by Robert Ward
“Oh, it was a good school,” Vicki Hastings said. “But kind of boring, too. They said it was a serious place but I found it to be a lot of suburbanites. People who had money, and whose parents played it safe. Most of them will end up being middle managers.”
She said “middle managers” as though she was saying something obscene. And Kevin found himself agreeing with her, though he wasn't quite sure what a middle manager was or what one did. He got the idea though . . . scared little people who lived harried little lives. Nothing like his dad, who put himself on the line for his country, and nothing like him either, he hoped.
“I hate people who don't go for it. Don't you, Kevin?”
“I guess so, yeah,” Kevin said.
“That's what appealed to me so much about the way you play lacrosse. When you lost the ball you didn't just sulk, you reacted like . . . like . . .”
Kevin found himself leaning toward her now, intoxicated once again by her smell and the hazy, sexual look in her eyes.
“Like what?” he asked.
“Like an animal,” Vicki said. “You went after him with the ferocity of a cat, a leopard maybe, defending his turf.”
Kevin laughed.
“You're very dramatic, aren't you?” he said.
She blushed and looked a little shocked that he'd called her on it.
“I guess I am. But I can't help it. I feel like it's the only way to be. I mean, if you're not, you just turn into some, some . . . old person.”
“That will never happen to you,” Kevin said.
She smiled and pursed her lips.
“That's sweet of you to say,” she answered, “but I'm getting older every day. I look around this library and see all the gorgeous young girls and I feel ancient!”
“No way,” Kevin said. “That's silly.”
She reached over and lightly touched his cheek.
“That's so sweet, coming from you, a man of action.”
Kevin felt heat in his cheeks. A man of action. He'd never thought of himself as a man at all. In fact he had started to worry during the last few years if he would ever become a real man. Like his old man or Grandpop Wade. They were real men. He remembered the story about how his grandpop had been in a freighter that sank; he was out in the water with sharks, and everyone else panicked, but Wade kept everyone cool by singing songs and making jokes until the Coast Guard came and fished everyone out. And, of course, Dad . . . the things he'd gone through were amazing. And he never ever bragged about it. Like those actors and phony athletes on TV, talking about hitting a homer, or catching a pass . . . God, Dad did things that made those guys look like the egotistical jerks they were.
Both Wade and Dad had had so many women come after them. And unlike Kevin, they knew just how to handle things, the right things to say, and how to hold your body so you'd look cool. Like exactly the opposite of the way he was holding his body now, all stiff and goofy looking.
A man of action. That was a laugh.
And yet she was staring at him now and there was something in her eyes, something overwhelming, like . . . like what he'd heard about in movies and on TV. Desire. He could see it. Feel it.
Unless . . . unless this whole thing was a joke. Maybe that's what it was. The guys on the team had set this all up with her and a minute from now they were all going to run out and yell, “You're punked, Kevin. We gotcha!” That was it, had to be.
“Hey, it's been good talking to you, Ms. Hastings,” Kevin said, “but I gotta go now.”
“I know,” she said. “But I'll be done here in a few minutes. Why don't I give you a ride home?”
“Hey,” he said, “I wouldn't want you to go out of your way or anything.”
“It's not out of my way. I live just a couple of blocks from you.”
He stopped then, turning away from her so he could hide his erection by pulling his shirttail out.
“You know where I live?” he asked.
She smiled.
“Don't worry,” she said. “I'm not stalking you. I happen to drive by your house every day on my way here. I've seen you outside, too, when I'm coming home from Ralphs with my groceries. You might as well come with me. We can talk some more.”
“Yeah,” Kevin said. “Okay, if you don't mind.”
She smiled at him in a way that told him that she wouldn't like anything better. Then she went back to the librarian's desk.
Her car was out in the parking lot, in the corner near a big ficus tree. The branches hovered over the hood of the car, a ten-year-old Thunderbird, bright blue, with porthole windows and a sleek low look that reminded Kevin of an era he'd only read about, the world of the fifties and early sixties when America was the greatest power in the world and no one would have dared send planes into our buildings.
“This is such a cool car,” Kevin said as he opened the door and slipped inside, onto the cool leather seat.
“I know. I love it,” she said. “And I got it cheap just two months ago.”
“From where?” Kevin asked. Here in the two-seater car he felt overwhelmed by their intimacy. It was like the car was a magical carriage and they were going on some kind of fantastic journey together. He told himself not to think that way, that she was a librarian, for God's sake, and that she was an adult and probably married to the guy in the leather jacket he'd seen at the Brentwood game. But just the same, here in the car, with her perfume and her body so close to him . . . He was only inches away from touching her . . . his left hand had to maybe move three inches to touch her breast . . .
“I got the car from a friend, a fellow librarian, believe it or not. An older man who is sort of an admirer of mine . . . nothing sexy, just a friend, if you know what I mean.”
“What about your husband?” Kevin asked, feeling a sudden panic cutting through his chest.
“What about him?” she countered.
“Doesn't he get jealous if some guy is giving you a car?”
“Oh, no,” she said. “You misunderstand, Kevin. I paid for the car. It's just that my friend gave me a very good price on it. My husband liked that very much.”
