by Frank Zafiro
I hoped instead that she’d just think I was stepping out on whoever I was with.
In any event, she wasn’t too drunk to catch my vibe. “Oh,” she said. “Uh, yeah. Sure.”
“Thanks.”
She looked back at me again, still slightly confused. Then she gave me a light push on the shoulder. “You call me, okay? We’ll have lunch and catch up.”
“I’ll do that,” I promised.
She gave me another hug, this one more perfunctory than the first, then spun on her heel and headed out of the bar.
When I sat down again, Anton was staring at me. My guess was that his eyes had never left me during the entire exchange.
“Who was that?” His voice was lower than before. The playful tone was gone.
“An old friend. From college.”
“Why you don’t want to introduce me? You embarrassed?”
I shook my head. “She doesn’t need to know you.”
“That girl? ‘Course not. She don’t like brothers, that much is obvious. But not introducing me, anyway? That shit be rude, H.”
“If she doesn’t know your name, she can’t repeat it to someone else.”
“Like who?”
I took a sip of my wine, considering. Then I said, “Did it ever occur to you that there might be someone in my life, Anton? Someone who doesn’t need to hear about me being at a bar, having drinks with a strange man?”
“A strange, black man, you mean.”
“Strange and man are the parts that would cause the most trouble, don’t you think?”
“My experience, the black part always cause trouble.” But he paused and thought about it for a few moments. Then he nodded, though his expression didn’t soften any. “Maybe. Perhaps.”
I smiled weakly. “I don’t need complications. That’s why I keep things like this—“
“Strictly business,” he finished.
“Exactly.”
“Mmm-hmm.”
I finished my wine. After the near miss with Tanya, I decided not to push my luck. Anton called me here to try to get into my pants, but he didn’t have any other business to do. Odds were he wasn’t going to tell me anything worth a damn, so the best thing to do was to just leave.
Before I could say anything, he picked up his drink and downed it. I heard the ice click against his teeth as he finished. Then he set the glass down deliberately.
“C’mon,” he said. “I wanna show you somethin’.”
“What?”
“You’ll see. You gonna like it. It be good for business.”
He dropped a few bills on the table and stood up. I reached for my purse and reluctantly followed him. We left the restaurant and walked through the rustic hallways of the Olde Flour Mill shopping center that housed it. All of the shops were closed but the windows were lit up with their wares. Anton walked past them without paying the slightest bit of attention.
He exited the Flour Mill and took a right. After a few steps, he stopped and looked over his shoulder to make sure I was with him. Once I’d caught up, he thrust his hands into his jacket pockets and started off again.
“Where are we going?” I asked. I wanted to get him to say something so that the recorder in my purse would pick it up. After my call to Lieutenant Shepard, someone should be monitoring the signal. If they couldn’t see me for some reason, they’d at least hear where I was headed.
“Just up here,” he said vaguely.
I didn’t like that answer much at all, but I followed him anyway. The direction he was headed took us across the wide foot bridge, around a corner and either into the park or to a parking lot.
“Is it in your car?” I asked. “You parked in the east lot over there across the river?”
“Yeah,” he grunted, and kept walking.
It’s been a long time since I’ve spent any time around Riverfront Park at night. When I was a patrol officer, we’d swing through once in a while on prowl checks, but not often. There was never a lot of foot traffic, and even less on weeknights. That hadn’t changed, by the look of it. Some security guys in white polos rode around on bikes, but I didn’t see any of them at the moment.
We walked across the bridge in silence, then started around the bend.
Suddenly, Anton wheeled toward me, a revolver in his right hand. Before I could react, he grabbed a handful of my hair with his left hand and the barrel of the gun pressed into my cheek.
I froze. If he was going to shoot me, I was already dead.
But he didn’t.
“Something else be botherin’ me,” he said. “’Bout that stuck up girlfriend of yours?”
“What?” I whispered, even though I knew.
“That bitch called you Gus.”
The world slowed almost to a standstill. I saw it all right then. A slapping palm to his groin as a distraction. Drive the hip into him to knock him off balance. Grab onto the wrist of his gun hand and rotate the thumb outward. Step under the upper arm and lever downward with my shoulder as the fulcrum, snapping his arm at the elbow.
Then get busy really hurting him.
The whole sequence flashed through my mind in an instant, and my hands automatically opened into a palm strike.
But I stopped myself.
Because I saw the rest of it.
Maybe I wasn’t quick enough, in which case he’d blast a bullet into my brain.
Even if I pulled off the move, the entire operation was toast. All I had was Anton at this point. None of his bosses. Could we sweat him, try to roll him over to get to them? Maybe. But I didn’t spend all this time undercover for a maybe.
Instead of slapping the heel of my palm into his balls, I held both arms straight down, fingers pulled back on my hands like I was throwing a stop signal down to the ground. Any cop watching would see this as a “stand down” signal. If I were some rookie out on a hooker detail, they might disregard it and move on Anton anyway. But I’d made my bones with the men and women I worked with, and I was pretty sure they’d hold back.
Anton was no good to me dead.
