The Perversion Trilogy: Perversion, Possession & Permission

by T. M. Frazier

  “No.”

  “Do you want to be with Marco?”

  “No.”

  “Do you respect him as your leader.”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you respect him as a man?”

  “No.”

  Mona looks up at me.

  “I wanted to say yes, but your brother is a bit too rapey for my tastes. It keeps getting in the way of the whole respect thing,” I say with a jaded smile.

  She frowns and makes a mark on the machine. “Maybe this fucking thing is broken,” she mumbles. “I need an obvious lie.” She presses another button and turns a dial. “Reply the opposite of the truth. Lie. You’re good at that.” She pauses. “Do you want Gabby dead?”

  “Yes.” I lie, allowing myself to think of her cold and in the ground and no longer a part of my life. The needles dance on the paper.

  Mona crosses her arms and stands up. “Would you continue to extract information for Los Muertos from Bedlam if allowed?”

  “Yes.” The needle makes another slow U. “Do you think Grim is in love with you?”

  “No.”

  “Do you think Grim trusts you?”

  “Yes.”

  “Do you love Gabby more than me?”

  “Yes,” I answer.

  Mona’s eyes glaze over, and I’m shocked that she’s capable of tears or that she even cares that I love Gabby more than her. Then it dawns on me. The reason why she’s doing this. Why she hates me so much.

  “Do you think Gabby loves you more than me?” she asks. Her voice has only the slightest hint of a crack, but it’s there. It’s real. And it’s all the ammo I need to load my mental gun and take aim.

  “No,” I answer. “We’re best friends, but she loves you. Always has. You’re her sister. Blood is thicker than water. I loved you, too. You were family to me.”

  It isn’t a lie. Gabby doesn’t yet know that Mona’s cuckoo clock is misfiring at all hours, and instead of popping out at the top of the hour, it springs out with its fucking mouth open whenever it pleases, feasting on human flesh and despair.

  “Yes or no only,” Mona spits, sniffling. She clears her throat. I can almost see her pushing the human in her to the side of the pool while the psychopath does a motherfucking cannonball right into the center. She returns to checking the machine and marking the paper.

  “Do you think Grim is coming for you?” she asks.

  “No,” I say. It’s the truth. He doesn’t know what’s going on here right now, and I made him promise to stay away. To give me time so the town can avoid a war.

  “One last question,” Mona says. “It’s a repeat. An oldie but a goodie.” She takes a deep breath. “Are you in love with Grim?”

  I won’t think about his kiss. Or the way his hands feel on my body. Or the way the air shifts when he’s around.

  “No,” I respond with a calm clear voice.

  The needles move in a slow U-shape before going back to the center of the page to recommence the pattern of steady little peaks and valleys.

  I would stand and cheer in victory, but I’m still attached to the fucking machine.

  Mona stands and leaves the room, slamming the door behind her with an angry scream of frustration. She barks orders at someone on the other side to tie me up and put me back out.

  I rip off the straps. The tearing of Velcro echoes in the small room. The paper on the polygraph machine falls to the floor.

  I’ve done it. I won. I beat the machine. I open my inner door, letting in all of the emotions I’ve been holding at bay. My heart seizes in my chest. The lines of breakage that began earlier tear through me at sharp angles, slicing it to pieces. I feel each cut. Each mark. A tear rolls down my cheek, falling onto the graph paper I’m now clutching. I look down and notice that the lines have made a pattern. A shape. I begin to laugh at the irony of it all, but it doesn’t last, quickly changing from laughter into a quiet sob. I crush the paper angrily between my fingers and let it fall back to the floor where it unravels, taunting me with the shape in full view. Daring me to see it for what it is. What it seems destined to always be.

  A broken heart.

  Eleven

  “Marci, Sandy, and Haze were all released from County this morning,” Bethany informs me.

  She’s talking to me through the glass partition of my cell at the sheriff’s station. Unlike my family, I was never moved to the county jail. Lemming wanted to keep me close, and because of some special task force exception, he was allowed to do so. He’d even gone so far as to cancel my arraignment. I’ve yet to see a judge, and for the three days, I’ve lived in this fishbowl of a cell.

