The Good Kill

by Kurt Brindley

  She stopped speaking as a moment of clarity struck her. Tears welled in the corner of her eyes. “Look at me,” she said, holding up her arms in indication of her sad appearance. “Why are you doing this to me?” She looked around the room as if seeing it for the first time and then began to sob. “I’m supposed to be studying to become a lawyer…”

  Savage turned toward her. His handsome, chiseled features softened into a compassionate look of fatherly concern. “Hey, you’re no prisoner here, baby. You came to me for help, remember? And that’s what I’m up in here trying to do. Help you find your sister.”

  Toni looked up from her hands. Her eyes bloodshot. Her face wet from tears. Her supple honey-brown skin now taut and dry and drained of color. “You know where my sister is?” she asked.

  Savage dropped his cigarette to the warped, wooden floor and stamped it out. He put his arm around Toni’s shoulders. “Not yet. But we’re getting close.” He then put a finger under her chin and gently raised her face up so she could look him in the eyes. “But if I’m right and it’s the people I think it is who have her, then you gotta know that they are some evil mother fuckers.”

  “If you know who has my sister, you got to tell me and let me go so I can get her. Please, Mr. Savage.”

  Savage sniffed. His features changed from the compassionate father figure back to the cold-hearted pimp that he was. “Listen to this light-skinned bitch telling me, the Hollywood Thug Killa, the mother fuckin’ beast that owns these mother fuckin’ streets, that I gots to do this and I gots to do that. How the fuck you think you gonna be able to get your sister all by yourself, Little Miss Lawyer Girl?”

  “I-I won’t get her by myself. I’ll tell the police. Th-they’ll help me. Look, Mr. Savage,” she said as she held out her bare arms full of needle marks. “I won’t say anything to anyone about any of this. I swear to God.”

  “The police?” Savage rose from the bed, his face twisted from anger. He looked down on her and said, “Shit, for a tight-ass college girl who’s supposed to be so fucking smart, you’re acting like a dumbass bitch saying stupid shit like that.”

  Toni was confused. “What do you mean it’s stupid? If someone has kidnapped my sister, what do you expect me to do besides go to the police for help?”

  “Damn, girl. I can’t believe you a Sandtown ho talking about going snitchin’ to the Five-O, especially since you first came to me for help.”

  Toni rose from the bed and pushed Savage hard in the chest with two hands. “Look at me,” she screamed. “How is turning me into a fucking heroin addict going to help me find my sister?” Her resolved faded immediately and she collapsed back down on the bed and choked out hard sobs.

  Like a chameleon, the anger in Savage’s eyes disappeared and his seductive smile returned. He sat back down next to Toni and once again put his arm around her. He spoke softly. “I know everything seems fucked up right now, but you gotta trust ol’ Hollywood, baby. You’ll understand everything soon enough, but for now all you gotta know is that all this shit you’re going through now ain’t nothing but…” He paused to find the word he was looking for. “…preparation. We’re preparing you, baby. That’s all we’re doing. And that’s all you needs to know.”

  Toni’s head was spinning and her cravings for the heroin were gnawing at her. Exhausted, she said, “Preparation? Preparation for what?”

  “Shit, girl. What the fuck we just been talking about. To save Ruby. Here you go, look at it this way…” He turned her toward him so she could see how earnest he was. “Let’s just say that what we’re doing here is helping you to get yourself into character.”

  Toni fell back onto the bed and closed her eyes. “Her name isn’t Ruby, Mr. Savage. It’s Whitney. Whitney Steele. And I have no idea… what the fuck it is you’re trying to tell me.”

  “I know, I know. But listen, if anyone’s going to be able to get close to the people who I believe are holding Ru— your sister, Whitney, it’s going to be you. But you’re not going to be able to do it looking and acting like a bitchy little law student, you feel me? You gotta toughen your ass up.”

  Toni laughed a slow, pathetic laugh. “You’re trying to tell me that I have to go undercover as a junkie to rescue my sister?”

  “No, not as a junkie, but as someone who understands the junkie’s world.” He pulled Toni up by the arm. “Listen to me, now. This is important.”

  Toni’s head wobbled. After a moment, her eyes opened into heavy-lidded slits. “I’m listening,” she said, her words slow and thick.

