The Girl They Couldn’t See (Blind Spot #1) (Blind Spot Series)

by Laurence Dahners

  Roni felt relieved. She’d been worrying that the two girls were in over their head. It seemed crazy that she, at age seventeen, was worrying about a couple of young women who looked to be in their early twenties, but she was. She realized that she would worry about any woman or girl who was involved with a Castano. But if they were leaving, they should be safe enough. She turned to go, then realized that Nick had gotten up with the girls and was leading them somewhere.

  Not to the front of the club where the exit was.

  Resignedly, Roni turned to follow.

  Out in the alley, she zipped her jacket back up against the cold. She heard Nick saying something to the girl about a taxi and felt relieved, thinking he was more of a gentleman than she’d expected. She started to move away, but glancing back Roni saw Nick had the girl pinned up against the wall.

  The girl was struggling.

  Roni looked at the other girl. The guy with her wasn’t trying to grope her like Nick was doing his girl. He just seemed to be holding the girl so she couldn’t go help the girl with Nick.

  A third guy just stood by the door.

  Nick’s girl weakly called out for help. Roni looked at the third guy, but he just turned to look the other way, evidently planning to ignore whatever was going on.

  A sick feeling coming over her, Roni started walking toward Nick.

  When she arrived, the girl was looking panicked. She fought to free herself from Nick’s hands. Roni realized he had a hand under the girl’s skirt! Roni glanced back over her shoulder. The two men were looking the other direction, the one actually walking the second girl down the alleyway away from the struggle between Nick and the girl.

  Roni closed her eyes, thinking she shouldn’t get involved, but at the same time that she couldn’t not get involved. After a moment, she shrugged, threw her left arm around Nick’s neck and applied a Hadaka Jime choke. The blade of her left forearm dug into Nick’s neck. Her left hand caught in the crook of her right elbow. Her right hand went on the back of Nick’s head. Left leg around his waist, she heaved, the bones of her forearm squashing Nick’s carotids and cutting off the blood flow to his brain

  She’d done the choke hundreds of times in her martial arts class, but never this hard or on someone as big as Nick. Roni was pretty tall, so Nick wasn’t much taller than she was, but he was bigger around. He staggered back from the wall, carrying Roni with him.

  Wide-eyed, the girl stared at Nick for a second, evidently wondering what was wrong with him, then she turned and wobbled off down the alley as fast as she could. Fortunately, she didn’t say anything. In the chokehold, Nick wasn’t able to say anything either.

  Roni worried that Nick would drop onto his back, smashing her under him on the hard street, so she kept her right leg extended back behind her, toes skidding on the pavement. Nick scrabbled at her arm, but couldn’t seem to get a grip, partly because his chin was forced down onto her forearm and covering the easy grip points, and partly because his fingers kept slipping on the nylon of her jacket. He reached up behind his head and grabbed at hers, but she kept her head buried against the back of his. His fingers slipped off the nylon of her hood as well.

  Nick slowly sat down on the pavement. At first surprised that he hadn’t tried to throw her or slam down on top of her, she realized he was passing out from the lack of blood flow to his brain. Pretty good evidence that she was doing the choke correctly. She’d never completely choked anyone out in practice, but according to Master Akita it should only take 10 to 30 seconds to render Nick unconscious. She followed Nick down and stayed behind him keeping the choke on because she knew he’d wake up pretty quickly once she let go. She glanced down the alley and saw the girl had gotten pretty far away. She’d joined up with the other girl and they were both making good, if unsteady, time.

  Roni looked for the other two guys and saw that they were trotting her direction. One said nervously, “What the hell’s happening?”

  The other said, “I don’t know!” He called out, “Mr. Castano?”

  Employees, not friends, Roni thought. She kept the choke on Nick until the two men were almost on top of her, then let off, slowly lowering Nick so he wouldn’t fall suddenly and reveal that someone invisible had been holding him up.

