The Closer

by Donn Cortez

  Richard laughed. “Sure. I’ll be in touch.” He hung up.

  She growled, and slammed the phone down. She’d have to change her phone number…

  Or she could change everything else.

  “Fuck it,” she said.

  Jack hadn’t left a number; she’d had to wait for him to get in touch with her. It was a long, strange week— she found herself looking at every one of her tricks with new eyes. She’d always been cautious, but now she found herself turning down even regular customers. There was a tightness in her belly that at first she thought was fear… but after a while she realized it was simply anticipation. She wound up spending most of her time in the diner where they’d first met, waiting.

  Finally, seven days later, he walked in and sat down. She told him she accepted.

  And the training began.

  She’d thought at first that he’d be the one in charge, a drill sergeant putting her through her paces. What actually evolved was more balanced: Jack trained her mind, while she trained his body. Nikki held a master-level belt in Akido, a martial art that relied primarily on submission holds, and worked out with weights three times a week; Jack had two years’ worth of art school. When they started, he was soft and out-of-shape—six months later, he could bench-press three-eighty and run a mile in four and a half minutes.

  Jack’s academic background proved more useful than Nikki would have guessed. He knew how to research, how to learn and how to teach—both himself and Nikki. His apartment was crammed with psychology textbooks, criminology papers, magazines that specialized in everything from surveillance equipment to mercenary services.

  Most of all, he had focus.

  Nikki had never met anyone as single-minded as Jack. He was a knife, a human blade sharpening himself every day against a whetstone of pain, honing away feeling and distraction and weakness until only an edge was left. An edge sharp as death itself.

  And somehow, just as exhilarating. One night, lying on the foldout bed in Jack’s apartment that she now slept on, she realized she hadn’t turned on a TV set or gone to a movie in weeks. She spent every day working out, reading, and discussing strategy with Jack. Before, she could make a thousand dollars on a good night; now, she was living on savings. She was on a path that would almost inevitably lead to either prison or the morgue… and there was a place inside her, a place that had been empty for so long she’d almost forgotten it was there, that was starting to fill up.

  She had traded one drug for another. She wondered if this was why people joined cults.

  She learned a lot. She learned about the difference between an organized serial killer and a disorganized one. She learned about methods of body disposal, which chemicals were often used and what they smelled like. She and Jack worked out a list of questions that might push a serial killer’s buttons, and she studied books on body language so she could interpret reactions.

  Jack learned, too. Nikki taught him Akido, and whatever she could about the street—how to talk to cops, how to spot a hustler, scams to look out for.

  And then there were the subjects Jack studied on his own.

  Every night, he retired to his room for several hours to do “research.” She’d seen some of the books on his bedroom shelf: Histories of the Inquisition. Studies of Nazi atrocities and psychological warfare. Books on brainwashing, interrogation, torture. He never discussed any of them with Nikki, but she understood what they were for.

  “You’ve never done it before, have you?” she asked him once. They’d just finished a workout in the old garage Jack rented as a bare-bones gym; it had a cracked concrete floor, a punching dummy in one corner and a weight bench. They were sprawled out on the tumbling mats they used to practice takedowns.

  “Killed someone?”

  “No. Tortured them.”

  “No.”

  “Think you can do it?”

  He’d looked at her for a long moment before answering. “I’ll make myself,” he said.

  He hadn’t sounded angry.

  Just sad.

  After six months, Jack thought they were ready—and he thought he knew where to start.

  The killer who had murdered Sally had struck twice more, though the police seemed unaware of the fact. Two working girls with curly black hair had vanished from the street, and Nikki’s contacts had no idea where they’d gone.

  “Stupid bitches!” Nikki raged, throwing her cell phone across the room. It hit the couch, bounced off and slid under the dining-room table. “Don’t they read their fucking bad john list? I warned them, for Christ’s sake!”

  “Nikki.” Jack walked across the room, stood unflinching in the face of her anger. “No more.”