“Why the fuck is that, H.? Why she call you Gus?”
“Easy, Anton.” The wavering sound of my own voice surprised me. “Easy now.”
“Fuck easy. Don’t talk to me like I’m a motherfuckin’ horse or some shit. Answer me. Why’d that bitch call you Gus?”
My thoughts swirled while I considered my options. There weren’t many that I could see.
“She didn’t,” I lied.
“Bullshit. I heard her.”
I cleared my throat, settling on a story. “No, she didn’t. I can explain.”
“You fuckin’ better.”
“Let me go.”
He pressed the muzzle of the gun into my cheek. His grip on my hair tightened. “You can explain right here.”
“Okay,” I said, my voice strained. “Okay.”
“Talk, bitch.”
“She didn’t say Gus. She said Goose.”
He hesitated. I knew he was mulling it over, playing it against his memory of the conversation. He didn’t say anything for a long while.
“Sounded like Gus to me,” he said, his tone less certain.
“She was drunk. It was Goose.”
Another long, tense moment passed. I could hear his breath whistling in and out of his nose. My heart pounded hard in my ears.
Then his grip relaxed slightly.
“Goose, huh? Why she call you that? Some kind of Top Gun shit? White people love that movie.”
“No. Nursery rhymes.”
“The fuck?”
“As in Mother Goose?” I said. “That was my nickname in college. After a while, it got shortened to Goose.”
He thought about that a little longer. Slowly, he let go of my hair, but kept the gun’s cold metal pressed to my face.
“Why they call you that?”
“I had a habit of taking care of everyone. Especially when we drank.”
He considered my words, then his expression broke int
o a cold smile. He pulled the gun away from my face and slipped it back into his jacket pocket. “Damn, H. Some shit never change, huh? You still doin’ that.”
I cleared my throat. “Yeah. I suppose so. We’re done here, right?”
“Yeah, we done.” He sniffed and looked away for a second. When he spoke again, his voice actually had a tinge of disappointment to it.
“I guess if it’s gotta be strictly business, then it’s gotta be.” He gave me another up and down eyeball. “Though I would have liked to see what you got waitin’ under there. Truly.”
I swallowed, my pulse still pounding at my temples. “Yeah, well, I don’t think you could handle it. Besides, I’m not into the rough play.”
He chuckled. “Shee-it. That bit was just like you said. Strictly business.”
SEVEN
Bull
My truck wasn’t pretentious, but driving around on the pot holed, cracked, single-lane blacktop of Sprague between the Valley and downtown I might as well stand outside with a sign asking about a guy with a green Impala.
Shit. I’d have to get out and walk around, but where could I park that wouldn’t compromise my truck? I turned off the main street and found another rundown neighborhood where the houses had cracked windows and missing siding.
A spot behind a van on cinder blocks and in front of an old school Volkswagen Beetle looked like it might hold my rig and keep attention at bay. The last thing I needed was people looking through my windows and seeing any of my hunting gear.
I slid from the seat, turning to reach under the back passenger foot rug into the hidden compartment I’d installed a few years back. The butt of the Taurus Slim fit snugly into my palm like I’d just gotten off the range with it.
Everywhere I went, I carried concealed. But an extra firearm never hurt anyone. I drew on the ankle holster and tucked the 9mm in the holder. A large part of me wanted to grip it tight and hold my finger over the trigger, ready to shoot at anything that moved.
Defeat soiled the air with mild desperation. Leaving the truck, I pocketed my keys and found a steady pace that didn’t look like I was searching for anything and didn’t look like I was running from something either.
A crack in the cement strip trying to pass as a sidewalk jumped out at me and I stumbled. Hell, my surefootedness normally carried me over hidden tree roots and slippery shale. Maybe I looked like a drunk and I’d fit in. Come to think of it, a drink didn’t sound too bad right about then.
Clang! A metal trash can lid fell to my right and I spun, crouching and reaching for the gun at my ankle. Damn black cat rubbed between the corner of a house and the trash can. I breathed deeper, and let my irritation swirl in.
I needed to get my head in the game.
My plans lacked stiffness. They needed to be roughed up a bit. This was a different kind of hunting than I was used to. When I found the buck in the woods, I knew exactly what to do and how to do it. But what did I do when I found the pussy in the Impala? Ask him nicely to return my niece?
I clenched my hands in the slight breeze coming from the main street and took the final few steps to the busy downtrodden area.
Nice guys didn’t get jack-squat these days. No matter what they did. I needed to be Bull the hunter, not Bull the store owner, or Bull the brother, or even Bull the uncle. All that extra emotional baggage made me soft. The knitting would be put aside because I needed my anger more than anything else in that moment.
Angry would find Taylor.
An hour passed on that damn street where storefronts needed wrought-iron bars across their windows and everywhere I turned men sat against buildings, smoking, drinking, spitting. Men. Not women.
I walked a solid eight blocks before the grass between the street and the sidewalk started to show thicker than small patches in a dirty square here and there. That was my signal to turn around.
