by Aaron Cohen
Hank, distracted by the sudden collapse of Luke, looks to his left, and has a moment to feel glad that he isn’t the one who got his guts punched. That happiness flees as soon as a massive fist pounds into his jaw so hard his world erupts into stars and goes to black. He sleeps only during his fall and wakes up again as soon as the floor bounces against his head. The world spins like he is hung over after a week-long tequila drinking marathon.
Charlie issues a yell dug up from his guts and lungs that sounds like the battle cry of a long dead race of mutant barbarian warriors.
The cuffs, which were never locked because they couldn’t reach around his big wrists, fall away with a shake. His hands go to necks of the goons, not to strangle, but to strike. Strangling took work, took time and patience. In this case, with the need to quickly disable two foes, throat striking is far preferable. Two tracheas become horribly bruised and two guards suddenly find they can’t breathe anymore.
Charlie’s massive hands wrap around the heads of Lunkhead and Goon. With a mighty heave of his shoulders and thick arms, the two heads smash together, forehead smacking forehead, nose crashing into nose, teeth banging against teeth. Charlie separates the heads, and then smashes them together again. And then again. And then one more time just to be sure. He opens his hands and the two guards drop to the floor.
Luke, lying on the floor, sees the massacre. He feels sad for the guards and is in awe at Charlie’s strength, which made two strong men look weak.
The blood surprises Luke. Suddenly there seems to be a lot of it, running down the faces of the two guards as they fall to the floor. Blood streams from their noses. Blood flows from cuts in their lips, where violently accelerated teeth gashed and tore.
“Charlie, remind me not to piss you off,” Luke says as he picks himself off of the floor.
Charlie makes a noise that sounds vaguely affirmative.
Goon’s walkie-talkie, the microphone of which is attached to the lapel of his jacket, squawks and emits a voice: “Unit 5, your lunch relief is delayed. You okay for another 10 minutes?”
Goon is sleeping and doesn’t answer.
Hank springs over to Goon, presses the button on the mike and speaks, “Sounds good to me. Ten, twenty, whatever. It’s all good. I might not even need lunch. I’m trying to lose weight, you know?”
Hank looks at Luke, desperation in his eyes. He doesn’t know what he’s saying.
“That was smooth,” Luke says. “That didn’t sound suspicious at all.”
“Your silver tongue didn’t exactly get us past these idiots, did it?”
A voice on the radio responds: “Lose weight? Who the hell is this?”
Hank speaks into the mike: “You’re breaking up. Didn’t catch that last thing you said. But everything’s fine. We’re all fine down here at the dungeon.”
Hank grabs the microphone and the black transmitter box its attached to, rips it out of Goon’s coat pocket, throws it on the ground and stomps on it until it stops making noise.
“It was a boring conversation anyway,” he says.
Chapter Thirty-Eight
We won, Luke thinks. We fucking won!
The rush of victory makes him lightheaded. Just on the other side of the black leather-covered door is Leanne, a woman in bondage, tortured, her life threatened. He is doing it. They are doing it. All they need is to grab her, find Ben, and get the hell out of there.
So easy! Beat up a couple guys, walk in, walk out, and no one will know the difference. Escape is so close!
Luke turns the door knob. Locked.
“Did you really think it was going to be that easy?” Hank asks.
“The guards must have a key,” Luke says.
“So go through their pockets,” Hank says.
“You go through their pockets.”
“I’m not going through another man’s pockets.”
Charlie howls in frustration. He slams his shoulder into the door. The frame shatters and the door flies open. Charlie stumbles in. Luke follows, kind of bummed he wasn’t the first into the door.
There she is, among all the dungeon stuff, the black leather tables, the whips and the chains, the wooden racks…wow is this place full of crazy shit…there she is…filing her nails. Looking annoyed. She looks up at him with disdain, not the response Luke was expecting.
What? No relief? No Joy? No gratefulness? Disdain? Disgust?
“Aren’t you a little small for a guard?” she asks. “Aren’t you supposed to be full of steroids and red meat? And where is your crew cut?”
“I’m not a guard!” Luke says. “Your father sent us. We’re here to rescue you.”
“Rescue me? How are you going to do that? Every inch of this place has a camera in it. Guards are all over the place. And David is coming back to torture me some more any minute now. What’s your plan?”
“Plan? The plan is…hmmm…”
“You don’t have a plan?”
“We get you. We walk out of here the same way we walked in.”
“That’s some plan. You think of that all by yourself?”
Hank staggers into the room, holding his bruised and swelling jaw.
“No! As I matter of fact, I helped him with it. You ready to leave your highness? Or would you prefer another session on the rack with David and his whip?”
“How do you know about that?” she asks, sounding angry.
“David posted it on his Facebook page,” Hank says. “You can tweet your displeasure later. Now, are you ready to go?”
“Ben Costa is with us,” Luke says. “He says you two go way back.”
There it is. Now she looks happy. Now she looks relieved. She’s glowing with joy! Beautiful!
“Ben Two-Cans is with you?” she asks excitedly. “Where is he?”
“He’s supposed to meet us downstairs after we find you.”
“Then let’s get going!”
