by Bera, Ilia
He laughs, shaking his head. “No, no. Don’t go and rope me into this.”
“They’re holding me prisoner.” I hide my trembling hands beneath the bar.
His eyes narrow but he holds his grin. “Hmm? Who?”
“The gypsies—the guys I came in with. They’re holding me prisoner. They’re using me to fix the fight.”
The man stops smiling as his eyes drift down to my trembling hands. Hell, he can probably hear my heart tolling rapidly, like a bullet, ricocheting inside of a church bell. “This better not be part of your fix.”
I tell the man about Freddie’s plan, the territs, and the windowless trailer. His expression remains taut, apprehensive; a piece of the puzzle is still missing. “So you drugged his opponent—hmm—to make it look like a fix? Hm, so everyone will turn on him?”
“No.”
“I don’t understand.”
“I want Freddie to be beaten in a real fight.” I say quietly. The burly man strains to hear me.
A topless Freddie emerges from the back room and the bar roars. Mel, his bet placed, slips out from the crowd. He scans the bar and locates me. I look away swiftly and my muscles become tense.
“A real fight?” the burly man asks.
I keep my head down. My lips part, but I struggle to speak. “So you can beat him up—so you can get me out of here.”
On cue, the moustachioed man falls to the ground, unconscious. The bar becomes silent for a moment before an eruption of boos and hisses. My hopeful hero looks over at the cage, then back to me. I look up into his eyes and say, “Freddie expected an easy fight. If he backs out now, everyone will know it’s a fix.”
Angry bettors crowd the bookies. The host takes to his platform and tries to calm the crowds, but no one is listening. Flushed and confused, Freddie scans the crowd for Mel. Everything’s going to shit. One of the drunker bar-goers pushes his way through the crowd towards Freddie, screaming threats and expletives at the gypsy fighter. A bookie holds the angry man back.
A glimmer graces the burly man’s eyes as he watches the fluster unfold, suddenly able to see my plan unfolding. He hesitates, but the glimmer persists—that inwards gaze that suggests, this is his chance to be a hero; this is his chance to do something good for a change.
He rises to his feet, proving to be much taller than I expected. Without looking back at me, he motions me to sit. “Wait right here.” His eyes are glued to his target, glued to the vulnerable Freddie. All the pieces of my plan are in place. Now, it’s just a matter of waiting, a matter of time.
The burly man approaches the announcer, who leads him to an official-looking man. I slouch into my seat as Mel’s head, poking up from the crowd, scans around the room for me. By this point, he’s probably figured out that I’m behind this, but by this point, it’s out of his control. There’s nothing he can do without running the risk of the bar turning on him. And he’s directionless, separated from Freddie. He has no one to tell him what to do, what to believe. Mel is Freddie’s puppet—a spineless dog that only barks when commanded. With Freddie out, Mel is nothing—another thick skull in a crowd of thick skulls.
“Ladies and gentlemen! Can I have your attention, please? We have a change of schedule,” the host announces, bringing silence to the crowd. He motions towards the burly man. “We have another fighter!” The announcer says. He goes on to introduce the burly man as “Giles,” and gives everyone a few minutes to seek out a bookie, to change their bets.
Only those who originally put their money on Freddie change their bets. Standing tall, Giles makes Freddie look like a scrawny Christmas elf. Giles takes off his shirt. All of the weight on his body is muscle—real, raw, manly muscle—and his skin is thick leather. My plan is working out better than expected.
Freddie’s face is pale. There’s something about the burly Giles that, for once, has reduced Freddie into a quivering child. He may be a good actor, but he’s not this good—he’s terrified, frantically scanning the crowd for Mel, desperately hoping to be bailed out at any second. But Mel’s a coward, slouching into the shadowed corner of the bar like a meek little dog that’s lost his owner.
The bell rings and the fight begins. Freddie keeps his distance, prancing like a fragile little doe around the perimeter of the cage, occasionally glancing around to find Mel’s equally worried face as it occasionally peers up above the crowd.
Giles’s eyes maintain that glimmer, his heroic fantasy. Also in those eyes is glimmer of hatred—hatred towards the con, the kidnapper he is about to snap into two pieces, hatred that further fuels his motivations.
He inches closer to Freddie, with a surprisingly casual stride, holding back on throwing his first punch as he deliberates his options: Kill him? Or simply mangle his fragile, little body. Freddie’s wide eyes suggest a different set of options: surrender or let the burly man mangle my body.
Giles throws a punch and sends Freddie flying. The dull crack of Freddie’s ribs is heard across the bar, over the loud groan that resonates through the crowd—a sympathetic sound; everyone can feel Freddie’s pain.
Freddie is slow to get up. I’m surprised he gets up at all—and judging by the wide-eyed look on Giles’s face, so is Giles. The drunken cheers, hollers, and taunts resume.
Back on his feet, Freddie continues to prance along the caged perimeter, but he now lacks the same grace from before, looking like a three-legged doe trying to hop through the mud. Somehow, he manages to grin at his much larger, much stronger opponent. Fresh blood stains his teeth.