  In the weak glow of the light by the club’s door, Nick looked pretty bad. A shiver ran over his body and his limbs flailed for a moment. Roni thought she saw a dark stain of urine at his crotch. She walked off down the alley after the two girls, wondering whether she might have done significant damage to Nick’s brain by keeping the choke on for so long. She decided it wouldn’t bother her if she had.

  She looked back over her shoulder to see what the guys with Nick were doing. They bent over him for a minute or so, glancing occasionally after the girls. After a bit, they helped Nick to his feet and started toward the back door of the club.

  I guess I didn’t kill him, Roni thought, not sure whether to be happy or sad. After a minute, she decided she’d definitely be sad except for her concern that having Nick die tonight might somehow foul up her family’s plan to do something about the entire Castano family

  Roni stayed there until the two girls staggered into a taxi, then she headed off to catch a bus.

  As she waited for one of the few buses that ran that late at night, she wondered what the Castanos were going to make of what’d happened…

  Nick felt confused when he first resumed consciousness in the alley. Two of the security guys from Petroglyph were crouching over him.

  He’d been trying to kiss Linda… suddenly he remembered some guy jumping on his back. Looking up at Mick, the guy whose name he remembered. He said, “Did you get the guy?”

  “Who, Mr. Castano?”

  “The guy who choked me!” Nick said impatiently.

  “Um,” Mick turned to look up and down the alley, “there wasn’t any guy, Mr. Castano. Just that girl you were hitting on.”

  “What are you, blind?! Some dude jumped on my back and choked me!”

  “There was only you and the girl, Mr. Castano. Maybe she punched you in the neck or something?”

  “Punched me in the neck?”

  “Yeah, there’s a karate chop to the neck that makes people pass out. Shall we help you up?”

  Nick reached up to feel his neck. It was sore. He let the two guys help him up then noticed that his crotch was wet. Though he felt like he could have stood fully, he stayed bent over to hide the fact that he’d pissed his pants. Once they’d got him inside the door of the club, he sank onto the bench and said, “Have somebody get my car. I’m goin’ home.”

  In the morning, Nick’s head hurt from a hangover and his neck had visible bruises. Could that skinny little bitch really have punched me in the neck? he wondered.

  She didn’t seem strong enough. Besides, Nick couldn’t shake the feeling that there’d been someone on his back.

  But I guess I shouldn’t tell those guys I think they’re full of shit, he thought. I can’t afford to piss them off since I’ve got to go get them to promise not to tell my dad what went down last night.

  ***

  On Saturday night, Tansey wouldn’t let anyone talk about the Castanos until dinner was over. Hax felt excited to see that she’d made Ravinder’s favorite, beef vindaloo, something that Hax liked a lot as well. Because of the cost of beef, they hadn’t had it for a long time. Apparently, Roni’s windfall had loosened the purse strings a little.

  Everybody seemed to be in a good mood, though Hax thought there was a general sense of apprehension too.

  Tansey set down her fork, “Are we ready to talk?” The other three nodded and Tansey spoke first, “I’ve thought about this a lot, and I feel strongly that we can’t risk Roni’s life trying to fight this battle. Yes, someone needs to do something about the Castanos, they’re a menace and they’re hurting everyone in the city, not just the merchants. But this isn’t our war, it’s everyone’s, and the government, not our family, should be fighting it.”

  Ro
ni said, “But I can attack without being seen! It’s much safer for…”

  Ravinder interrupted, “No, no, I’ve changed my mind. I agree with your mother. The government could go after them in a tank if they had the courage. They can do it far more safely than you can. This is not our responsibility!”

  Hotly, Roni said, “The government can’t do anything until it has proof! Their hands are tied by all the legalities. We all know what the Castanos are doing.”

  “Then we should send proof to the government,” Tansey said. She took Roni’s hand, “Let’s keep it calm. We don’t need to fight with each other.” She looked around the table, “If the government needs proof to move in with tanks or SWAT teams or something, let’s give them the proof. Surely we can send copies of our own security videos to the FBI in Washington. That way, even if our local Bureau has been bribed or intimidated, the central office would have to respond.”

