Dirty Debt

by Lauren Landish

  Javier tries to smile, but it hurts, so he just grimaces and nods. “Sorry, Ryker.”

  “No sweat, man. We’re gonna get you stitched up, you’ll rest up a little, and then you’ll be back in no time. You showed guts, which is number one. We’ll work on getting those guts under control later.”

  Nobody says anything else until we get to the doctor’s place, dropping Eric and Javier off at the underground clinic while Marcus and I head off to ditch the van. As I drive, Marcus rides shotgun, his eyes constantly sweeping the streets around us. “So, Ryker, about Doc . . .”

  “Yeah?” I ask, and Marcus looks over.

  “You do know that he’s not a real doctor, right? He was just a Navy Corpsman who went to State on an ROTC scholarship.”

  I nod, giving my brother a smirk. “I know that. You know that. But Javier doesn’t need to know. He’ll be fine. Now, on to business. After tonight, we’ve got to be ready to move and move fast. The next hit’s going to be at the funeral for Sal Francisco. If we’re lucky, we might even get a shot in on Jacob Waters himself.”

  Marcus nods, his hands tightening on the steering wheel. “We’ll be ready.”

  Chapter 4

  Sarah

  Breakfast is light, which I’m glad for. After getting the news that Sal Francisco was killed along with some other men in his group, Jacob’s been on edge. I’m eager to finish and stay out of his sight. Stanzie, on the other hand, hasn’t been as lucky as me. Her left eye is half-closed from the slap he gave her last night when she supposedly looked at him wrong. I should feel bad for her, but I don’t. I know it’s wrong, I really do, but I’m practically numb to what Jacob does to us now.

  The only good thing is that he’s been busy. The hit was messy, according to what the men who’ve come to the mansion have said. They gossip almost constantly whenever they get a chance, filling the time they’re standing around bragging and gossiping. They’re worse than old women that way. There’s a name they keep saying too . . . Ryker. It’s a name I’ve heard more and more over the past few months. Apparently, he’s some sort of street gang leader. They say that he and three of his boys hit the card game that Sal Francisco, Jimmie Clausen, and Julio Gonzales were playing at. From the way they’re talking, Ryker took out at least two of the three men himself. Until the hit on the game, Jacob talked about Ryker like someone would talk about a particularly annoying fly. Not anymore.

  “I said after the funeral, I want the best men in town to hunt that motherfucker down and bring me his balls in a silver bowl!” Jacob yells into his phone. He’s pacing back and forth, running his free hand through his silvery gray hair, looking like neither the distinguished tough, bargaining real estate tycoon the law abiding public knows, nor the bad ass mob boss the other side of society knows. Instead, he looks like he’s just this side of unhinged, and a lot older too. “I don’t care if it gets messy! I don’t care if he’s got every street rat from the South Side to the Tracks to the Narrows on his side. I want him dead!”

  I cringe and quickly go to my room, seeing that I’ve got about ninety minutes before we need to leave for the funeral. Stanzie joins me soon, but I wave her away. The poor woman has been through enough. She should do like me and stay hidden. “Go rest, Stanzie. Is the house clean?”

  “Yes, Mrs. Waters,” she says, her voice quavering. “Thank you.”

  Watching her leave breaks my heart. She’s grateful for even this little bit of reprieve, and the first inevitable dark thoughts start to fill my head. Stanzie’s still fighting, but she’s only been around a little while. I wonder how much fight’s going to be left when she’s been here as long as I have.

  There’s no escape. I know that, and she will soon too.

  He’s done it before, he showed me what he did to his second wife, the one who supposedly disappeared while the two of them were scuba diving in Thailand. They never did find the body.

  So what exactly is stopping me? Is it just that I hate him that much?

  But hating Jacob is a lot like hating a hurricane. You can hate on it all you want, but there isn’t a hell of a lot you can do to stop it from tearing the roof off your house if it wants to. All you can do is try and get out of the way, and I’m in a situation where I’m not able to even do that.