Mel is nowhere in sight; his red-haired head no longer pokes up from the crowd. Maybe he really did catch on and he knows he’s next. He knows that, as soon as Freddie is finished, Giles will be coming after him. He’s probably halfway out of Ilium in that old Cadillac.
Freddie lunges forward, kicking off the cage, throwing a flurry of punches at Giles’s midsection. Right hook, left hook, right hook, left hook, right… Once the gentle massage is over, Giles clutches Freddie’s throat and lifts him off the ground. Freddie’s face becomes a mixture of ivory and lilac. Then, the dull thud of Freddie’s body is clear over the drunken, cheering crowd, as it slams into the cement platform.
I hide my wince, and then I hide my smile. Neither feels appropriate, but both insist on making an appearance.
Freddie peels his tattered body off the cement. How is he not dead? How is not a pile of goopy mush already? With the help of Giles’s powerful arms, Freddie flies across the cage into the rusty wire fence. The cage rattles and waves and Freddie is left with a crimson grid on his pale face.
Before picking himself back up again, Freddie looks up at the bell, which hangs motionless over the cage. His eyes close momentarily, as if to mind-will the bell into ringing. It doesn’t.
The fight is as good as over. Men are already lining up before the bookies, eager to collect their winnings. I almost forgot—I have twelve-hundred territs on Freddie losing. Maybe I can find someone willing to trade cash.
The bookies aren’t paying out yet; a fight isn’t over until the host announces a winner. Freddie throws himself at Giles once again, and once again, Giles throws Freddie down into the cement. Crack! Every face in the crowd simultaneously winces away. There is blood all over Freddie’s broken body, all over Giles’s hands, and all over the cement platform. Still, Freddie picks himself back up.
The bar is loud, no longer cheering for their winner, but cheering for more blood, more violence. It’s what they came to see, after all. No one can look away. Unlike the others, I can’t look at all. They say if you like roses, you have to put up with the thorns. I should be enjoying this, watching my freedom unfold in the form of my tormentor’s ass-whooping. But I’m not. I hate Freddie’s guts, but I don’t like watching as they’re strewn around a cage. Technically, Freddie did save my life once, albeit, under less than noble circumstances.
Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #15: have no sympathy for your enemy. He has none for you. Sympathy means hesitation; hesitation means dyi
ng.
Once again, Freddie throws himself at Giles, this time wrapping his arms around Giles’s large body. Giles tries to pry Freddie off, but can’t. Giles spins around, swatting, flailing his body from side to side, trying to spring the gypsy loose. You don’t need an anthropologist to tell you who will win in a fight between a spider monkey and a gorilla. Spider monkeys are cute, but my money’s on the gorilla. Somehow, Freddie slithers behind Giles, and gets his hands around Giles’s throat.
Giles shouts and throws his body, and Freddie’s, back into the wire fence. The impact reverberates through the whole cage. Freddie hangs on, his feet still dangling two feet from the ground. Giles stumbles across the battlefield and slams Freddie into another fence.
Still, Freddie hangs on. I’m not sure whether to laugh, cringe, or worry. Freddie should be finished. How is he still in this fight? Giles’s face turns pink.
The dance continues. Giles, now trying to pry Freddie’s hands loose from his throat, slams into one of the metal poles that hold the fence. Ping! Freddie still holds on. An impact like that should have left Freddie paraplegic.
The bar is once again reduced to silence. Bar-goers watch as Giles’s shifts from rose to crimson before slamming face first into the pavement. Bloodied, beaten, and exhausted, Freddie remains slumped over the fallen brute. I can’t tell which is redder: the face of the unconscious Giles or all the faces of the disgraced bettors.
When Freddie finally stumbles up to his feet, eyes swollen, mouth swollen, and lips grinning, the faces of the crowds become redder than the blood running down from Freddie’s nose. Even the host is slow to announce the winner. He fails to announce me as the loser.
Survival instincts kick in and I move three seats down the bar, in front of the little security camera.
Olivia’s Survival Guide, tip #56: cameras won’t save your life, but they will buy you time. Smart criminals always avoid cameras, and won’t make a move until the camera is out of play. Dumb criminals ignore this rule and end up in prison.
Next to the bar’s sole entrance and exit, Mel collects his winnings from a bookie. He stuffs the cash, and a small velvet sac, into a small backpack. Somehow, my plan had not only failed, but it worked out in Freddie’s favour, making him even richer than he would have been, had I just followed his rules.
And now, I have to face Freddie, and, unless he really is as dumb as he looks, he knows I didn’t follow his rules.
People start to leave; the bar is closing soon. The camera isn’t buying me enough time.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
STILL A PRISONER
With his hand firmly around my wrist, which is still tender from spending the night in cuffs, Mel guides me back out to the parking lot, back to the Cadillac. “Get inside and wait,” he says, opening the back door, motioning me to enter. I do.
He unzips his backpack and counts the winnings while we wait for Freddie to emerge from the underground bar, which takes well over an hour, long after the rest of the bar-goers and angry gamblers have left.
He’s cleaned the blood from his face and the dozen cuts on his face have already begun to scab over. One of his eyes is swollen shut. And he’s grinning—no surprise there.
