when he sees me, tomatoes bouncing out onto the counter and rolling away.
“Frankie ain’t here today, Zeth. He’s outta state with Cindy.”
I ignore the kid. He’s paid (barely) to keep the front of store charade respectable, believable, if you will, and that includes running interference when a member of the family’s in trouble.
Looks like I’m expected.
I head straight for the swinging doors to the rear of the store, while Archie scrambles over the counter, green apron twisted over his shoulder. “Zeth, I mean it, man. Frankie ain’t here.”
But when I slam through the office door hidden out back, Frankie most definitely is here. His beat up, junkie wife is on her knees, blowing him good. The black-and-white striped dress she’s wearing is hiked up so high I can see her ass cheeks. The look of surprise on Frankie’s face is priceless; he’s so stunned that it takes a minute for him to slap Cindy’s shoulder. Another minute still for her head to stop bobbing.
“Put your dick away, Frankie. We’re having words.” The last thing I need to see right after dinner is Italian cock. I roll my eyes to the ceiling while he zips up. Cindy stands, one hand balancing herself on Frankie’s desk, the other hand tugging her dress down. Her eyes are bloodshot, totally vacant. In other words, she’s baked.
“The fuck you think you’re doing, Zeth? You can’t just barge in here whenever you feel like it, y’know?”
Her husband slaps the back of her leg—crack. “Watch your mouth, bitch. Be careful how you speak to my business associates.” He might as well have thrown a bucket of water over her. A spark of life reignites in her eyes.
“Well fuck you, Frankie. I got better things to do than stand around defending you all day.”
“You were on your knees if I recall. Now get out of here. Zeth and me gotta talk.” He either has no idea why I’m here or he’s trying to ingratiate himself to me. It doesn’t matter. There’s no sweet-talking me, no point in brown-nosing. I curl a lip as Cindy storms out of the office. She shoulder barges me, and I raise an eyebrow at Frankie.
“Bad attitude,” I tell him.
“Bad everything,” he replies. Frankie and Cindy were like Bonnie and Clyde ten years ago but now he’s a two-bit womaniser and she’s a used-up whore. Frank still has his looks, though—the only reason Lacey looked at him twice. She’s shallow like that. It’s part of her charm. Frankie leans back in his leather chair, eyeing me.
“You know why you’ve been given this ticket, Zeth?” he asks.
“Am I supposed to?”
Frankie shrugs. “Most times people know why they’re killing a man.”
So he does know why I’m here. Hardly surprising; you don’t piss of Charlie to this degree without realizing you’re gonna reap the consequences. “I’m not what you’d consider…inner circle. I get an address and some instructions, nothing more.”
“And a suitcase full of cash, too, right?”
My turn to shrug. No point in being shy. “Right.”
“Well how ‘bout I offer you two suitcases full’a cash instead, Zeth? Hire you to go right back where you came from and put an end to this once and for all?”
“You want to hire me to kill Charlie?”
“Why not?” Frankie is one composed motherfucker. He’s ri
cher than God—the eighties might be long gone but cocaine is still Seattle’s drug of choice—and I doubt this is the first time he’s offered to buy his way into someone’s good graces. No doubt he’s never had anyone tell him no before, though. See, the thing is I don’t have any good graces. And I don’t need his money. I dump the duffel I’m still carrying onto his desk. Unzip it. Pull out my go-to—my duster.
Frankie’s still not blinking. The fucker must have cast iron balls. “I’m Charlie’s man, you know that, Frank. Now, I have other jobs to get to tonight. Let’s tidy up these loose ends, huh?”
The reason for Frankie’s calm appears in hand a split second later. The little shit’s had a gun on me under his desk the whole time. Desert Eagle 50-calibre. Nice. He holds it up at shoulder height, arm held straight out. “Shame you won’t just do the job for me. Charlie’s been running this place into the ground for years. Time for him to move on if you catch my drift. And time you were leaving right now, okay?”
I’ve had a lot of guns aimed at me over the years. A man’s intent is always right there, shining in their eyes, to be read like the pages of a book. Some of them just wanna scare you enough that you back off; some of them are so desperate in trying to hide their own fear that they forget to make you believe they mean it. You gotta mean it. And some of them are sharks. Stone cold. People who’ve pulled the trigger countless before and haven’t thought twice.
Frankie, the little fuck, is a shark.
I’d never have called it. I clench my fingers around the duster, staring down at my fist. There’s little to be done about this now. Things will play out the way they’re meant to. “I suppose this is where you shoot me, then?”
“I suppose it is,” he answers.
Someone, somewhere, said something I felt compelled to have tattooed onto my chest when I was drunk once: So it goes. I know it was Billy Pilgrim from Vonnegut’s Slaughter House Five, but I frequently pretend I don’t. That would mean admitting to the fact that I actually read something in high school before I dropped out. But never mind that. As the bullet zips through the air, I realize how absolutely fucking perfect that saying is. So it goes. There is something so inevitable about me getting shot here tonight. Something so obvious and unbelievable, all at the same time.
Pain ricochets through my body like a hot, white lance. The bullet hits me in the chest, two inches below my collarbone…and suffice to say, it hurts like a bitch. Frankie seems stunned that I'm still standing. If I were him, I would already have shot me another five times and emptied the clip just to make sure I was dead. Fucker’s gonna wish he had. I launch myself across the desk and grapple the gun from his hand, ripping it free from his grip.
"Big mistake, Frankie. Big mistake." I raise my fist and bring it sailing down into his face with a brutal force. The crunch of metal crushing bone, skin and muscle separating, isn't something I ever get used to, but on occasions like this I allow myself to enjoy it a little. Just a little. We have to try and enjoy our work, after all, and pain always awakens my dark side.
