Randolf had been dropped off at the front door by a taxi. Most clients arrived that way, or by some other ride-share conveyance. Lisa told her one client had arrived in his own Lamborghini, which of course became Ferry property when he was terminated. Randolf didn’t look like the Lambo type.
Sparkling decided the client was mis-named. Anyone whose first name described a Scottish fighting knife ought to be assertive, bold, and fearless. Dirk Randolf was none of those things. He was the only child of a Hollywood socialite for whom husband number one had been Dirk’s biological father. Daddy was long gone, however, a successful Wall Street broker who’d discharged his fatherly obligation with Christmas and birthday cards containing large checks. Mom had just divorced husband number three and was off in Paris, shopping in preparation for a month-long Mediterranean cruise. She had parked Dirk in an expensive live-in private school three years ago, and this year she had even forgotten to send a birthday card.
“You’ve also agreed that your bodily remains and any personal property you’ve brought with you become property of Charon’s Ferry. Your family can have a funeral if they want, but you won’t be there.”
“Nobody’s going to have a funeral,” he said. “They’ll be happy they don’t have to buy a plot or a marker. The only people who’ll miss me are the school’s bookkeepers when the checks stop coming.”
“Well, that brings me to the final point,” Sparkling replied. “I assume you’ve left messages or otherwise notified anyone who needs to know you’re gone. We do not notify next-of-kin or anyone else. We do not issue obituary notices. The only thing we will do is file the required notice with the California Department of Human Services that Dirk Randolf—Universal ID attached—is now deceased. If you don’t have your affairs in order, it’s too late now.”
She paused to let him consider that, wondering once again what would make a healthy 18-year-old want to end his life. She’d seen the report from Northstar. The kid was drowning in a social cesspool for which his mother had never bothered to prepare him—which she could have done, since she lived in that same cesspool.
He wasn’t a bad-looking young man, he was just…ordinary, plain, nondescript. He might have been handsome, if his mother had spent a fraction as much on plastic surgery for him as she’d spent on herself. She also hadn’t given him much fashion sense—she’d shopped for his wardrobe at Walmart, while finding her own on Rodeo Drive.
Of course his classmates at school had noticed those things, since they were young sharks who swam in that cesspool and fed upon lesser humans who stumbled into it. They tagged him as a useful gopher, a target for jokes, a lower life-form that could be allowed to live among them as long as he served their purposes.
It was an all-male school—biological male, that is. They allowed gay and non-binary students—Randolf was neither—of sufficient wealth and social standing, but insisted on the right plumbing. The elites of Southern California did not feel compelled to abide by the rules required for public schools, where a student might use either male or female restrooms depending on how he/she/it felt on that particular day.
Social events were often held with a similarly upscale all-female school, which gave Randolf’s classmates an opportunity to have lots of fun at his expense—with the cooperation of some like-minded females. Their favorite game was to set Randolf up with an attractive young woman who would string him along to the limit, only to publicly humiliate him in the end.
The culmination of their efforts had come a few weeks ago, when a girl had lured him off to an empty coat room and gotten him to remove his clothes while keeping most of hers in place. Then his classmates—and hers—had burst into the room to enjoy the spectacle. They’d taken photos and videos, which immediately appeared on social media. The next day, he’d filled out the Ferry’s application and posted the required fee.
Three days ago, having emptied his bank account, he’d come in for his interview and signed the contract. Mom had been generous over the years and he had saved most of the allowance she’d sent him. He’d paid in full up front, and today he was here to finish it. No frills, just a short drop and a sudden stop, and it would be over.
“I sent a letter to my mother’s business advisor,” he said. “She’ll know how to get the word to whoever needs to know. Right now, I don’t even know how reach my mom or dad, and there’s nobody else.”
Sparkling presented the contract, and he imprinted it without hesitation. Now all she needed to do was take him upstairs and finish the job. But…”
“Can I ask you a question, Mr. Randolf? Have you ever been laid?”
“Huh?”
“Have you ever had sex…with a woman?”
“Uh…” He immediately turned a deep shade of red—the more noticeable because of his fair complexion. “I…I mean…only with myself, not with a woman. I tried to buy it from a hooker on the boulevard once, but she took my money and disappeared. Not even sure she was a she, now that I think about it.”
“Yeah…some of the trans out there can be very convincing.” Sparkling shook her head. “So…what you’re telling me is, you’re a virgin?”
“Yeah…I guess so.” He looked thoroughly miserable.
Sparkling stood up and began to unbutton her blouse. She usually wore a loose upper garment that kept her refusal to wear a bra from being noticed, but by the time she got three buttons down, the view had captured his undivided attention.
“Over there…” she pointed at the comfortable sofa against the wall. “Take off your clothes. And don’t worry—this is my private office. Nobody’s going to walk in on us.”
Per Lisa’s orders, Mark was still in bed when she arrived with lunch on a tray. The bacon cheeseburger and cheddar fries she presented to him would have put any fast-food chain’s offering to shame, and the long-neck bottle of Dos Equis Lager Especial made it the perfect midday meal.
“I’m really feeling better,” he insisted. “After I finish this, I’m going to get out of bed and get dressed.”
