by Anna Zaires, Pepper Winters, Skye Warren, Lynda Chance, Pam Godwin, Amber Lin
“I didn’t really think about it while I was there,” I admitted. “I mean – it wasn’t the same at all. Just a little cabin, me and the dog…it never even crossed my mind while I was there.”
“What did you do while you were there?”
“Nothing,” I said. It was accurate enough.
“Sounds like an exciting vacation.”
I glanced up and raised an eyebrow at the sarcasm, but Mark wasn’t apologetic.
“I wasn’t looking for any excitement,” I said. “I’ve had enough excitement in my life. I just hung out in the cabin. I didn’t go anywhere or do anything, really.”
“Did anything significant happen while you were in Arizona?”
My eyes dropped back to the rug, and my tongue darted over my lips. I could still taste her there, the brunette beauty who stumbled across my path in the middle of nowhere, spent the night in my bed, and then disappeared from my life.
Lia.
Did she ever go back to that rickety old cabin? Did she call my name, wander inside, and find the lame-ass excuse for a note I left her?
Would I ever know?
“No,” I finally said. “Nothing happened while I was there.”
* * *
Much like the other times I had visited a counselor before I had been discharged, I was left feeling empty inside, more unsure than I had been before I walked into the office, and in need of a lot of distractions to keep my mind from dwelling on whatever was said. Keeping myself occupied usually came in one of three forms: throwing myself into exercise, spending all my free time with a hooker in my bed, or focusing on my work.
Sometimes doing all three was the only way to keep my mind off of whatever was bothering me. When I wasn’t even sure what was quite literally keeping me up nights, even that didn’t help. For the moment, my best distraction was work, which meant digging into my target’s life.
Brad Ashton was not an easy guy to get close to, that was for sure.
The whole Hollywood scene sucked, whether you were in LA, New York, or downtown Chicago. Red carpet events weren’t overly common in the area, but I guess when you’re into a mob boss for a shitload of gambling money, you do what you need to do.
The premier of Ashton’s new movie was all over the place, and this was just the Chicago leg of the tour. I knew I wasn’t going to get close enough to him tonight – not with all the insanity going on at the AMC River East 21. There had to be at least ten thousand people there, and every one of them was trying to get up close and personal with the dude. The vast majority were women, mostly in their mid-forties, and mostly crazy.
They had to be.
I mean, some of them were actually carrying cardboard cutouts of the guy and trying to get him to sign his own face.
That shit’s weird.
There were at least two dozen people acting as a human shield at any given moment. They were all decked out in basic B-movie secret service attire – black suits, receivers in their ears, sunglasses regardless of the weather. They were pretty comical to watch.
As far as my cover went, they were going to be my best chance to get to him.
I heard Ashton was staying at the Embassy right next door, so I made myself comfortable in the bar there and sipped club soda while a scotch sat untouched next to me. It was a long while before the noise of screaming females alerted me to the star’s arrival. He was escorted by the caricature guards to the bank of exclusive elevators and disappeared.
Just a little longer.
A few more patrons were hanging out and watching various sports on the large screens around the bar, but no one paid any attention to me except for the bartender. The next time he came around, I ditched the soda and started sipping the scotch.
Two guys in black suits, sans ties, and unbuttoned white shirts came out of the same elevator where Ashton had disappeared and headed towards the bar. Not surprisingly, they opted for a bar-side seat instead of a table.
I watched from the end of the bar.
They were both in their mid twenties, which was convenient. As they talked, I picked up that one was named Jim, but no name was mentioned for the other. They drank cheap beer in bottles and watched football until closing time but didn’t talk about work. Jim was apparently a Raiders fan.
They sat reasonably close like they knew each other, but not close enough that they might accidentally touch one another in passing. They both had short hair but not military cut like mine, just neatly short. There were little marks around their right ears where the receivers had pinched them.
They were career guys, not just hired for this event. They would go with Ashton when he left Chicago, which was exactly what I needed. I kept my head down, turned my body away as they passed me, and finished my scotch before heading home.
The next day was a television appearance for the popular actor and then back to the same hotel for some beauty sleep before he flew out to LA. The same two guys came down to the bar again the next night. I sat in the same spot as well, but this time I was wearing a Raider’s jersey.
Fortune was on my side, and after the first drink, Jim’s buddy called it a night, but Jim didn’t seem ready to turn in just yet. It didn’t take long for him to approach me and start talking football.
Too easy.
“Raider’s fan, huh?”
“Like anybody with a lick of sense,” I replied. “Best team in the fucking world!”
I held up my glass of beer and clinked it against his bottle. The beer was still light, same as his, but just different enough not to appear suspicious. This guy knew security, and I couldn’t be that obvious. Even wearing his team’s jersey on a day when they weren’t playing was a little risky.
“Damn straight!” Jim replied. “I’m Jim Conner – mind if I join you?”
“Marshall Miller,” I said as I shook his hand. “You staying here at the hotel?”
“Yeah, I’ll be heading out in the morning. I work security, and my boss is staying here.”
“That’s cool,” I replied. “I hear the rooms here are really nice.”
“You aren’t a guest?”