  Savage continued. “Before your sister disappeared, she was working as a stripper and a prostitute at one of the clubs down at The Block.”

  Toni tried hard to focus. “But I heard she was dancing at your club, not downtown. That’s why I went there in the first place.”

  “The point is,” Savage said patiently, “if you want to get close to thugs, you gonna have to become a mother fuckin’ thug yourself. And that’s what I’m trying to help you do, girl, become a mother fucking thug.”

  Toni sighed hard and her head lolled back. “Can we please continue this talk after I get high? I’m really hurting now, Mr. Savage. I can’t focus on what you’re saying.”

  “Yeah, about that,” Savage said, shaking his head with concern. “It brings us back to where we started. The cost it’s taking me to help you prepare for all this shit, none of it comes cheap. Especially all the valuable time it’s keeping me away from running my businesses.”

  Toni lay back down on the bed. Her sobs were slow and intermittent now.

  “I’m happy to help you, Toni, “Savage continued, “but I need to find some way to cover my expenses, that’s all.”

  Toni’s face was tear-streaked and swollen. “I got some money saved,” she said. “If you promise me you’ll help me get my sister back, I’ll give you all I have.”

  Savage was pleased. “Okay, good. That’s a start. Depending on how much you have, it might help cover some of the costs I’ve already invested in all this. But I’m thinking it may take some time for us to get you ready. We got to consider the long-term costs. Any idea how we can cover them?”

  Toni could barely speak now. “What… How much… I don’t know how else…to get more… money.”

  Savage sighed. “That’s going to be a problem then.”

  “Please… Mr. Savage…”

  “I have an idea,” Savage said. He pulled Toni back up again by the arm.

  Toni struggled to open her eyes. “What… is it?”

  “You can work at my club, you know, doing some dancing. Help our customers have a good time while they’re there. You can do that, right? For your sister?”

  At first Savage thought that Toni hadn’t heard him, that she had passed out. But then her eyes opened wide.

  “You’re telling me you want me to strip and whore for you?” Toni said, struggling to sit fully back up. “No fucking way, Mr. Savage.”

  Savage grabbed her hard by the shoulders and turned her to him. His eyes narrowed. His voice growled as he spoke through his teeth. “Bitch, if I wanted to, I could have been trickin’ your ass out a week ago. I’m telling you, that if you want me to continue to help you find your sister, Ruby fucking Black, then this is the way we’re going to do it. You’re going to work my club, doing what I say needs to be done to earn the money that I say gots to be earned to cover my costs. If not, then you’re out on your fucking ass, bitch. And I’ll tell you what, Little Miss Lawyer Girl, if you even think about going to the po-po about any of this shit, then you and me have got a big mother fucking problem. You feeling me, right?”

  Toni’s head dropped to Savage’s shoulder. “I can’t, Mr. Savage. I just can’t. I worked hard my whole life to not get trapped in all this kind of shit. To not go down the same path my mother and Whitney went down.”

  Savage stood up and walked to the door. “Well, if that’s the case, then you’re on your own, college girl.” He turned the doorknob.

  Toni sprung fr
om the bed and ran over to him, grabbing him from behind by the shoulders. “Mr. Savage, please, don’t go yet. You can’t leave me like this. I need to get high. I hurt so bad.”

  Savage shrugged her hands off his shoulders. “Bitch, I already told you what you need to do.” He reached down and pulled up his pant leg. Tucked inside his sock was a small heroin kit. He pulled it out and held it in front of Toni. “If you don’t want to do that for me, then I’ll be damned if I’m gonna keep spending my money on this shit to help you get what you want.” He waved the kit in Toni’s face and then started walking out the door.

  Toni pulled him back into the room and slammed the door shut. She looked at Savage with frantic, desperate eyes and then hugged him as tight as she could. “Don’t go. Please… I-I’ll do whatever you want, Mr. Savage… Anything.”

  Savage pushed her away from him and walked over to the bed and sat back down. “Now you’re finally talking some sense, girl.” He set the kit on the bed next to him and zipped it open. He then leaned back on his elbows and smiled. “Now get your ass over here and show me exactly whatever it is you’re willing to do for me so’s I can go ahead and keep on doing all the shit I been doing for you.”

