DIRTY DADDY

by Evelyn Glass

  And then my mind moves from this precious image to Dad, and my blood runs cold in my veins. Dad always interfering, always doubting, always hurting. It’s a confusing coldness. I know that if Dad had not hired Samson, Eric would’ve killed me. But that’s the thing about parents. You can be thankful for them and hate them at the same time, wish them closer and wish them farther away. He saved me, in a roundabout way, and yet I resent him for it. I try to find a way through this jungle of thought, but I fail. He loves me; I tell myself that again and again. He obviously wants to protect me. But in doing so he declared loudly and without hesitation that I am wrong, that my decisions are wrong, that everything I do is wrong. He makes me into a teenager again, as I sit here lost in thought, a teenager who lives in constant fear of his knife-sharp words.

  Then, as the helicopter surges over the glittering nighttime lights of New York City, I think of River, Samson’s ex-girlfriend and the woman who orchestrated our meeting. Even my feelings toward her aren’t as cut-and-dry as they should be. I should hate her, unflinchingly. She wants me dead, she wants my man dead. But when I think of her, it’s not a bloodthirsty killer I see, but a wounded woman, a woman tortured and raped for two years by a psychopath. If I had gone through what she did, I don’t know if I could have come out the other end unchanged.

  All of it is confusing. Nothing about it is simple. I find myself wishing I could feel just one way, anger or resentment or hate or love, just one of them, instead of this confusing medley.

  Then Samson is setting us down and we’re climbing from the helicopter, one step closer to our plan, which will, if all goes well, banish River from our lives forever.

  Our lives, I think, and I know that will never change, not now. It will be our lives forever.

  ###

  “The queen hath returned!” Elle cries when I enter the changing room.

  It’s odd to think that it’s been only a few days since I last saw her, it seems like a lifetime. So much has changed. I feel like a different woman as I walk past my fellow cheerleaders, smiling and returning their greetings. Samson has become an integral part of my life, has changed me, and walking into these familiar surroundings highlights that in a way nothing else could. I join Elle at the end of the room, standing near our lockers.

  “So,” she says, and the roar of the crowd filters into the room, loud, shaking, “you’re back.”

  She smiles and I return the smile. I have to pretend like everything’s alright, I know. Samson’s words echo in my mind. I’ll know what to do. I have to trust him, and yet I can’t believe that I’m back here when there’s a psychopathic killer out there gunning for me. And soon I’ll be out in the court, cheering, smiling like a loon and waving my pom-poms.

  “I’m back.” I smile, as I undress and begin changing into my cheer outfit. I wonder if they’re up there now. I know that Samson is, watching, waiting. I’m bait, I think. He’s using me as bait. But I agreed, didn’t I? I’m not going to back out now, no way. I’m going to see this thing through to the end, soldier on, march confidently out there and pretend that everything is fine.

  “Are you okay?” Elle asks quietly. She puts her hand on my shoulder.

  For a moment I am confused, and then I realize. To the other girls, it must seem like I took time off because of the corpse, the shock of finding my ex-husband in the trunk of my car. Even now, the girls are uncharacteristically quiet. I feel their eyes on me, all of them watching, trying to be subtle and failing. They’re listening, I know, trying to figure out if there’s any drama or gossip to be had.

  “Oh, fine.” I laugh, and wave a hand as though nothing is wrong. “It was just a shock. That’s all. I’m over it now.”

  “But the police interrogated you, didn’t they?” Elle presses.

  I sigh, and then immediately regret it. Sighing makes it look like there’s something wrong. I turn to her and smile my brightest, fakest smile; the smile of a cheerleader. “Oh, that was just a mix up,” I say. “They got the wrong idea. That’s all. There’s nothing to worry about.” My voice is artificially cheery, but that’s nothing new in this room. Most of the women in here are artificially cheery, it comes with the territory of being a cheerleader.

  “Well, that’s good to know,” Elle says, taking her hand from my shoulder.

  Soon, we are all changed into our cheer gear. The crowd roars and cheers and claps and chants and I know that somewhere, up there, Samson stands among them. He stands among them and he watches, watches for River and her goons, watches and waits for them to reveal themselves when they see me. That is our plan: dangle me before them like bait and wait for the killers in the crowd to break cover.

  I’m nervous, it’s true, but I also trust Samson. I know that he is skilled at what he does and that he cares for me. That brings me more comfort than anything. Samson cares for me and he’d never let anybody hurt me.

  But what if he can’t stop them? A voice whispers. I don’t want to listen to it but I can’t ignore it, either. Despite my trust in him, I know that he’s a man. A brilliant man, a strong man, a deadly and skilled man, but a man all the same.

  Just be brave, I think, echoing his words to me in the cabin. Just be brave and patient.

  I take a long, deep breath, clearing my mind, and then Elle taps me on the shoulder. A sense of déjà vu grips me; it wasn’t so long ago she was tapping me on the shoulder to bring me out of a different reverie.

  “It’s show time, girl!” Elle smiles.

  “Okay,” I mutter.

