by Powers, AJ
Another swarm of scanners floated down the street, moving like a group of hummingbirds interested in every face that wandered about. They bounced from person to person, window to window, scanning and transmitting every little pixel they could observe back to the Parthenon for analysis. One of the tiny drones rushed right up to Hagan’s slumped over body, seeking out a face to photograph, but Hagan’s face was tucked tightly into his chest, making it impossible for the autonomous snitch to get a clear picture.
“You should have brought a fly swatter,” Solomon chimed in over the radio.
Hagan grunted out a laugh as the scanner zoomed away to catch up with its robotic comrades. “Is it me? Or does it seem like those dicks are starting to come by a little more frequently tonight?”
“That’s the third flyby in the last hour,” Solomon replied. “Think it has anything to do with some salty people over the boat?”
“Wouldn’t surprise me,” Hagan said, groaning as he shifted his position to find something slightly less uncomfortable.
“It’s nice to finally get the recognition we deserve,” Solomon joked, before quickly returning to his professional self. “All right, I’ve got a brunette coming from the east. This might be your girl,” Solomon said. “Damn. She’s sportin’ the go-go boots and everything.”
Hagan lifted his head and looked to his left. Several minutes passed before the girl came into view; bathed in neon lights and malfunctioning streetlights. Despite the frigid temps, the woman wore jean shorts that barely stretched down to her thigh, tall white boots that complimented the bright, blue bra used as a top, and a white, plush vest that likely provided little in the way of warmth. She had long, brown hair that hung over one shoulder, and a bellybutton ring that sparkled sporadically in the pools of light she passed through. She walked with purpose down the sidewalk, ignoring the wintery mix falling from the clouds overhead. She looked cautiously around her, as if she was worried someone was watching her.
She was right to trust her gut.
The woman’s boots clicked past Hagan, she barely registered he was there.
“How much for the night, sweetheart?” Hagan asked, his voice grungy and tired sounding.
The woman barely flinched. “Sorry, I don’t do business with guys old enough to be my grandfather.”
“How much is Jericho paying you for the night, then?”
This caused the woman to slow her feet, gradually coming to a stop. She turned around and stomped over to Hagan. “What’d you just say?”
Hagan slowly got to his feet, maintaining his cover that he was still an intoxicated vagrant in case his intuition was wrong. He shuffled closer to the girl and said, “Jericho. That’s who you’re on your way to visit, right? How much does he pay you for a good time?”
The girl blinked a few times, her teeth chattering in the bitter cold while she contemplated the question. Suddenly, she spun around and walked away. “I don’t have time for this.”
“I’ll double it,” Hagan shouted.
The woman stopped. She remained motionless for a moment before turning around to step back to Hagan.
“So… What does Jericho pay you?”
“He pays me fifty,” she said, her eyes avoiding Hagan’s while she spoke.
Hagan felt pity for the girl. She was lying about the fifty. It was likely she sold her body to this man for ten, maybe fifteen bucks. That’s all she felt she was worth. Ten to fifteen bucks. Such a shame.
“So, do you got a hundred for me? Or are you just trying to get me in trouble for being late?” the girl remarked.
Hagan pulled the hood off his head and suddenly the girl seemed much more enthusiastic with his proposition. Hagan knew he wasn’t bad looking for forty-nine. And he was pretty confident that the girl entertained much worse-looking guys than him on a regular basis. But that wasn’t Hagan’s angle anyway. Instead, he pulled out a folded stack of cash and held it up. “If a hundred gets you for the night, what does a thousand get me?”
The girl’s eyes went wide with disbelief. She’d likely never seen that much money at one time. Probably hadn’t even earned that much over the course of her career as a hooker. She stammered over her words for a moment before fluttering her eyes and standing up straighter, pressing her breasts closer to Hagan. She did her best to turn on the charm and said, “Any-thing you want, mister. Hell, I’ll even invite a couple of my girlfriends to join us if that’s your thing.”
