I Don't Like Where This Is Going

by John Dufresne

  Bay told Kit that the young girls he’d mentioned to her were being held as sex slaves—there was no other way to say it—at the place she had called the House of Mirth. He told her that we’d called the police tip line several times, but nothing was done. We called the homeowner’s association. Got an assessment-of-violations notice as an answer. We had violated the community’s rules by having three cars parked in a two-car driveway.

  Kit said, “You don’t want the cops involved. The two sleazebags who work the night shift over there are off-duty Metro cops.”

  I said, “One of them built like a brick shithouse?”

  “They call him Filthy Luka. The smaller one’s Nicky Slots.”

  “Anyone else inside besides the girls?”

  “The madam who calls herself the concierge. Tulin something-or-other.”

  Bay said, “We have a job opportunity for someone cunning, playful, and quick.”

  Kit smiled.

  “We need to get you inside the house, and I know that’s against your company’s very sensible policy, and I don’t want you to lose your job.”

  “I can’t be delivering pizza all my life. Get in and then what?”

  “You’ll wear a tiny camera. We just need to know what we’re getting into.”

  “I’ll complain of female troubles and ask to use the bathroom.”

  “Get lost if possible and walk through all the rooms you can.”

  “They have a standing order every Sunday at seven: two Blondes on the Beach, two Manhattan Men, two Del Reys, one BBQ Chicken, one box of Parmesan Pull-Aparts, and a case of Red Bull.”

  “Tomorrow it is.”

  I said, “How well do you know this Tulin?”

  “Not at all. Catch a glimpse of her once in a while. But she’s on the website.”

  “Website?”

  “Tulinsgirls.com.”

  Bay got out the computer. I called Elwood. We needed a fourth. I told him the plan, and he agreed. Bay made appointments for a party of three randy fellows looking for nubile girlfriends, Saturday night at seven. “I paid a premium for a private party. We’ll have the joint to ourselves.”

  MONDAY MORNING BRIGHT and early, Kit arrived with the camera and a box of cinnamon torpedo doughnuts. Everything had gone well at the neighborhood brothel except that she’d only made it halfway up the stairs before Madame Tulin told her about the downstairs bathroom. Kit was still able to see that there were two bedrooms to the left of the stairs and one to the right. Mike got the strawberry jam out of the fridge. Bay attached the camera to his laptop. Elwood poured our coffees, and we all watched Kit’s eight-minute reconnaissance video.

  In the video, Filthy Luka took the pizzas and drinks from Kit, paid her, opened the door, and consulted with Tulin before letting Kit inside. Tulin sat at a desk staring at a computer. She wore a white open-sided blouse, black leotards, black ballet slippers, and reading glasses. The bathroom was off the kitchen, where Nicky Slots sat at the table playing solitaire. He stood when he saw Kit and flexed his knees so his white flared linen slacks fell adroitly over his black-and-white Spectator shoes. He asked her if she was here for a job interview. He wore his blue dress shirt untucked, with the sleeves rolled up in the Italian style to show the contrasting red color of the cuffs. The large living room was uncluttered, tastefully simple, and clean. There was a Modigliani print of a reclining nude on the wall above Tulin’s desk.

  Mike spread jam on his doughnut. “Piece of cake,” he said.

  I said, “You know it’s kidnapping, right?”

  THE RESCUE MISSION went without a hitch. We arrived shortly before seven. Luka, our greeter, asked for our names.

  Bay said, “James, party of three.”

  “Right this way, gentlemen.”

  Tulin said, “Welcome. Shall I bring the girls down?”

  “We like a surprise,” I said.

  Tulin asked Elwood if they had ever met. He told her they hadn’t. She said, “You look awfully familiar.”

  Elwood said, “I’ve got one of those faces.”

  Bay said, “The girls are young, correct?”

  Tulin said, “Three unblemished virgins right off the banana boat from Belize. And they’re the only ladies in the house right now.”

  Elwood clapped his hands. “Let’s get the show on the road.”

  Tulin said, “Nicky, would you show the gentlemen upstairs?”

  Bay said, “We’ll find our way.”

  Tulin pointed to the three bedrooms in turn. “Blonde. Brown. Blue.”