“Nah,” I said. I wiped the back of my arm across my mouth. “I just like the bar. Other sports bars around have kind of a crappy crowd, you know?”
“I do,” he agreed.
I made a point of scooting my chair a bit so he could sit down without going all homophobic on me or anything. Sports guys could get kind of uptight sometimes, and I didn’t want something that simple to blow my chances. We talked about the team’s performance over the season and their chances for the Super Bowl and then went on to politics.
I argued with him about one of the viewpoints expressed on the nightly newscast. I took it just to the precipice of pissing him off and then dropped back down. We eyed each other cautiously for a moment before touching our drinks together once more in a truce sort of toast.
It was all about as perfect as it could be until he insisted on shots. I probably should have known better – really wasn’t much of a drinker. I’d have a drink or two, yes, but that was usually it. Being out of control wasn’t my favorite feeling, but sometimes the job called on you to do shit you didn’t want to do.
“Did you play?” I asked Jim as I tipped back the third.
“Nah,” he said. “I love the game, but I was never good enough to play more than JV. You?”
“In college, yeah,” I said with a frat-boy grin. “Tight end freshman and sophomore years and then screwed up my knee. There went my scholarship. I couldn’t keep up with everything after surgery, and I never was the same again.”
“That sucks, man,” Jim said. As some sort of celebration-slash-condolences he bought the next shot, which we both downed too quickly to count, so we had another.
“I always thought I’d play for the Raiders someday,” I mused. “I guess since that didn’t happen…well…you know. Life and shit.”
“I do know that,” Jim agreed.
I didn’t really think he had any i
dea what he was agreeing with, but it didn’t really matter. We did another shot, and my head was getting a little fuzzy. I didn’t drink often, and it was hitting me a little harder than I expected.
“I got laid off a week ago,” I told him. “I was a mall cop, if you can believe it. It was kind of a crappy job – mostly chasing teenaged shoplifters – but it paid the bills.”
“Have you been looking for something else?” Jim asked.
“Looking, sure,” I responded. I waved down the bartender for two more shots since it was my turn to buy them. “Finding is a whole other thing. I like the security stuff, though.”
We did a couple more shots, talked more football shit, and bitched about the economy until the hotel bartender finally tossed us out. Jim and I shook hands, and he wished me the best of luck. I jotted my cell number down on the back of one of the cardboard coasters used at the bar and asked him to call me if he heard of any work.
Once Jim was out of sight, I pushed my way through the revolving doors and hailed down a cab to take my drunk ass home. I hadn’t actually planned on drinking as much as I did – I didn’t like the out of control feeling of intoxication – but it seemed to have served its purpose as far as “bonding” with Jim was concerned.
I stumbled into my apartment and nearly fell over Odin twice as I attached his leash and took him out the back door. My head was swimming, and I had such a rough time just getting Odin outside in the first place that I decided to forgo the leash law and just dropped the people-end of the thing. Odin never wandered off anyway, and it allowed me time to lean against the wall of the building and debate the merits of puking in the bushes versus puking on the rocks.
Splatter was bad, so I maneuvered a little closer to the bushes.
The dog went about his business, watered down a couple of sticks that were likely going to be bushes in the spring, and then took a shit next to the sidewalk. That’s when I realized I hadn’t brought any doggie bags down with me.
There was no way in hell I was going to make it all the way back up to the apartment and then down again to clean up shit. It was going to have to wait until morning, and whatever neighbor who was out at this time of night to complain could suck my cock.
I whistled, and Odin lumbered up next to me. I checked around to see if anyone had noticed my dog-owner’s ultimate sin, but there wasn’t anyone around. Just as I was picking up the end of his leash to take him back inside, Odin decided there was something seriously interesting about the “flower bed” recently constructed in the park. There weren’t any actual flowers or even any dirt – just a lot of slate rocks. I was actually considering puking on them, but Odin was more interested in what was down around the brick base. I sighed and let him continue on – it was easier than moving, anyway.
Odin suddenly stopped sniffing at the ground and let out a growl.
I looked up through blurry eyes at the two kids who were walking across the grass of Lake Shore East Park, coming from between the buildings on East Randolph Street. It really was too late for them to be doing anything legal, and the way they looked up at me and nudged each other was so obvious, it was almost pathetic.
At least, it would have been pathetic under other circumstances.
Normally this situation wouldn’t have concerned me. Two punk teenagers didn’t tend to be much of a challenge, but I was drunk. Aside from drunk, I was also unarmed and feeling pretty damn stupid to boot.
The two kids moved off to one side of the walkway where the light wasn’t as good, but I could still see them pretty well. One had dark hair and a pretty beefy build, and the other was smaller, thinner, and had red hair in a greasy mop on the top of his head falling over into one eye.
The dark-haired one reached around to the back of his jeans and pulled out something shiny and sharp looking. Whatever doubts I might have had before about motives evaporated.
Odin growled again before he took a couple steps to move himself between me and the two teen boys. I put an end to that immediately because the last thing I needed was for the dog to get knifed. I wasn’t in any shape to drive him to the vet. I cut him off with my legs, forcing his bulk behind my knees and partially into the rock garden.