“That won’t be necessary,” Hagan quickly responded. “But here’s what I do want from you. I want you to go ahead and go to Jericho’s place. When he buzzes you up, I want you to put this over the latch when you shut the door,” Hagan said, holding up a U-shaped metal bracket in his other hand. “When he lets you into his apartment, try to distract him for a few minutes. I’ll be right behind you. Once I crash the party, you take this money and you use it to find yourself a new job. Far away from here.”
Hagan’s request made the woman second-guess herself. “No… I-I-I can’t do that. What are you going to do to him?”
“A pretty young thing like you doesn’t need to worry about that.”
The girl’s lips trembled, but this time it wasn’t from the bite of the cold.
“So, are you in? Or do I need to find one of your colleagues to do me this favor? Perhaps that blond girl that likes to wear the leather corset? Or the other blond girl that seems fond of stilettos?”
Of the five days Hagan and Solomon staked out Jericho’s place, a new girl came each night. Whether Jericho was a repeat customer for this girl or whether she would be a one and done, Hagan wasn’t sure. But with each woman Hagan described, the realization that this was a one-time offer sunk in a little deeper.
“No!” she barked. “No… I’ll do it… I just…”
“You don’t have to worry about a thing. All you need to do is put this on the door latch,” Hagan said, placing the metal bracket in her hand, “and then act like normal. Try to keep him a little preoccupied until I get there. But don’t get too carried away. I wouldn’t want to interrupt things.”
The girl slowly nodded. “Yeah. O-o-okay.”
Hagan handed the girl a hundred from the folded stack. “You’ll get the rest after I’m inside.”
The woman took the money and stuffed it inside the back pocket of her shorts. She spun on the ball of her foot and walked away from Hagan as he murmured something under his breath. Suddenly, she felt colder than before. Her shivers worse. Her anxiety was stifling. Was she really doing this? For a stranger? She wasn’t stupid. The man she just talked to was going to kill Jericho, and the thought twisted her stomach into knots. It’s not that she liked Jericho—he was lousy in bed and far too rough some nights. But if his friends found out she was involved, they would make her last few hours alive miserable as they took turns ravaging her before cutting her throat.
But she could also escape all that with the money the man promised to give her. She could hire someone to take her back to the Dakota plains. Back to the home she ran away from when she was just thirteen. She could finally put this three-year-long mistake behind her. The thought of never having to screw a random guy from the neighborhood just so she could afford to have a few scraps of food to eat motivated her to press forward despite the nagging pit in her stomach.
After two blocks, she stopped in front of Jericho’s building and froze. She looked at the façade for a moment, trying to convince herself to abandon the plan. To lock the door behind her, do what she needed to collect her eight bucks from Jericho and then run off with the stranger’s cash. No, she thought. I want to go home, she heard herself say as she thought back to the farmhouse she was born in. She missed her parents. Her sister. Her brother. She wanted to see them again. So, she stepped up onto the porch stoop and pressed on the #12 button on the panel.
“Who is it?” a voice crackled through the speaker.
“It’s Amber. Buzz me in! I’m freezing my ass off out here.”
“Maybe I want you a little c
old when you get up here,” the voice laughed.
“Cut it out, Jericho and let me up!”
A second later, the door buzzed, and Amber pressed her way inside. Spinning around, she grabbed the door, stopping it from latching. She looked over her shoulder—nothing but a dark stairwell behind her—then fit the bracket over the latch, straining to get the metal to flex enough to fit. Finally, she found success, and pushed the bracket until it was nearly flush, allowing the door to close the rest of the way.
Her heart pounded as she climbed the stairs to the third floor, her mind cluttered with all the things that might go wrong. She saw a big, Hispanic man standing in the corner of the hall just outside Jericho’s door.
“Evening, Mikey,” Amber said, flashing a smile.
“Lookin’ gorgeous as always, Ms. Amber,” he replied.
“Thank you,” Amber replied politely. “You’re looking sharp yourself,” she said, hoping a little flirting would cover the angst she felt.