  I ASKED BLUE what her name was. Brenda. I said, “Brenda, get dressed.”

  “You mean un-.”

  “We’re leaving.”

  “I know you.”

  “I’m one of the people who tried to rescue you from the bordello up in Pesadilla.”

  “Your eye looks better.”

  “Get dressed. Put all of your essentials in a bag. We’ve got fifteen minutes.”

  “What the fuck is going on?”

  “We’re getting you to a safe place.”

  “I’ve heard that before.”

  “As we speak, one of my colleagues is disabling the three bottom-feeders downstairs.”

  “Who is he, Batman?”

  “He’s good at what he does.”

  “I hope you do a better job this time.” She took off her heels and put on some turquoise and yellow sneakers with Hello Kitty’s face on them. She slipped on sweatpants and a very large Dallas Cowboys T-shirt. She looked around, opened the dresser drawers.

  My phone buzzed: the coast-is-clear from Mike. We heard a bedroom door open across the hall.

  While we were all busy upstairs, Mike had walked up the front steps wearing a NO BED BUGS: ACE PEST CONTROL T-shirt and a full facepiece respirator around his neck, carrying a leather tool bag. He set the bag down and told Luka, “The exterminator’s here.”

  “We don’t need one.”

  “Until you do.”

  “What?”

  “I got a call about a cock-a-roach infestation.”

  Luka shook his head. “I’ll need to see your business card.”

  Mike knelt on one knee, unzipped his bag, removed an aerosol can, slipped his respirator over his face, and sprayed Luka in the face with Kolokol-1, an incapacitating agent developed by Soviet scientists and used by the KGB, which takes effect immediately and renders the recipient unconscious for two to six hours if it doesn’t kill him. Then he knocked on the door, told Tulin there was a sick man on her porch. When she answered the knock, she, too, was summarily incapacitated. That left Nicky. Mike walked through the living room to the kitchen, and heard Nicky say, “Is it my shift already?” And then Nicky went to sleep. By the time we all assembled in the living room, Mike had dragged the three senseless stooges to the pool and duct-taped them to three chaise longues.

  Elwood and Kit drove the girls to the Mustard Seed, a Catholic Worker House of Hospitality, across the border in California near Mono Lake, a place run by friends of Kit. Elwood interviewed the girls, Donna, Lourdes, and Brenda—who told him that her real real name was Christy—on the way for the story he’d write for the Wingo Star and maybe also place in a national outlet. The girls would stay at the Seed until they could be reunited with their families, if that was wise, or placed in the homes of families who’d been providing sanctuary for illegal immigrants. The best we could do for now was get the girls out of harm’s way. And probably get our own asses out of Vegas.

  WE DIDN’T GET our asses out soon enough. I woke late the day after the rescue to find that Django had unrolled the toilet paper in the half bath off the hall, had unrolled the paper towels on the kitchen counter, had knocked over the vase of calla lilies on the dining room table, pushed the magazines off the coffee table, and was now lounging on his side in the litter box watching me. His bowl was empty. He was used to and expected a twenty-four-hour Vegas buffet. I apologized, and to make it up to him, I opened a can of flaked fish and shrimp, and he wept for joy.
/>   “You spoil him,” Mike said.

  “Good morning, Mr. Lynch. Can I fix you breakfast?”

  “You making doughnuts?”

  “Eggs?”

  “I’ll bring home a dozen assorted. I’m driving by the House of Mirth—see what’s cooking.”

  I said nothing about the wisdom of returning to the scene of a crime. I got the coffee started, went to wake Patience. She was already in the shower. I peeked in and said good morning. I retrieved the mail, poured myself a coffee, and at the kitchen table sifted through the circulars and bills for people Bay had made up. We got a vintage postcard of C Street in Virginia City from Alice O. She wrote that she found peace and solitude unnerving, tourists amusing, and the night skies glorious.

  Bay entered the kitchen and poured himself a coffee. He sat, smiled, and told me that our little friend had chewed through the wire on my phone charger.

  “Django!”

  Bay said, “I don’t know where we’re going, but we can’t stay here.”

  “We’ll ask Patience. She’s the travel agent.”