  I start to get dressed, thoughts as dark as my dress swirling around my head, and I’m so deep in thought that when Jacob puts his hand on my shoulder, I’m lucky that I don’t screw up my lipstick.

  “You surprised me,” I say softly, putting the lipstick away. “I was thinking about the funeral.”

  “I can see that,” Jacob says, looking at me in the mirror. He doesn’t say anything yet, but I can see from the look on his face that he doesn’t approve. Nothing new there.

  I look at myself in the mirror, and I don’t think I look bad at all. Sure, the lipstick isn’t deep maroon or something, but it’s not like I’m wearing fire engine red or bubblegum pink. “I just wanted to look pretty today.”

  Jacob glares at me in the mirror. “Show some respect. You need to be in mourning. Sal Francisco was more valuable to me than you ever were or ever will be. At least he knew how to be loyal, how to do what his betters demanded. Although . . .”

  Jacob grabs me and kisses me hard, smearing my lipstick all around my face and ruining everything. When he pulls back, he laughs. “Now maybe you’ll do it right this time.”

  His words should sting. I should be upset. I should be wanting to cry, but for some reason . . . I just can’t.

  Five years, four months, and seventeen days is all it took to burn every bit out of me, I guess. He started our wedding night, that was when he ‘got rough’ for the first time as he called it, and since then I’ve had it all burned out of me, all my self image, all my pride, all of it. I’m just an empty puppet doing what I’m told to do. I’ve got nothing left.

  Instead of protesting, I look in the mirror, where I can see both of us as Jacob continues his disapproving look. Finally, I look at him directly in his cold, dead eyes. “I’ll be in mourning,” say.

  His grimace disappears into a bit of a smile. “Good girl. Well then, I’ll let you finish getting ready. We leave in twenty minutes. Meet me in the foyer.”

  He leaves, and I look at my face in the mirror, reaching for the towel next to my makeup kit with robotic arms, not feeling anything at all as I wipe all traces of makeup off my cheeks and mouth before carefully reapplying it. I use a different tone from before, more conservative, more subdued, with nothing for my cheeks at all. I still look beautiful, but I also look like I’m in mourning.

  I guess I am, but not for the reason Jacob wants me to be. I’m mourning the woman I could have been. I don’t want to sound too much like Brando, but I could have been somebody. I could have made the transition to legit actress. I had the skills even if I wasn’t going to win any Academy Awards. Even if the typecasting had been too much, I didn’t deserve this. I didn’t deserve five years of abuse. I should have had a loving husband. I could have started a family already. I didn’t deserve this.

  I use eighteen of my twenty minutes to try and find a reason to work up tears on the way to the funeral, but I can’t. I can be in mourning. I’m still a decent enough actress to do that, but it’s going to have to be the ‘stunned yet stony-faced mourner’ bit. Works well enough when you don’t know the man being buried beyond him being one of your husband’s business associates and occasional poker buddy.

  We get in the limo to ride to the church and after that, the cemetery. We’re about a third of the way there when Jacob looks over, evaluating my face. “Good girl.”

  “Thank you,” I whisper, trying to do anything I can to avoid looking at him. “I also have a hat with a veil.”

  “Good girl,” Jacob repeats, and I can see a grin form on his face out of the corner of my eyes. A queasy feeling forms in the pit of my stomach. No, dear god no, we’re on our way to a church.

  “Jacob…”

  He shakes his head, unbuttoning his coa
t and undoing his belt. “You know what to do.”

  Sadly, after all these years, I do. I get on my knees. I don’t protest, I just shut off my mind, knowing that if I’m not already in hell, I’m just this side of it. Thankfully it doesn’t take long, and as I do everything I can to work up enough spit to get his taste out of his mouth, he speaks softly, almost gently to me. “That’s it, baby. See? You listen and things go well.”

  Chapter 5

  Ryker

  A different warehouse, and a different time of day, but the idea’s the same. I look out at the assembled group, this time a crew of ten. The danger levels are off the charts right now, but there’s a reason that Marcus and I picked these men to come with us. Every one of them has a personal reason to hate Jacob Waters but is also professional enough to do their job without fucking around on a personal vendetta.