Mikey grinned. Despite working for a monster, Mikey was friendly and borderline respectful to Amber; one of the few men she encountered that treated her with any regard. She liked him, and, despite being quite large and fairly unattractive, Amber always wished she was on her way to entertain him for the evening instead of Jericho.
Suddenly, the pit in Amber’s stomach swelled as she realized that Mikey was caught in the middle of this. What have I done? she bemoaned in her head. She tried to think of a way to get him to abandon his post, but she knew it would only arouse suspicion. Instead, she stepped over to the door and knocked on the chipped, green paint.
Jericho greeted her wearing only a pair of boxers, his small, skinny frame on full display. His disheveled, dirty, blond hair was even more unkempt than usual. He pinched his lips as he took in Amber’s attire—or lack thereof. He gestured her inside and closed the door behind her.
“What took you so long?” he asked impatiently.
Amber’s pulse quickened as she took off the furry vest and draped it over a chair next to one of the barred windows. “You know you’re one of my favorites, baby,” Amber said, her words heavy with seduction. “I always want to make sure I look perfect for you when you call me over.”
“That’s what I like to hear,” the man said confidently as he pressed his lips into hers. His clammy hands ran across her back and down to her butt, giving it a hard, painful squeeze that made Amber gasp. It hurt, but she’d perfected making her painful whimpers sound like cries of pleasure.
“On the bed. Now,” Jericho pointed to his bed in the single-room apartment.
“No way, hunny. I canceled all my other appointments when you called tonight. So, I want to make sure we have a bit of fun before we get down to business.”
The man’s eyes filled with lustful anticipation as Amber pushed him down onto the edge of the bed and began lightly dragging her fingers over his hairless chest. She gently swayed her hips, so he grabbed her and pulled her closer so he could kiss her chest. Amber faked a moan as the swing in her hips increased, as if she was dancing to music that wasn’t there.
She gradually turned her body and pressed herself down into his lap, allowing her to see the security cameras displayed on the wall-mounted TV. She saw a figure walking toward the building, so she turned around and drove her tongue into Jericho’s mouth, pressing him down onto the bed with feigned passion.
“Oh, Jericho,” she purred. “I’m so glad I cleared my schedule tonight. I want you to make me scream, baby. Like only you can.”
The man reached down to pull off Amber’s shorts when a quiet but distinct CLACK stopped his efforts. Jericho craned his neck to look at the two-second-delayed camera feed just in time to see Mikey’s head whip back, a spray of blood painting the wall behind him.
“What the—!” Jericho shouted, pushing Amber off the bed to scramble for his pistol on the bedside table. By the time he spun back around, Amber was bringing the ash tray down over his head.
Jericho bounced off the wall and then fell back onto the bed where he lay motionless. Amber shrieked as Hagan kicked the door in, sweeping his suppressed pistol around the room. When he saw Amber standing over Jericho’s body, fear and terror in her eyes, he ran up to her and put his hands on her shoulders.
“Are you hurt?” he asked.
“No…At least, I don’t think so,” she said. With the adrenaline coursing through her, she wouldn’t have realized it if she was.
“Good,” he said, taking off his jacket and putting it around her shoulders. “Here,” he said, then handed her the money. “Remember what I said. Use this money to have someone help you cross the border, then get as far away from here as you can. You deserve a better life than this.”
Amber looked over at the security monitor, her eyes glazed over as they rested on Mikey’s lifeless body. “Yeah… Far, far away,” she muttered.
Chapter 6
On a scale from one to ten, the throb in Jericho’s head was sitting around thirty-seven. His eyes opened just wide enough for him to know that the blast from the lamp was going to crank that number up to a solid fifty. He screwed his eyelids shut and groaned loudly as he tried to remember what happened. Getting high was out of the question. He never felt this bad after shooting up—even when he overdid it. Maybe he got drunk? No. Even his worst hangovers paled in comparison to the sharp pain at the top of his skull.
He lay motionless in bed for a while longer, racking his brain to recall the night before. Jericho fought through the fog as images of a faceless brunette flashed into his head. Was it Oleksandra, the woman who used to be a model in one of those countries near Russia? No, it wasn’t her. He was certain of it. Perhaps it was Crystal. No. Her hair was almost jet black and too short.
