by Gabi Moore
“What?”
He looked at the clock.
“We only have another five minutes, and I think I’m good, I’ll take off, actually.” He gave me another awkward laugh.
Oh god. This was worse than I thought. I had been floundering and pinching and scratching and messing up the whole week. But now I had gotten so bad my client was actually walking out? I struggled to blink back tears.
“Yeah, sure, of course, I understand,” I said, and tried to hurry him out as fast as I could.
I had failed my client. I had hurt him instead of healed him. I wasn’t calm. I wasn’t composed. I wasn’t fucking Zen. I hurriedly closed the door after him and erupted in hot, embarrassed tears. Wiping them off in anger, I slammed shut my appointment book, threw on my coat and scarf and got ready to leave.
I was losing my touch. I couldn’t connect anymore. I couldn’t feel people anymore. For fuck’s sake, I couldn’t even feel myself. Was this a sex thing? I kept pushing Leo away, I knew I did, but I just couldn’t …do that right now. Not with him. Not with the stress of the wedding. With all the stress of ...of …of what? My life going perfectly according to plan? I frowned hard and tried to get a grip on myself, thinking how pathetic I must have seemed right then. What the hell was wrong with me?
I opened the door again and gasped at the figure standing right in front of me. Before I could say anything, a pair of heavy black arms reached for me, spun me round hard and threw me to the floor. My bag dropped to the ground; spilling its contents right across the tiles, and in a heartbeat a hand went to my mouth to squeeze shut my screams.
I kicked and wriggled desperately against the wall of flesh behind me, but both my hands were pinned behind me with his other hand, and I was being viciously backed away, pulled from the practice and dragged backwards through the front door. My screams turned into desperate muffled moans against the gloved hand as I staggered to find my feet again. But it all happened so quickly. I was instantly outside in the chill air and then just as quickly thrown into a vehicle, where a strip of cloth was yanked across my mouth and another one knotted over my eyes, blotting everything out.
I lay on my side and tried to kick at the now closed door. The car was moving! Unseen hands moved quickly over me and soon my hands and feet were strapped together with painful cable ties. I bucked and kicked for a while, till a firm, angry hand pressed itself to the back of my neck and held me down, the pressure squeezing against my throat feeling like a threat all in itself. I swallowed hard and felt a torrent of tears seeping into the material of my blindfold. Shaking uncontrollably, my body went numb as the fear of what was happening washed over me.
“She’s hot,” said a disembodied voice.
“Don’t be a pig, it’s not like that,” said another voice, closer to me and to the right.
Both voices laughed, dry and cynical.
“Bit of a waste, though, right?” said the first voice. “Come on, at the next light, lift her shirt, I wanna see.”
“No way. Shut up. I told you it’s not like that,” said the second.
My heart was beating so hard it felt like a drum in my ears.
“Come on, just a peak. I bet she’s got really great tits.”
“Fucking animal” came the other voice.
My entire body prickled up as I thought I felt someone reach over and touching my stomach. But the touch never came. Instead we drove on in silence, nothing but my roaring heartbeat in my ears, and the horrifying realization that something was happening to my body.
I was wet.
Chapter 11 - Leo
“I understand that, but she wouldn’t have gone anywhere, she wouldn’t have just stopped answering her phone, she wou--”
“Sir, please calm down, what I’m trying to tell you is that we can’t open an investigation just because she stopped answering your calls.”
My jaw tightened and I tried to remind myself to breathe. This wasn’t like her. She never did this. Sophia was a list maker. She was organized. She was never late. And she never, ever ignored my calls.
“Look,” I said, “it’s not just my calls she’s not taking.”
“Have you contacted her family? Her workplace?”
“She doesn’t have any family and her work …are you really telling me there’s nothing you can do about this?”
“Again, sir, we can look into it but to be honest, the most likely outcome is that she’s simply cut contact with you, we see this kind of thing all the time.”
“What? No. That’s not what happened. Something’s gone wrong, I’m telling you.”
“Sir, please calm down. Is she currently employed?”
“Sure.”
“Well, if she doesn’t turn up at her place of work the next time she’s supposed to, then we can start looking into filing a report for--”
“But it’s Friday today.”
“So that gives you two the whole weekend to sort out your little disagreement.”
My fingers tightened round the phone. I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. I couldn’t believe that someone could just disappear and that the Police were so casual about it. Right now, she could be… I tried not to even think about it. In my mind I saw her face flashing across a TV screen, but squeezed my eyes to clear my head and thanked the officer, hung up and flung the phone across the room.
I paced around the room like a caged animal, kicked the sofa, then scrambled to pick up my phone again. Though it felt like I had just gargled acid, I cleared my throat, dialed another number and held the phone to my ear.
“What happened to her?” I shouted the instant he picked up.
“Who the fuck is this?” came a dopey voice.
“It’s Leo. Where is she? What have you done to her?” I said, realizing how easily my voice was untethering from the forced politeness from the last call and becoming a scream. I heard him inhale and exhale slowly on the other end of the line.
