“If only everyone realised, if you give a little, you get more back in return.”
“Heh. It’s not so easy when the local Boss taking a cut has expensive tastes and Ripper’s were very expensive. Here we are.” Cracker pulled the car up and parked at the side of the street, next to a very familiar residential permacrete building. Unless there was a shop, bar or cafe in them, they were very difficult to tell apart.
The two of them got out and Cracker led them inside. Once there, Valerie recognised it from the Graffiti on the walls. It was another difference from Inferno. Maybe the residents of the Zeus Ghettos were more artistic than those in Inferno. Several stylised SH’s were spread around, denoting Hopwood’s territory. She could also see where an R with a tear through it had been replaced with her M. Willem, one of the street kids who hung around the Workshop, drew it for Valerie when she realised they needed one. The Enforcers were happy to put up the tag while they made their rounds of the territory.
Hopwood’s Brothel was two flights up, where he owned the whole floor. As they approached the landing, Valerie saw the door to the floor was open and no one guarding it. Wanting to see how Cracker would react she didn’t say anything. He did not disappoint and drew his pistol.
“Something’s not right. There should be a guard there.” He looked at her.
“I’m your Enforcer today,” she told him. “Just do what you would normally do.”
“OK. Draw your weapon, Guv, and be ready for trouble.”
“Not a problem,” she said and drew her guns.
Cracker led them in. It was a wide corridor and some people were crowded round a doorway a few metres in. Aged from eighteen to much older and, from the way they were dressed, Valerie guessed they were the Whores. She also recognised a couple from her last visit, when she spoke to a few privately.
“What’s going on?” Cracker asked calmly and holstered his pistol. There did not seem any danger and Valerie did the same.
“He beat up Breena and shot Leigh,” one of the Whores said.
“Alright, get back to your rooms and let us through. We’ll handle it,” he told them confidently.
Inside a man sat on a sofa, a bandage red with blood wrapped around his shoulder. Two of the male Whores were tending to him. Hopwood stepped out from a side door leading to a bedroom.
“What happened, Scott?” Cracker asked him.
He looked at Valerie before answering. She indicated with a nod of her head, he should answer her Chief Enforcer.
“Client got rough with Breena. Leigh heard her screams all the way out at the stairwell door. He tried to stop the guy, but the client got angry and pulled a gun. Shot Leigh and legged it out of here.”
“Not before putting the boot into Breena a couple of more times.” Leigh interjected from the sofa.
“Where were you?” Cracker asked Hopwood.
He grimaced before answering. “Two of the boys got into a massive argument at the other end of the floor. I was dealing with them. It was so loud I didn’t know what was happening, until it was all over and one of the girls came and got me.”
“Fair enough. Was he a regular?”
“Yeah,” Leigh answered. “Jeremy Gruter, but we can’t touch him. He’s Privileged. Likes to come down to the Ghetto and play in the dirt.”
“I know him. Shit, I thought that prick was banned?”
“He was, but he threatened to have his mother, a Police Superintendent, come down here and bust us.” Hopwood explained. “Sorry, I had to lift it last month.”
Valerie stepped past Hopwood and into the room he came out of. Breena lay on the bed, barely conscious. She couldn’t have been more than eighteen or nineteen. A girl of the same age was tending to her. Valerie gently placed a hand on her shoulder.
“Let me see.”
The girl stepped back and Valerie could see the extent of the damage. Breena’s face was smashed up pretty badly, with a broken nose and what looked like a broken jaw to go with it. Both eyes were swollen well past the point they could be opened and from the way the she was struggling to breath, Valerie guessed she had some broken ribs. Ever so gently, she ran her fingers over the girl’s stomach.
“I don’t think it punctured a lung,” she said out loud. “But there is definitely some internal bleeding.” It was then she noticed the girls arm was at a slightly strange angle.
Valerie moved it very carefully and Breena let out a cry of pain. “Broken as well,” she looked at the girl tending Breena. “What’s your name?”
“Constanze, Ma’am.”
