I Don't Like Where This Is Going

by John Dufresne

  “So you killed her sister?”

  “Collateral damage. My associates here got a little carried away. But I always take care of my staff. If people minded their own p’s and q’s, they wouldn’t get hurt.”

  “You do understand that you can’t own people.”

  Tinker said, “Babatunji’s great-great-great-great-whatever grandfather was owned by President Thomas Jefferson.” Then he said, “Let’s be reasonable, Eli.”

  Eli the boss, I presumed, must be the Eli Belinki, head of enforcement for the Invisible Empire that Elwood talked about. He said, “That was a grand gesture—thirty stories down. You have to admit.”

  I said, “But nobody knows about it.”

  “The people who need to know about it, know.”

  “How did you make it go away?”

  “Not by magic.”

  Eli told Babatunji that Tinker was no longer his boss. “You’re working for me now, for the company.” Babatunji crossed the room. Eli told him to stand out front and let any late-arriving customers know that the place was closed for renovations. And then he said to me, “I didn’t expect to see you here. Or anywhere.”

  “Mladinic’s,” I said. Eli had been my wicked messenger.

  Grady rapped at the side of his head with the heel of his hand, opened his mouth in an extravagant yawn, and mumbled something unintelligible. The Ronan Farrow with the Hard Rock T-shirt sneezed. Eli said, “Nobody has to get hurt here.”

  What I learned in the next few minutes corroborated what Elwood had told me that afternoon at his kitchen table and then some. Eli’s Invisible Empire was quite jealous of its virtual monopoly of the Nevada sex trade and vigorous in its pursuit of renegades and upstarts. You can have your brothel, your franchise, as it were, but you’d best buy your product from, and pay your tribute to, headquarters, or you would be shut down. Just like in the burger business. But then Tinker and his Merry Men decided to go rogue, bypass the organization’s recruitment and distribution department, and hope that Eli wouldn’t find out. But those impulsive hopes were dashed when news of the single-wide explosion and the deaths of Creed and Nacho reached Vegas—a call, perhaps from one of the other Shoshone County sheriff’s deputies on Eli’s payroll—and summoned Eli and his Ronans to Pesadilla. They must have flown to Austin and driven down.

  Tinker said, “What about the Asians? They do what they want and get away with it.”

  Eli said, “They smuggle in the product and keep themselves busy with home invasions, identity theft, counterfeiting, that sort of thing. Some meth trafficking. Yes, and some prostitution. They have a niche clientele, the guys with acute cases of yellow fever, and we’re okay with that.”

  Carl said none of this was his affair, what Grady did on his own time was Grady’s own business, and Eli told him to stifle it, and Carl said he was leaving, and he took out a pistol, waved it at Eli, and backed himself to the door. Eli said, “Look at my eyes, Carl, and listen to my words: Stop right there.” When Carl reached for the doorknob, Eli shot him and walked to Carl, bent over the writhing body, and said, “That there was a round-point, full-metal-jacket slug you took, and it’s going to hurt like hell for quite some time, and that should keep your mind off trying to stand.”

  Eli straightened up. “Gets hot in here,” he said. He lifted his mask, wiped his sweaty face, and said, “So how are we going to play this, Tinker? Intelligently or expeditiously?”

  And there it was, Bay’s reveal staring me in the face. I recognized Eli as the excruciating asshat poker player at the Mandalay Bay casino and as the unsettling gentleman drinking a Rob Roy at the Boar’s Head Bar. I said, “How long have you been watching us?”

  “Since that afternoon.”

  “I can’t be a threat.”

  “You’re a nuisance, and I thank you for coming to your going-away party.” He nodded at Tinker and said, “We’re paying Tinkerbelle a visit because he forgot he worked for me and was not an independent contractor. We’re here to jog his memory.”

  A man walked downstairs, stopped at the landing, took in the scene, said, “Whatever you got going on here, it doesn’t concern me. I’ll just be going.” He put on his cowboy hat.

  “Not another one,” Eli said. “You’re not going anywhere.”

  “Do you know who I am?”

  “I don’t care who you are.”

  “Marv Pearl, treasurer of Shoshone County.”

  “And you just had sex with, what, a twelve-year-old girl?”

  Marv said, “Out of my way,” and stepped toward the door.

