by Gabi Moore
“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 Twelve – 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.
The other stripper snorted at her little speech.
“Lily, you’re almost on, get out of here.”
“Well I’m not addicted to anything,” I said.
“Sure you are.”
“No, I’m not. You snort that stuff and strip and you think that’s just fine?” I realized I didn’t want her to go. I didn’t want to be alone here in the room, or with my …thoughts.
“Damn straight I do,” she said.
“So those men just ogle you, and abuse you, and—”
“Honey, look at it this way, those men out there have their addictions too. I’ve been poor. I’ve been pretty desperate. But I’ve never been so desperate that I’ll throw money at a girl who shows me her titties. You get that? You want to lecture someone, lecture those men out there. Maybe it’s me abusing them,” she said and winked at me. In a second she had flounced out the room, high heels clacking, and slammed the door behind her.
“Don’t mind her, that shit’s cooking her brain,” the other one said with a scowl, still not turning to look at me.
Something buzzed and the stripper scrambled to answer her phone, then wandered out through a corridor and away till I couldn’t hear her voice anymore. I examined my raw wrists, tried to stand on wobbling legs, then made a dash for the door.
Outside was a landing – down below seemed to be a series of heavy black curtains and the source of the music, a dull thumping trance beat that seemed to reverberate through the walls. The stage? I turned to look at my other option: a staircase going up. It’d have to do.
I raced up, legs still shaky, and found another door, unlocked. I opened it a crack, then opened it more fully. Inside, it was a small room, dimly lit, with a plain wooden desk holding up a mountain of paperwork.
I went over to see files, bank statements, random envelopes. Under this was a thick yellow folder, which I opened. A woman’s photo caught my eye, it was accompanied by stats – her age, height, weight, eye color, nationality. The folder would have looked like a modelling agency’s portfolio were it not for the row of dollar figures handwritten at the bottom of each page.
My eye paused on “$450 000”. Some higher amounts, some very small. I turned the page. A 16-year-old girl with brown eyes. Underneath her name was “$25 000” scratched with amounts subtracted from it till it was “$1000”, with a little smiley face scribbled beside the amount.
I dropped the folder and broke out in
to a cold sweat.
Not just stripping.
Not just prostitution.
The amounts in this book were too high. I gulped and looked around the rest of the room, shaking hands rummaging through whatever I could find. The music pumped away down below, muffled like it was coming from deep in the ocean somewhere, not real somehow. But the men who had abducted me were real. If they found me here…
I had to find a way to get out of here, no question. They could kill me. Or worse. My fingers found a beat-up looking notebook with some more handwritten numbers. Codes. Passwords. Why would anybody leave such a thing in the open like this? I felt around in my pockets – my phone had been taken from me.
I looked over my shoulder, stuffed the notebook into my pocket and rushed out again, clicking the door closed behind me. I was on the stairwell again, and mercifully the stripper’s room was still empty. I heard footsteps and laughing coming up the other stairwell and sped inside so quickly I thought I’d have a heart attack.
I threw myself back onto the floor and thrust my hands behind me, trying to look like I hadn’t budged. A dangerous looking mountain of a man walked in, took one look at me and then frowned.
“You awake?” he said, and then peered around the room.
“Tay? Tay, where the fuck are you?” he bellowed, and then peered round the corner to where I had seen the stripper walk off.
The moment went liquid and electrified all around me. The beat from the music below seemed to press itself right to the front of my consciousness, travelling up from the ground into my bones; my body ignited. Something hot and sticky was buzzing at my core as I watched his form move around the room, menacing. The adrenaline became like static snapping through my veins. But it wasn’t fear.
It was something far, far more delicious.
I stared out the still opened door and thought about making a run for it. There was nothing in this room to use as a weapon. I could never fight him – he was three times my size.
But maybe I could run.
Just as my muscles were firing up and my spine coiled up and tightened to spring to action, I heard more voices come up the stairwell, and in an instant, two people had blustered up, throwing their bodies against the wall. Both me and the man-mountain turned to look.