“OK, Constanze.” Valerie said, smiling gently. “Here is what you are going to do. Keep an eye on Breena and if anything changes, like her breathing, you call out to Hopwood. Understand?”
“Yes, Ma’am.”
“Good. I’m going to get a doctor here for her.” Nodding to Constanze, Valerie stepped back outside where they were still talking.
“I’ll get one of my guys to come and sit on your door until Leigh is fit again,” Cracker was saying.
“Thanks. Can we-“
“When is the doctor getting here?” Valerie interrupted and they all looked at her.
“Erm. Sorry Guv,” Cracker said. “We need to take them to him. Doc Heenan doesn’t make house calls.”
“He does now,” Valerie said firmly. “Hopwood. Get over there and drag him back here. If he gives you any shit, tell him it’ll be me he has to deal with. Clear?”
“Got it.” Hopwood nodded firmly and left straight away.
“Cracker. I want this son of a bitch found. Put the word out and make sure you call Hanna. She’ll get the kids out onto the streets. If the idiot is still in the Ghettos, I want to know about it. When you talk to Hanna, tell her I want a file on Gruter. She’ll know what I mean.”
“Yes, Guv.” He stepped out of the room to use his com.
Looking at the two Whores tending Leigh she asked them. “Doesn’t this place have a first aid kit of some sort?”
“No, Ma’am,” one answered.
Grimacing, Valerie shook her head. “I normally would have one with me but not today. Something else to add to the list. First aid kits in all of the Enforcers vehicles. Right. Boil some water and get me any hard booze you’ve got around here. Let’s see what we can do.”
It took fifteen minutes for Hopwood to return with a very flustered and put out doctor. One look at Valerie’s face stilled any complaints. Once she was happy he was hard at work, Valerie went looking for Cracker.
“Anything?” she asked. He stood in the corridor after finishing his conversation.
“Maybe, his aircar has been spotted. It’s parked only three streets out from here.” An aircars security was too good to make stealing one an option, even in the Ghetto.
“Empty, I take it?”
“Yeah, we think so.”
“So where would he have gone?”
“Don’t know. Two of my guys are already there and four more are minutes away.”
“Hopwood,” called Valerie loudly. He stuck his head out of the door and she waved him over. “What are Gruter’s habits? What does he do after leaving here?” she asked him.
Scratching his head, Hopwood shrugged. “I don’t know. I’ve never really spoken to him except to ban him and then get threatened.”
“Was Breena his only girl?” Cracker asked.
“No,” Hopwood said thoughtfully. “He mostly asked for either Breena or Constanze. I’ll get her.”
He went back into the room and Cracker turned to Valerie, looking like he’d swallowed a lemon.
“What is it, Cracker? There’s nothing wrong with asking questions when we have the time.”
“What are we going to do to him when we find him, Guv? If he’s the son of a Superintendent, like he says, that’s trouble we can’t afford.”
“We can’t afford to have shits like that beat our people up either, without learning there are consequences. The Privileged think they can just come down here and abuse those i
n the Ghettos and no one will stand up to them.” Valerie said sternly. “Today he’s going to find out there are some people who will fight back. Don’t worry. I know what I’m doing. He won’t go crying to his mother.”
Constanze came out of the room with Hopwood looking a little frightened.
“Don’t worry, Constanze. You’re not in any trouble.” Valerie told her gently. “Now, Gruter was one of your clients as well?”
“Yes, Ma’am,” the girl replied quietly.
“Did he ever mention where he would go after seeing you?”
“Yeah, he used to say he would go and get something to clear his head of the ‘Manual stench’.”
Valerie nodded and turned to Cracker. “Any Dealers near the aircar?”
“You bet, Guv. Rapaport’s place is right down an alley, across the road.”
“It’s a good bet that’s where he‘ll be. Have your guys stake it out and wait for us to arrive before doing anything. Gruter is going to get to deal with me.” He activated his com and Valerie looked back at Constanze.
“Did Gruter ever hit you, Constanze?” she asked.
The Whore looked to her Pimp worriedly and Hopwood nodded encouragingly. “Yes, Ma’am. Never in the face.” She rolled her dress up and her stomach was black, blue and yellow. “These were from a couple of days ago.”