  “It took a while to get the judge to agree to bail, considering that all three of them have some heavy priors, plus the seriousness nature of the new trafficking charge. However, more serious is the judge’s little dalliance with a young girl a few years back.”

  “How young?” I ask, feeling sick.

  Bethany smiles. “Nineteen.”

  “Nineteen is legal.”

  “True, but it didn’t take a lot of convincing to make the judge believe she’d lied about her age and was actually sixteen at the time. If you were in County, I would’ve gotten you out, too. But since Lemming has pulled this Homeland Security task force GI-Joe bullshit, he can basically keep you here indefinitely without ever seeing a judge.”

  “I can’t stay here indefinitely,” I say, wringing my hands.

  “I know.” Bethany looks tired. It’s the first time I’ve ever seen her with even the slightest bags under her eyes. “It took some doing, but I wanted to let you know that I made contact with someone on the inside at Los Muertos.”

  “Tricks?” I ask, feeling an immediate sense of panic.

  “No. It’s not Emma Jean.” Bethany hesitates. “Emma Jean is alive but in rough shape. She’s locked up in a room somewhere in the main building, has been since the night of Belly’s funeral. Gabby told me that Marco’s…well, I don’t need to go into detail, but he’s hurt her.”

  “I can’t fucking stay here one second longer.”

  “I know that. Trust me. I know that.”

  Something occurs to me. Gabby?

  “Your person on the inside is Gabby?” I ask, just to make sure I’d heard her correctly.

  “It is, although it wasn’t easy. I had to pull a lot of strings and bribe a lot of people to get to her. All of which will be listed on your bill under ‘other’”.

  I don’t give a shit about a bill right now. “Listen, Gabby is the one who’s been updating me on Tricks. She never once said that she was in danger, as she sure as shit never said Marco’s got her fucking locked up.”

  Bethany thinks on it for a second, then she grabs her phone and flicks through some screens before showing it to me. “This is Gabby Ramos. I’m a hundred percent sure.”

  The picture is of Tricks with her arm around another girl. It was taken years ago because Tricks looks more how she did when we met and less like she does now. The girl she has her arm around has darker skin and long dark hair. On first glance, it does look like the girl I ran into on the path that night and who came to me on the reservation.

  “Zoom in,” I say.

  Bethany zooms in, and it’s only then that I notice the girl in the picture doesn’t have the same downward turned eyes or the big pouty lips like the other girl. These are all things that could change with age, but the clincher is the birthmark below her eye.

  There isn’t one.

  Because it’s not the same fucking girl. I ball my fists against the glass. Bethany tucks her phone away.

  “Fuck!!!!!” I yell, tearing at my hair. “Whoever the girl was, she wasn’t feeding me intel on Tricks. She was feeding me lies.”

  I pound on the glass with my closed fist, but there’s no one in the vast room beyond my cell except for Bethany and the muffled sound of a distant TV.

  “Grim,” Bethany says sternly. She shakes her head slowly from side to side and lowers her voice to a whisper. �
�I’m taking care of this. No need for all the yelling.”

  “How?” I hiss.

  She answers with no sound at all. I’m forced to read her lips. I called someone. Just wait. She raises her index finger over her lips.

  An officer emerges into the main area. Bethany looks over her shoulder and gives him a little wave. He feeds some bills into the vending machine. He grabs his pork rinds and tips his chin to Bethany before disappearing again. The volume of the tv rises from muffled to impossibly loud. Either someone's going deaf or there’s a bigger plan at play.

  A janitor ambles into the room, emptying garbage pails from underneath the cubicles at a snail’s pace. The wheels of his garbage cart screech along the linoleum. As he passes by my cell, he slips something through the square receiving box on the wall.

  Bethany nods to the box, again pressing her finger to her lips. “We will know more when you’re assigned a judge. Until then, we will just have to wait,” she says loudly. She points with her eyes to the item in my hand, then leaves.

  The object I’m holding is a rock with a piece of paper attached to it by a rubber band. I pull the paper free and flip it over. It’s a note.