She jumps to her feet, smiling at 1,000 watts now, looking incredibly beautiful. Luke likes looking at her. And he becomes instantly aware that Hank likes looking at her too. He looks over at Hank, whose tongue is practically hanging out of his head. Fucking horn dog.
She struts out of the room on her five inch heels, her tiny little bubble butt moving in a hypnotic figure eight.
“Put your eyes back in your head old man,” Luke mutters to Hank.
“What are you talking about?” Hank says with a smirk. “I’m just doing my job, minding my own business.”
She turns, looks impatient, puts her hands on her hips, and commands: “Hey! Let’s go find Ben. You two can compare cocks later.”
***
The golden dice launch out of Ben’s hand, tumble their way down the green felt and land on six and three. Another seven dodged. He and David have each rolled 20 times now, and even though the odds say that the number seven should roll more than any other number, these gold dice of David’s don’t seem to care.
“You know how much money I’d have made by now if this were a real game?” Ben asks.
“If you were playing with your standard $200 pass line bet with 10-times odds, pushing two come bets both with full odds, let me see…just about 120 thousand dollars.”
“Always good with the math. That mind of yours, like a computer.”
“You never gave me enough credit. I’m smarter than you. You never believed that.”
“There are different kinds of smart. You are good with numbers. You aren’t so good with other things.”
“Right. I’m a billionaire building a trillion dollar business. I am about to take over Las Vegas. And once I take over Vegas, I’m taking over North America, and then large hunks of the world. Imagine a Dark Star next to every big city on the continent. Sex and sin delivered safely and for a fair price, satisfying every shameful desire in a place as secure and professional as Disneyland.”
“A chain of giant whore houses. That’s some dream you have.”
“A trillion dollar dream. And it all starts here.”
> “Your corporate friends, your politicians, they will all turn on you soon. None of them have any honor. As soon as your back is turned, in goes the knife.”
“Then I’ll never turn my back.”
Without taking his gaze off Ben, David rolls a hard eight, two fours.
Ben’s turn again.
***
Artie is watching the screens, all 20 or so of them, scanning the hallways, inside the guest rooms, outside in the pool area, the big empty casino floor, the empty cavernous showroom, and outside in the parking lot. With a few flicks of his fingers he can spot, zoom in on and analyze any three square inches on the property.
“Christ, you guys even have cameras in the restrooms,” Artie says to the director of surveillance, who is sweating profusely and turning red, still taped down to his chair with two rolls of silver duct tape.
“That’s just rude,” Cecil says over the newspaper he’s reading.
“Do you have any idea the shenanigans that happen in restrooms,” the director says. “Drug trades, unauthorized sex, assaults, murders. Restrooms are among the most dangerous places in the world precisely because they don’t have cameras. Well not here!”
“Did you just say ‘unauthorized sex’?” Cecil asks. “Do tell, what is that?”
“An employee has sex for free outside of the rooms where billable hours occur.”
“Truly, this is a palace of romance.”
“What the hell?” Artie asks suddenly.
On the screen just above his head he watches a back access road, a two-lane strip of tar intended to be used by supply trucks delivering to the many restaurants of The Dark Star. Three black vans with no windows pull up just outside of the gate. No one gets out. They just sit there.
“What new madness is afoot now?” Cecil asks
“I have no idea,” Artie says. “But we need to get the fuck out of here soon. And by the way, even English people don’t say ‘afoot.’”
“Balderdash!”
“They don’t say that either.”
***
“Let’s get the fuck out of here already,” Leanne says as she smashes the elevator button over and over, calling what she hopes will be her ride to freedom.
“You know, you only have to press it once,” Hank says. “Pressing it over and over doesn’t speed it up.”
“It makes me feel better, alright?” Leanne says. “Today I’ve been kidnapped, beat up, tortured and now corrected by the elevator-button police. I’m stressed. So forgive me if I hit the button one too many times.”
Ding! goes the elevator. The doors slide open, revealing two brand new goons, same crew cuts, same muscles, and Leanne assumes, the same cocktail of steroids and human growth hormone coursing through their veins. David does like a certain type when it comes to security.
Before the guards have a chance to do anything Luke and Hank lift their guns and start screaming like maniacs: “Get the fuck back in there! Get the fuck down! I will shoot your fucking head off!”
Charlie adds to din by shouting a lion’s roar, like something wild and mean and hungry. It’s scary and weirdly exciting. Her new idiot friends don’t know what they are doing, but they are doing it with a certain amount of passion. Leanne likes that.
The two guards, startled, retreat deeper into the elevator and lift their hands. You can see the fear and confusion in their eyes. Leanne almost laughs. Luke reaches into the elevator and presses all the buttons then hits “door close.”
The doors close.
“We don’t have very long,” Luke says. “Let’s run for the stairs.”
“We’re 23 stories up!” Hank says.
“If I can do it in heels…” Leanne says.
She breaks into a run, her frame perfectly balanced over her 5-inch heels as if she had been born wearing them.
Hank, Luke and Charlie follow her, heading for the red emergency exit door, all three of them watching her ass, because something deep within the male brain insists that its owner stare at a female’s curves, even during life threatening situations.
