To the left of the entryway was a large open dining room, around a long plank table sat twelve heavy wooden chairs. An ornate wrought iron chandelier bathed the room in golden candlelight. Several men sat, eating and talking. Between them, the table was piled with platters of steaming sliced beef, potatoes, squashes of every color, bowls of fresh fruit, bottles of red wine and vodka.
Nika’s mouth was watering as she stumbled towards the dining room. Svetlana caught her elbow and steered her to the right, away from all the wonderful food and through a grand sitting room. With its large leather sofas and ironwork, it looked much like it had when the early Dons built the hacienda. Nika walked with her head turned back, watching the dinner disappear behind her.
“Come, little one,” Svetlana said, “I’ll find you a nice bed to lay on and then bring you dinner. Relax, dears, your troubles are over.”
The bedroom was at the back of the building. Five beds were the only furniture in the bare room. The walls were thick, dingy white adobe. There were no windows, the door was solid and heavy, when it was closed, all sounds of the outer house vanished. When Svetlana left to get dinner, they heard her turn the bolt in the door, locking them in.
“See. I told you it was going to work out,” Zhanna said, flopping down on one of the beds.
“You stupid twat,” Yumma snapped. Two days without a cigarette had left her nerves jangled and her mood rotten. “You think everything’s fine?”
“Svetlana won’t let them hurt us. Tell her, Nika.”
“Leave me out of it.” Nika lay back, closing her eyes.
“We will be fine,” Zhanna said.
“Guzel? Will she be fine? She’s taking a sauna, they’re feeding her grapes?” Yumma flipped her bleached hair back and started a mirthless laugh. “Maybe they took her into town for ice cream and cake.”
“Shut up, Yumma,” Nika said.
“Make me.”
Nika didn’t have the focus or energy to take any more shit. Pulling herself off the bed, she looked up at Yumma, who had six inches and at least forty pounds on her. Nika invaded the tall girl’s air space, her jaw was firm, her eyes hard.
Yumma broke eye contact first. “Screw you.”
Nika relaxed the tension in her face and suddenly started to laugh.
“What?” Zhanna asked, wondering if Nika had cracked.
“My first year at school,” Nika said still laughing, “a big girl beat me up. I went to my sister and told her, and she spanked me. Told me she would do it every day until I kicked the girl’s ass.”
“And that’s funny, why?”
Yumma started to chuckle, “Me too, only it was my mother. No dinner until you take that girl down.”
“You’re both crazy,” Zhanna said.
An hour later the lock finally turned and Svetlana came in with a tray filled with food. She hadn’t taken two steps in when Kolya stormed past her. He was a stocky older man in a velour jogging suit.
“What the fuck are you doing?” He knocked the tray from Svetlana’s hand.
“The girls are hungry.”
“Fuck them. They want to eat, they work. They don’t want to work, they can starve.” He kicked the fallen food into the hallway. After giving Svetlana a chilling glance, he walked out.
“I’m so sorry, men are pigs and Kolya is the worst. But he is the boss. I have to do what he says.” The girls looked at her, scared into silence.
“What does he want us to do?” Nika asked in almost a whisper.
“It is nothing, really. Men come here, fellow Russians, nice men, lonely. They pay us to spend time with pretty girls like you.” She made it sound innocent, almost a charity.
“And are we supposed to sleep with these men?” Nika asked.
“We are all women here, I can speak frankly. Which one of you hasn’t slept with a man because he was cute, or had a car, or could afford to buy you dinner and a night on the town? This is the same, you’ll see. Men are pigs and they want what we have, so why not charge them.” She left for a moment and returned with a washbasin, a water jug and fresh towels. “Clean yourselves and I will return for you in ten minutes.”
After the door locked, Zhanna burst into tears.
“She’s right,” Yumma said. “When I fucked Vadic, all he bought me was dinner. If I don’t like the man, I’ll tell him to fuck off. Svetlana wouldn’t make us screw a guy we didn’t want to.”
“You think?” Zhanna said, wiping her eyes.