“How about you give me your wallet,” the kid on the right said. “Maybe then I’ll decide not to leave you and the pooch bleeding in the street.”
I debated telling him that the street was a good hundred yards away but decided against it. The other dude snickered, and I just shook my head a little. That action caused enough vapor trails to make me stop moving immediately. Taking a step back, I almost tripped over the damn dog again.
“The dude’s fucked up,” the red-haired kid said. I couldn’t help but look at his hair and remember David Hasselhoff in Piranha 3-DD. He had played himself in the ridiculously campy horror movie Jonathan once made me watch. In the movie, he kept going off on a little red-headed kid who was too stupid to live through to the end. He kept calling him by the same nickname throughout – little ginger moron.
I heard myself snicker.
“You think this is funny?” the darker kid asked.
“Now that I think about it, yeah,” I answered. “You gonna knife me and the dog here in the park and then drag us over to the street? What exactly does that accomplish for ya?”
My vision blurred again, and the next thing I knew, there was a sharp pain in my side and I dropped to my knees on the cement as Odin let out a short bark.
There was just no way this night could get worse.
Chapter Four
Patient Research
I landed on the ground, not because of the hit – it wasn’t that hard, though somewhere in the back of my mind, I thought a rib might be bruised – but because my body decided it was just the right time to get rid of the alcohol in my system.
Fortitude only goes so far, and I wasn’t able to hold it in any longer.
My mind tried to count the number of shots I must have done with Jim, the security guy, as I retched into the shrubs near the edge of the park. The commotion going on around me barely made sense as I fertilized the rock garden and reminded myself over and over again why I didn’t make a habit of drinking too much.
I hated puking.
Just hated it.
Even when I was a kid, the very notion of puking was abhorrent. The slightest feeling of nausea had been enough to nearly send me into a panic attack, and if I had an actual stomach bug, I would cry and scream between stomach heaves. I honestly thought major organs or other important bits of my insides would come out if I threw up too much. I remembered the feeling of terror and helplessness as I knelt over the grimy porcelain bowl at the convent and tried to keep my insides actually on the inside of me.
There was one nun who would smack me and tell me to stop being such a baby; I think I had been about four at that time. Needless to say, that didn’t help me get over my fear of vomiting, and though adulthood had given me a more realistic perspective on the whole thing, I still hated it with a passion.
By the time I was starting to get a bit of control back, everything seemed to have quieted down. It didn’t make any sense at all, but the commotion that had been all around me as I was sick had vanished. The scent from the ground below me was nearly enough to make me puke again, so I started pushing myself backwards and onto the walkway – trying to get away from the stench in hopes of saving myself. My knees scraped the rough asphalt, and I cringed as I finally regained enough sense to look around me.
Odin sat next to me, wagging his tail and lolling his tongue to one side.
Some guard dog.
He tried to lick my face, which was just disgusting. I pushed him away as a pair of feet came into view right in front of me. Dirty tennis shoes and bright white socks over hairy calves bounced around in my vision as my head spun in a steady circle. I knew I needed to lift my head to see who it was, but I didn’t have quite enough muscle control.
“You look like shit,” a familiar voice said.
My finge
rs rubbed into my eyes to try to un-blur my vision while the other hand wiped a sleeve across my mouth. It took a minute, but I was finally able to look around with some clarity only to find both the kids who had come after me were gone. In their place, Terry Kramer was grinning down at me.
“What the…” I shook my head, earning me more woozy feelings in my head and stomach. Terry blurred in and out of existence while I tried to keep myself from puking again. With herculean effort, I swallowed back bile and willed myself not to be sick as I looked up at Terry. “What are you doing here?”
“Saving your ass,” he replied with a big grin.
I looked around, but I didn’t see the two kids anywhere. There was a little switchblade-style knife lying on the walkway next to the grass a couple of yards away, but no one around to wield it. Looking over the park, I saw no signs of anyone walking around, so they must have gone around the front of the building. It didn’t make sense – they had come from the park.
“Great timing I got, huh?” Terry said as I forced myself back onto my feet.
Wobbling slightly, I reached down to Odin’s neck and grabbed a hold of his collar. My fingers worked their way around to the edge to the leash, and I wrapped my hand around it. He wasn’t going anywhere, but I needed something to help ground me. I kind of needed him to help get me off the ground, too.
With shaking knees and Odin as leverage, I managed to stand up but continued to stare at the concrete as it spun around in my vision. I had to focus. I had to get the shit out of my system, so my body would stop revolting against me.
I turned towards the decorative pile of stones and puked again.
“Oh, man!” Terry exclaimed. He took several steps backwards to avoid the splatter. “You’re in bad shape!”
Responding to him would have been pointless, not to mention impossible given the current situation, so I didn’t. Besides, I had the feeling opening my mouth again would cause problems.
“You’re really lucky I was walking by,” Terry said. “Those kids might have given you some hurt.”
A lot of potential responses bopped around in my head like a Teen Beat celebrity, some with words and others with actions. At least one response included my knuckles. I might have tried to say something, but I really was a little afraid that if I opened my mouth, I was going to puke again.
