by Nikki Wild
Misty said something about asking her friend if I could borrow a car, but until that sorted itself out I was relying on my feet and Misty to get me around. The more I tried to make my peace with this, the less peace I could find. Truth was, every hour between me and prison was an hour that I was reminded of everything I’d missed the past four years. And driving was, far and away, the thing I missed most.
Except for pussy, but that’s a given.
Having Misty drop me off before her shift wasn’t so much embarrassing as it was attention-attracting. At least she’d thought to provide me with some new clothes, so I didn’t totally reek of prison. But the shirt was too tight, so my muscles looked intimidatingly large (not a bad thing) and the pants were a tad long. I looked like a toothpaste tube that was being rolled up from the bottom.
But I didn’t want to wait until I had a brand-new wardrobe to get to work on Misty’s behalf.
Neither of us knew how much time she had before her tormentors got tired of waiting.
Even though it was nearing that golden hour of five pm, the drunk’s version of salah, the Piper wasn’t too busy. For a single flash of a second, walking through the door, I remembered how I’d felt the first time I’d walked into the chow hall at Guvcheck. Fresh meat.
But this time, there were a whole lot more familiar faces.
“As I live and fuckin’ breathe. The good Reverend is loose.”
Luis stood behind the bar, wiping down a glass. In that sense, the world might as well have been frozen the whole time I was in jail; I’m sure the last time I saw Luis, he was in the same spot, doing the same thing.
There was no use standing in the door, pretending like I wasn’t there. I crossed to the bar, hand out, smile plastered on, ready to get re-acquainted with the regulars – and with a shot of whiskey followed by an ice-cold beer while I was at it.
Slickboy, Tanner, Shark – just as Misty had said, they were lined up at the bar, just the same as always. Shark’s boys, a nameless and ever-shifting crew of “men” who still had to worry about acne, stood around the pool table, watching me with blank expressions. I knew they were Shark’s boys because they were young, well-dressed, and each clocked in somewhere above 200 pounds. Shark was very particular about the kind of kid he recruited for his little gang.
Adding to the picture Misty painted in my head were Suzy Jag, Leathers, Tommy the Handler, and Big Mickey. Suzy Jag ran an escort service, and she was one of the few pimps in this world who didn’t abuse the shit out of her girls. Suzy’s broads were the crème de la crème, and lived well on their earnings. She’d been known to kick a man halfway through Tennessee just for insulting a girl, and I know for a fact that she’d once cut a john’s ear off when he let a pro leave his hotel room with a black eye.
Leathers was older than sin, and the last surviving member of the now-defunct Red Raptors Motorcycle Club. I’d never heard him speak, but he always had booze in his hand and was generally accepted as a staple of Sorghum Bend’s criminal underworld. I suppose his past afforded him a lot of respect, and he was so old anyway that you respected him just for being able to sit up straight on his barstool.
Tommy the Handler earned his name by, well, “handling things”. He was a cleaner. And he was one of the most sought-after men in town, by a wide margin. He could “handle” anything from a corpse to a crack den. I’d seen him in action more than once, when he was brought in to “handle” a car too hot to move (or too bloody, or too full of dead people…) He and Millions were tight, back when Millions was still running game.
And Big Mickey. My smile was genuine once I made it down the bar to Big Mickey. We called him Big Mickey to differentiate him from Mickey Tucker. Mickey Tucker was a handful and a half of bad fucking news. He had plenty of associates, and a horde of men working under him, but he was insufferable as a person and generally unpleasant to deal with. Plus, Mickey Tucker was loyal to no one but himself. He was a greedy, sneaky, bloodthirsty motherfucker with nothing but bad blood to spread around.
Big Mickey was the diametric opposite. Sure, he was a criminal through and through, but you’d never meet a nicer con. He specialized in arson – insurance fraud, mostly. His old man had been legit, an electrical technician. Big Mickey took the trade from legit to lucrative by working on the black market. If I had a best friend, it would be Big Mickey.
“Mick,” I said. “God damn it’s good to see you!”