  The Ronan with the blue oxford shirt slammed his pistol into the side of Marv’s face. Marv dropped like a rattlebag.

  Eli said, “Why does everything have to be so fucking difficult?” He told three of the Ronans to go upstairs and fetch the girls and their gentlemen.

  I said, “One of those ladies is my girlfriend.”

  Eli said, “If you had listened to me then, none of this would be happening now. You understand that, don’t you?”

  The sneezy Ronan sneezed again. I told him he was probably allergic to the mask.

  “Think so?”

  “Latex is a common allergen.”

  He pointed to his mask and said what sounded like, “It’s a mess in here. I’m slimed.”

  Eli told him to find the loo and clean up.

  I said, “Why do you wear the masks?”

  “At first because of the surveillance cameras and the facial recognition software the Feds have, but it’s become a branding thing.”

  Three girls, not looking older than fifteen, in vanilla robes and strawberry high heels, a blonde, a brunette, and an electric-blue-haired beauty, came down the stairs, followed by two Ronans, followed by three bewildered men, one wearing only black socks, one a red thong, and one a dog collar and leash, followed by the third Ronan carrying an unconscious Patience in her street clothes over his shoulder. He laid Patience on the couch. I said, “I’ll take care of her.”

  Eli told me to be still, and then he told Tinker he was taking the girls as a down payment. Tinker said how was he supposed to pay up without the brothel, and how could he run a brothel without girls. The blue-haired girl walked over to the knocked-out cowboy Marv, bent down, and spit in his face. Then she took off a shoe and pummeled his face with the stiletto heel. She beat him back into consciousness until the returning Sneezy took her by the shoulders, mumbled something in her ear, and embraced her as she wept in his arms, and I couldn’t help but imagine the start of an improbable but tender love story right there, right now, wherein Sneezy and Blue get permission from the irascible but sentimental Boss, the corporation’s CEO, to leave the business and start a life of their own back in Blue’s hometown in Idaho, and they wait for her to graduate from high school, and have a kid and get married, in that order, because that’s how it’s done these days, and, of course, being out of my mind with fear, I was using the Hollywood love story to distract myself from my probable imminent death, from the loss of Patience, and from my wretched helplessness.

  Eli told his men to take the three girls out to the cars. Creed’s phone buzzed in my pocket. I slipped it out. A message from Bay: We’re outside. The girls objected to being moved. The brunette told Bleak, “Get your fucking hands off me, shithead.” The blonde said she was sick. Eli asked me what the text was about. I put the phone in my pocket. I said, “Mom. She worries.”

  He held out his hand, wiggled his fingers. “Give!”

  I handed him my phone, not Creed’s.

  “Nothing here.”

  “That’s how I know it’s Mom.”

  When Grady bolted for the door, Eli fired a warning shot into the floor. Eli told one of his Ronans to lock the three johns in the closet, where they could have a circle jerk. Then he noticed that the bullet shot to the floor had passed through Marv’s neck. “Motherfucker. Why won’t people listen to me?”

  Tinker said, “You killed my best customer.”

  Eli said, “And you’re next
.” Then he directed his men to throw the ex-cowboy into the closet with the others.

  I guessed that Eli wasn’t used to this level of chaos in his operations, and I also figured the living closeted trio was probably happy being out of the line of fire, except for the leashed one, who claimed to be claustrophobic and whimpered audibly until Eli fired a shot through the closet door, and then everything went quiet for a five-count, and then Babatunji exploded through the shattered glass of the large front window and landed at my feet. His wrists were bound behind his back with plastic handcuffs. Eli and company leveled their pistols while the women screamed, and we all dropped to the floor. Tinker stood and took a bullet from somewhere in the shoulder.

  Grady pointed at the west window and we all turned and saw Bay there with his gun. The oxford Ronan fired at Bay and blew out the window, then fell when a second shot hit him in the back. We heard a voice I recognized as Mike’s say, “Lay down your weapons and come outside. You’re surrounded.” And then Bay was in the east window and the west window at the same time. Was he working with mirrors out there? And then we heard what I knew was Bay’s voice coming from somewhere over our heads, and he was gone from the windows. He said, “We’re going to start tossing in tear gas.”