“Don’t worry.” He raised a hand to stop her impending protest. “I’m not going to work. I’ll just go out to the living room and watch a video, or maybe read a book. The tenth novel in Webb’s Last Brigade series has just come out, and I can’t wait to get started on it.”
“Well, OK…but nothing strenuous. I want you all healed up by the weekend so we can get back to…you know, the fun stuff.”
“Yeah,” he grinned at her, “the fun stuff, but I also need to get back to work. How’s Spark doing?”
“Just fine so far. Last time I checked the cameras, she was about to give the guy a freebie.”
“She’s about to do what?” Mark sat up with a fierce scowl on his face.
“Calm down, Daddy Dragon!” Lisa scowled back at him. “Despite what you might think, you’re not actually her father. She’s a grown woman who lost her virginity about 16 years ago.
“You’re getting upset with her for doing something you and I have done many times. Don’t you think that’s just a little bit hypocritical? She’s only following the lead we’ve given her.”
“I suppose you’re right…” He relaxed with a sigh. “Besides, the guy will probably be dead 20 minutes from now anyway.
“Well, Randolf? Still want to take that last walk?”
“Uh…I…”
Sparkling Waters had given him the full treatment. He’d gotten off prematurely—she’d expected that, given his inexperience—but she’d gone on to give him a full body massage (her body on his) with plenty of kissing and fondling action. Then she’d instructed him in the proper method of manual stimulation to make sure she achieved an orgasm of her own.
“It doesn’t matter who finishes first,” she told him, “as long as we both finish.”
Now she was up and getting dressed again, but he still lay on the sofa, drained of energy, with a dazed expression on his face. She suddenly thought of the cameras in the room—the same four-cornered arrangement as in the other private offices.
Wonder if Lisa was watching…oh, hell! Wonder if Mark was watching? Somehow the thought distressed her, but she got past it. Might be an awkward conversation coming later.
“So what’s it going to be? I can take you upstairs, put a rope around your neck, and drop you through the floor…or you can get up, get dressed, and walk out the way you came in.”
“I…but…I already imprinted the contract…” He finally stirred, sat up, and swung his legs to the floor. In an absurd but touching gesture, he grabbed one of the sofa pillows and pulled it onto his lap to cover himself.
“Doesn’t matter.” She shrugged. “If you want to leave, we won’t stop you. We’ll just mark it off as a no-show, same as if you hadn’t come in this morning at all. You won’t get your money back…but you get to keep the rest of your life.
“You can go back to school, and nobody will know where you’ve been. You can call your mom’s advisor and tell her to ignore the letter. And, hey…” she walked behind her desk and brought up the financial report on her screen, “your next allowance deposit should be arriving in the bank any day now, so you can start building your savings account again.
“Just for the record,” she pointed a finger at him, “you and me, that was a one-time-only thing. I’m a few years older than you are and have no interest in any sort of romantic relationship. I just didn’t want you to go out without ever having done it. If you do walk out of here, you can write me off as the most expensive piece of ass you’re ever likely to have. Probably the best, too.”
Dinner started off quietly, with none of the usual festive chatter. Mark, as promised, had gotten dressed and come down to Lisa’s apartment. Lisa had decided a celebration of some sort—Mark’s recovery, Sparkling’s new status, whatever—was in order, and Mark’s kitchen was inadequate for the task.
She busied herself with preparing and serving the meal with a little help from Sparkling. Mark used his recovering status as an excuse to let the two of them wait on him. That gave all of them an excuse to talk about something other than the conversation Sparkling knew was coming. They got all the way to dessert before Mark finally leaned back and asked the question.
“So…how’d it go today, Spark?”
“I…I screwed it up, I guess. I didn’t finish the job, but I just didn’t want him to go out without…well, you know.”
She had been confident, in charge, sure of herself when she was dealing with Randolf, but in hindsight, she was having second thoughts. Mark and Lisa waited patiently for her to sort it out.
“I screwed his brains out and sent him home,” she said at last. “I failed to execute the contract.”
“No…he failed to execute the contract,” Mark said. “You did fine, we got paid, he gets another shot at life. It’s all good.”
“Lots of people who come in here are pretty far gone.” Lisa shook her head. “They want to be dead, and they have their reasons. Others are just…confused. They think they want to die because they can’t see any other way out of the situation they’re in.
“Sometimes we help them. We don’t try to talk them out of it, just suggest alternatives—maybe show them a different path they might take. Mark’s done it, I’ve done it, and now you’ve done it as well.
“We already know you can pull the plug on somebody,” Mark told her. “You’ve helped Lisa do it a couple of times without flinching. Now you’ve proved you can go the other way, help somebody go back to living. I’m proud of you, Spark—you’ve passed another test.”
“Yeah…go back to living.” Sparkling relaxed. “I told him he should look for an ugly girl—one nobody’s interested in, one they all joke about. In other words, I told him to go find the female version of himself. ‘Get to know her, let her get to know you,’ I said. ‘You might find out she’s not so ugly after all.’”
“I could have given the kid a lot more advice, but once he decided to bail, he just wanted to get out the door—like maybe he thought I was going to change my mind and shoot him or something. Anyway, good luck to him…” She raised her glass of wine. “Hope he gets laid again real soon.”