Mickey wasn’t going to let me off with anything less than a hug. A manly hug, mind you, but a hug all the same.
“Shit,” Mickey said. “And I was just about to leave.”
“Well, don’t,” I said. “Buy me a drink, dammit. Don’t you know I just got out of jail?”
“Man, I’ll buy you a drink, but I can’t stick around to watch you drink it. Got a job.”
“Still a flamebug?”
“Yeah buddy,” Mickey grinned.
“Can’t put it off? I wanna catch up, man.”
He shook his head.
“I’ll explain more later, but time is of the essence with this one. But how about tomorrow? Where you staying? You need a couch? Hey, Luis, can we get a shot and a beer for my little jailbird buddy? Ah, shit…”
Mickey looked at his watch, sneering. He slipped a twenty on the bar and got to his feet, grabbing me by the shoulders. Used to be, Mickey was bigger than me. Now, we mostly equaled out.
“I really gotta run,” he said. “So, you need a place to stay?”
“Nah, man,” I said, warmed by his friendship. “I’m staying with…”
“Tell me about it tomorrow,” Mickey said. “God damn it’s good to see you, boy! You get any new ink in prison? I didn’t think they fed you too good, but you look like you’ve been eating alright. Alright, alright, shit, I gotta go. I gotta go!”
Mickey, as always, was thinking too fast for his tongue, and was asking me questions even as he backed away towards the door.
“Tomorrow!” he finally shouted, halfway into the darkening night, pointing a finger at me before waving goodbye to the bar. As soon as he was gone, Luis rapped on the bar, pointing out the drink Mickey’d paid for. I slid into the stool, still warm; it all felt surreal and perfectly natural at the same time. I held the shot of whiskey for probably a little too long before I raised it in the air, offering a toast to freedom, friendship, and my future fornication.
Whiskey never tasted so good.
Chapter 11
Rev
“So, where are you stayin’, Rev?” Suzy asked, leaning on the bar, her head laying heavy on her hand, her lids drooping under the weight of her make-up. She was a lovely woman, really, but she dolled herself up like a burlesque dancer whenever she left the house. Dolled up or not, she was young and pretty enough for me to seriously consider breaking my four-year streak with her. Except she wouldn’t bend to my charms, and I knew it. Suzy sold pussy for a living; she didn’t give hers away for anything.
And I’m not the kind of guy who pays to play.
“Misty-Lee Constatino,” I said, savoring my second beer as a free man. The small crowd had grown larger, but since I sat at the bar I was treated to a more exclusive party. Those who knew me drifted by to shake my hand and welcome me back into the fold, but a man getting out of jail wasn’t exactly a rare thing at the Pied Piper, and I’d been so young when I went away that I hadn’t made a huge impression on a lot of the locals.
Millions’ crew, though. They knew me. Shark. Tanner. Slickboy. Suzy and Tommy, to a much lesser degree. These were the people I needed to talk to.
Just saying Misty’s name influenced them. Tanner and Slickboy especially. They were both Millions’ age, probably the best friends any criminal could claim to have. Tanner made a lot of money selling stolen goods back in the day, and saved it well enough to retire. Last I heard he had a small team of guys who sold grass for him, but that’s it. Hell, the way states keep legalizing the shit, he might end up totally legitimate in a few years.
Slickboy was a jack of
all trades: a lock pick and safe cracker, a tradesman with the tools to saw off shotguns and file off serial numbers, an expert in slipping out of cops’ hands, and, weirdly enough, he was a decent jewelry appraiser.
Shark was a people person. Literally. He had a small army of boys who did his bidding, muscle for hire.
That’s how I knew them, and how they knew each other. We weren’t a gang by any official means, but Millions brought us together for a reason. Millions could think his way out of a doorless, windowless room. Tanner could get us into that room in the first place. Shark provided plenty of expendable bodies. I got everyone back safe and sound. Slickboy knew how to offload anything we got our hands on.
In Millions’ heyday, which happened before I knew him, he got his hands on plenty. Made himself a rich man – and he made rich men of Tanner, Slickboy, and Shark while he was at it.