  Eli said, “And we’ll start tossing out bodies.”

  Touché. One for the bad guys. I saw that Sneezy still had his arm around Blue’s trembling shoulders. Babatunji opened his glazed eyes without moving his thick head and then closed them again. Patience stirred. I squeezed her hand. She groaned and blinked her eyes.

  Bay said, “Send the women out, and we’ll take them and leave.”

  “They’re hostages. And we’re walking out with them.”

  Two.

  “And if you try anything, anything at all, we’ll kill them one at a time. Or all at once.”

  Mike said, “You okay in there, Coyote?”

  “I’ve been better.”

  “Patience?”

  “She’s with me.”

  Eli and company walked out with the girls, got into their three cars, and drove off toward the highway. I looked out the front window and saw no sign of Bay or Mike. I yelled that we were not alone, as they surely knew, and said there were no weapons in evidence. And suddenly Bay and Mike were standing there in the room, Mike wielding a desert-tan tactical sniper’s rifle.

  Mike looked at the senseless Babatunji and said, “I know this guy, but who are these other clowns?” He walked to the chair where a very blanched Tinker was slumped and bleeding. “That’s got to hurt.”

  Bay said, “We should be going. We have hostages to rescue.”

  Mike said, “Is this your establishment?”

  Tinker nodded.

  “It’s fucked up what you’re doing here. You know that.” Mike fired a burst at the ceiling and the glass chandelier crashed to the floor.

  Mike asked Grady his name. I said he was deaf. Patience said his name was Grady and he had raped her. Mike put his mouth to Grady’s ear and yelled, “Can you hear me now?”

  Grady nodded. Mike pointed to Patience and then poked Grady in the chest. “It’s unfortunate you did that, pig.” Mike pulled some handcuffs from behind his back and cuffed Grady to Tinker. He held his finger and thumb an inch apart, leaned in to Grady’s ear, and said, “I’m about this close to shoving a grenade so far up your ass, if you burp, you’ll explode.”

  I crossed the room to Grady. I took Grady’s head in one hand, Tinker’s in the other, and slammed their skulls together. Grady’s eyes rolled up into his head. Tinker winced but recovered and smiled. I grabbed the two heads again but made the mistake of visualizing what a second battering would do to Grady’s skull, and I stopped.

  Mike grabbed my arm, shook his head, and said, “He can’t feel anything now.”

  And then we heard yelling from the closet and pounding on the door. “Customers,” I said.

  Mike pulled a Hummer sport-utility truck around front, and we hopped in. It was a paramilitary pickup with a cargo bed in back. We drove a hundred yards down the road, and Mike stopped, let the engine idle, got out, and walked to the back. Patience said we couldn’t let the assholes get away with the girls. Bay said the three getaway cars were now equipped with GPS devices, and he showed Patience the three beeping vehicles on his iPhone’s map. He figured they had ten miles on us. Fifteen, tops. Meanwhile, Mike pulled a rocket launcher and a rocket out of the cargo bed. He knelt about ten yards from the car.

  Bay said, “Really, Mike?”

  “The coup de grace,” Mike said. He fired a rocket at the bordello and scored a direct hit on the second floor, lit it up like a Roman candle. He put the weapon back in the truck bed and got back in the driver’s seat. He fastened his belt.

  I said, “Where did you get a rocket launcher?”

  “Craigslist.”

  We saw the bronze pickup at the end of the road. I said, “Not this asshole again. This guy’s been following us for days.”

  Mike eased up to the truck. We could see that the tires had been shot out and the engine was steaming. Our stalker sat at the wheel, crying. Mike rolled down his window. The driver said, “I was parked here bothering no one, waiting for your friends in the backseat to come by, when these maniacs just opened fire. I took a bullet in the leg and one that grazed my skull and blew my hat off.” We saw the hole in the door that may have been the entry for the bullet in the leg. One lens of his glasses was shattered.

  “I don’t even own a gun,” the driver said.

  Mike and I helped him down from the cab and into the backseat of our vehicle. Mike got out his substantial first-aid kit and cleaned and dressed our stalker’s wound. Our stalker thanked him profusely, wondered if we might have something for the pain. Mike said, “Name it.” Our stalker thanked Mike, swallowed a Percocet, and introduced himself as Lawson Scott, PI.