  Toni walked slowly over to Savage. She stopped before him, unable to go any farther. Her body started shaking before the sobs came.

  “Go ahead on, bitch, and get to doing what you walked over here to do.”

  Crying, Toni knelt between Savage’s outspread legs and, despite the tears running hot down her cheeks, and despite the vows she had made to herself so many years ago, she unzipped his pants with shaking hands and reluctantly got to doing to him what she had walked over to do.

  ✽ ✽ ✽

  Savage stepped out of the room and locked the door behind him. As he walked down the dark, decrepit hallway of the battered row house, one of three he used throughout Eastern Baltimore to pimp his stable of whores, he smiled to himself as he calculated how much he expected her to soon be earning for him.

  CHAPTER TEN

  BEFORE

  Everything is silent. Beyond silent. Even the subtle sound of the blood rushing in his ears and the heart beating in his chest are absent, their sounds being sucked out behind him into the void, the black, before they can disturb the atmosphere around him. But he knows the screams are still there. He can’t hear them, but, like his silent heartbeat, he can feel them. Everything is black, almost purple, until he turns the corner when he can see light seeping from beneath the closed door at the end of the hallway. His feet are bare and his steps are silent on the cold tiled floor. He can feel the vibrations of the screams in the floor making their way through his feet, up his legs, and throughout his body. Waves of silent screams vibrate through him. He shakes without control. His steps become uncertain. The tile beneath his feet cracks. The hallway twists violently, throwing him against the wall. It continues to twist until the wall becomes the floor, then the ceiling. The door, his goal, remains unmoving even as the hallway twists. He can no longer walk upright so he begins to crawl. He crawls as fast as he can, for as the hallway twists, faster and faster with each turn, the door at the end of the hallway with the light seeping out from beneath it, gets farther away. No matter how fast he tries to crawl, the hallway twists faster, slamming him onto the walls, the ceiling, the floor repeatedly, tumbling him like a helpless rag within a clothes dryer, spinning and spinning until the hall becomes nothing but—

  Astaghfirullah!

  The perception of a threat slipped through the razor-wire-contained prison of his nightmare and woke Killian violently. His chest pounded from the fright, reminding him of the thin slice of shrapnel that had shot through his back and pierced its way through the dura matter, the intercostal veins and arteries, the lung tissue, and the left atrium’s thin, fatty layer of the epicardium, until finally coming to a precarious rest within the myocardium, the middle and thickest layer of the heart wall. Each accelerated and pounding heartbeat brought with it an accelerated, deadly risk. The sheets, damp from the nightmare sweat, stuck to him, leaving him feeling as if he were being prepared for the grave, mummified. He panicked and threw the death shroud off his body. Breathing hard, he stared at the ceiling wondering if the threat was real or just a further extension of the hellish, pounding dream from which he woke. If he woke.

  A throat was cleared near the window. “Hello, Senior Chief Lebon.”

  Killian’s head whipped toward the voice.

  Navy Commander Darius Walker stood up from the recliner. He picked up his combination cover from the stand next to the chair and tucked it smartly under his left arm. His dark brown hair with its tight afro was close-cropped, neat and tight. He was tall, built solid, and looked poster-ready in his service dress blue uniform.

  Killian’s first effort to sit up in bed out of respect for his commanding officer failed. The pain, too prolific to pinpoint its origin, held him down. His second effort got him up as far as to his right elbow. “The team? Is everyone okay?”

  The commander looked back over his shoulder at the open door. He walked over to it and closed it before speaking. “Everyone’s fine,” he said. “Of course, they all miss the hell out of you and send their regards.” The commander’s smile faded. “How are you, Kill? They treating you right, shipmate?”

  Killian brushed over the question. He was eager for news direct from the battlefield. “I’ll live. What’s going on with Kobani? The news reports say Raqqa’s about to be liberated.”

  The commander stood a bit taller. His dark, square chin jutted out. “Indeed, it has. Those sick fuck ISIS bastards finally got their asses handed to them.”

  “What about the team? They back at Little Creek?”