“Well? Answer me or so help me I’ll find you and fucking skin you alive you piece of sh--”
“Leo! Relax! Can you just calm down a second?”
“I swear if one more person tells me to--”
“What happened to who? Who are you talking about?”
I wanted to scream.
“Did you do this? Is this Vito trying to scare me? I already fucking told you that I’m done helping you. Is this a threat?” I yelled. My voice seemed to echo in the silence. Eventually Joe spoke up again, this time sounding genuinely confused.
“Your girl? Cindy?” he said quietly.
“Sophia,” I spat.
“She’s gone missing?”
My blood ran cold. I could have handled them taking her. At least I could have done something about that. But he …seemed sincere.
“You’re not behind any of this? You didn’t do something to her?” I said, my mind reeling.
“Pfft, do something to her? Fuck, now who’s living in the low budget gangster movie, huh? Who do you think I am?”
I had to sit down to keep my head from spinning.
“If you haven’t taken her, then who has?” I asked miserably, then said all at once, without thinking, “can you help me find her?”
“You got a lot of nerve calling me up, you know that? See what I mean? I’m a filthy good-for-nothing when we ask for your help, but now that you need our help, well, lookie here, now the shoe’s on the other foot…”
“You gotta help me find her.”
“I don’t gotta do nothing, kid,” he said with poison in his voice.
“Who would have done this, though…? I thought Vito…” I said, squeezing my temples to get my head to stop thumping.
Joe was chuckling low under his breath.
“Vito’s the least of your problems, pal. I told you, these new kids are dangerous. They weren’t raised right. I don’t even recognize this city anymore, I swear.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Don’t you fucking listen? I told you already. Shawn T. He’s
behind this FBI bullshit, he’s behind every pile of shit we’ve stood in this whole year. His dad was Big Casper, remember Big Casper?”
I felt like I wanted to puke.
“How the hell would I know someone called ‘Big Casper’?”
“How the hell should you know? You only delivered boxes to him every Sunday when you was a kid, didn’t you?”
His words were like a slap to the face.
“How do you know about the boxes?” I asked quietly. I hadn’t thought about the boxes in forever. I hadn’t thought about them in so long that I had convinced myself that none of it actually happened. Not really.
“Nevermind how I know, I know a lot of things. I don’t know what you and Vito were up to back in the day, but whatever you two put in those damned boxes pissed them off so hard we’re still dealing with the fallout now.”
It felt as if my entire world had been burnt right in the center by a cigarette lighter flame, and was now rapidly crumbling and folding in on itself through a black, singed hole, getting bigger and bigger.
“They know who you are, pal, I can tell you that much.”
“They?”
“Shawn T and his guys. That’s why Uncle Vito needed to redirect the containers through you. The family’s crumbling. We’ve been trying to save some of the cash at least by putting it all in one big shipment before the investigation got too far. Shawn T knew if he played his cards right he could swoop in and take our territories by the docks and snatch the new shipment while we were exposed. But Shawn must know about you. That’s all I can think of to explain it. You lost your girl? I’d say it’s him you should be calling.”
My mind raced to try and process what he was saying.
“I need to speak to Vito,” I said quietly.
“Well, good luck finding him, buddy.”
“So, this Shawn T…?”
“Yeah, shit’s hit the fan. Vito may be dead already. I don’t know. But your girl going missing is kind of good news for us.”
“Why?”
“Because if Shawn T’s going after you, it means he hasn’t been able to get to Vito yet. It means he’s desperate…”
“Wait, you think this guy kidnapped Sophia? But why?”
“Because he wants that shipment. And he thinks you’re the one Vito would hide it with. Fuck, I don’t know, these hooligans have no sense, who the hell knows what they’re thinking.”
“I have to find him.”
The line went quiet.
“Kid, you don’t know what you’re getting yourself into.”
“They took her! She might be in danger!” I yelled, leaping to my feet and screaming into the phone. I felt sick that this was all my fault. That I had gotten her involved in all of this.
“Hey, buddy, calm down, OK?”
I felt my voice crack.
“What the fuck am I gonna do, Joe? The Police…”
“Woah woah woah, the Police? Kid, you can’t call the Police, you moron.”
“I can’t?”
He sighed loudly.
“You just forgotten that you’re in the illegal imports business now, or…?”
I gulped.
“Keep your mouth shut. Just stay calm. Now if I know these kids, they won’t let up until they get what they want from you. They know what we’re sitting on and they know that if they can get Vito out of the picture, they can swoop in on the spoils.”
“So what? They want me to tell them where the shipment is? I don’t even know where it is. You haven’t delivered it yet. Where is it?”
Joe sighed.
“Your guess is as good as mine.”
Silence.
“I’ll do whatever it takes to get her back, Joe. I don’t care. This shipment business, this bullshit about the containers, I don’t care, I just want her back.”
“Please help me,” I begged. The line was quiet for a long time before Joe exhaled loudly again.