She smiled and turned the key and the engine roared to life. She hit reverse and backed out fast, then slid a little as she turned to head to the street.
Kevin laughed.
“You drive like a teenager,” he said.
“I know,” she said. “Watch this.”
She stepped on the pedal and the T-Bird shot forward down Culver Boulevard. When she got to the light she made a sharp turn and hit the pedal harder; by the time they'd hit Venice Boulevard they were doing seventy-five. Then, without warning, she hit the brakes and the car skidded to a perfect stop at the red light.
“Wow,” Kevin said, “you really know how to handle it.”
She took a right and suddenly turned into a darkened parking lot at an abandoned hamburger place called Ruby's.
Then she downshifted, and drove the car slowly behind the restaurant, under some electric wires.
“Where are we going?” Kevin asked.
She stopped the car, and in a husky voice said, “Come here, Kevin. And be very quiet. No talking in the library.”
She turned to him and kissed him with those pink lips and Kevin put his arms around her and seconds later his tongue was in her mouth.
She ran her hands through his hair and moved her mouth to his neck, biting and kissing him, driving him crazy.
Then she put his right hand on her breast and told him to pinch her nipple, hard. He did it, in a daze, stunned out of his mind.
She groaned and put her hand on his cock, squeezing it and making some kind of animal sound he'd never heard before. And then her head was down in his lap and she was unzipping his Levi's and Kevin felt as though he would burst. Not only his cock but his brain, his heart ... all of it would burst, be blown apart . . . and he heard himself making noises similar to hers, groans of pleasure that sounded as though they came from outside of him.
And then her head was rockin
g back and forth on his cock and Kevin held her head in his hands and felt totally mad for her and knew that he could never, ever let this stop.
Never.
No matter what.
Chapter Nine
Was it the next day? The same night?
In her cell, Jennifer didn't have a clue.
She had finally fallen asleep, then wakened, then slept again . . . for who knew how long?
The truth was, she was in shock. It was just too hard to believe. She couldn't be here, she just couldn't . . . but the sounds of a rat running across the floor at the end of the hall convinced her it was all too real.
She was caught, trapped, and could think of no reason why. Maybe a lunatic had done it. Yeah, what was she thinking? Of course, it had to be a lunatic, and she knew the one. That Lucky Avila. Of course. He was pissed at Michelle and her because they wouldn't let him have his way with them. That had to be it.
Jesus, the guy was off his rocker on methedrine. That was the deal, had to be. He was going to keep her here, scare the shit out of her . . . and maybe . . . God, maybe rape her.
And if he raped her, then he could never let her go. He'd have to ... God, she didn't want to think about it. Shit.
Do not panic! Do not freak out!
She took three deep breaths and let the air out slowly as she had been taught when studying yoga.
Chill. There had to be a way out.
And though part of her just wanted to lie there and cry, she wouldn't give in. Oh, no, she was going to battle. If it was Lucky Avila, he was going to be in for the fight of his life.
The first thing she had to do was find out if there was a way out of the cell. How did they do it in movies she had seen? Try to remember . . . Oh, right, the hero always looked up in the ceiling and found a loose tile. Then he climbed up there and got into an air duct and cruised right along until he found a way outside.
Jennifer got up and looked at the ceiling. It didn't take long before her hopes in that direction were dashed. There were no loose tiles because there were no tiles, period. The ceiling was concrete. She'd have one hell of a time getting through there. Maybe . . . maybe she could take the leg off of her bed and whack at the cement. Yeah, and maybe the guard would hear her and come down and dash her head against the wall.
What else? The toilet . . . wait, didn't she see a movie about a guy who dug out under his toilet and created a trench, which led to sewer lines?
No, that was wrong. She was conflating two movies. One was the The Great Escape, where they dug under the fence at the prison camp, and the other was Trainspotting, where a junkie dove into a toilet and swam into a cesspool.
Who was she kidding? She was a nurse. She knew nothing about how to escape from jail. Jennifer burst into tears. She was no heroine. She wasn't going to escape. She was going to die.
It was the first time she had let herself think that thought. Now she said it out loud, to convince herself of its terrible reality.
“You are going to die,” she said, and the sound of her own voice, low and trembling, was a shock to her.
It was true, wasn't it? She was going to die. They had brought her here to kill her.
Why?
She shed a few more tears, and then a strange calm came over her. She began to think, rather than panic.
Okay, she wasn't going to be able to go up into a handy air shaft, and she wasn't going to be able to dig a tunnel, either. She wasn't strong enough. And she probably didn't have enough time, even if she'd been built like a lady weightlifter.
But she was smart.
And so the thing to do was think. Think . . .
For example, if they were bringing only good-looking women here, then you would assume they were some kind of sex slave traffickers. Yeah, and they had to wait to take them away because . . . uh, because they had to set up the various houses of ill repute they were sending them to. Some girls would go to Asia, and maybe some to South America or Mexico. And that took time, and boats, and payoffs to authorities.
Maybe that was it.
But sex slaves? Didn't that mean really young kids? Maybe not. There were all kinds of people who wanted all kinds of sex.
