No Shelter (Holly Lin, No. 1)

by Robert Swartwood

  The other man points his gun back at me. He starts firing. I duck and swerve off to the left and—shit—lose the TEC-9 in the process.

  The man veers wide to the right. He glances my way, starts to drop back. I accelerate. I push it hard, watching the glowing needle go up to eighty, eighty-five, ninety, and I concentrate on the highway, on the cars and taxis and tractor-trailers, swerving from one lane to the next, knowing the man is right on my tail. No way is he going to try to take another shot, not at this speed, but then again I have run into dumber dipshits, so maybe this one will surprise me.

  I try calling Nova or Scooter, but my voice is too muffled because of the helmet. Besides, the transmitter only goes up to two miles, and if everything went accordingly for them, they should already be headed to the garage.

  The interchange is coming up fast. I make a split-second decision and then veer right, merging onto 515. I continue on for maybe a tenth of a mile and then slow for the exit. Next thing I know I’m back on Las Vegas Boulevard. Driving up three blocks and then pulling over onto the side of the street, I jump off the bike, take off my helmet, and glance back the way I came.

  Roland’s man has kept up and is coming my way.

  Making sure he sees me, I wait another moment and then turn and start down Fremont Street.

  Despite the late hour, the place is still packed. At this time of night, the freaks have come out. I figure with my outfit I should blend right in, but still I get a few stares, even a whistle. I glance back, expecting to see Roland’s man having ditched his bike, following me now on foot. But I’ll be damned if the crazy son of a bitch hasn’t driven up onto the sidewalk. He’s revving his engine as he maneuvers around people trying to scurry out of his way, and he has the gun in hand, as if he isn’t making himself conspicuous enough.

  If there is a God, he’d have police swarm on this stupid shmuck right now, but maybe God’s busy playing craps at the Golden Nugget. I am by myself, surrounded by people, and without looking back—with just sensing it—I know Roland’s man has seen me.

  I approach the Four Queens, quickly dart into the casino. If I draw some stares, I’m not aware of it, because I keep my focus on the entrance. I position myself to the side, the helmet in my hands. I wait. Listening to the sounds of the casino, listening to the hushed murmur of disembodied voices, I can just hear the motorcycle approaching. I hear it shut off.

  Roland’s man appears moments later. He still has his gun out in one hand. I figure, what the hell, for anyone watching now it’d be self-defense, and as he takes a step forward I take a step forward and wind up my arm holding the helmet and smash it right into his face.

  He goes down hard. The gun clatters to the ground. I kick it out of his reach and keep wailing on him with the helmet. It’s just like déjà vu, like I’m back in the bedroom with Jerold. Only now I have a captive audience, people having gone silent watching. The only sounds are the bells and whistles of the slot machines. I smell sweat and cigarette smoke and the distant aroma of the buffet. The man’s face has become a bloody mess.

  I stand up straight, drop the helmet, and turn back to everyone staring at me.

  “This bastard just tried raping me,” I say, my voice loud but hoarse.

  Then I walk away, dipping low to pick up the gun, concealing it in my shirt as I disappear into the moving crowd of freaks.

  9

  The boys aren’t happy with me.

  Scooter hasn’t spoken to me since I’ve returned to the garage. He keeps himself busy packing up his computers on the table. Every couple seconds he glances back at me with a scowl as he chomps on his gum.

  I guess it doesn’t matter though. Nova does enough talking for both of them. Standing in front of me, his arms crossed, he says, “Just what the fuck were you thinking?”

  “You mean back at the hotel? I was thinking about staying alive. Besides, what the hell do you care? Not like you had to do any hard work.”

  “Actually, for your information, your little friend over there and I ran into some trouble. One of Roland’s men was hanging out by the garage entrance.”

  I roll my eyes, shake my head. “God, just how many henchmen did this bastard have?”

  “He came at us with his gun drawn. He even aimed the fucking thing at my head.”