Amber, Jericho thought. Yeah, it was Amber over here last night.
Unlike Oleksandra and Crystal, Amber worked for herself. She wasn’t quite as talented as Diego’s girls, and she was a little thicker, but she was young and offered a bargain bin price tag, which made her Jericho’s end-of-the-month special for when money was running a bit lean. He liked Amber well enough; she was one of his regulars for the last six months.
What happened last night? he thought as he tried to adjust his body in bed.
That’s when he realized he wasn’t in bed; he was tied to a chair.
Ignoring the agony of the blinding super nova coming from the floor lamp next to him, Jericho’s eyes went wide with fear as he looked around the room, panic contorting his face. The rope binding his wrists to the chair painfully tore at his skin as he struggled against them.
“What’s happening?” Jericho tried to scream, but his voice was little more than a raspy whisper. His mind raced with terror; a jolt of panic shot through his body. He grunted and tightened his muscles, trying to move his restrained limbs but found no success. “Help!” he cried. “Mikey! Get in here and help me!”
“Unfortunately, I had to let Mikey go last night,” a voice came from behind Jericho.
“What? Who’s there?” Jericho cried.
“Nice place you’ve got here,” Hagan said, walking into Jericho’s view. He looked around the squalid rat’s nest Jericho called home, shaking his head. Trash and filth littered the floor, covering most of the lifeless carpet that was more stain than fiber. The ceiling was riddled with water spots and flaking damage from years of neglect. There were multiple holes in the drywall, revealing rotten shiplap and wood laths, giving hints to just how dated the structure was. A solitary ceiling fan squeaked slowly over the living room/bedroom, three of the five blades missing. Hagan felt as if he needed a tetanus shot for just breathing in the air. It was a fitting home for a dirtbag like Jericho Stevens.
“Who the hell are you? And what are you doing in my house?” Jericho said, his chest as puffed up as he could manage.
“That’s not really important. What I want from you, however…” Hagan stepped closer to Jericho, leaning in close enough for Jericho to smell his breath. “Well… That’s the question y
ou should be asking.
“Please!” he begged. “I’ll give you whatever you want. Just don’t kill me, man! Please!”
“Now that’s the spirit, Jericho,” Hagan smiled, giving the man a light smack across the face before pacing around the chair, his hands behind his back—one of them gripping a silenced pistol. “My job is so much easier when people realize that cooperation is the best option on the table.”
“What do you want, then?” Jericho asked, worry and fear still trembling through his words. “I’ve got a half kilo of Dust in the desk drawer over there,” he nodded with his head. “Or… Or I think I have a little bit of Black left in my coat pocket,” he nodded again, this time to a jacket scrunched up on a filthy, orange patch of linoleum next to the door.
Hagan stopped in front of Jericho and gave him an icy glare.
“Oh… I get it… You’re more of a Cotton Candy guy. Well, I-I-I don’t have any here, but a buddy of mine owes me a favor. I can hook you up within the next hour. I just need to—”
“I don’t want any of your poison, junkie,” Hagan said with disdain. He leaned in close to Jericho’s face once again and whispered, “I just need you to answer a few questions for me. That’s all,” he gave the man a smile.
“Questions?” Jericho asked, his face scrunching with confusion. “Uh, yeah, sure. I can do that.”
Hagan stiffened his back and crossed his arms over his chest as he looked down at the pathetic specimen sitting in front of him, the gun still in his gloved hand. Jericho was the worst kind of criminal. A scrawny little pipsqueak whose crumbs of success within the drug world gave him a false sense of power and authority. He would boss around other peons like him or convince poor girls into thinking he was worth knowing, but in reality, he was a weak, sorry excuse for a man who would snitch on his own mother if he thought it would save his own ass. In short, the trembling man in front of Hagan was nothing more than a run-of-the-mill fink. And Hagan planned on taking advantage of that.