I can hear Mel and Freddie through the flimsy, car door. “Jesus, Freddie. You okay?”
“Yeah. Fucker did a number on my side, though. Think he broke a rib.” Freddie stretches his torso, investigating his theory. “That guy wasn’t human. Must have been a Therian.” There he goes again with the human crap—as if he isn’t human.
“He was Lemurian.” Mel says it with concern, as if everyone knows you never mess with a Lemurian. What’s a Lemurian? Giles looked American—maybe Canadian, at the most exotic. Maybe the Lemurians are some new gang I’ve never heard of, some weird gang that trades with territs instead of cash.
“Fuck off. Really?” Freddie says.
“Didn’t you see his tattoo? I hope you killed him. Last thing we need is the Lemurians knowing we’re in town.” They might as well be speaking Mandarin. Or Lemurian.
Freddie lights a cigarette. “I thought we smoothed things over with the Lemurians,” he says. He leans against the car with a big grin. Ooh, look at Freddie, looking all cool in the face of danger.
“You can’t smooth anything over with the stubborn bastards,” Mel says under his breath, just in case there’s a Lemurian listening—whatever that means.
“How much we make?” Freddie says.
“Lots. Eleven thousand.” Mel digs out a small velvet sac and holds it up. Only briefly does he look down at the sac, much more concerned about his friend’s bruised, cut, and beaten face. “Biggest haul yet.”
Freddie’s grin grows. He grabs the sac and weighs it with his hand. “Damn—we should take the girl ‘round with us more often.” Freddie licks his swollen, split lips.
“She tried to kill you, Freddie.” Mel’s eyes narrow and his head tilts to the side. Why is his best friend and leader is taking his beating so casually?
“What’d ya expect?” Freddie hands the velvet sac back to Mel.
Mel glances over his shoulder at me. “It almost worked.” He says it quietly through his teeth, unaware that I can hear him fine.
“Yeah, she’s a bitch.”
Mel pinches his eyes closed, his brain attempting to process Freddie’s nonchalant attitude. “Why are we still dragging this girl around? She’s just fucking with us, Freddie. She isn’t going to spill. She probably doesn’t know where the territs are—she probably sold them. Let’s just cut her loose, cut our losses.”
“She knows where they are,” Freddie says, taking a long drag from his cigarette. “She’ll talk.”
Mel sighs. “Okay. Fine. So what do we do now?”
“We wait ‘till tomorrow—like the girl said. So let’s go check in.” Freddie is halfway to the front door of the Holiday Inn before Mel finished another long, deep sigh.
The night auditor jumps from his seat as we walk through the front door. I wouldn’t be surprised if, in the whole of his employment, we are the first people to check into the hotel. We have to wait ten minutes while he boots up the computer—and another ten minutes while he figures out how to open the check-in software. He keeps saying, “Sorry about the wait. We’re switching over to new software,” but his flustered red face suggests that’s a lie.
The thick layer of dust in our room also suggests we’re the first guests to visit the Holiday Inn in years—possibly ever. The bathroom sink confirms this suggestion with a minute of gargling and humming, before blasting a torrent of brown water into the never-been-touched porcelain sink.
Mel makes sure every door and window is locked before slipping out into the hall where Freddie is busy buying every snack in the vending machine. I consider escaping out the third-story window. Mel had no problem dropping down three stories when he jumped from my apartment window; he would have no problem jumping out this one, either. Escape is unlikely—and stupid. Even if I could scale down three stories, I would be caught within minutes.
Mel and Freddie’s voices rise as they fight in the hallway. It’s a one-way fight, as Mel yells at Freddie and Freddie dismisses all of Mel’s concerns. Freddie’s dismissal fuels Mel’s growing anger. Thanks to his growing and loudening frustrations, I catch the tail end of the fight.
“She thinks you’re bluffing,” Mel says.
“Let ‘er.”
“As long as she thinks we’re bluffing, she isn’t going to say shit.”
“She’ll talk.” Freddie remains totally casual. The snack machine buzzes and whirs as it dispenses another candy bar.
“When, Freddie? When is she going to talk?” Mel silences his voice, realizing he’s tapered into full-blown yelling. I press my ear against the door.
“She said she’d tell us in the morning. So we’ll wait for the morning.”
“Aren’t you mad? Don’t you care about what she did?”
“I’m livid,” says Freddie, though you can’t tell from his cool voi
ce. I can almost hear him smirking.
I know he’s smirking based on the ramping annoyance in Mel’s voice. “Is this some kind of game to you? Have your forgotten how much she stole from us?” Mel’s voice grows louder with every word.
“I haven’t forgotten.” Whir, buzz, thud! Another candy bar is dispensed.
“Good. Then you haven’t forgotten about Carmine, you haven’t forgotten that we’ve been on the run for five years, and you haven’t forgotten about your sister.”
Thud!
This thud is too loud to be a bag of chips or a candy bar, unless the candy bar weighs over two hundred pounds and grunts like Mel.
Carmine? Carmine Pesconi? What does any of this have to do with Carmine Pesconi?
“I haven’t forgotten, ya sonofabitch,” Freddie says, his voice finally matching Mel’s in volume.