  “Don’t tell me that! I—I just wanna break something—”

  “No. I mean no more waiting. No more training.”

  She blinked back furious tears, met his steady gaze.

  “No more dead friends,” Jack said. “It’s time to go to work.”

  There were only two of them. They had no experience, limited finances and few resources. They had no access to police records, manpower or equipment. Their one advantage was that they were criminals themselves—but it was a crucial one.

  “Killers that target prostitutes don’t always kill them,” Jack said. He was working on retrofitting the cargo space of the white Econoline van he’d bought secondhand. “Sometimes they just have sex with them.”

  Nikki handed him a pair of vice-grips. “Yeah, and sometimes they have sex with them and then kill them. Or vice versa.”

  Jack took the vice-grips and used them to tighten the nut on the ring-bolt he’d attached to the floor. “Once he knows you’re not a cop, he might get overconfident. Drop hints about what he could do to you, or what he’s done to others. Can you handle that?”

  “Don’t worry about me losing my nerve,” Nikki said. “I could blow the Devil himself with a smile on my face.”

  “Good. You may have to….”

  Nikki wore a dark, curly wig. Jack shadowed her on tricks, eavesdropping via a tiny bug in her purse and never more than a moment away. They soon settled into a routine: every night from nine P.M. to three A.M., they would hit the street and Nikki would trade fake intimacy for real dollars while Jack stood guard in the background.

  Three months passed.

  Jack listened to her give a hundred blow jobs. He listened to her have sex in hotel rooms, in cars, in alleys. The number of bad johns she encountered jumped, because now she actively sought them out; and if a john was acting strangely, she did everything she could to push him further. More than once, Jack was poised to intervene—but it always proved to be a false alarm, a trick that didn’t want to pay or liked things just a little too rough. She went home with bruises sometimes, but none of her customers tried to strangle her. She kept an eye out for Richard, the wannabe pimp, but apparently he’d taken the hint; nobody on the street had seen him for months.

  And then, one night in late March, she met Luis.

  He pulled up in a station wagon, a family vehicle that still had a Baby On Board sticker in the rear window. The driver was a man in his mid-thirties, balding and portly with an olive complexion and a thick, black mustache. He beamed at her in delight.

  “Hola, beautiful one! How are you tonight?”

  “Lonely and short on cash,” she said, beaming right back.

  “Ah, then I think I can help. Would you care for a ride in my chariot? I would gladly pay you a hundred dollars for such a privilege.”

  “I’m thinking more of two.”

  “Ah, rides are getting more expensive. But you look like you would be worth it, yes?”

  “Only one way to find out…”

  He grinned and nodded. She slid into the passenger seat, glancing into the back as she did so. No child seat, no toys, no mess or clutter of any kind.

  The Baby On Board sign still had a price sticker on the back.

  “Careful on those yellow lights,” she said as the car pulled away. “We don
’t want to get stopped, do we?”

  The word yellow was a warning signal. When Jack heard the trick ask if it was okay if they went back to his place rather than a hotel room, Jack knew they had a possible. He tailed the car, but stayed well out of sight—the GPS unit Nikki had in her purse would let him track her to within ten feet.

  He followed them across the Georgia viaduct, then around and under the overpass itself. This was largely undeveloped industrial land, sandwiched between Chinatown and the shores of False Creek. The Vancouver Indy race wound its way through here every summer, but right now the steel bleachers and concrete barricades stood row after lonely row in razor-wire-fenced lots.

  Somehow, Jack wasn’t surprised when the station wagon stopped.

  He pulled over himself a block away, and covered the rest of the way on foot. He moved quietly and efficiently through the dark, preparing himself.

  “He’s unlocking the gate to a storage lot,” Nikki’s voice said in his ear. “Says he has a key to a trailer inside. I’m going to let him lock it behind us—should make him feel all safe and secure.”

  Jack froze.

  He’d left the bolt cutters in the van.