  Heart thumping, palms soaked with sweat, legs threatening to tremble so badly I don’t know if they’ll do as I command them during the cheer, I make my way to the exit of the changing room, following the line of the other girls.

  All too soon, we are walking out into the bright lights of the arena, into the gaze of thousands of cheering, clapping NBA fans, and into the glare of the hidden killers within the crowd.

  I plaster a smile on my face. Elle is right.

  It really is show time.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Samson

  I settle down into the crowd, scanning my eyes over the hundreds of faces which sit or stand all around me, filling up the arena right up to the back walls. So many people, most of them roaring as the announcer calls out the cheerleaders, many of whom hold plastic cups swilling with beer. A man beside me thrusts his cup into the air and lets out an almighty roar, as though he is a member of a cult and his leader is about to emerge. I’m a fan of basketball, too, but I’ve never understood the cult-like behavior that comes from people at the games. It’s as though they forget who and where they are and just let themselves go in ways they would never dream of under any other circumstances. Businessmen, students, people of every sort, come to the games and roar and cheer and cry out in rage.

  I push this observation from my mind and continue scanning the crowd. After a few moments, my eyes come to rest on him. Why the hell is he here? I think. But of course I should’ve anticipated that he would show up. It would be out of character for him not to show up. I sit on the third row; he sits in the first row. I can tell who he is just from the way he sits—straight-backed, hand gripping his suspenders—and the way he takes a drink from a hipflask every now and then. I begin making my way through the crowd, ignoring people’s grunts of protest, giving a few men the stand-down eye, the wolf gaze which causes them to second guess their attempt to shove me away. Soon, I am standing directly behind him. I breathe in, and even over the scent of the sweaty crowd, whisky impregnates the air.

  I tap him on the shoulder. He turns abruptly, mustache trembling, and when he sees that it’s me, he sighs.

  “Following me, are you?”

  The cheerleaders begin dancing out, waving their pom-poms. I spot Anna and see that she has a huge smile on her face, a smile bigger than she has even after we’ve just made love. Which is how I know it’s fake. Looking at her, I find it difficult to believe that any of these men are truly fooled by her smile—or any of
the smiles of any of the cheerleaders. It looks carved on, molded, contrived. It’s the kind of smile I imagine a concubine giving her king back in the Middle Ages.

  “Don’t flatter yourself,” I say.

  I turn to the man next to him, a squat, red-haired man with bright red eyes who watches the cheerleaders intently.

  “Excuse me,” I say, and I take out a rolled wad of bills from my pocket.

  “Eh?” He pulls his eyes away from the dancers reluctantly. They’re taking formation, on the cusp of breaking into dance.

  I hand him the notes. “My seat is three rows back,” I tell him. “Let’s swap. There you go.” When he doesn’t take the bills, I force them into his hand.

  He looks down at his hand clutching the bills for a long moment, and then nods shortly. “Third is as good as first,” he mumbles. And then he clambers over the back of the chair and walks down the aisle. I climb over the empty chair and drop into it.

  Ian Hill scowls and turns away from me. “Is this necessary?” he asks.

  “What are you doing here?” I say. I continue to scan the crowd. If River is here, I’ll see her soon, I know that. But that immensity of the crowd annoys me. For the first time in years, I question my plan. In all this hugeness, what if she—or one of her operatives—gets past me, makes it to Anna before I have a chance to stop her? I push the thought from my mind. If I think like that, I’ve already lost.

  “Watching my daughter,” he answers gruffly. “What are you doing here?”

  “The same,” I say.

  The cheerleaders are in formation now. Music starts, ear-pounding, thumping music. The majority of the crowd stamp along to the tune.

  “But I’m surprised to see you, Ian,” I go on, as pom-poms are waved in the air. “You must know that whoever’s after Anna is most likely here. Aren’t you scared you’ll somehow get caught up in the fray? Or have your contacts told you it’s safe?”

  Ian’s jaw clenches, and I think, he knows something.

  The cheerleaders prance around the court, flipping and writhing and thrusting, the crowd erupts in zoo-like madness all around us, and soon it is like Ian and I exist in our own isolated bubble, cut off from the rest of the court.

  Ian turns to me. His lips tremble. His eyes are red.

  “You’re drunk,” I comment, when his whisky-soaked breath washes over me in a wave. “You’re drunk out of your head.”

  “I’m drunk,” he nods, somewhat shakily. “Yes, yes, yes, I’m drunk. Is that what you want to hear?”

  “Is there something you want to tell me, Ian?” I ask, keeping one eye on the court and the other on the drunken man before me. Here is a man not uncommon in the world of killers and mafia. A legitimate businessman who somehow discovered along the way that it is easier to fix your problems if you know the right man to pay. Not in the life and yet not entirely out of it: straddling the gap of crime and peace. The kind of man who looks down upon men like me and yet never once hesitates to use them.

  “N—no,” he stutters.

  “You’re lying.” I say it softly, without judgment. I say it as though his lies are of no great concern to me. I say it as though whatever he has done does not bother me in the least. I say it as though I am asking only out of idle interest. “Tell me, Ian. Tell me what’s eating you up inside.”