  Stay by the glass, motherfucker! Whatever you do, don’t turn around. PS-You look nice today. Prison blue suits you.

  The one-piece scratchy uniform I’m wearing is bright orange. What the fuck is all this about?

  I peer out from my cell. There’s no one in the room now. Not even the janitor. The security camera high in the corner across from my cell, the one that’s usually pointed directly at me, is now facing down toward the floor.

  Whatever you do, don’t turn around. Okay, so I won’t turn around completely, but curiosity leads to risking a glance over my shoulder. It’s just a wall. An empty blank wall. BOOM. BOOOOOM!

  An empty blank wall...that just exploded.

  The sound resonates through my eardrums. I duck and cover my head with my hands as pieces of cement rain down into the cell. Dust coats my hair and the back of my neck. After a few beats, I stand, waving away the plumes of the aftermath.

  Through the debris, I can just barely make out headlights. It’s a truck with a battering bar attached to the grill.

  “All aboard! This train is leaving the motherfucking station. Literally!” shouts a voice. I can’t see who it is through the windshield which is shrouded in what remains of my cell. I don’t have time to ask any questions of the mystery voice.

  There’s no time to question anything.

  The passenger door flies open. Two officers appear behind me. One fumbles with the cell keys while the other shouts at him to move faster.

  It won’t be fast enough.

  I leap into the truck and slam the door. The tires spin in place for a few seconds until they finally grip the concrete. My head hits the headliner as we reverse over the broken bricks until we’re clear of them and are able to make forward motion. It isn’t until we’re through the field and on the road when I finally get a good look of my getaway driver.

  “Preppy?” I ask. “What the fuck are you doing here?”

  Preppy may not be part of any official organization, but he runs a tight ship over in Logan’s Beach. Belly and I have worked with him and his friend King a few times in the past. I haven’t seen Preppy since before he was thought to be dead only to later be rescued from an underground cave where he was held captive for the better part of a year.

  “Grim? Fuck, I thought I was rescuing Bear. Get the fuck out,” he teases. “Just kidding. If Bear was locked up I wouldn’t help him escape. That fucker could use some ‘me time’ to contemplate his grumpy nature.”

  He holds the wheel with one hand and straightens his signature bowtie with the other. His white dress shirt is rolled up to his elbows revealing arms heavily covered with both tattoos and angry jagged scars.

  He lights a joint and tugs on the wheel, making a sharp turn off the road into a dark heavily wooded area. When we’ve made it in far enough to be fully camouflaged by trees and brush, Preppy kills the engine.

  He passes me the joint, and I take a much-needed hit, holding the smoke for as long as I can before slowly exhaling.

  “Thanks, man. How the fuck did you get sucked into this?”

  Preppy types out a text on his phone then sets it back in the console. “Bethany. I owed her a favor. She got my boy, Bo, out of some trouble recently.”

  “Isn’t your kid like ten now?” I ask. “What kind of trouble can a ten-year-old get into that needs Bethany’s kind of help?”

  “He’s eight,” Preppy corrects. “And my boy catches the kind of trouble most kids his age don’t know is out there to catch. My girls are easier. Twin toddlers. Miley and Taylor. The three of them, along with their mama, are the loves of my fucked-up life. Bo’s a good kid. He’s just…well, his brain arrow doesn’t exactly shoot straight. Its target is usually more…”

  Preppy shapes his hand like an arrow aimed at the windshield then changes the aim to me.

  “Human.” He drops his hand. “And the incident in question wasn’t that bad. It may or may not have had something to do with the unfortunate disappearance of a certain…”

  He waves the rest of his sentence away like there’s a gnat flying around his head.

  “Let’s just say he’s grounded. VERY grounded. For life. Or like a week. Minimum a few days. Or a day. Maybe, an hour or two. Poor kid. Maybe, I’ll just take him to the movies.” He sighs. “You’ll see. Wait until you’ve got some sex trophies of your own. You’ll understand.”