“I’ll drink to that,” Mark said. Lisa smiled and raised her glass.
“You know, Spark,” Mark drained his glass and set it back down on the table, “I need to tell you about Sergeant Hooker—guy I knew in the Marines, and yes, that was his actual name. When we were out on the town, he wasn’t very fussy about the women he pursued. If it wore a skirt—or showed any other evidence of being biologically female—he went for it.
“Anyway, he explained his philosophy to us in very simple terms. ‘There is no such thing as an ugly woman,’ he said. ‘There are only varying degrees of beauty.’”
“We used to laugh and joke about it, but eventually we realized he was getting shot down less and laid more often than the rest of us were. Maybe if your client adopts a little of the same philosophy, he’ll live happily ever after.”
Chapter Seventeen: GITFOH
“Sorry I got you into this, Babe,” Jay Morgan muttered.
“No, you’re not,” Ramirez insisted. “You’re just hoping you can get us out of it in some way that makes you look like a hero.”
A stray bullet shattered a bottle on the shelf above her head, showering her with cheap tequila and glass fragments. She responded with a string of curses, mostly in Spanish.
The town of Guerrero Negro—Black Warrior—was named for a whaling ship that had wrecked in its lagoon in 1858. It was a pleasant town of around 20,000 people, located on the Pacific coast near the midpoint of the Baja Peninsula, about 300 miles south of Tijuana.
For the most part, it was a peaceful town—but not today.
“I guess we can scratch Rivera off the list,” Ramirez said.
“Yeah…you could say that, but technically he was never on the list.”
Estefan Rivera was to have been a new LifeEnders franchisee, the first in Baja California. When LifeEnders was first established, franchises were only granted to “originals”—members of the elite force that had gone out on missions to assassinate the world’s most noteworthy terrorists. They were the founding members of LEI.
As the company—and the demand for its services—grew and began to branch out into paranormal, arcane, and other areas of activity, it became obvious that there weren’t enough originals to go around. LEI began to accept franchise applications from other qualified individuals, though they still insisted that qualified meant military experience with a special ops background.
Rivera, born in Mexico, had come north and enlisted in the U.S. Army, served with distinction in a Ranger battalion, and earned commendations under fire in some nasty parts of the world. He’d gotten U.S. citizenship as part of the deal but had elected to return to his native Mexico to go into business for himself under the LEI banner.
That put him in Jay Morgan’s newly expanded area of operations. Jay had been asked to go to Guerrero Negro for a final evaluation of the application. If all went well, he was to award Rivera his badge and certificate. Pleading a limited knowledge of language and local customs—he’d only just been assigned to cover western Mexico—he had requested assistance. Of course, the only person qualified to provide that assistance (in his view) was Nydia Ramirez. It had been a stretch, but to his surprise, corporate had agreed.
At first, the evaluation went smoothly. Rivera had set himself up in a comfortable office and was ready to put the LifeEnders name and logo on the door. He’d impressed Morgan with his no-nonsense attitude and Ramirez with his business sense. Morgan was about to wrap it up and present Rivera with his badge when everything went to hell in a shitstorm.
The first invader kicked the door open without warning and came in shooting. He put two rounds into Rivera’s chest, glanced at Morgan and Ramirez, and apparently dismissed them as a couple of harmless gringos—probably there to do business with his target. He turned back and put four more rounds into Rivera, spewing a string of Spanish invective that Morgan assumed wasn’t comp
limentary.
Ruger GP-100, .357 Magnum, Jay’s professional brain observed. Nice gun, but you’ve spent your six.
The shooter flipped the revolver’s cylinder open and dumped the spent brass as he pulled a speed loader with another six rounds out of his pocket. Absorbed with his reload, he never noticed as Morgan slid his Colt M45A1—the Marine Corps CQB version of Browning’s famous 1911 pistol—out of the shoulder holster under his jacket.
A second shooter—a woman with an AK-47—had come in behind the first, but Morgan already knew he had a tactical advantage. Both shooters were right-handed, and the door they had come through was behind and to the left of the chairs where he and Ramirez were sitting. The guy was still focused on the recently deceased Rivera in front of him, and the woman held her AK at port arms, its muzzle pointed away from them.
Morgan brought the Colt up and put three rounds directly under the guy’s armpit, causing the target to do a passable imitation of a sack of potatoes falling off a truck. The woman started to turn toward him, but he was already lining up to engage—only to hold his fire as three shots from behind him caused her to stagger backward with bloody stains appearing suddenly on the front of her white blouse.
Ramirez held her Sig P229 on target, ready for a follow up shot if necessary, but the AK slipped to the floor as the woman fell back against the wall, then slowly toppled over onto her left side.
The 9mm Sig didn’t have quite as much punch as his .45, but success in a gunfight was about good shot placement, and Morgan had to admit Ramirez had gotten it done. It looked as if she’d placed three rounds in a two-inch group right at the top of the target’s ample cleavage.
His admiration of Nydia’s work was cut short by the sound of gunfire—heavy and continuous—out in the street in front of the office.
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