by Layla Wolfe
“Wolf, do a quick google on his address,” I said.
It only took him a few seconds to say, “1166 Route 66, Flagstaff—“
We looked at each other, then around the store. We wound up gazing at the ceiling as though waiting for it to leak.
Faster than fake news on Twitter, we all leaped into action at the same millisecond. Closing down programs, wiping browser histories, deleting files. If Corey was intelligent enough to send a threatening email to Tutti from a bogus account telling him to drop the investigation, this guy was as guilty as if he’d pushed Lavinia off the cliff himself. And he knew we were tracking him down, thus his appearance in front of Lytton’s house. So, while there was no point pretending we weren’t chasing him, there was also no point in leaving our footprints everywhere.
Wolf was stuck paying for our computer usage with a Bare Bones credit card while Unity and I made a getaway. Sure enough, a couple doors down a mailbox in a vestibule announced that C. Shabazz lived in one of the shitty apartments above.
I said, “If you’re going to be a hitman, maybe you shouldn’t put your name on your door.”
“What next?” asked Unity. “You wanna get your Glock from my saddlebag?”
“That’s probably wise,” I said, and we headed back to her Sporty. “But I’m telling you, Unity. I don’t want you confronting this jizzmonger. Wolf and I will take care of it. You’ve had your share of confrontation in your life. Your life should be smooth from now on.”
“I’ve got this whole adulting thing down, Tanner. I’m tougher than you give me credit for.”
“We don’t need you demonstrating it. We’ll take your word for it.”
By the time I stuck the loaded piece into the waistband of my jeans and slapped on a ball cap of Unity’s—yes, I caved to disguise—shouts already came from Corey’s apartment.
“Hey!”
We sprinted back in time to witness a surprisingly agile Wolf Glaser tackle the diablito-head. The guy did a faceplant into the gutter, taking the brunt of the fall on his chin. He persisted in trying to escape, though rivulets of garnet blood flowed from his soul patch. Wolf pinned him to the concrete in a half-nelson, but the blond guy was accustomed to more brutal fighting tactics than bitch-slapping and swirlies. Corey soon got the upper hand and flipped Wolf. Wolf still gripped Corey’s elbows in the small of his back, but it was a good opening for me to step up, straddling Corey’s knees while pointing the barrel of my Glock at his forehead.
“Listen, anus brain,” I growled. “You know we’re the ones tracking down Lavinia. We know you’re the one who sent Tutti that bogus email from a bogus Sideshow Barbara. You’re his right-hand man. Why would you be lying to Lavinia’s husband about where she is? Did she ever wind up taking you to the university that day?”
Corey just snarled, his upper lip as though snagged on one of his gold caps. He panted through the shiny grill, teeth gritted, his tiny pupils accusing me of being the bane of his existence. “What fucking emails are you freaks talking about? I’ve never seen you before in my life.”
“Oh yeah?” bawled Unity. “What about the time on Mormon Mountain a few days ago in front of Lytton—“
“Did you go to the University of Arizona?” I repeated. I didn’t want Unity getting involved. I rattled my piece just in case Corey hadn’t seen it. But I had to keep it close to my thigh, as Route 66 was a bustling throughway. I wished I’d thought of removing Unity’s plates from her bike. But I hadn’t been expecting to be giving a beatdown to a small-time criminal.
If Corey was currently on el diablito, his heart would beat slowly, and that would explain the faintly bluish cast to his already pale skin. “Who said anything about going to the U of A?”
I said, “Lavinia did, in a text to Tutti. She told him that on the night she went missing she’d be taking you to the U of A to make a delivery.”
“Huh. Well, I don’t deliver to the U of A. But you guys might as well stop wasting your time looking for her. She did fall off a fucking cliff. And if you keep looking, Tutti’s going to be raging.”
“Why would he be raging against someone trying to find his bride?” demanded Unity.
“Ow!” Wolf had kneed Corey violently in the small of the back. “Fuck it! I give, asshole! All right?”
“Just making sure you know who’s the boss,” Wolf said, cornily.
“Why would he be raging?” Unity repeated. “He’s the one who told us about the Sideshow Barbara email.”
“You figure it out,” snarled Corey.