So, yeah. Misty was right to expect some loyalty from them. And their silence was a heavy mark against each one of them, in my opinion.
“Misty?” Shark was the first to speak up, in shock more than anything else. “You’re shacking up with Misty?”
“How in the hell did you manage to pull that off? Shit,” Tanner said, and I heard the harsh note in his voice, even through the smile he painted on. His old scar, the one that cut across the black skin of his cheek like a pale pink ribbon, wrinkled with that fake smile.
“First day out of prison and you already managed to slip your way into Millions’ baby girl,” Suzy marveled, blinking up at me.
“It’s not quite like that,” I assured them. “We’ve got a mutually beneficial thing going on.”
“What else do you call it when a man and a woman decide to make the beast with two backs?” Luis observed with a smirk, listening in on our conversation.
“Nah,” I said. “It’s not like that. Don’t want Millions coming to get me from the other side, you know.”
“Then what’s the arrangement?” Tommy pressed. They were downright rapt, all of them. Like I was reciting The Odyssey or something.
“Seems like the poor girl found herself in some trouble,” I said, holding back from revealing how much I knew about how much they knew. “Someone’s after her for some money she doesn’t have. So I agreed I’d hang around and be some muscle to back her up. And, you know, see if I can’t figure out who’s after her. Maybe I can talk them down.”
The silence that met my story was telling. And tense. When Leathers pounded on the bar for another beer, everyone pretended they hadn’t just jumped.
“What?” I finally asked. “I figured you guys knew something was going on. I mean, she’s Millions’ daughter. I figured she’d turn to you first. You’d owe her old man enough to back her up, wouldn’t you?”
“Of course,” Tanner said. “We didn’t know nothing about that.”
Liar.
“What kind of trouble?” Suzy asked, frowning. She didn’t really have any loyalty to Millions, except that he was a regular customer and a good tipper. But she always had a fondness for the old man.
“Just like I said, someone’s bothering her. Coward won’t say who he is, but he’s threatening her.”
“That’s a damn shame,” Slickboy said, holding his pint glass like a rosary. “Poor little thing…”
“Well, now she’s got you to protect her…”
“Sure,” I spat, cutting Tanner off. “But I don’t know how safe she’ll be with me, unless I can figure out who’s after her. And why.”
More silence. We were playing some kind of game now, a standoff. I was pretty sure they knew I was holding back what I knew, and I knew they were holding back what they knew, and who knew who was going to cave first?
“You all wouldn’t have any idea about that, right? Someone who might think Misty has some money she doesn’t have? Maybe someone who’d hire a hit on Millions in jail?”
“No,” Slickboy said quickly. “If I did, I’d tell you, Rev. Owe it to him, sure.”
“I’d cut my own arm off before I let Misty get hurt,” Tommy swore.
“You know it,” Tanner agreed. Shark was frowning, brow furrowed, like he was thinking hard.
“Millions had a lot of friends,” he finally said. “But he also had a lot of enemies.”
I bit my tongue against a sarcastic response to Shark’s way-too-obvious comment on Millions’ social life.
“Wait a minute,” Suzy said, and I watched every man’s eyes go huge, turning to her with obvious alarm. All but Slickboy and Leathers, anyway; Slickboy was busy helping Leathers with his jacket, and Leathers was busy continuing to be alive and mobile. “I’m trynna think…you know, I had a girl two-time me recently. She was a good pro, it was a real bitch losing her. She used to do this trick… she would get a bottle of champagne and…”
“Suzy,” I said. “That sounds like a great trick, and I want to hear all about it. But you were saying something about Misty?”
“Well, this girl left me to go work for some other asshole, no clue why. I mean, I treated her as good as any of my girls, she got more than her fair share of the cut, and you know she opted in for the college fund, where I put some of her cut aside to pay for school. So I figure she must have gotten herself on the needle or in the snow. I mean, what kind of escort prefers working for a man over a woman? It’s downright self-loathing, to me, because…”
“Suzy!”