“Sure.” Yumma splashed water on her face, dropped her dress off her shoulders and cleaned her pits. Slowly Zhanna joined her. Nika sat on her bed, not moving, watching them.
“Come on, Nika, you don’t want to stink up the place,” Yumma said.
“I’m not going,” Nika said.
“You have to eat.”
“No.”
“What if they are cute, and sweet?” Yumma asked.
“I don’t care.”
“What, you’re a virgin?”
“Yes.”
“Oh,” Yumma said, “it’s no big deal, really. All you have to do is lay there. The man does all the work.”
“I’m not going,” Nika said.
When Svetlana returned, she took notice of Nika but said nothing, as if she had been expecting her to refuse. She led the other two out and locked Nika in. The lights went out and Nika was left in the dark with her hunger and fear.
CHAPTER 9
“RELAX, YOUR FUCKING DOG IS FINE,” Piper said. We were sitting in the beast in the back parking lot of Club Xtasy. After finding Gregor’s apartment empty, I had gone to her. “Oh yeah, and Gregor and the Russian skirt are ok, too. By the way, are you fucking her or is Gregor?”
“No one’s fucking anyone.”
“That’s a shame.”
“Tell me about it.”
“If you’re not getting laid, then why are you tangled up in this mess?”
“Where are they?”
“Gregor called me, they’re laying low over at his mother’s place, he gave me the address. Now are you going to tell me what the hell you’ve got into?”
“Long story.”
“Will it have a happy ending?”
“I doubt it.” I filled her in, the short version, meeting Anya, the lap dance, the way she made me feel. I kept it simple.
“She must be good,” Piper laughed, “to convince an old cynic like you that she actually had the big O.”
“I don’t think she faked that.”
“Men never do, and you are a man. So you had a couch tumble, fell in love and now mobsters are trying to kill you. No, don’t explain it. It makes perfect sense in Moses World. You do know it is possible to fall in love without people ending up dead?”
“Didn’t say I was in love with her.”
“No, but you’re willing to risk life, limb and Gregor to save her and the baby sister. What’s that sound like to you?”
“Stupidity.”
“Exactly, or in other words, love.”
“Her little sister, she’s lost. Nobody will give a fuck if she lives, dies or anything in between.”
“And if you weren’t trying to get with the big sister, you’d still care?”
“Yes.”
“We have plenty of kids in trouble right here in LA, if it’s sainthood you’re aiming at.”
“I don’t know them, their stories. Hers, I do. If I don’t do something about it, I’m no better than the freaks who have her.”
Piper understood, even if she didn’t admit it. She and I didn’t vote, picket, donate to save the children, we just did what we could for those we met and left the big picture to those with grander visions than ours. She gave me Gregor’s mother’s address and a warm kiss goodbye. For a moment as her lips pressed on mine, I wondered when I was going to come to my senses and fall for her. Then again, even with all her flirting, she knew me too well to ever make the mistake of falling for me.
Gregor’s mother lived in a California bungalow court off Broadway in G
lendale. The small house smelled of boiled meat, cabbage and fresh baked bread. Gregor pulled me in the door, looking around to be sure we were free of prying eyes. His mother knew nothing of our troubles, he wanted to make sure I kept it that way.
“Those Russian fucks showed up at your place. I should have stayed, taken them out. I was worried about Anya.”
“You did right.”
“No.”
“I’m alive, you’re alive, Anya’s alive. You did fine. I want you to stay here while I get us a clean car and try and figure out what the hell we’ve stumbled into.”
“We’re going to find Nika.”
“Yeah, we’ll find her.”
From the path outside, I looked in through the kitchen window. Angel was curled up on the floor, gnawing on a bone at the feet of a small plump woman. Anya was chopping carrots into a bowl. She was wearing a large denim shirt that came down to her knees, it had never looked that good on me. Maybe it was the domestic setting, or the lack of makeup and spike heels, but all the sense of stripper was gone. She was a beautiful young woman, the kind you took home to mother, if your mother wasn’t a gin-swilling Jesus freak. I knew, looking at her, I could wake up every morning, roll over, see her and count myself a lucky man.