  No way to tell Nikki, no way to change the plan. He sprinted back the way he came.

  By the time Jack grabbed the bolt cutters, the john had relocked the gate. Jack stopped worrying about stealth and ran.

  “Okay, Luis, hope you’re ready to party,” Jack heard Nikki say. The reception from the bug was so clear she could have been standing right next to him. He could hear the door of the trailer open, almost see her and Luis stepping inside—

  He hadn’t run in the dark like this since he was a child, tearing full-tilt through the wide-open spaces of a playground on a summer night. It was almost dreamlike…and then Jack’s foot hit something in midstride.

  There was a single, airborne moment of flailing through the dark, then an explosion of pain as he smashed face-first into a wall. Everything went red, then gray.

  “…I don’t know, Luis.” Nikki’s voice. It brought him back, cut through the haze of pain in his skull. “I don’t like making it with bi-boys, y’know? You might give me something.”

  She was taunting him, pushing his buttons. Counting on Jack to back her up.

  He was lying in a puddle of cold water. How long had he been out? His right hand was submerged, so cold it was numb. The bolt cutters were gone, lost somewhere in the shadows.

  “Oh, chiquita, I’m not like that.” Luis’s voice. He didn’t sound angry at all. He sounded happy and confident. That was bad, very bad.

  No, no, it was good. It was what they’d been looking for, working so hard for. As long as Jack could just stand up…

  He made it to his feet, but the world was on a strange angle and he fell down again. His head was spinning like it was full of tequila. He threw up, trying not to make any noise.

  “You have lovely hair,” Luis said.

  Suddenly, Jack’s head was clear.

  He got to his feet carefully, got his bearings. The gate was that way. He walked quickly toward the nearest source of illumination, sodium-vapor brightness glaring from the top of a streetlamp, a lone steel palm generating its own island of orange-tinted light.

  “But I don’t care too much for your attitude,” Luis said.

  On the far edge of the island of light was a chain link fence. Jack sprinted toward it, tearing off his trenchcoat as he ran.

  “I don’t much give a fuck,” Nikki said. “And I mean that literally. You give before I fuck.”

  Jack reached the fence. It was topped by coils of razor wire. He took his coat in his teeth and began to climb.

  “Oh, I have plenty to give, puta. I have more to give than you can take….”

  At the top of the fence, Jack tossed his coat over the jagged barbs. It shielded his hands from the worst of it, but he still took painful gashes on both forearms and one calf. He dropped to the ground on the other side, leaving his coat tangled and impaled.

  In his ear, the sounds of a scuffle. A dull thud.

  And then nothing.

  The trailer was fifty yards away, a white rectangle on its own atoll of light. Jack pounded toward it, straining to hear any sound from his earpiece. It felt like he was running on a treadmill, the trailer getting bigger but not any closer. Just as he reached the door he realized he’d left most of his equipment and weapons in the pockets of his trenchcoat.

  He wrenched at the door, but it was locked. “NIKKI!” he yelled. He slammed into the door with his shoulder, but only wound up bouncing off it and losing his footing. He landed on his butt in the mud.

  The door unlocked. It swung open.

  “Jesus,” Nikki said. “Try knocking first, huh?”

  Inside, under a flickering fluorescent light, Luis lay facedown on a small cot. He was unconscious, a small trickle of blood behind his right ear.

  “Had to smack him with this,” Nikki said, holding up a heavy glass ashtray. “Would have used the stun gun, but he went for something in that drawer real quick.”

  Jack looked around. The only decoration on the cheap wood-paneled walls was a tattered calendar, and the air smelled of mildew and old sweat. Beside the cot, a card table held a coffeemaker and three stained cups, and a small desk stood in the corner with its top drawer open. Jack reached inside, pulled out a bottle of whiskey, a pair of handcuffs and a short electric cord. “Looks like he was planning on having a real party.”

  “Yeah. Hope I didn’t kill him.”