“Ok, here’s what we’re gonna do. I think I know where we can find this fucker…”
Chapter 12 - Sophia
I had never smelt so much perfume in one place in all my life. I had never even been to a strip club before. And I had especially never been to the back room of a strip club before. But even though it looked pretty much how I would have guessed, I was struck most by the smell.
Thick, acrid clouds of a million mixed up scents choked me up in the semi-darkness. A flash of a naked, glittery breast here, a glossy lip laughing in the darkness there. It was like a seedy carnival, or a house of horrors where the girls disappeared clothed and came back with nothing on but a thin film of sweat and the last little bits of a fake smile on their lips.
I sat crouched small on the floor, looking up at two women who had only half noticed my presence, and seemed more intent on piling on as much mascara as humanly possible. One was dark skinned and had a tight, boyish ass, and breasts that hung full and heavy, the other was a redhead with a tattoo of an ankh just above her navel.
I watched it all unfold like a dream, hands still bound behind me, my head thumping and my mind coming slowly back to consciousness.
The events of the last few hours, if that is indeed how much time had passed, were like scattered puzzle pieces. I had a dim sense of things – of being abducted, of black-gloved hands, of the shameful feeling of my fear taking on an excited, sexual edge – but my muddled mind was having difficulty putting them all together.
I must have been drugged, or hit, because my head was pounding and I couldn’t recall how I had landed up here. My mouth was dry and I felt a weird, wriggling sense of fear deep in the pit of my stomach. I wondered if anything had been done to me, while I was unconscious. More alarming than that, though, was the horror that just thinking about it was making me wet again.
I blinked hard to try and gather myself and focused again on the strippers, who were chatting idly and primping in the mirrors. I had spent the better part of my life learning to read and understand the body. To speak its language. But at that moment I had no idea whether I was hungry or scared or horny as hell. I just ached.
“What you staring at?”
The redhead shot me a sharp look.
“Nothing.”
“What’s she here for anyway? A new girl?” she said, ignoring my response and speaking directly to the other stripper.
“No idea, baby. JD said to ignore her, so…”
The redhead continued to look down at me with something halfway between pity and curiosity.
“You speak English?” she said slowly, mascara wand still hovering in her hand.
“Yeah.”
“You’re going to dance? Work with Peter?”
I didn’t know. Dance? Like on a stage? Stripping? What a preposterous idea. But everything that had happened to me so far was about as preposterous. And Peter? I shuddered to think what that ‘work’ would entail.
“I don’t know,” I said and tried to convey as little emotion in my voice as possible. The other striper was chuckling under her breath and applying some sort of lotion all up and down her neck.
“Lily, if she had met Peter already, she’d know about it, don’t you think?” she said. The way she said it made my skin crawl.
“They hurt you or anything? They do anything to you?” the redhead asked, lifting an already massively arched eyebrow at me.
“Lilly, leave her be. They said to make like she isn’t even here.”
“I’m just asking her questions.”
The redhead loomed over me and then peeked behind to look at my bound hands.
“They tied her up though. Seems mean.”
“Lily, leave it alone for fuck’s sakes.”
But Lily was already leaning over me and cutting the cable ties on my hands with a tiny pair of nail scissors. The blood rushing into my fingers was almost painful.
“You scared, honey?” she said, ignoring the other’s disapproving looks.
I said nothing.
“You got a guy or something?”
>
“A guy?”
“Yeah, you married? Boyfriend?”
I was mesmerized by the glitter on her nipples. For some stupid reason, I pictured myself with glittery nipples. Maybe this was my life now. Maybe I had slipped into some parallel universe and now I would have to dance and wear too much perfume and …do things with Peter.
“Yeah, I have a boyfriend, so?”
“He into anything shady? What work does he do?”
“Why?”
She stood tall again and shrugged.
“Well, that’ll go some way to explaining how you got here, that’s all. Don’t listen to anyone who says money’s the root of all evil. Men are the root!” she said and laughed to herself.
“He’s not …he would never be involved in any,” I said, my brain waking up to the crazy idea that this could have anything to do with Leo.
The redhead shrugged.
“So you landed here by accident, huh? Seems kinda weird, huh?”
“Lily, if you’re done torturing the poor girl, you’re on in a minute,” the other one said and jostled her breasts so they hung better in her halter top.
The ache returned. What if Leo did have something to do with ‘this’?
The redhead took a pinch of some brownish powder from a little jar attached to her belt and snorted it quickly, rubbing her nostrils and taking one more quick look at her reflection. I could tell the music outside had stopped and some people were applauding.
“Coke?” I asked.
She looked at me.
“No, ma’am. Not for a while now. This is that new shit. This is PK, this is stuff that cocaine takes when it’s having a bad day...” she said and laughed again. “You know it?”
“I’ve been clean for more than a decade,” I said. “And I’ve never looked back. I don’t need that stuff anymore.”
She gave me a strange look, then smiled at me.
“Honey, everyone needs a drug. We’re human. We can’t live without our addictions. We’re all dying anyway, right? Something kills us all eventually. Might as well choose the drug that kills you the slowest, that’s what I say. Choose one you’re willing to die for,” she said, with a faraway look in her eyes.