  “Remember, the idea is to cause carnage,” I brief, pointing to the chalkboard where I’ve drawn a diagram of the action. Again, another lesson I learned from studying successful armies. Brief your soldiers. Let them understand the mission, and then when the shit hits the fan, they’ll be better prepared to react to unexpected circumstances. Everyone has a role, and they need to know it. “Thankfully, the weather gods are in our favor,” I continue. “They’re calling for rain this afternoon, so long trench coats aren’t going to look out of place.”

  “Damn shame to be ruining a suit like this in one day, I look like a million bucks,” someone quips, earning a few laughs. I shrug, while I’ve got better suits, I understand, I made sure that everyone had a suit that would let them walk into any bank and look right at home, with good labels. Spending an extra couple hundred dollars on suits is worth it if today’s mission works.

  “Yeah well, I’ll buy you a spare if you want it,” I reply back, not wanting to add the morbid thought that I may be doing that anyway, for their own funerals. “Now, everyone, let me be very, very clear: Nobody is to take a shot at Jacob Waters. Today’s idea is to hit another of his lieutenants, and to snatch his wife.”

  “Why not just put one in his head?” one of the guys asks, and I sit down on the table, relaxing. Marcus doesn’t look happy about it, but that’s okay. We’ve got a little bit of time.

  “If we just cut the head off the beast, the remaining lieutenants are going to be strong enough to try and fight us. Hell, he’s still popular with the police. What do you think’s going to happen to our neighborhoods if the cops go rampant citywide because we shot one of their most popular crooks? No, we must remove his support, peel each group from him, and make his underlings recognize that he’s not strong enough to protect them anymore. We make them realize that the real power lies with us so that when we do take him down, he’s going to be friendless.”

  “Now, let me wrap things up,” I say, glancing at my watch. There’s still time, but I can see Marcus is getting antsy. Better to keep him calm until it’s time. “The target that has to be taken down is this guy, Soo-Young Pak. He’s the connection Waters has with the Asian gangs overseas, so if we take him out, we take away his overseas drug and money operations. That leaves the wife, Sarah Waters. She’s mine, plain and simple. Nobody touches her. I’ll snag her. Is everyone clear?”

  Nobody says anything, and I turn the rest of the briefing over to Marcus, pretending that I have to go take a piss. The reality is that I’ve got to get my head right. Last night, after Marcus had gone to bed, for some reason, I’d pulled up an old episode of Sarah’s television show. I can’t seem to wrap my ahead around the fact that the girl I was so fucking into back then was a fictional character, not the real-life woman who got my father killed. Even worse, I have a problem separating her from the woman that I met that one bright, sunny day, the one who’d looked at me with deep, sultry eyes and thanked me. That woman, who turned out to be a snake in the grass. Still, as I shake off and tuck myself back into my suit pants, I can’t get that old fantasy of fucking her in that schoolgirl outfit out of my head.

  I come out, looking over the group. “Okay, any last comments, concerns, gripes, or bitches? Now’s the time.”

  There are no more questions, so we split up, five vehicles this time, ranging from a pickup truck to the Caddy that Marcus and I are taking. As soon as we roll up the door on the warehouse, I see that the rain’s starting already, and by the color of the clouds, it’s just going to get worse. “Well, well, that’ll make things even easier.”

  “It’ll be hard for folks to not want to take a shot at Waters,” Marcus warns me. “Is that why you went with pistols?”

  “That and hiding a shotgun under a suit coat is really fucking hard,” I reply with a chuckle. “But I do want that fucker to die by my hand.”

  When we get to the graveyard, I put on a dark, wide-brimmed fedora to match my coat and to keep the rain out of my eyes while Marcus peels off to approach the gravesite from another direction. We’re just in time as the main procession arrives minutes later and the first problem shows up. I’d expected there to be about ten cars in the burial party, but there are nearly twenty-five, which means a lot more people at the graveside. Getting close is going to be difficult.