Gregor came into the kitchen, snatching a bite out of the salad Anya was making. She slapped his hand playfully and they both started laughing. I walked quickly away before I could convince myself I should stay.
I called Helen, my friend from the dog park. She had someone for me to meet. The pink light of sunset was sparkling off the Silver Lake reservoir as I rolled into the hills.
“Bottom line? You could stumble around Ensenada for months and never find their safe house.” Peter Brixon, an LA Times reporter, was sitting across from me in the breakfast nook in Helen’s home.
“And taking you with me will do what?” I asked.
“A, I speak Spanish, helpful when in Mexico. B, I’ve spent the last year investigating Russian sex trafficking, so we won’t be starting from zero.” He spoke in a rapid clipped way that reminded me of a meth freak two grams into a bad bender.
“Rolling with a punk civilian, looking for his shot at a Pulitzer, is an easy way to get dead.”
“Moses, don’t be such a prick,” Helen interjected, “Peter came here to help you.”
“No, he’s right,” Peter said. “You want my credentials? Fine. Somalia riots, Haiti coup, in Afghanistan I was embedded with Air Cav. Now do I strip down, compare bullet scars to prove I’m no fucking cherry?”
I looked from him to Helen. “I like him. If he walks like he talks, he may survive.”
I had only one stipulation and it was a deal breaker: he could come along, he could write his story, I didn’t even care if he turned it into a million dollar movie deal, but he wasn’t to use my name. Not in the paper, not with cops if it went wrong, not even to his favorite girl. Never. I didn’t need the heat that came flooding in with a little notoriety.
While Peter went to pack, I dropped the Crown Vic with Jason B, he was a part-time actor and full-time gear head. He had started a business buying used cop cars and selling them on eBay. But he discovered the real green was in building sleepers for people who needed to run fast and attract as little attention as possible. I had steered illicit business his way, and had hooked him up with a connection for cheap parts of questionable origin. I figured he owed me a solid.
“This lil’ sweetie had a blueprinted 454 that delivers an honest 400 horses to the rear tires. But she ain’t cheap.” He was showing me a mid-sixties International Harvester Scout, the light blue paint was sun bleached almost to white, where it wasn’t gray from bondo and primer. The chrome was pitted and the upholstery was more duct tape than fabric. It was perfect.
“How are the papers?” I asked him.
“They’ll survive a Smokey stop and snoop, but if they dig into the VINs, you’re fucked.” He was handsome in a tan, chiseled leading man way, as well as he could sling bullshit, I wondered why he hadn’t made it in Hollywood.
“What’ll a week cost me?”
“Does this look like Avis? Do I look like I try harder? This beauty is forty grand, cash. And that is my tit buddy price.”
“What do you charge your enemies?”
“Look under there.” He kneeled down, pointing a flashlight at the undercarriage. “That’s a custom suspension, she’ll take a hairpin at seventy without a hint of body roll. And those Brembos? Stop on a frickin’ dime and give you nine cents change.”
“I don’t doubt the quality, it’s the price got me choking,” I told him.
“Did I mention it has two separate cargo hides, Kevlar door panels? This bitch is a smuggler’s wet dream, she makes the Dukes of Hazzard’s General Lee look like a pussy wagon.”
“I’m sold. Now who am I going to have to fuck to get you to let me have it for a week?”
“If I let you take it for a week, I’m the one getting fucked and I don’t swing that way.”
“How’s a grand sound, and you keep the Crown Vic for collateral?” I offered.
He walked away, kicking up a small cloud of dirt. “Fuck it Moses, I know I owe you, but shit, you’re taking bread out of my baby’s mouth.”
“You don’t have any kids.”
“Yeah, but I could,” he said. “Alright, two grand, and if you dump it you owe me forty, plus I keep the Crown Vic for my trouble.”
I reached out my hand. “I could shout rape, but with our history, people might think it was my fault for stepping into your room.”
“Bitch and moan all you want, you know it’s a sweet deal.”