  “I’m not sure I like that,” Ravinder said slowly. If there’s someone corrupt in Washington and they get a video that only shows our store being extorted… What if they send it to the Castanos? They’d know where it came from.”

  The other three were glancing uncomfortably at one another, so Hax spoke up. “Roni could follow Nick around, videotaping him extorting a hundred stores. We could mail copies of the vids to a lot of people at the FBI. They can’t all be compromised.”

  His family turned to look at him speculatively.

  He lifted his palms, “That shouldn’t be too dangerous.”

  Roni said, “I’ve been reading up on organized crime. They’re probably doing a lot of other illegal stuff too. I could probably get that on video.”

  “Like what?”

  “Running drugs, laundering money, illegal gambling, prostitution…”

  Tansey’d started by shaking her head, now she interrupted, “No! I don’t want you around those kinds of things.”

  “I already know all about ‘those kinds of things,’” Roni said, making little air quotes.

  Tansey shook her head and looked down at the table, “Knowing about those kinds of things… and seeing them are… different.”

  The family talked for almost an hour. Ravinder and Tansey had already decided to invest the money Roni’d taken from Nick. They wanted to put it in a college fund for Roni and Hax. By the end of the meeting, the parents had agreed that it’d be reasonable for Roni to follow Nick and any other Castano collectors around, filming what they were doing to the merchants, but not interfering. Since Nick and Mario did most of their merchant visits during the day it’d be easiest if she did it over the school’s Christmas holiday. The idea was for her to try to film while holding the camera braced in a location that’d look as if the camera had been hidden there. That way the people who watched the videos wouldn’t have any reason to think that someone invisible had carried it in and held it.

  Hax could tell from the set look in Roni’s eyes that she didn’t think videotaping them was enough. She’d argued for taking more of the Castanos money. It’d help out the family, and the loss of cash would put a serious crimp in the Castanos’ business model. Their parents felt that’d be too dangerous and in some sense unethical, though Hax couldn’t see how it could be wrong to steal from thieves.

  Personally, Hax thought that at least of some of Castanos’ people deserved to die for what they’d done. That guy Mario, for instance, who’d killed the nice old guy that ran the Med Delhi, then laughed about it afterward. The Castanos themselves needed to die for having their minion murder people. Hax knew better than to voice such thoughts.

  Next Roni proposed scoping out the Castanos’ facilities. She believed she could figure out where the Castanos kept their records. Roni wanted to give the records to the FBI, and she thought she might be able to burn or otherwise destroy some of their drugs if she could find them. Those two suggestions practically put Tansey and Ravinder into a frenzy, so she let them drop.

  At least she stopped talking about those ideas at the family meeting. Hax thought she still had them in the back of her mind.

  “Next,” Roni said, “we all need cell phones.”

  “Cell phones are an extravagance…” Ravinder began as he had many times in the past.

  Roni interrupted, “That may be, but if I’m out following these kinds of horrible people around and I get in trouble, I need to be able to call you. Or the police. Keeping that money in our college fund won’t do me much good if I die before I go. Besides, a smart-phone has a video camera in it.”

  Reluctantly, Ravinder nodded.

  Hax didn’t say anything about how he thought Roni was going to go beyond what their parents had agreed to. He did, however, help her out by saying, “If Roni’s going to be going around videotaping those guys for hours on end, the rest of us should pitch in and do her chores.”

  You’d have thought he’d jumped on a grenade the way everyone praised him for the idea. He got assigned to run the cash register in addition to stocking. Ravinder said he’d do the data entry and Tansey said she’d take on Roni’s household chores.

  Hax suspected that, since no one else knew how, Roni was still going to have to do some of the computer stuff, but he promised himself that he’d learn what he could about what she’d been doing.

  ***

  Coach Rasmussen shook his head. He taught PE, and come spring he coached the school’s baseball team. During the last season, their pitching had been awful and their two best pitchers—who hadn’t actually been very good—had been seniors. Now they’d graduated.