Frankie’s head rolls back as I pound my fist into his face over and over and over again. My hands, T-shirt, jacket, jeans, everything is covered in blood by the time the guy falls slack. I’m laughing hysterically as bubbles of blood form on his lips.
“It wasn’t my fault,” he mumbles. His now broken teeth make the words a little muffled, but I get the gist. “You lock people inside a sealed shipping container for three…three days, they’re gonna d—die, Zeth. How…how is that my fault?”
The burritos I ate an hour ago start churning in my stomach. What the fuck is he talking about? I raise my fist to smash it into his mouth again, but…I can’t. Just…this is just fucking perfect. “What people?”
“The ones Charlie’s been bringing in through the docklands. Girls. Girls in con…containers.”
I let Frankie go. Girls in containers? Charlie promised me two years ago that he didn’t deal in girls. Drugs and guns, yeah, but he swore no skin trade. “What’s he moving girls for?” I hold my hand to my shoulder, wincing past the pain. It’s growing now that I’m not inflicting it onto someone else.
“Why do you think?” Frankie rasps. “He gets twenty grand a pop if he can prove they’re still…still in….in tact.” He chokes on the blood welling in his mouth; it runs down his chin, dripping onto his ruined shirt.
“You’re lying.”
“I ain’t,” he says, and I believe him.
Fuck.
Charlie’s the one who’s been lying to me all this time. A part of me wants to believe this is a new development, but I know my boss. He’s got a degree, masters and a goddamned doctorate in lying. Especially when it concerns money. No way he would pass up twenty thousand bucks for a nobody kid he could have snatched off the street. My head spins, numbed and disoriented from the pain of the bullet lodged in my shoulder Through the mist slowing down my mind, I still think it, though. Did that mean I’d been right about the girl? Did that mean Charlie had taken the girl’s sister nearly three years ago?
The first time I’d seen her, she was working a night shift at the hospital. My sack of shit uncle had just been eighty-sixed—that hadn’t worked out so well. To be eighty-sixed you have to actually be buried the prerequisite eight feet down and six feet under instead of dumped out of a moving car on the side of the freeway—and it had been on me to identify the body. Well, what was left of it. Sloane was a broken bird, I could tell. Beautiful in an understated way, luminous brown eyes, wavy brown hair. It was the fight in her eyes that had captured me, though. Captured and enthralled me in the space of ten seconds flat. We’d stood face to face in the corridor as she waited for the elevator, and her eyes had met mine. I felt like I was being gutted stem to sternum, and all the while I knew she wasn’t seeing me at all. She was seeing some distant horror that I could only guess at. And I didn’t like guessing.
I’d made it my business to find out everything there was to know about her, which was when I’d discovered that her sister had gone missing. Just snatched off the side of the road, only eighteen years old. Sloane’s family were Christian to the core—promise rings, hymns every Sunday, no cursing, no drinking, the whole nine yards. Except when her sister had been kidnapped, Sloane had stopped going to church. Didn’t wear the cross I knew her mother had given her. She’d given up believing because it was just too hard to keep her faith alive when something so terrible had marred her life.
And then on top of everything else, and in keeping with the truly vile motherfucker that I am, I’d taken her virginity.
I’d found out Eli Harris was bribing her when he’d shown up to pay his dues to Charlie. He’d been bragging about the trade he’d made with her as he handed over the protection money he paid each month to ensure Sammy and the boys didn’t fuck up his business. The sick bastard thought it was hilarious that he was about to sell her ass to the highest bidder, a guy I knew from reputation alone. A guy who liked to beat his women black and blue while he screwed them. I’d paid big to take his place, double Eli’s month’s protection money, and then afterward I’d made Eli spill everything, everything he’d known about Alexis Romera’s disappearance. The pimp had said it was Charlie all along. I hadn’t believed him. I’d killed him for breathing the very words, and Charlie had been mortally offended when I’d confronted him about it.
You know me better than that, Son. I’m signed up for some questionable dealings but I’m not fucking interested in pussy. The karma on that shit is too raw; now get the hell outta my face.
I’d had my one night with Sloane and then severed all ties. Left her with no way of knowing what Eli was promising to tell her. It had been harsh, yeah, sure, since she’d carried out her end of the bargain and never gotten the lead she was after. But fuck, I’d at least made sure she’d enjoyed it. Made sure she wouldn’t have nightmares about my face every second she closed her eyes. I know I could have just walked away, left her in that hotel room still a virgin, unspoiled, but then again I couldn’t
have. This is me we’re talking about. I had to have her. Besides, she’d kept that one little titbit a secret, anyway. Maybe if I’d known she was still riding on her V card, things would have gone differently.
Yeah, right.
“You’re sure about this?” I tighten my grip around Frankie’s neck and his eyes damn near bug out of his head.
“Yeah, man! Yeah, I’m sure!”
Screw you, Charlie. I stoop and pick up the piece from off the floor where Frankie dropped it. Desert Eagle: I don’t usually kill with guns, but sometimes for a work of art you’ve just gotta make an exception.
“Zeth! Zeth, man, don’t! I’m sorry, okay? I’m—I’m sorry I shot you!”
Begging makes me feel queasy. I do it. I pull the trigger and Frankie’s head kicks back like a rock-em-sock-em robot, except there’s blood. A whole lot of blood and fragments of bone, like little pieces of smashed china.
“Why am I right all the time?”
I turn and Lacey’s standing there in the doorway, the heel of her right palm pressed into her sternum. She’s soaked to the skin and panting.
“Lacey—”
“Don’t worry about it,” she tells me. “I already knew.” She stumbles into the room and looks down on Frankie, eyebrows banked together, mouth drawn down in a confused pout. I’d like to think this is her first dead body, only I know better. She faces me, holds her hand out. “Come on. Let’s get you to the hospital.”