I already had.
By this time, someone along the route had stopped their minivan and were shouting at us, “Hey, what’s going on? Do I have to call the cops?”
Good Samaritan. Having determined that Corey had no piece of his own, I backed off a few steps. Holding out my arm, I backed off Unity, too. She was snorting and hot and raring to go, but the only reason I’d brought her was because she was Lavinia’s friend.
And my partner.
“Let him go, Wolf,” I commanded.
Wolf did so, not without a few more knees to his lower back. The Good Sam finally drove on.
“Fuck!” roared the fentanyl fan. He stood shakily, nervously pinching his T-shirt as though it were a tux jacket he straightened. “What the fuck, dudes? I’m just here to tell you to back off the investigation because Lavinia is at the bottom of a cliff.”
“Which cliff?” I inquired. “A cliff at the U of A?”
“How’m I supposed to know? I was just told she slipped and fell somewhere. Now, if you fucking excuse me!” And he sprinted off toward a beaten Dodge Dart—not a vintage, cherry one, but a definite beater that had belonged to someone’s grandma. It took him several tries to start before it ruptured into giant pipe-splitting action, lending credence to the notion that he needed Lavinia as a driver.
“Come on,” I said, herding my little crew in the opposite direction. “Whoever pushed her off a cliff seems privy to the knowledge that she’s dead. Someone doesn’t just slip and fall off a cliff, and you leave them down there without checking to see if they’re alive.”
“Well, you never know, with Tutti Morgan and his people,” said Lavinia.
“True. Doesn’t seem there was much love lost between Tutti and Lavinia, though you told us different, him being all lovey-dovey at the wedding.”
“Well, who wouldn’t be, if only for show?” Lavinia pointed out. “I thought of something. If Lavinia did take Corey to the U of A, they’ve got traffic cams all over. If only we could gain access to the tapes.”
“Good idea,” said Wolf. “Only there aren’t any cliffs in Phoenix.”
We’d reached our rides, and I handed Unity her dome of obedience. “I’m sure it’s occurred to you they’re leading us astray with this whole cliff thing. Corey could’ve bashed her over the head with a DVR and shoved her in a drainage ditch. This could have nothing at all to do with cliffs.”
“I don’t know,” said Wolf, straddling his saddle. “Corey doesn’t strike me as a criminal mastermind. He’s so dim he couldn’t drive nails into a snowbank. I wouldn’t trust him to off anyone. He’s just a dumb-ass helper, a driver, a nobody. This is a job for Santiago Slayer.”
“Who?” I asked.
Unity looked at me knowingly as I slung my leg over her bitch seat. “You’ll see. He’s kind of a ‘fixer.’”
“Last I heard,” said Wolf, “he was taking a year off from the job to study to be a telenovela actor. But maybe he’ll do us a solid.”
A fixer turned telenovela actor? I shook my head in amazement as we peeled out of the parking lot. The Bare Bones were full of surprises. One was that Wolf Glaser was actually a pretty competent associate. He demonstrated a deductive logic far beyond his goofy persona. Most of all, I was surprised the Bare Bones were related to this elegant, daring, artistic woman I now wrapped my arms around.
It felt natural, like I’d been doing it for years.
CHAPTER TEN
Unity
Why? Because I’d suggested to Tanner Principato that we go to The Crack at Wet Beaver Creek.
Before you get all excited over the name, it’s a swimming hole on the other side of Highway 17. A favorite with locals and tourists alike, I was hoping beyond hope it might be abandoned or nearly so after last night’s thorough rain. It was not a “vortex” for the woo-woos and seekers, luckily.
It was about a mile hike from the parking lot. This time we’d taken Tanner’s staid rental car in case it rained again, and I had a little backpack full of munchies, wine, and Young Man Blue. I knew Tanner wasn’t into altering his mind, but I was, and I didn’t fucking care. Gone were the days when anyone told me what to do!
Tanner insisted on shouldering the backpack, though it weighed only a couple pounds. “Tell me more about this Santiago Slayer guy. Why do I get the feeling he’s some kind of hitman?”