  “He’s still breathing,” Jack said. “Get him ready. I’ll bring the van around.”

  They took him to the garage they worked out in. Jack had soundproofed the room as best he could, lining the ceiling and walls with egg cartons sandwiched between acoustic tiles. The floor was concrete, with a drain in one corner.

  Nikki helped get Luis out of the van and into the garage. Jack tied him to a kitchen chair with rope, making sure both his arms and legs were immobilized.

  Jack stared at the unconscious man, unblinking. “Go,” he said quietly.

  Nikki left.

  Jack took out a pair of large scissors. He used them to cut all the clothes off Luis’s body, and put the scraps in a white trash bag when he was done. He laid out his equipment. He lit a large candle, and turned out the rest of the lights.

  Then he got out a bottle of smelling salts and waved it under his captive’s nose.

  Luis’s head jerked, and his eyes fluttered open. He moaned.

  “Do you know where you are?” Jack asked him.

  “What? No, no… what’s going on? Who are you?”

  “Who I am is not important, Luis. It’s who I’m not.”

  “You’re crazy!”

  “No, Luis. I’m not a lunatic. I’m not a police officer. I’m not a thief, or a kidnapper. I’m not a practical joker hired by your friends. And the one thing, Luis, that I most definitely am not, the one negative that defines me the most, is this: I am not someone who believes you are an innocent man.”

  “What—what do you want from me?”

  “The truth. But first, you have to become somebody else.”

  “Who?” Luis whispered.

  “Someone who would never, ever lie to me.” Jack picked up a small tape recorder, hit the Record button. “Now. Let’s go back to the beginning….”

  Six hours later, he gave up.

  “I can’t do this, I can’t do this,” Jack said to himself. He was sitting in the alley beside the garage, staring at his hands. There was no blood on them, but they wouldn’t stop shaking.

  Luis wouldn’t confess. He had begged and pleaded and cried, but he wouldn’t admit to anything beyond soliciting a hooker. He had talked about his children, and his pregnant wife. He had apologized for every bad thing he had ever done in his life, and asked God to forgive him.

  Jack had done terrible things to him. He’d had to leave twice to throw up, the last time producing nothing but ten minutes of painful dry heaves—but he�
��d forced himself to return and continue.

  After four hours, Luis changed his tune.

  He was guilty, he sobbed. He’d done it all, everything Jack had accused him of. He would sign anything, say anything—but when Jack pressed him for details, Luis had none to give.

  “Am I wrong?” Jack asked himself softly. “Am I wrong?”

  The sun was starting to come up, a gray hazy glow in the east. The alley stank of garbage, but the wet, fresh scent of rain was there, too. A swirl of pink dots blew past him, early cherry blossoms from a backyard tree.

  Jack thought about his son. He thought about being a father, and what a father does. And then he stood up and went back inside.

  Luis. Or whatever your name is. No wallet, no registration papers in the car, no ID at all.

  “I told you, I explained that. In case I got arrested, I didn’t want my family to find out.”

  Smart. You have a little boy, right? Roberto.

  “Yes, yes. He’s a good boy, he loves his father—”

  Why? What do you do together?

  “We, we do many things together. We go to movies, we go to the park and play soccer—”

  Ah. He likes soccer. He must play on a team then, at school.

  “Yes. I take him to practice, every Saturday—”

  Never his mother. Only you.

  “Always me. I love to see him play—”

  Tell me about his first game. Against another team.

  “What?”

  How old was he? As a father, I’m sure you remember.

  “Of course. He looked so handsome in his little uniform… oh, God…”

  Go on.

  “They lost. Four to one. He played so hard.”

  I’m sure he did. How old was he?

  “Seven.”

  And the weather that day?

  “Raining. Vancouver, it rains so much.”

  Yes. And what was the name of his team?

  “…I don’t remember.”

  That’s all right. I’ll help you.

  “No! No, it was—the Wolves. The Wolf cubs, all the parents called them that.”

  No.