Halfway back to my entry point, a man smaller than myself, maybe five-and-a-half feet or so, stepped from a black-painted doorway. He pressed a long, dirt-encrusted fingernail to the center of my chest about chin level for him and he pushed. Hard. “You looking for good time?”
I couldn’t place his accent and his soiled skin didn’t give away a specific ethnicity. But I understood an offer when I heard one. And I wasn’t buying. “Not today.”
Brushing him aside, I continued past a chipped garbage can and a flier-plastered telephone pole.
He called after me. “I have fresh fun. Good fun. You like. I know this.”
I turned, catching him gesturing with his finger plunging in and out of his fisted hand. Seriously? Had he just signed the banging signal at my back? Sick. But he’d said fresh. Did that mean new?
“Alright, I might be lookin’. Whatcha got?” I ignored the clamminess in my palms. I’d never been into prostitutes. The whole idea turned me off. I’d heard so many stories about women and children being forced into the profession it made me want to beat the shit out of anyone involved.
My biggest fear was curled around Taylor having been kidnapped and forced into the sex slave industry. I’d most likely never see her again, if that were the case.
A possibility I couldn’t stomach.
He flashed his dark yellow and black pitted teeth at me as I returned to his side. He motioned me eagerly through the door. My gut pulled at me to head to the truck, but I had to move forward. I had to know what he was talking about and if fresh meant Taylor.
I stepped over the doorjamb and inhaled a lungful of unwashed body odor, sweat, smoke, stale alcohol, and what could only be described as cat piss. Everything in me struggled to get to fresh air. Why couldn’t I be hunting the bastards in the wilderness where I was comfortable and could do my own thing?
The man must have sensed my hesitancy. He pushed at my back, shunting me through a tight corridor, down a short flight of stairs, up a different set of stairs and into a large room partitioned off with hanging sheets of different designs, some with flowers, some solid colors, and others in stripes. Painted yellow, the walls tried to be cheery but clashed with the myriad of colors in the hanging makeshift-curtains lining both sides of the room and the wall opposite me.
“You pick a number and you get that room.” He held out his hand. “But you pay first. Ten minutes. Good time. Thirty bucks.”
Thirty dollars? For ten minutes? Shit. Was that all those girls were worth? I hadn’t even seen them, but the style of the room and the set-up screamed turnover. Fast turnover. Like a damn sex factory.
I reached into my back pocket and pulled out a wad of bills. “Tell you what. You let me look and choose which one I want, and I’ll pay…” I peeled off a twenty, then another twenty, then another twenty, until I hit a hundred. His wide eyes told me I didn’t have to go any further. “A hundred.” I held up the money between my index and middle fingers. “Deal?”
He watched me for a minute, then waited as if considering it. Which I knew he’d already decided but I let him play his charade. He reached for the money before he spoke. “You get look each one. Make it fast. You cut time with look.”
I turned away before I hit the guy. Idiot. I’d just paid for over thirty minutes and he was warning me about cutting into my ten?
All different kinds of scenarios bombarded me with each quick thump-thump of my heart. I couldn’t grab all the girls and make an escape. I couldn’t see a damn exit in the room except the one the little shit guarded. I had a gun, but I had no idea who else was in the building.
Even windows were non-existent in the prison-like room. The light filtered down from uncovered bulbs crudely displayed from standard fixtures.
Reaching the first cubicle, I pushed the sheet to the side enough to see in. Ratted hair hung to the girl’s shoulder. She had to be in her late teens to early twenties, but the hollowed cheeks and sunken eyes confirmed what the bruised inner elbows of her arms stated. She’d been there a while. Working.
She lifted her gaze past my shoulder and motioned with small movements to come closer.
The cubicle beside it didn’t hide a different story. The woman’s bony collarbone reminded me of a skeleton I’d seen once in high school biology. I exited that one to move to the next.
Each sheet I lifted, the more intense my nausea became. Their ages didn’t matter so much as the fact that I could almost pinpoint how long they’d been there by the dimness in their eyes and the flack to their movements.
The man by the door grunted as I moved to the thirteenth cubicle, two from him and on the opposite side I’d started. He shifted his feet, obviously fed up with my choosiness. A slight crinkling suggested he gripped the money tighter. There was no way I’d get a refund, if I wasn’t satisfied.
I lifted the sheet and looked up from the tattered rug to face the back of a girl with dirty blonde hair hanging limply between her shoulder blades.
No bra strap stood out above a bright red pleated skirt.
Bright red like a candy striper’s.
EIGHT
Gus
The sun warmed my face and bare arms through the tangled branches of the huge oak. I sat with my eyes closed, turned up toward the rays, letting them wash over me. Spokane was a dreary place for many months out of the year, and moments like this late spring day of full on sun were to be savored.
I don’t know if it was the light or the warmth but either way, it settled my nerves a little. I’d gone straight home after my little dust up with Anton last night. I was relieved that none of my cover units stopped me. Usually there’s a debrief after any meet, even if it’s just to confirm what they heard and ensure the recording equipment worked. If it doesn’t catch the conversation due to background noise or equipment failure, Shepard likes me to write out my report immediately, while it’s still fresh in my mind.
As if last night was going fade into memory.