“Because he’s a sicario,” I said cheerfully, zip in my step. I wore only a white lacey tank top and a thong that went up my ass crack. I wasn’t trying to seduce Tanner, seriously I wasn’t. This was my standard getup. Part of being a spokesmodel was attracting attention no matter where you went, because you never knew who’d see you, offer you a gig. Anyway, I knew my ink looked like I wore a turtleneck one-sleeved shirt under the lace, so I felt covered anyway. The only way I felt naked was if my boobs were bared, because for the most part they were un-inked and stood out like—well, you figure it out.
For a woman who didn’t like sex, I was feeling so frisky as I trod the trail that I even took Tanner’s arm in mine. This meant “unconsciously” rubbing my boob against his elbow, his bursting bicep. I babbled to cover it up. But like the creek we were heading toward, I was wet. “The Bare Bones hires him occasionally to do shit they can’t, or don’t want to. He’s a major character in Arizona. It does no good to describe him. You’ll just have to see.”
“But we don’t need a hitman, at least not yet.” It was more a question than a statement.
I said, “Oh, no. I mean, who would we hit? Corey or Tutti?”
“Gary Gregario?”
“Oh! Gary Gregario was arrested, did you hear?”
“No!” He put his free hand over mine in the crook of his arm. His affection warmed me.
“Yes! Ford, Lytton, Fox and Knoxie took Lyric to the Cottonwood Police, who you know are butt buddies with Gary. She gave a statement to a sergeant who has a vendetta against Gary.”
“Good. We need all the help we can get.”
“Exactly. A couple of Lyric’s friends who had known what was going on came down too, backing up her statements. I’m supposed to go to Cottonwood tomorrow to add fuel to the fire and testify. But it was enough to arrest Gary and slap him with rape charges. No way can he make the bail, though I think the cop buddies are getting a bond together for him.”
At this, Tanner stiffened. He patted my hand mechanically, absentmindedly, like a grandpa patting a kid. Then he removed his hand and looked up at the red sandstone wall we were passing by. So far, we hadn’t seen another soul.
I asked him lightly, “I always forget, you probably don’t like discussing prison. How did you get arrested?”
To my surprise, Tanner answered. After all, I hadn’t asked what he was arrested for. “My older brother and I had a shitty life in West Memphis. Our stepfather was a lazy bum and we were too young to work, so we actually lived in a garbage dump for awhile.”
“What?”
“Yeah, in a dump. There was a trailer there and we sort of squatted there for a few years. I still played football and got girls, but my older brother Sonny really was ruined by it. Believe it or not, a scarecrow for us symbolized earlier times when we were loved by our real father, when we felt safe, when we didn’t have to panic about every dime.”
“That’s nothing for children to have to worry about.”
“I agree. That’s what adults are for. So we never had a sense of security around us. We could come and go as we pleased, no curfew, no one to care where we were.”
“I’m with you, brother. Gary would beat me up, you know, assault me, then kick me out of the house. I’d be with Maddy and our rummy friends sleeping in soaking wet sleeping bags up in the canyons.”
“Well, that’s what our stepdad did to Sonny, the beating up part. I wasn’t as affected for some reason, but it really got to Sonny, so he became a petty criminal, small time stuff.”
I pulled a rolled blunt from my fanny pack. I paused briefly to light it, letting Tanner continue.
“Eventually his little stunts became more serious. Because he was eighteen and I was only seventeen, I took the rap for him. We were in the same place at the same time, so it looked plausible. Cops didn’t care, as long as they had a Principato brother. I didn’t expect the harsh sentence, though. I spent the first year in juvie then transferred to Tucker for the next nine.”
“Fuck,” I marveled. I squeezed his bicep harder to encourage him as we continued walking. “What sort of brother would let another one take the rap?”
We were at a bend in the creek where chilly, sun-licked waters churned in whirlpools. The surge was then forced over a lip in the rusty sandstone, but this wasn’t the waterfall we wanted. The other waterfall was much taller, protected by rocky overhangs, little slot canyons where one could hide, even from tourists.
I was surprised by Tanner’s reply. “A scumsucking peckerhead who lies like a rug, that’s who.”