That’s why they almost completely miss the fact that two guards with bloody faces are running at them with guns drawn.
Leanne stops, skids a few inches like she’s on ice skates, then bursts in the opposite direction, darting in between Hank and Luke and sliding around Charlie.
Hank and Luke see why.
“Charlie, didn’t you knock those guys out?” Hanks asks.
Charlie grumbles.
“Hank, didn’t you take their guns?” Luke says, lifting his gun.
“I didn’t know that was my job!” Hank says, lifting his gun.
Hank and Luke fire at the guards, who drop to the floor, lie on their stomachs the way they were taught in whatever branch of the military they were in, take aim and begin firing back.
Hank, Luke and Charlie run away, bullets exploding into everything around them, the walls, the doors (where intricate sexual scenes develop splinter-ridden bullet holes), and the ceiling, which drips white plaster chips on their heads.
They dart around the corner and sprint down another long hallway, a hallway that ends in scaffolding, sheets of plastic, exposed wiring and paint buckets. It’s an unfinished hotel, and this hallway leads to where it isn’t complete. It’s a dead end. There will be no elevator or emergency stairs down this hall, because the hall stops existing before it gets to anything that might be useful.
Ahead of them is Leanne, who is motioning them to hurry up.
Luke turns to look behind him. The two goons come around the corner. He blasts away and they two dive for cover.
Leanne is standing in a cave of plastic sheeting, on the other side of her is the night sky. Luke thinks she looks beautiful.
She points to a hole in the side of a temporary wall made of metal pipe, plywood and plastic sheeting. The hole is about three feet around and leads into a ribbed tube of grey plastic that reminds Luke of a giant intestine.
“This is it,” Leanne says. “This is our only way out.”
“Oh fuck that!” Hank says. He then fires off three rounds down the hall as one of the guards peeks his head around the corner.
“David wants me alive,” she says. “You three, not so much. You coming? There’s nothing to be afraid of. It’s just a big plastic tube, like a big water slide.”
“Like a big water slide 23 stories high with no fucking water at the bottom,” Hank says.
“You have to trust me! This will work!”
“How do you know?”
“I know!”
With that, she turns and jumps into the tube head first and disappears.
Three POPS. Bullets fly past Hank’s head.
Hank fire back, sends bullets down the hall. Plaster and wood explode. He fires over and over until the gun clicks. It’s empty.
“With her gone, those guys will be shooting to kill,” Luke says.
“All right. Fuck it” Hank says. “Down we go!”
Hank doesn’t know why he trusts Leanne. But she seems so sure of herself. She seems like a chick who knows what she is talking about. Also, people are shooting at him, so that inspires a certain level of trust with anyone not shooting at him.
He dives into the hole, his hands touching the smooth plastic, a breeze moving past his face. It’s pitch black. He’s falling. There is the sound of his borrowed blazer, creating friction. It’s slowing him down, giving him some hope that he’ll actually emerge from this stupid decision alive.
Shit. I should have let Charlie go first. When that dude lands on me I’m going to splat like an overripe tomato.
Chapter Thirty-Nine
It was a lifetime ago when Leanne was in her first year of college, majoring in criminology with the plan to be a lawyer. She’s had a lot of “life plans” but lawyer was one she stuck with for a while. Lawyers seemed to do quite well for themselves, according to the many courtroom-based TV shows she watched.
Of all the professionals that appeared at high school car
eer day, the women lawyers dressed the best, had the best shoes, the best suits, and looked the most professional yet were still sexy.
The 17-year-old Leanne decided at that career day to be a lawyer, while looking at a pair of snake skin 4-inch pumps worn by a beautiful blonde lawyer in a Gucci suit.
Leanne took her straight A’s and academic scholarship to Brown (the Ivy League school that no one seemed to know was in the Ivy League, which she found appealing). She joined the Pre-Law Society, which was made up of overachieving law geeks, all of whom either expected to be appointed to the Supreme Court or to become a partner at a law firm making bazillions by suing big companies or by defending big companies; it didn’t seem to matter which.
The Pre-Law Society was a big drag, to tell the truth. They brought in guest speakers, each one more boring than the next, each one plumbing the depths of tax law, or immigration, or intellectual property, or, good god, international boundary rights in the age of the internet.
The one interesting speaker she could remember, the one she would have fucked, was a pony-tailed pro-bono lawyer whose life mission was to free every death row inmate. He was handsome, passionate and seemed to actually give a fuck about something. She could see herself with a guy like that. She pictured them as stars in a weekly legal TV show, where they would win cases together by day, have charming repartee and creative sex at night, and then craft perfect closing arguments as pillow talk. She would watch that show.
She followed him out to his car, and she knew it was going to happen, knew her future was happening right now. This was it. She was going to marry this guy. She was going to have his babies while also leading a fulfilling life at an exciting law practice.
He walked her out to his car. You could tell from the grin on his face that this was what he wanted too, that he was way into her, that she was special and about to change his life for the better.
Then Leanne saw his car, an abused grey Prius, at least five years old, that hadn’t been washed in years, its back seat filled with folders and file boxes, a mound of fast food wrappers on the passenger seat. This was not the car of a future husband.