  “And we should leave soon.”

  “Mercedes?”

  “She’ll join us later. When the class is finished and she can get leave from work.” And then Bay said that we all had chipped in to finance the rescue, and he hoped I didn’t mind, but he’d tapped into my savings account.

  I said, “How much?”

  “How much were those three lives worth?”

  “You’re not going to answer me, are you?”

  “Mike will recoup our losses.”

  “How?”

  “You buy arms, you sell arms. And you don’t want to know.”

  “I do and I don’t.”

  “We’ll leave first thing in the morning.”

  “Where are we going?” Patience said. She kissed me on the cheek and sat down. I poured her a coffee.

  “That’s up to you,” Bay said.

  We had read online that the Shoshone County Sheriff’s Department was investigating an explosion in a mobile home apparently caused by a propane gas leak that left two men dead. They did not suspect foul play. No mention that one of the victims died with his leg caught in a spring-loaded trap. Nothing about a bordello in ruins; nothing about a missing county treasurer or an injured deputy, not to mention a slew of bodies in the ruined bordello The tentacles of Invisible Empire’s PR department had a long reach, indeed.

  We were down to the one vehicle, Mike’s disposable Hummer. The plan was for me to drive Bay to Mercedes’s, then drop Patience off for her doctor’s appointment and Mike at the City of Dreams, where he’d be spending the day and night at the sports book. I’d swing by Elwood’s to say goodbye, then fetch Patience at the doctor’s, drive her home so she could arrange our travel, buy kitty Ambien at Petland, get the Hummer detailed, retrieve Bay, drive the car to the Caesars Palace parking lot, and leave it. Bay and I would catch a cab home, pack, clean, get some sleep, rise early, and take a cab to the airport if we were flying, to Hertz if we were driving, to Amtrak if we were training. Mike would meet us at whichever.

  Mike came back with the Hummer thankfully empty of weapons and ammo and with a box of doughnuts. He told us it smelled like rain outside. Bay told him he was dreaming. I was reminded to check my savings account on my bank app, and I was pretty sure I had more money now than I had before.

  Mike opened the box, and all I could think of was a busload of ladies in crazy hats. Bay picked one up. “What the hell is this?” Here was an orange flower on a featherbed of whipped cream on top of a glazed pillbox doughnut.

  “Pumpkin cheesecake,” Mike said. He himself preferred the one with what looked like palmetto bugs on top that were actually dates.

  Patience said we were all going to have heart attacks. I gave her a bite of my maple bacon bar, and she said her teeth hurt. She asked Mike if he’d brought any fruit, and he took the slice of banana off the top of a Fat Elvis. Patience laughed so hard she started to cry.

  • • •

  ELWOOD SAT TYPING at his computer and listening to the Handsome Family sing about Nikola Tesla’s last days of wonder. His Chekhov cocktail stood beside the voice recorder, the memo pads, and the iPhone. I made myself a negroni. I told him we were leaving.

  “Who am I going to play with?”

  “How’s the piece going?”

  “I’ve got photos of the girls at the house and of the three criminals downstairs. No one’s going to rattle any cages. I may have to lie low after this gets posted. But I can write anywhere.”

  “You can’t post our photos.”

  “Faces pixilated.”

  “You don’t have to mention the Kolokol, do you? Call it chloroform.”

  “I’m a journalist, not a fiction writer. I write the facts.”

  “As you see them.”

  “I don’t fabricate.”

  “It’s all fiction, Elwood.”

  “I won’t use your names, of course.”

  PATIENCE SAID THE DOCTOR’S visit went as expected, said she’d be worried until the test results were in, would be distressed for a very long time, and would be angry forever. “And I’m not letting go of that anger. It’s empowering.”

  “Just as long as you use that power for good.”

  Patience smiled and punched my shoulder. “I’m glad you’re around.”

  I said, “Do you want to talk about it?”

  “The assault, you mean?”

  “Yes.”

  “No.”