  He said, “The Kurlanskys hired me to find your friend Charlotte Edge. Said she murdered their beloved son and brother. And I found her with you, but then I lost you in Tonopah. Got stuck behind a jackknifed tractor-trailer for an hour and a half. And then I found you two again in Lovelock, but not Charlotte, and I was hoping you would lead me back to her.”

  I said, “We won’t.”

  Bay said, “Find her and what?”

  “Call them with her whereabouts and punch the clock.”

  Patience said, “So you’re not very good at your job?”

  “I’m terrible at it, but I was the best the Kurlanskys could afford. I get two hundred dollars a day plus expenses, and I’m going to lose a bundle on this assignment. I mean, how do I explain a lost truck to Hertz?”

  “Explain it stolen,” Mike said.

  “Usually I’m spying on cheating husbands in Mendocino County. Steady work.”

  I said, “What’s that like?”

  “One: they are always cheating. Two: they are always cheating with women from work. Three: they never leave their wives. Four: they never leave their girlfriends.”

  “So the wives leave them?” Patience said.

  “About half the time.”

  I said, “We thought you might be a bad guy.”

  “Just a working stiff.”

  Patience said, “Have you thought about another line of work?”

  “This is all I’m suited for.”

  Bay said, “Where are you from, Lawson Scott?”

  He smiled. “I usually tell people I’m from Alaska. Petersburg. Tell them I grew up swimming with seals and sledding down glaciers. But it’s all a made-up story.”

  “Why make it up?” I said.

  “Because the truth is trite and tedious.”

  I tried to imagine the horror that Patience had endured and hoped that, for now, in her confusion, she might assume that this was all an appalling dream.

  Once we were back on the road, those of us in the backseat—Lawson, Patience, and me—fell asleep one by one. When Bay woke us up, the eastern sky was lightening, and we were turning into a hospital parking lot i
n Tonopah. Mike parked the car near the ER and helped Lawson out of the Hummer. He said, “I’m glad you like making up stories, Lawson, because very shortly you’re going to have to explain this gunshot wound.” He leaned Lawson against an Audi. He called the hospital and told them where to find a seriously injured man. We said our goodbyes and drove away.

  Patience said, “What about the girls?”

  “We have their location.”

  14

  MIKE WAS READY to go shopping for our upcoming rescue mission. Deep shopping. What he needed you couldn’t buy off the shelf. He said he was promoting a free market economy by circumventing needless governmental regulations. And then he laughed, slipped a Fat Elvis doughnut into his coat pocket, and headed out. Bay, Mercedes, Patience, and I ordered pizza, made cocktails, and sat in the living room talking. Patience said she kept seeing Grady’s miserable face everywhere she looked. Her sadness and grief at her assault had evolved to rage. She’d need to see a therapist to talk her way toward meaning and a degree of serenity, but that therapist could not be me. I squeezed her hand; she put her head on my shoulder.

  Mercedes told us about her new short story, inspired by the flood of prostitution that had been deluging our lives recently. She was calling the story “Firefly,” which was the central character’s stage name. It’s about a young woman who kills herself after an ex-boyfriend outs her on Facebook as a porn star. It was not the porn business that killed her, not the dirtbags who inhabit that debased world, but the friends at school she would have to face, their smirks, insults, and corrosive laughter, those who were spreading the juicy news, and the church ladies, her mother’s friends she would see on Sundays, the shame and the humiliation of the public revelation. Mercedes said she thought she’d been writing the story of a woman debased by men and by the sex industry, but then the story changed directions without her knowing how or why, and she followed the accidental plot and now she couldn’t get Firefly out of her head.

  When Kit arrived with our pizza—two Hang Tens and a Popeye and Olive Oil—Bay set the boxes on the counter, explained our situation, mentioned the kidnapped young women now being defiled at the House of Mirth, and said he’d pay for her evening’s salary, tips, and then some, if she’d come in for a while and talk with us. And eat, of course, Bay said. And drink. Kit called work and told her manager that her car had broken down and she was waiting for the tow truck. She louched her Pernod with water till it was milky and drank it with her pizza. Django snuggled into Patience’s lap, sniffed the aromatic molecules in the air, and closed his eyes.