Hitting the gas, I knew he was right, the Scout leapt forward with enough force to pin me to the seat. Jason had done what he could to quiet the 454 down to a subtle roar, at idle it almost sounded like any other SUV, but when the hammer was dropped, there was no mistaking the deep throated rumble of the monster rat. I stowed my weapons in the cleverly disguised lockbox built into the rear quarter panel, all except my snub nose: it, I slipped into the pocket of my leather.
Peter Brixon was waiting in front of his condo, it was one of those classy new buildings in downtown. It had a sign that said if you lived here you’d be home now, plastered so that the slobs stuck in the 101’s constant traffic jam could see it and wish they could afford to live there. He had a canvas shoulder tote and a leather briefcase that had seen its better days somewhere in the 1990s.
“Nice car.” Peter looked over the Scout, unimpressed. “You want me to drive? I have a BMW 540.”
“Of course you do,” I said, holding the door for him to get in.
“I just meant, are you sure this thing will make it to Mexico?”
“Yup,” I said, climbing behind the wheel. It would have been easy enough to tell him about the Scout, but for some perverse reason, I liked the nervous look his face.
I had decided not to tell Gregor or Anya I was leaving. Chances were, they would have convinced me to take one or both of them. Anya didn’t have the docs needed to cross freely into Mexico, and Gregor was mistaken for an Arab enough to draw heat from the border patrol. That was what I told myself, but maybe it was looking in that window and seeing how normal and happy she looked that made me want to protect her from the jug fuck I was headed for.
It was late enough that the freeways out of town were moving with what we Angelinos had come to call fast: 65 mph with only slight congestion. As I watched the glittering high rises of downtown fade in my rearview, I got Peter to fill me in on the modern slave trade. Since the fall of Communism, Russia’s number one export had become women. He rattled off figures and stats like a machine gunner trying to stop the last wave. But the gist I got was that it was international big business, with no end in sight.
“And here, this is the saddest part, we are the end user of all this pain and we don’t even know it,” he rapped on. “If Johnny mid-level executive knew he was supporting rape, torture and destruction, do you think he would still pay for sex
?”
“Absolutely,” I said, without a doubt.
“No, if he knew, I mean really got the price these girls were paying for his fun, he wouldn’t do it. Not the sickos, they fuck for pain, but Johnny normal, he would stop.”
“If you say so.”
The Scout proved to be a grand road cruiser, smooth and responsive. After Peter had talked himself dry, he leaned back and was snoring. Around midnight we passed Camp Pendleton, the Marine Corps base where I had done basic before being shipped to that gang bang in the streets of Beirut. Unlike some Semper Fi freaks, it held no warm memories for me. The Marines had taught me to pull a trigger without thinking and not ever trust the old bastards who are giving orders. Fuck questioning authority, there was no question involved, if they asked you to do it, it was a bad idea. If it was a good idea, they’d do it themselves. If what we were doing in that mess was so noble and right, why hadn’t I met even one politician’s son on the firing line? And here we were stuck in the sand pile again, young men dying with no end in sight. Just thinking about it made my throat dry. It was nothing a good shot of scotch wouldn’t cure.
I almost pulled off in San Diego for a half pint, but I knew that would never be enough. Flipping the radio around the dial, I filled the car with classic rock, at least that’s what they called it. After sitting through some Foreigner 80s hair band bullshit, Elvis Costello started singing about Alison. By the time she was dragging her fingers through the wedding cake, my mind was filled with Anya. Why the fuck hadn’t I taken her to bed when she offered? Instead, I had stuffed my feelings for her down into my gut and pretended I didn’t care. I tossed her at Gregor. Were they fucking on his mother’s couch while I was on a suicide run south of the border? Bullshit. She was a good woman and he was a true friend. I needed a drink. I needed to get laid. I need the love of a strong woman. But none of that was in the cards I’d dealt myself. Instead, I was stuck on the road with a motormouth reporter looking for trouble that any sane man would run away from.
Out There Bad (Moses McGuire) Page 8