Valerie turned her hard gaze to Hopwood and he held up his hands. “Honestly, I didn’t know. Neither Breena or Constanze said anything to me.”
“It’s true, Ma’am,” Constanze interjected. “We didn’t dare. He said he would have us sent to the Rock if we said anything.”
The Rock, a top secret Pantheon prison. Not even Valerie knew its location. Gruesome stories surrounded it for centuries. Given the lack of police attention to ninety-nine percent of the population of the Pantheon, unless they were directly affecting the Privileged, there weren’t many prisons.
With a handful on each planet, they were highly secure facilities the government did not care about what happened inside. People were sent in and left there with only regular shipments of food and water to sustain them. The guards were all on the outside, none inside the walls. People were released at the end of their sentence if they survived. The Rock was rumoured to be the worst of them, no one returned from there.
“I’m sorry, I’m really sorry.” The girl begged with tears running down her cheeks. Valerie put her arms around her shoulders.
“It’s OK, it’s not your fault,” she looked at Hopwood. “I want regular checks of all of your people from now on. This doesn’t happen again.”
“OK,” he nodded vigorously. “You got it.”
Valerie released Constanze from the hug. “Go and look after your friend. If the doctor isn’t doing his job, you call me. OK?”
“OK,” she sniffed.
“Let’s go, Cracker. We’ve got someone to talk to, let me just borrow something from the good doctor first.”
It didn’t take long to get to Dealer Rapaport’s Den. Two of Cracker’s Enforcers, Hayley and Gregor stood leaning against the wall next to the alley.
“I took a look inside while we waited.” Hayley said as Valerie and Carter walked up. “Gruter is inside and off his face on smack.”
“He didn’t see you?” Valerie asked.
“Not a chance.”
“OK, good work. You stay here. Cracker and I’ll be back out in a minute.”
Together they went down the alley and in through the open door. It led to some stairs taking them down into the basement of the building. It was dark at the bottom with only a few lights working.
“I see it hasn’t changed from our last visit,” she commented. A couple of people lay propped up against the corridor walls, completely oblivious.
A grey-haired woman came out of a room further down laughing.
“Can you believe that idiot? He paid triple what anyone else would.” She was talking to a tall, skinny man following her. Looking up the corridor, her eyes widened when she spotted Valerie and Cracker. “Oh, shit!”
“Hello, Rapaport.” Valerie greeted her. “I thought I told you to clean this place up.”
“Look, I’m trying. As I told Anja, when she came by,” referring to one of the Enforcers. “I just need more time.”
“Really,” Valerie continued to walk down the corridor towards the Dealer. “Time’s up, and if your man doesn’t step out of that doorway and put his weapon away, I’m going to perforate both of you.”
Rapaport looked at her Enforcer wildly and shook her head. He did as he was told and Valerie didn’t like the look he shot her. It was a problem for another time. She’d get Cracker to live up to his name and deal with it.
“You’re lucky, I’m not here for you today. I’m looking for Jeremy Gruter.”
“He’s in here.” Rapaport indicated the room she just left and stepped back out of the way. Making sure she moved her Enforcer clear at the same time.
With a nod to Cracker telling him to watch the two of them, Valerie went inside. A couple more people were sprawled out on the floor, both high, and neither Gruter. She had to look into a couple of rooms before she spotted a man dressed too expensively for the Ghettos.
He sat on a grimy bed with his back to her, pistol next to him. She could see he was high, but must have recovered a bit from when Hayley saw him. He was in the process of cooking up his next hit in a small processor designed to cleanse the Heroin. It removed any impurities and set the hypo with a safe dose. No one else in the Den could afford one and took much higher risks when they injected. The processor would be set with Gruter’s full medical information. It could calculate an amount allowing him to get high without killing him.
Stepping forward, Valerie slapped him round the back of the head. She didn’t use anywhere near her full strength, but it was still enough to send him sprawling off the bed. He landed on the floor with a yell of surprise, there was too much of the drug in his system to feel much pain. Stupidly, his first reaction was to go for the pistol which landed next to him.