  “Well,” I say, crossing my arms now to match Nova, “judging by the fact you’re standing here telling me this captivating story, I’m guessing you made it out alive.”

  “Just barely. The fucker actually took a shot at us. I had to bat the gun away, hit him in his throat, break his neck.”

  “Aw, poor baby. You actually had to get your hands dirty for once?”

  Nova, his face already red, opens his mouth to respond. But before he can Scooter slams his hands down on the table. He turns around to glare at us.

  “Enough of this shit,” he says. “What’s in the past is in the past. Each of us is st-st-still alive, which is all we can ask for after a job. Now the only thing left to ask are two questions both Nova and I have been asking ourselves for the past half hour. Just who the f-f-fuck is that woman and why the f-f-f-fuck did you have her brought here?”

  I’ll admit it—Scooter’s intensity catches me off guard. Very rarely does he raise his voice like this. Normally he’s the easygoing one, the guy who’s always cracking jokes, looking on the brighter side of life, sometimes even making fun of his own stutter. Not the guy who has venom in his eyes.

  The Mexican girl is standing off in the corner. Apparently she hasn’t said a word to either Nova or Scooter this entire time. She hasn’t even let them near her. But when I first arrived she smiled and ran over to me, wrapped her arms around my neck, murmuring in Spanish how happy she was to see me. Then when Nova came over and started up with me she slipped away to the spot she’s standing in right now.

  “Well?” Scooter says, and when I glance at him I see his jaw is still and I think it’s the first time I’ve ever seen him not chewing his bubblegum.

  “She saved my life back there. I needed to repay the debt.”

  “That doesn’t answer the questions, Holly.” Nova still has his arms crossed, glaring at me. “Who is she and why is she here?”

  “She’s a prostitute,” I say.

  “No shit.”

  “But I don’t think she’s any ordinary prostitute.”

  “What makes you th-th-think that?” Scooter asks. “The fact that she’s an illegal?”

  I ignore him and walk past Nova to the girl. I hold my hand out to her and smile and tell her my name. I ask her what her name is. She says it’s Rosalina.

  “It’s very nice to meet you, Rosalina. Thank you again for your help back at the hotel.”

  She shrugs and looks away, embarrassed.

  I push on. “Rosalina, you mentioned something about men and a ranch. What did you mean about that?”

  Still looking at something near the ceiling, Rosalina shakes her head.

  “Please,” I insist, “I want to help you. But you need to tell me about them.”

  Her eyes shift to meet my own and I can see tears are threatening. In a very small voice she says, “They will kill me if I tell you.”

  “No they won’t. I promise they won’t. Now please. Please tell me.”

  And so she does tell me. Not a lot at first. She’s vague and I have to keep asking questions, and when she speaks her words are slow and thoughtful. Then, the more questions I ask and the more she answers, her words begin to increase. Soon she’s frantic, telling me everything, every terrible detail, her arms waving around, tears streaming down her cheeks. Then she falls silent. She holds her hands to her face, begins sobbing.

  I place a hand on her shoulder, squeeze it, tell her that it will be okay, before turning away and walking back to where Nova and Scooter now stand together.

  “So what’s the deal?” Nova asks.

  “The deal is that she is one of at least twenty women kept prisoner in a place out in the desert.”

  Scoo
ter is already shaking his head, knowing exactly where this is going. “Don’t even th-th-think about it. Our job here is done. Now it’s time to go home.”

  “You know I can’t do that.”

  “Holly—” Nova begins.

  “The girls at this ranch only get five percent of what they make. Until they make five thousand dollars each, not one of them is free to go. They’re slaves. Their whole purpose is to be a whore. They fuck and suck and most times they get beat by the men that request them. Apparently that’s what the place specializes in—very rough sex.”