  As the crowd emerges, I see Jacob Waters getting out of a stretch limo, a better ride than even the deputy mayor, who at least had the humility to drive his own car to the graveyard. They follow behind the casket, which is carried in the old-fashioned way on the shoulders of six men who struggle a little in the now wet, slick grass.

  I see my guys start to blend into the crowd, and I’m reassured when I see two of them get close to Pak. They’ll have the drop on him. But I have a problem with my position. Waters is being more careful than I thought he’d be. In addition to his wife and himself, he’s got a small entourage with him, three guys who are more muscle than brains, but they form a human wall behind Waters as everyone gathers around the gravesite for the final service.

  The priest, his vestments already soaked from the rain despite someone trying to help him by holding an umbrella over his head, starts his speech, his voice carrying over the sound of the rain hitting the casket in an almost machine gun-like rattle. The sound is annoying, Sal Francisco was a millionaire. Why the hell he decided to get buried in a cheap, shitty, hollow aluminum casket is beyond me.

  If I can’t get right behind Sarah Waters, then I’m forced to move. I put myself between them and the limo, as close as I can dare without drawing attention. Then, all I can do is wait for the signal, which comes from the priest himself.

  “Ashes to ashes—” he says, and a pistol shot rips through the rain, Soo-Young Pak jerking as the first shot takes him down. Screams and pistol shots fill the air, with people diving for cover. Jacob Waters’ bodyguards form a human shield around him, and I make my move, expecting Sarah to head toward the car, but instead, she runs the opposite direction, surprising me.

  The grass is slippery, and I need to shove three people out of the way before I see her. She’s most of the way up the rise that dominates the side of the graveyard and gives it the name Forest Hill before I’m clear. I have to trust that Marcus is organizing the rest of the action while I chase Sarah up the hill, wishing I could have worn something with more tread than dress shoes as I slip, my knee sliding in the mud. I’ve got my own pistol, but I don’t want to draw it unless I must.

  We enter the trees that provide the other half of Forest Hill’s name, and Sarah’s running hard like she’s running for her life. I think about calling out her name for an instant, but I don’t, running harder. The fact is, she’s long-legged, and while she might be in heels, she’s on her toes and sprinting, her own coat billowing out behind her as she loses her hat and makes a turn around a tree.

  She glances back, seeing me, her eyes going wide, but it’s a mistake as she doesn’t see the tree branch in front of her that catches her on the side of her head, knocking her to the ground. I close the gap, grabbing her just as she struggles to her feet, wrapping my arms around her from behind.

  “No! Let me go!” she
yells, twisting like a wet cat in my arms. “Let me go!”

  “I don’t think so,” I growl, slipping my arm around her neck, feeling her body writhe against me. I hate that I’m doing this, but it’s necessary, and I’m still careful not to hurt her.

  I’m not one to engage in violence against women—that’s part of my own personal code of honor—but this is for her own good, and I choke her out quickly, waiting until she’s unconscious to pull the syringe from my coat pocket and inject her with enough ketamine to keep her down for a good half hour. She’ll have a sore spot on her ass for a few days, but at least she’ll be alive. Ketamine doesn’t fuck with your breathing or heartbeat.

  I sling Sarah over my shoulder and head over the hill, looking around to see if anyone’s following us. I reach for the earpiece that I put in for just this sort of clusterfuck. “Marcus, I need a pickup.”

  “Where?” he says as I emerge from the forest, seeing the north entrance to Forest Hill in the distance.

  “On the north-side road, closest to the hill. Hurry.”

  “One minute,” Marcus says, and I squat down, making sure to stay in the shadows. It’s actually a minute and ten seconds by my count when Marcus comes around the corner and I rush down the hill, slamming the trunk closed on Sarah Waters’s knocked-out form before jumping in the back of the car. Marcus peels out, not slowing down until we’re a half-mile away and we’re approaching the freeway.

  “What’s the count?” I ask, untying the belt on my coat. I don’t really want to know, but I need to.

  Marcus knows exactly what I mean. “Two of our guys down, one wounded. We got our main target. Also . . .”