“Right. Well, it’s not much, but she said that this kid she spent the night with was pretending to be a pirate.”
I blinked, waiting for her to finish off her cranberry vodka before she went on with the story. She waved for another. The men at my back, leaning on the bar to look at her, shared expressions of barely-concealed discomfort.
“He was talking about how he was working for a guy who was convinced there was some big money hidden somewhere in the Bend. And he was high as a kite, I guess, because he was rambling on and on about being a pirate looking for the buried treasure.
So I asked her, well, where did he say this buried treasure was? Because damn, if there is a buried treasure somewhere, I wouldn’t mind getting some of it myself. But she said he was flying, so she couldn’t really understand what he was talking about, except he was fixated on that word, millions. So I figured, you know, that must be how much money it was. But maybe it wasn’t. Maybe it was our boy he was rambling about, bless his soul.”
We raised our glasses in a perfunctory toast.
Well, it wasn’t nothing. And I could guess why Misty hadn’t approached Suzy on her own behalf. I didn’t think Misty would be that comfortable talking to a woman who’d sold her father prostitutes. Misty was cool, and certainly didn’t pass judgment, but women draw the line one place or another.
“Huh,” I said. “And who’s this chick?”
“A right bitch,” Suzy scowled.
“Her name, Suz,” I smiled.
“Oh. Well, if you were any old guy, I wouldn’t tell you. But considering the circumstances, and considering she’s a two-timer, she goes by Tallulah Honey. At least, that was the handle she used for me.”
“And who’s she working for now?”
“Some pimp who works out of the Dragonfly,” Suzy said, rolling her eyes and scrunching her nose. The Dragonfly Motor Lodge was not a nice motel. It was not a nice place to bring the kids. It wasn’t even a nice place to rent by the hour, unless you were looking to pick up an STD from the sheets. Suzy had very high standards and clearly didn’t think much of the Dragonfly, or anyone who would do their business there.
“Maybe I’ll look into it,” I said. “Thanks, Suz.”
“Anything for you, babe,” she said, pinching my cheek. Looking down the bar, the men who owed everything to Millions sat displaying various shades of alarm and shame and doubt. All except Leathers, who was doing an excellent impression of the Crypt Keeper. Suzy pulled my attention back to her by pulling on the cheek she still held. “Speaking of which, handsome, I know a man needs some things, first night out of prison. And if you an
d Misty aren’t bed buddies maybe I could give you a little something on the house…”
“We’re not,” I said. I knew where she was going with this. And god, did I need a release. But even while my brain screamed at me to say yes, to ask for her best girl, to break this four-year frustration, I heard my mouth say something totally different. “But I think I’m alright. Really, thanks for the offer.”
The surprise on Suzy’s face was mirrored on every other man in listening distance. Here I was, being offered a free ride after four damn years of sharing a dirty shower with two hundred other men…and I was turning it down.
Trust me, I was just as surprised as the rest of them.
Fact is, in a few hours I’d be strolling through Misty-Lee Constantino’s door. The thought of facing her smelling like sex and liquor made me feel downright filthy. That was not a good sign. Because I was filthy. I reveled in being filthy. I was a pig in shit, and I loved it.
But she was so fucking clean. And that made being dirty a lot less appealing.
Chapter 12
Misty
The house was dark when I got home. That didn’t make me feel so good. Rev said he’d take a taxi back when he was done at the Piper. Either he had gone to bed already, or he wasn’t back yet. I’d come home to an empty house a thousand times. But for some reason, it felt emptier than usual. Darker than usual. Scarier than usual.
Probably because of Rev’s commentary on everything that was unsafe about it.
Much appreciated, but not very comforting.
And what if he wasn’t coming back at all? What if he decided that he didn’t actually want to do any of this, helping me or anything, and found someplace else to stay? What if I was on my own again?
I sat out in my car for too long. Finally, I had to suck it up and enter my house. My own damn house, and my mouth was dry, my heart thudding in my chest as I let myself in.
Light was a blessing that couldn’t come soon enough. I flipped the switch, illuminating my living room, and breathed a sigh of relief.