  And then he tells me, tells me quickly, his words rushing into each other. He tells me about his involvement and as he tells me his hands shake and he has to reach inside his jacket pocket and retrieve his little hipflask. He tells it all in a great torrent of words, coming so quickly that the cheer isn’t even over when he’s finished talking. I’m angry, of course, but my anger is second to my focus.

  “Who has she hired?” I ask. “Tell me that. You must know. Did she ever mention it?”

  “I’ve heard some names,” he mutters, a defeated man. “Yes, I’ve heard some.”

  “Tell me,” I say.

  “I don’t know their real names,” he says. “Just—”

  “Just tell me what names you’ve heard.”

  He takes a deep breath, and I think for the first time in his life he understands that he’s not the good, honorable man he’s always seen himself as. It’s a strange sight, watching a man transform before you and yet with no definite sign of the transformation. The trembling in his lips, his hands, the way he glances skittishly over the crowd, the way he constantly reaches for his hipflask. He suddenly seems weighed down. What will Anna make of it? I think. And I’ll have to tell her, of course.

  “Four men,” he says. “The Gent, The Pistol, The Butcher and The Bear.”

  My blood runs cold in my veins for a moment. One of these men would’ve been bad enough, but all four of them is the equivalent of an angry rhino showing up to the game, ready to unleash its hell at a moment’s notice.

  “Thank you, Ian,” I say.

  The cheer is only halfway done. I glance briefly at Anna, and see that she watches her father and me every chance she gets; whenever the dance swings her gaze toward us, she lets it rest on us. But not once does her artificial smile slip. Nor does she miss a step or lose her place in the dance. For any of these men in the crowd, she is just a sexy cheerleader, an attractive young woman. Nobody would guess that she’s under the constant threat of murder.

  I look around the crowd once more, looking not just for River but for her men, too. Finally, my gaze comes to rest upon River. She sits in the first row on the opposite side of the court. I didn’t notice her at first because she wears a bright pink dress, cut short on the thigh, legs folded, and a blonde wig which flows down to her shoulders. Only the cold murder in her eyes and her killer’s posture tells me that, beneath this apparent glamor, there is a person willing and eager to do immense harm.

  I make a mental note of where she is, and as I scan the rest of the crowd, I glance back to her routinely. My job would’ve been hard enough with only River to contend with. But with the others . . .

  I swallow.

  This will be the hardest job I’ve ever done, I think. Damn, for Anna’s sake, please let me be strong enough.

  ###

  It’s one of the skills you learn early in the trade: watching one thing while scouting the area. Obviously, I can’t physically watch two places at once. What I do is scan the crowd, but in intervals of ten to fifteen seconds I look back to where River is sitting, playing the attractive young woman who has simply come to the game. I wonder how many weapons are concealed within the folds of that pink dress, if any. Perhaps she’s only brought her men as her weapons. Once, I glance back at her to find that she’s looking back at me. She lifts her hand and waves like a debutante waving at a would-be lover, all fingers. I lift my hand and give her the finger. She throws her head back and laughs, a voice barely audible over the music and the cheering.

  I ignore it and continue my scan of the crowd. After half a minute, I see The Gent.

  The Gent, otherwise known as Andy McCray, was raised in Boston and came to New York in the early nineties. I’ve worked with him before, a few years ago on a mafia job where we had to kick in the doors of a rival family and kill everybody inside. It was a simple job and one I had no problem with. These guys were murderers and some of them rapists, and I had it on good authority that at least two of them beat their children. This Irish-American Bostonian got his name for the way he goes about his business. No matter the job, he always wears a tuxedo, and he always tries to kill his marks with a single silenced shot in the back of the head, so that they never see it coming. Apparently, this is a very gentlemanly thing to do, because the marks don’t suffer, don’t fear or panic. He is a tall, thin man, and tonight he wears a tuxedo, as always. His nose is hawk-like and he watches the crowd with small flitting eyes. But on that job . . . he wasn’t The Gent then. We had to bust in, and despite his reputation, he had no problem with it. He smashed into that bar and his pistol was a whirr of movement. Bang, bang, bang. All of them head-shots. I remember being impressed with him. We had a drink a
fterwards. Now he is my enemy. I note his place, five rows back from where River sits.

  Then I spot The Butcher, and without thinking, my fists clench tightly. The Butcher, who is never called by any other name and whose origin is a mystery, is a huge vending machine of a man. Six-foot-five, wide as a football player with limbs like trunks, The Butcher got his name for the way, just like Uncle Richard, he likes to get in close and personal. He often uses a machete, and the scenes he leaves behind are often like someone had a fit in the back of a butcher’s shop and started hacking madly at the meat. His face is all squashed features except for the eyes which are blue, like mine, and watch with a predator’s hunger. The people standing either side of him have left a half-foot of space. As I watch, they take another step back. He probably hasn’t even tried to intimidate them, it’s just the aura he gives off.

  This would be challenging enough with River, The Gent, and The Butcher. But where are the other two?