Valerie let him pick it up and swing it toward her. She grabbed his wrist and with one violent twist, she snapped it in two.
“Aaarrggghh,” he screamed. He would have to be unconscious to not feel that.
Grabbing him by the collar, she hauled him up.
“Hello, Gruter, time to pay for Breena.”
“What? Who?” His eyes were unfocused, the initial pain of the wrist receding, pushed down by the Heroin.
Slapping him a couple of times to bring back his attention, Valerie pulled a hypo from her pocket.
“I borrowed this from a Doctor. I knew you wouldn’t be in any condition to talk. It’s amazing just how many drugs they can put in one of these. Right now I have it set for a counter to the Heroin. I bet you know what that’s going to be like.” His eyes widened and he shook his head as she pressed the hypo to his neck.
A slight hiss came from it and only a second later he began to convulse. Valerie tossed him onto the bed and stepped away. He rolled over and started throwing up all over the floor. It took several minutes for his body to purge the heroin from his system. Valerie had never experienced it herself, but she was told it was a truly awful thing to have to go through.
Eventually he rolled back and gave out a cry when he tried to use his broken wrist.
“You bitch. I’ll fucking have you killed for this!”
“That was a stupid thing to say, Gruter,” she told him, grabbing his broken wrist and squeezing it slightly, eliciting a scream. “You and I are going for a little ride.”
With one hand she hauled him out of the flat. “There’s a processor in there,” she told Rapaport. “I want it working all day, every day. You clean up as many of the shots for these unfortunates as you can. If not, what I am about to do to this little piece of shit, will seem like a pleasant dream compared to what I do to you. Understand?”
Rapaport nodded vigorously and Valerie carried the still struggling Gruter down the corridor with
Cracker following. “And clean this place up!” Valerie shouted before going up the stairs.
Hayley and Gregor were waiting for them. Valerie dug into Gruter’s pockets until she found the key to his aircar and tossed it to Gregor. “Go and bring it round.”
“Yes, Ma’am,” he answered and took off at a run.
Gruter managed to recover slightly. “Do you know what my mother is going to do to you?”
“We’ll discuss that shortly,” Valerie told him coldly. “In the meantime I suggest you shut up before a snap your other wrist.” He must have believed her and quietened down, he only dared to glare at her.
Ignoring him, she said. “Starting to get cold again. I guess summer is over now.”
“Err. Yes, Guv.” Cracker replied.
“You’ll need to have a word with Anja. Give her the benefit of the doubt, but keep an eye out in case she’s taking bribes.”
“Oh, you don’t need to worry, Guv. I’ll have a long chat to her and I’ll pair her up with Hayley here for a while. She’ll make sure Anja understands how you want things run. Won’t you, Hayley?”
“Absolutely, Ma’am. Was she responsible for checking in on Rapaport?”
“See. Hayley’s quick.”
“I do, Cracker. Yes, Hayley. Anja gave her a bit too much leeway. Let Cracker handle the instruction. Just partner up with her and give her a nudge if she’s heading in the wrong direction. If you do see anything untoward, tell Cracker.”
“Understood. Ma’am.”
“Good, and here’s Gregor with the aircar.” Valerie passed her ID to Hayley. “Take this. It’ll give us access to the Blue band and Hanna has it programmed to leave no trace. Tell Gregor to take us up there and hold us in a hover.”
The Enforcer went to the cockpit and Valerie dumped Gruter into one of the seats in the back. As the aircar lifted off the ground, she checked some information on her wristcomp and turned to the spoiled Privileged man.
“Here’s how it is, Gruter. You are not going to tell your mother about anything that happened here today. You are not going to Hopwood’s Brothel ever again. You will not enter my territory ever again. In fact, you will never set foot in any of the Ghettos again. I’m going to be putting the word out to every other Boss in the city. Should you cross out of the Privileged areas, I’m going to hear about it.”
Crusade For Vengeance (Dark Vengeance Book 2) Page 12