  “Not yet,” the commander said, the pride in his voice remaining evident. “They’re still in the fight. Shipped out from Kobani a couple weeks ago to…” He paused, as if struck by a thought. “Well, you know. They’re still out there kicking some jihadi ass.”

  Killian struggled hard through the pain to sit all the way up. “Shipped out to where? Yemen, right? All the scuttlebutt about Niger back before I got my ass blown up was just bullshit, right?”

  The commander dropped his eye contact with Killian and looked down to the floor.

  “What the fuck, commander? Shipped to where?” It was hard to tell if the grimace Killian spoke through was from the pain or from his rising anger.

  The commander looked back to Killian. “Look, Kill. I know it’s fucked up, but I can’t… I’ve already said too much. The review boards, they made their decision… They…” The commander frowned and looked down to the floor again.

  Killian had never seen his commanding officer behave in such an indecisive way. He forced out a harsh laugh. “What the fuck are you talking about, sir?”

  The commander sighed and looked Killian in the eye. “It’s hard as hell for me to tell you this, Kill, but… you’ve been medically retired.”

  Killian started to speak but the words didn’t come.

  The commander continued. “The evaluation boards, both medical and physical, have ruled that the shrapnel in your heart along with the shock to your brain from the blast have left you… well, unfit for duty.”

  Killian looked down from the commander’s pained eyes to his Budweiser, the golden special warfare insignia of an eagle spreading its wings while holding onto an anchor, a trident, and a flintlock pistol that the elite few worthy and privileged enough to be called a Navy SEAL wore prominently and proudly over their medals. The twinge of pride he always felt when pinning his insignia on his uniform sliced through his chest like a knife. He lay slowly back into his pillow as the realization sunk in that, while he would always be a SEAL in his heart, he would never again be a SEAL where it mattered most – in combat fighting in defense of his country. His eyes found their stare spot, a water stain on the ceiling that reminded him of the exit wound of a hollow point bullet.

  The commander stiffened back up and pushed out a grin. “The guys are already planni
ng a big blowout bash for your retirement the next time they’re back stateside. Rigs told me to tell you that—”

  “What about the girl?” Killian asked. His voice was empty. His eyes remained fixed on the water spot.

  “The girl?” the commander asked.

  Killian’s head snapped toward the officer. Their eyes locked. “The girl from the house. The girl who was in my fucking arms when the RPG hit. The fucking Yazidi sex slave girl, for fuck’s sake.”

  The commander grabbed the bed’s side rail and leaned in closer. “Hey, Kill, take it easy, shipmate. Try not to think about any of that shit right now, okay? You just listen to your doctors and focus on your—”

  Killian sprang up on one elbow. “Try not to think about her? How the hell do you expect me to do that, Commander, when she is all I can think about? All I can see in my mind is her in my arms right before the explosion. Her dark eyes blank, seeing nothing but the horror I was carrying her away from.”

  “I-I don’t know what happened to her,” the commander confessed. “I’m sorry, Kill.”

  “Jesus fucking Christ. I am so sick of hearing everyone being so goddamned sorry for me.”

  The commander released the side rail as if they were electrically charged and took a step back from the bed. He saw a look in his senior chief’s eyes that he had never seen before, one that exceeded even the intensity he was known for on the battlefield.

  The commander pushed back. “Come on, Senior Chief,” he said, his voice resuming its tone of authority. “Cut the dramatics. You know damn well how much we care for you. And I’m sure if you thought about it, you’d realize just how tore up we all are about losing you. That fucking blast didn’t just rob us of a leader and our team’s fiercest killer. That fucker robbed us of a shipmate, a brother, god damn it.”

  The tough love worked. Killian ran his fingers through his thick blond hair and sighed. His anger drained away and he once again lay back into the pillow.

  “Look, Kill,” the commander said, his tone softened. “I’m here for a day-long spec ops conference beginning tomorrow at the Pentagon and then I’m heading right back to…” He laughed, giving in. “You’re right, it is Yemen. But, still, when I get back in country I’ll do my damnedest to find out what happened to the girl, okay? I have a pretty good relationship with a commander in the Kurdish Peshmerga. If I can track him down, he should have some idea how the Yazidi refugees are processed.”