She was twenty-four years old and she looked great in a bikini, and maybe some sick fucking drug czar wanted a good-looking Chinese girl that he could fuck until she was half-dead.
She began to feel her skin itch.
She had to talk to Gerri, figure out why they had been marked and if it was Lucky who had done it. Hadn't he mentioned to Michelle that he used to frequent some whorehouse? What was it called? The Jackalope Ranch, that was it.
Maybe she was there now. Maybe she was waiting her turn to be thrust into a life of prostitution.
She got up from her bed and moved back over to the corner of the cell door.
“Gerri,” she whispered.
No answer. Gerri must be sound asleep.
“Gerri,” she cried out now. “Wake the fuck up!”
“Huh? What—”
“It's me, Jennifer.”
“Geez, girlfriend, it's the middle of the night.”
“You can sleep when you're dead, Ger.”
“What the fuck? All right, what is it?”
“I want to know something.”
“Yeah, fine, we've established that. So, like what?”
“Are you . . . a hot chick?”
There was an outraged sigh.
“For this you wake me up inna middle of the fucking night? What you want to do, have some sex talk?”
“No, Gerri,” Jennifer said, forgetting all about whispering. “Sorry, not interested. I said it wrong. How old are you?”
“Twenty-four, baby.”
“And do you have a nice body?”
“You sick girl. We are in deep shit and you want to play lesbo games.”
“No, I want to know if you and I could be candidates for sex slavery.”
There, she had finally said it.
“Shit, I hope not,” Gerri said.
“And Mary, was she young, too?”
“Yeah, she was. Very young. Christ, maybe that's it. They sending us off to some foreign country to be whores.”
Jennifer sat down on the edge of the table in her cell.
“It could be that. It's the most logical thing.”
“Yeah, but I thought they did that mainly with little Asian girls. Like ten or twelve years old.”
“Yeah, me, too,” Jennifer said. “But in our new world of sexual diversity anything is possible. Besides, I'm Asian.”
There was a long silence from Gerri, and finally Jennifer heard her start to cry.
“I'm sorry,” Jennifer said. “I'm just trying to find some reason for all of this. Maybe if we find it we can somehow use what we know to get out of here.”
“Yeah, I get it, girl,” Gerri said. “But if they are really all about having us be sex slaves, there ain't nothing we can do. They got drugs, baby. I seen ‘em before. They knock you out and they rape you. And you ain't got a thing to say about it. And when they all done with you, they cut you up and throw yo ass away.”
Jennifer shook her head, and went quietly back to her bed.
She remembered something she'd heard in college. Knowledge shall set you free. Well, not all the time, baby. Not all the time.
Chapter Ten
In the morning Jack headed up to Taos and spent two hours talking to the people of the pueblo. The pueblo was an interesting place, and the round kiva prayer building was a spot he wished he could spend time in. Unfortunately, the Taos Indians gave him no answers. Not one person had seen anything. That is, they hadn't seen anything of Jennifer. An Indian sculptress named Rada Mankiller had met a couple from Blue Wolf. She even had their card, and she gave it to Jack. On it were the names Phil and Dee Dee Holden. They were from Columbus, Ohio. They had come up to look at the art but found it too expensive. Rada Mankiller said that they had told her they loved her pots but they could get a “pot for a lot cheaper at Target in
Columbus. It was even Indian, sort of . . . anyway, it had an arrow on it and it only cost 29.95, plus tax.”
Jack thanked her and headed back down the hill. He needed to get to Blue Wolf and find the Holdens. But it so happened that he still had to pass right by the doors of Lucky Avila's El Coyote. He found a spot in the hills just across from the converted motel and watched the action at Lucky's place for a while. He had done some research on him in the morning, and found that Lucky was a kind of renaissance crook. He had robbed Good Humor trucks when he was a kid, sold porno pictures of his classmates at Sacramento High School, and blackmailed his minister at the Faith Catholic Church. All the while he had been playing lead guitar in a heavy metal band called Headripper and had been known to have four or five girlfriends whom he kept at a commune he called the Playpen.
Now he was loaded with dough and flying high. Lucky was the Scarface of the Southwest. He had fast cars, gorgeous (if mentally challenged) women, and boats to pull along behind his massive SUVs. He'd also built a barn and several other residences behind the main house at El Coyote. These cabins were where his gang members lived.
His Achilles’ heel, as Michelle had said, was that he apparently dealt meth. And like most meth dealers he couldn't resist using his own product. The word Jack got from reading old police reports about him was that he'd become even more mercurial and violent than he'd ever been.
He sounded sick enough, Jack thought, to take Jennifer Wu.
She could be held prisoner right now in one of the outbuildings that Jack was observing through his Hasselblads.
Still, he doubted it. Anyone who went to all the trouble to kidnap someone surely wouldn't be dumb enough to hide her right on their own grounds.
Jack watched for three hours before anything happened.
He saw Lucky Avila lead a group of six fellow Sons of Satan out of the gate and down the highway.
Jack followed them.
Two miles down the road, Jack watched as Lucky and his boys pulled into the parking lot of a local restaurant, the Red Sombrero.
Jack waited until they'd been inside the restaurant for five minutes, then parked and went inside.