  Both men are silent, staring back at me. I glance over my shoulder and see Rosalina standing right where I left her, still sobbing. Now in brighter light and away from danger, it’s clear just how emaciated she has become. That was another thing she had said, something I don’t bother mentioning to the boys because I’m sure they already know the truth: the men who run this place starve the girls, get them addicted to drugs, sometimes beat and rape them if they’re bored.

  When it’s clear neither of the boys is going to say anything, I shake my head in disgust. “You both are cowards.”

  Nova keeps his arms crossed, his face impassive. “Holly, this isn’t our problem. If you want to call the police about this, be my guest. But we can’t get involved.”

  “You’ve said that before.”

  “Yeah, but this time I mean it. Remember what happened in Berlin? I do. We almost got killed working on one of your fucking crusades.”

  “One of my fucking crusades,” I say, nodding. “That’s nice, Nova. Thanks for that.”

  “Holly”—Scooter now, his voice back to normal—“just th-th-think for a moment. Just one moment. I’ve said this to you before and I’ll say it again: You can’t save the world. It’s just not possible. Yeah, I feel bad for this girl—for all the girls there—and yeah, those men no doubt deserve to pay. But let the police handle it. Our time here is up.”

  I stare back at them for another long moment. I’m thinking about Rosalina of course, and the rest of the girls back at what she calls “the ranch.” But I’m also thinking about another woman I once knew, someone I’d called a friend, someone who had something terrible happen to her and then killed herself.

  It’s her face I see now as I stare back at Scooter and Nova, her ragged, sorrow-filled face, and before I know it I’m turning away from the boys.

  “Don’t,” Nova says, and I pause. “Holly, if you go through with this, you’re on your own. I’m sorry, but neither of us can involve ourselves. It isn’t our fight.”

  I wait there a moment, just one moment, and then I turn away completely, start walking, staring intently at Rosalina until I come to stand directly in front of her.

  “Rosalina, this place you told me about, the ranch—do you know where it’s located in the desert?”

  Her eyes shift again, this time toward the floor. They stay there for a moment, then shift back up to stare into mine. Wiping at her face, she slowly nods.

  I reach out a hand, place it on her arm. “Show me.”

  10

  After I let the Town Car roll to a stop, I place it in park and shut off the engine. We just sit there then in darkness, neither one of us speaking. Eventually I look over at Rosalina. She looks at me. After a moment she nods and points out through the windshield, at the rocky hills in front of us.

  “There,” she says. “It’s over there.”

  Rosalina had taken me down the road that leads to the private drive that leads back to the ranch. I’d backtracked then to the highway, taken that for a half mile north. At some point I turned off the highway, cut the headlights and did a good job of not hitting the brakes, rolling over the sand and rocks and through the sagebrush for a quarter mile, so that anybody driving by on the highway wouldn’t see us. Now we’re wrapped in darkness, the moon almost full, the stars bright, and Rosalina has just confirmed what I already know.

  “Wait here,” I say.

  I’ve already flicked the dome light off, so when I open the door the darkness remains. I open the backdoor, reach in and grab the sports bag the boys had given me before I left the garage. They may be cowards but they’re not complete assholes, and they didn’t let me walk away empty-handed.

  I’ve changed out of the schoolgirl outfit, put back on my jeans and tee. The only weapon I have on me now is my trusty two-shot strapped to my ankle. The other two weapons I pull out of the sports bag: a nine-millimeter and an AK-47.

  Rosalina opens her door and slowly steps out. Despite everything she still wears her heels and they crunch the sand in the dead silence.

  “You are really going by yourself?”

  I set the nine-millimeter on the roof to check the AK-47, ejecting the clip, slamming it back in.

  “These are very bad men,” Rosalina says. “They will kill you.”

  I strap the rifle over my shoulder, grab the nine, check its clip then rack the slide. Reach back into the sports bag for its holster, clip the holster to my pants.

  Rosalina persists. “Why are you doing this?”

  It makes me pause. Sure, Nova and Scooter asking the same question, that’s one thing, but a complete stranger, an illegal who has been forced into prostitution asking why I’m trying to help save her?