  • • •

  I BACKED THE HUMMER into a parking space in the rear of the Caesars Palace parking lot. It seemed a shame to leave all the new toys—the self-balancing luggage system that Mike used for packing weapons; the auto rescue kit with its flashlight, seat-belt cutter, and glass-shattering window hammer; the first-aid kit; and the Igloo beer cooler—in a car we were abandoning. We stepped out of the car. Bay said the air had a sweet and pungent zing. Eddie Fisher sang “Oh! My Papa” on Bay’s phone—a call from Little Bob. Bay put him on speaker.

  Bay said, “Hey, Dad.”

  Little Bob said, “Lorena’s in labor.”

  “Congratulations.”

  “Her water broke just now.”

  “As it should.”

  “What’s that about?”

  “Your baby wants to get born.”

  “Doesn’t taste like water.”

  Bay put his arm on the window of the Hummer and his head in his arm. “No, you didn’t.”

  “What do we do now?”

  “Call the doctor.”

  “Which one?”

  “The ob-gyn.”

  “What’s that spell?”

  “Baby doctor.”

  “Don’t have one.”

  “There’s no hospital in Flaubert, is there?”

  “There’s no pharmacy in Flaubert.”

  “Call 911.”

  “Nine-one-one. I’m writing it down.”

  “Or boil some water and get ready for some screaming.”

  “Will do.”

  “Call it now.”

  “Roger that.”

  “Call me later.”

  “Affirmative.”

  Bay hung up.

  I said, “I’m worried about that baby.”

  Bay said we should get a drink or two before catching a cab home. One for the baby, one for our bon voyage. “To the Luxor, where our misadventure began and where it will end.”

  I said, “The Ronan pharaohs might be there.”

  Bay said, “Ouch.”

  On our walk down the Strip, Bay and I noticed flashes of lightning in the southern sky. Bay inhaled and said, “Petrichor?”

  “Ozone,” I said. “Petrichor comes with the rain.”

  “We may get some.”

  I said, “Some parts of the Atacama Desert in Chile haven’t had rain in four hundred years.”

  “They should schedule a picnic.”

  Dozens of men in modest black suits, white shirts, and silk ties, a
few of them sporting fedoras, stood separately along the sidewalk, a half dozen or so on every block. They all looked noticeably interested in, but resolutely unengaged with, the working girls out for their promenade. And they all sported high and tight Soviet Bloc vintage haircuts. I asked one of them, a man with an aquiline nose, a dimpled chin, and silvery blue eyes, what was going on.

  He said, “You are free and that is why you are lost,” and then he opened his hand to show us a cockroach on its back, waving its antennae, and shaking its six sturdy legs. The man said of the insect, “He’s late for work.” He closed his fingers around the roach and told us that the North American Kafka Society was having its annual convention at Circus Circus.

  At the Luxor we quite literally bumped into Loomis, the blunt and burly security guard who had ushered us out of the casino on the day that Layla died. Bay had his eyes on his cell phone, reading a text from Little Bob: Water boiling. What now? and walked right into Loomis. Bay apologized. Loomis adjusted his uniform jacket and said, “You two.” He flared his nostrils like he was oxygenating for action.

  I said, “Hello, Loomis.”

  He leaned his head back and looked down his nose at me. “Did you boys ever identify that woman?”

  I said, “What woman?”

  Bay stooped and picked up a trifold camouflage wallet, opened it, and we all saw a photo of Loomis dressed in a Jedi warrior uniform, a raven perched on his shoulder. Bay said, “I believe this belongs to you, Mr. Truman Loomis.”

  Loomis patted his back pocket and then took the wallet from Bay. We excused ourselves and made our way across the lobby toward the Aurora, a bar that featured exotic drinks and fake northern lights on its ceiling.

  Xena, our waitress, told us she’d been in Vegas four months, loved it, came here from Saugus, Mass. She was slim as a minute, fair as marble, had a splash of exuberant freckles on her cheeks, and tight curls in her wild red hair. She aspired to be a singer, she told us. Well, she was a singer. She aspired to sing onstage, professionally. She admired Edith Piaf and Billie Holiday. When Xena returned with our hibiscus martinis, Bay passed his hand over his linen napkin, lifted the napkin to reveal a single long-stemmed orange rose, and handed it to Xena, who blushed, thanked him, and hurried back to her station to slip it into a wine bottle.