I actually brushed my cheek against his bare shoulder, briefly. His skin was just as it seemed—soft as velvet. We looked like two desperate people clinging to each other, contemplating jumping off the cliff edge. “So, you got Slushy to help you prove your innocence.”
He sighed, releasing some tension. He looked at me directly, warmly. “Yep. I heard through the grapevine Sonny went and did it again, and again probably, getting away with it, and that just set me off. I wasn’t protecting this innocent brother—I was enabling this petty criminal to continue his nefarious path. I finally got fed up. He was so damned crooked, he swallowed nails and spat out corkscrews. I was through being his fall guy. So I worked with Slushy for a couple years.” He shuffled his feet. “He’s a good man. That, and DNA evidence cleared me finally.”
Again, I pressed my cheek to his warm bicep. “I’m so glad.” I dared to rub my face against him, soaking in his pheromones like a cat. I sighed all my cares away. “Yes, sometimes DNA evidence isn’t enough. The last time I tried to tell the cops about Gary, I demanded a rape kit. They lost it. That was like the third rape kit they’d lost. What a fucking coincidence. So, the next time I went outside our jurisdiction. I went to Maricopa instead of Yavapai. They sent me back to Yavapai even when I sobbed that those guys were in cahoots with my stepfather. They didn’t give a shit. They just said ‘the system’ would kick me out when it saw I was in the wrong place. That was the last straw. I went home, quietly packed everything, had friends move stuff out little by little. And my coup de grace was I dumped a bowl of spaghetti over Gary’s head while he watched TV. And I apologized to Lyric, but she said she understood. Still, I could’ve done a better job the past few years.”
Tanner put his arms round me, hugging me to him. “That’s just downright shitty. Were your incidents more than seven years ago? Maybe you could also accuse him of your business while he’s going to trial for Lyric.”
I’d never thought of that before. I was just going to testify about Gary’s maulings of Lyric. I looked down at the churning swimming pools with a welling feeling that can only be described as “revenge” keeping my heart afloat. Strange to say, I felt safe in Tanner’s arms. My ink of a neoclassical speared heart that said “Dad” probably wasn’t lost on him—I could just say it was for my original dad, the one who went to get cigs on Christmas Day, but I actually thought good luck and good ridd
ance to him.
Tanner whispered something so low it didn’t register. “You smell like lemons.”
And he kissed the nape of my neck.
Oh, so sweet and simple, an act like that. But the effect it had on my body was instantaneous. My uterus clenched in anticipation. Of receiving seed? That was fucking absurd! The fight or flight instinct should be kicking in now—instead I was melting like a woman overcome by the vapors!
Tanner snaked one palm around my front and placed it flat against my chest anchor, the wings of my bluebird. He snuffled around my ears like a dog, sending a flood of exquisite shivers down both my front and back. My nipples puckered, any fool could see under my bikini bra and flimsy tank. Hairs stood up on my arms. My ass was awash in gooseflesh. But most of all, my uterus quivered with delight and the walls of my vagina actually clenched, as though searching for the big, primal cock. I even found myself standing on tippy-toe so I could slide my hands behind his neck, spread my feet without him noticing, do a few unobtrusive butt-rolls against his crotch. Yes. My sensitive ass cheeks sought and found the massive ridge of his wang, and I worked it. Pole dancer style, I made clockwise and counterclockwise rolls with my hips. For my effort I was rewarded with some slight gasps. I was getting to him.
“I could file my own accusation,” I grunted, “since the most recent experience was less than seven years ago.”
“Good for you,” breathed Tanner. It seemed that his hand was doing its own thing, wisping down the center of my abdomen and stopping beneath my belly button. He ever so lightly tickled that little line of hair that gives directions to a woman’s cunt. This is where the ink stopped, so he was not even pretending to be admiring a picture. Every slight flicker of his finger sent arrows of excited, almost electric lust directly to my pussy lips. I was oozing pussy juice so thickly the narrow thong was buried deep between my petals. If I shifted feet, the rope of it rolled against my clit like another little finger.
Tanner touched my belly-button piercing, an attractive little dendritic crystal scepter. “Branding livestock can cause tumors to grow around the permanent markings. Humans who modify their bodies with branding might have higher risk of cancer at the injury sites.”