  Before I can respond, she says, “You are a killer, yes? A ... assassin?”

  Actually, when people ask what it is I do for work, I tell them I’m a nanny. I tell them I watch two perfect children, a boy and a girl, who I sometimes wish were my own children and who I sometimes wish would shut the hell up and quit being brats.

  The killing people thing, the non-sanctioned government missions, that’s just work on the side that I keep to myself.

  “Do you not want me to kill these men, Rosalina?”

  She takes a moment to think about this, raising her thumb to her mouth, biting the nail. Finally she shakes her head.

  “These men,” she says, “they are very, very bad. But ...”

  “But?”

  “But us women, we are all here in this country illegally. What ... what will then become of us?”

  It’s like a giant corkscrew jammed into my stomach, being twisted and twisted, this question of hers catching me so off guard. Here is a girl younger than me but yet looks ten years older, who has been forced into a life of prostitution where half the time she is beaten to an inch of her life—here is this girl finding herself preferring this rather than being sent back home.

  “Who says you’ll be sent back?”

  Rosalina gives a soft, sardonic laugh. “Everyone in this country hates people like me. We are ... less than human. We are trash. They will send me back to my country without a second’s thought or care.”

  “But wouldn’t you rather be back in your country? Don’t you have anyone there?”

  “I have my husband and children, yes.”

  Rosalina sees my expression and quickly shakes her head.

  “No, no, believe me when I say I love and miss my family more than anything in the world. We came over here four years ago, us and a dozen others. But then the police came and took my husband and children and many of the others away. There were only a few of us left, women, and we had nothing—no money, no shelter, absolutely nothing.”

  “I still don’t understand. Why then wouldn’t you want to go back?”

  “Because this ... this is America.” She says this in such an obvious way, a soft light starting to burn in her eyes. “This is the land of wealth and freedom. You have to work to get it, and once I get it, I will send for my husband and children.”

  I see where she’s going with this and slowly ask, “Rosalina, how much money have you earned since you’ve been at the ranch?”

  She looks away, tallying the amount up in her head. “About six hundred dollars.”

  “So that means you need another four thousand four hundred dollars before you are free.”

  She nods, slowly, that soft light dimming bit by bit in her eyes.

  I do
n’t tell her the obvious, something she must already know but something she has blinded herself to. She just stares back at me, her eyes filling again, and slowly shakes her head.

  “I cannot return empty-handed.”

  I reach back into the sports bag, pull out the last toy Scooter has provided me. It’s a night-vision scope which I stuff into the front of my pants pocket. Then I softly shut the back door and walk around to the other side, keeping my gaze level with Rosalina. When I reach her I place my hand on her shoulder and ask her to again tell me everything she can about the ranch.

  She wipes at her eyes, slowly shakes her head. “Please tell me—why are you doing this?”

  I think of that woman from years ago, the one I used to know, the one who called me a friend, and I say to Rosalina, “Because nobody else will.”

  11

  The darkness has taken on a greenish-yellow tint. I can distinctly see the ranch house at the base of the desert, a squat brick building with bars over the windows. Adjacent to this is another building, just one room, a shack where Rosalina says the guards spend most of their time.

  There is no electricity, no indoor plumbing to either building. A generator growls softly in the night, keeping the lights on inside the guards’ house.

  I lie on my stomach on top of the rocky hill, the night-vision scope to my eye. I sit up and turn, focus back down to the other side of the hill where I parked the Town Car. Rosalina is inside, the keys in the ignition. I told her if I don’t return within an hour, or if she senses trouble, to take the car and never return.

  In the heavy and cold silence a sound comes from down the hill. Rusty hinges screech as a door opens. A man steps outside. I focus the scope on him. He’s tall, Hispanic, wearing a holstered gun on his belt. He stands there a moment, looking out over the dark. He pulls out a pack of cigarettes, lights one, then starts toward the sagebrush, unzipping his pants as he walks.