  Kids. I’ve never thought of myself with a kid before. I picture Tricks holding a baby in her arms. Our baby. Much to my surprise, I don’t fucking hate it. Although, the thought isn’t helpful to my current situation and only makes me more impatient and enraged.

  One thing at a fucking time.

  Sirens wail through the night. Preppy remains cool and calm like he’s driving a parade float down Main Street, and not at all like he’s running from the law with a fugitive.

  Blue and red flashes light up the woods. After a few seconds, the vehicles pass, and both the lights and sirens fade off into the distance. “That’s our bat signal. Let’s get you the fuck outta here so I can get home to the missus and eat her cookies.” Preppy pauses, probably realizing his odd choice of words. “I do actually mean cookies. Dre makes a mean batch of chocolate chip.”

  I stare silently out at the passing trees.

  “I’m going to eat her pussy, too. You know, after the other kind of cookies. Just so we’re clear.”

  “Thanks, man. We’re clear. And if you ever need anything and I’m not dead or serving time, I’m there,” I assure him. I mean it. I owe him a debt. A huge one.

  “Hhhhmmm,” he considers, taking the joint I pass him. “How do you feel about babysitting?”

  I smile at his joke until I look over at Preppy only to see he’s not doing the same.

  In fact, it’s the only time in my life I’d ever seen him with a straight face.

  “I uh…”

  He looks straight ahead through the scratched and broken windshield. Bits of concrete from our escape attempt cover the dashboard, and some of it is lodged into the glass. “Never mind. You can do me one favor, though.”

  “Anything within my power. It’s yours.”

  “Don’t tell King about this,” he says. It comes out as a sheepish high-pitched question.

  “Why? He wouldn’t want to know that you broke me out?”

  King was a friend of Belly’s and a good ally to Bedlam. It wouldn’t make sense that he’d be against helping me. I’d do the same for any of them if the roles were reversed.

  Preppy shakes his head. “Oh no, he knows I broke you out. I just sent him a text to tell him it’s over. The grand escape is complete.” He steps on the gas. “But he don’t gotta know I used his truck to do it.”

  Twelve

  I scan over the faces of my family. Marci, Sandy, and Haze and I are all in the war room behind my office at the
reservation. Neither the police, the feds, nor the task force have jurisdiction here, so for the time being, it’s the best place to come up with a plan.

  “Lemming’s got cars posted at the exit of the res. The second you try to leave he’s going to take you in,” Marci says.

  “I thought as much. I’ll talk to the Chief and figure a way to get out undetected when it’s time, but right now, we’ve got two major problems. The first being Tricks. Bethany’s got a source inside Los Muertos. Gabby, Tricks’s friend. We know that Tricks is alive, but it’s all we know.

  Marci wraps her hands around the steaming mug in front of her and leans her elbows on the table. “Emma Jean is one of the good ones. There aren’t many out there left like her. So, go get her the fuck out of there and bring her home.”

  I place my hand over hers.

  “I’ll grab the duffle bags and round up what ammo and weapons we have available here. I’ll check the storage room and take a look into a few of Digger’s old hiding spots to see what he might’ve stashed,” Haze offers.

  “Good,” I reply. “Sandy, you do what you were doing before Lemming interrupted. Get back on the phone and continue to round up as many of our men as you can. Tell them to meet us here as soon as possible. We’ll need all the trigger fingers we can get.”

  “It’ll take a little time,” Sandy tells me, pulling out his phone and dialing.

  I shake my head. “Time is not something we have, brother.”

  Sandy holds the phone to his ear. “I’m on it.” He assures me, leaving the room.

  “What’s the other major problem?” Marci asks. “You said we have two major problems, but only addressed the one.”

  I look her in the eyes and take a deep breath that does nothing to make me any more prepared to tell her the truth. “Belly didn’t die of heart failure. He was poisoned.”

  Marci’s face pales.

  “How? By who?” Sandy asks, jumping from his chair.

  “Not sure, but Lemming showed me the coroner’s report.”

  Marci sniffles and wipes her teary eyes. “We’ll figure it out and take down those responsible. AFTER we bring Tricks home.”