  Then last night, he’d had this bright idea that maybe he could find some pitchers in his PE classes. This morning, he’d dragged one of the pitching nets over into a corner of the gym. The class was supposed to be learning the fundamentals of basketball, but he was rotating kids over to the pitching net. He sold it to them as an education in the fundamentals of pitching. Rasmussen figured if he found a kid who looked like he might have some potential, he’d recruit him for the baseball team.

  So far, it’d been a complete bust.

  Kids who were any good at sports, he’d decided, already went out for sports. We all like to do things we’re good at, after all. He realized now that checking all the dweebs and nerds to see if one of them might have a hidden talent for pitching had been a stupid idea. Rasmussen had almost put the net away after the morning sessions, but worried that word would get out about how he’d had people learning the fundamentals of pitching in the morning but not in the afternoon classes.

  He’d finished explaining what they were going to do on the basketball court, and waved over at the pitching net where it stood in the corner of the gym. “While most of you are practicing dribbling and shooting, I’m going to have you rotating one at a time over to try pitching. Not that I expect you to throw any curveballs, this is just to give you some idea what’s involved in getting a ball into the strike zone.”

  He took Adams over to pitch while the rest of the kids were dribbling basketballs up and down the court. Adams threw his ten balls. One hit the strike zone and one missed the net completely. Bad, but not the worst he’d seen that day.

  He sent Adams down to retrieve the balls and checked his clipboard. He called, “Buchry.”

  Buchry came trotting over. A tall, fairly light-skinned kid with some African features but straight hair. Rasmussen thought he must be of African and/or Indian descent. At the beginning of the semester, a lot of the other kids had teased him about being clumsy, but to be honest, Rasmussen thought the Buchry kid was better coordinated than most of the rest of them. Maybe the year before he’d just been in a clumsy phase like some kids went through. Still, as far as Rasmussen knew, the kid didn’t play any sports. He pointed out the rectangle on the net that represented the strike zone and said, “You’ve got ten balls here. See how many of them you can put in the zone.”

  The kid looked surprised. “You want me to throw from here?” he said, sounding like he thought it was too far.

  “Yep,” Rasmussen
said, turning to see what the kids were doing on the basketball court. Without surprise, he heard the ball hit the wall, not the net. He yelled at the kids on the basketball court, “Okay, those who’ve been shooting, start dribbling. Those who’ve been dribbling, start shooting.” He felt a little surprise when he heard the next baseball hit the canvas flap behind the strike zone in the net. One complete miss, one in the strike zone, he thought disgustedly to himself. It’s like, random.

  Then he heard the distinctive sound of the ball hitting the canvas flap again.

  Rasmussen turned. The kid threw slowly with terrible technique, but the fourth ball hit the strike zone too. Right in the middle.

  So did balls five through ten!

  “Um,” Rasmussen said, “that was pretty good, but your throwing technique could use a little work.”

  The kid shrugged uninterestedly.

  “Here, let me show you.” Rasmussen pantomimed the mechanics of a good pitch.

  “Okay,” the kid said, sounding like he hadn’t really paid any attention. “I’m supposed to go get the balls, right?”

  Rasmussen nodded, “Yeah, then why don’t you try throwing them again, trying to do it like I showed you.”

  The kid cocked his head, “I thought we were only supposed to throw ten balls?”

  Rasmussen felt irritated, but he kept it to himself. Instead, he said, “Sorry, I was watching the kids playing basketball and didn’t keep an eye on you while you were pitching. I didn’t get around to giving you any coaching until you’d already thrown all your balls. Just give it one more go, okay?”

  The kid shrugged, picked up the bucket, and trotted off down toward the net to gather the balls.

  Rasmussen considered trying to have the basketball players start a new drill, but he didn’t want to miss anything the Buchry kid did, so he decided there was no rush. When the kid got back with his bucket of balls, Rasmussen said, “Let me show you the throwing motion again.”