by Sean Black
“That’s okay,” said Lock. “Next available works. Whenever that is.”
“I’ll be right back, bro,” Gilman told the bodybuilder.
He wandered over to the reception counter, chest puffed out, ink-stained hands stuffed into his pockets, all business.
“Look, what do you guys want?”
Lock glanced at Ty and shrugged. “I just told you, I’d like to make an appointment to get a tattoo.”
Gilman shot Lock a sarcastic smirk that suggested he didn’t believe a word of it, but he was prepared to play along.
“Okay, what kind of thing are you looking for?” he asked Lock with a wave to the wall filled with designs.
Lock was tired and sore, and he didn’t appreciate the attitude. He knew where this was going, and it wasn’t anywhere good. Not for the tattoo artist. In the meantime, he decided that he may as well press some more of the guy’s buttons.
“I want to get his name, and he’s getting mine. On my ass cheek.”
Ty took out his Oakley sunglasses and put them on as he struggled to keep a straight face.
“That’s right,” said Ty.
“Yeah,” said Gilman. “It’s not that kind of place.”
The bodybuilder had gotten up and was waddling over.
“Okay,” said Lock. “That was a lie.”
“For real?” said Ty. “I feel kind of hurt now.”
Lock took out his phone and pulled up the picture that showed Shanice’s tattoo.
He angled the screen so Gilman could see it.
“This your work?”
Gilman glanced at it. “How would I know?”
“You want me to get rid of these assholes?” the bodybuilder chimed in.
“Easy there, Sparky,” said Lock. “This won’t take long.”
“We’re looking for your buddy Hanger,” said Lock. “We know you did time together, and we know you ink up his girls.”
“Can’t help you,” said Gilman, folding his arms across his chest.
“He can’t help you,” said the bodybuilder.
Lock didn’t shift focus from Gilman.
“You want to speak with Hanger?” said Gilman.
“Or you could tell us where he is or whether you did any work on one of his new girls?”
Lock could sense the wheels in Gilman’s brain turning around. He was making a decision.
“You’re not going to leave until I help you, are you?”
“Correct,” said Lock.
Gilman turned to the bodybuilder. “Go sit back down,” he told him. “I haven’t seen Hanger or anyone he knows in months, and for the record I don’t exactly agree with how he makes his money, but I ain’t no snitch either. I’ll make a call, see if I can find him for you, but if I do, you gotta leave. Fair? I have a business to run here.”
Lock nodded his agreement. “Fair.”
Bodybuilder waddled back to the chair. Gilman followed him. He picked up his cell phone and with his eyes still on Lock and Ty made a whispered but brief phone call. A minute later he finished the call and walked back over to them.
“You’re in luck. I got him, and he’s here in Bakersfield.”
“Where?” said Ty.
“Don’t worry, he’s coming to meet you.”
Lock and Ty stood outside the tattoo place.
“You believe any of that?” said Ty.
“Nope. You?”
“Not a single word.”
“We’ll give it ten. If no one shows, we go back inside and express our disappointment,” said Lock, glancing through the door where Gilman had resumed his work. Every few seconds he looked up at them, seemingly untroubled. When he saw Lock looking, he smiled. Lock didn’t like it.
“Let’s wait in the car,” said Lock.
They walked the short distance to the Vietnamese restaurant. Lock got into the driver’s seat.
“You sure you want to drive?”
“We’re not going far,” said Lock as Ty got in next to him. He pulled out of the space and moved the car closer to the exit, taking a spot between two hulking pickup trucks.
No one driving into the strip mall would see them. Not immediately, anyway. And even if they did, they’d have to drive the whole way round the lot before they reached them.
“What’s the plan if he doesn’t show?” said Ty.
“Go back in, take his phone, see who he called, take it from there.”
It seemed to meet with Ty’s approval. He sunk back into the passenger seat.
“Please tell me once you find this girl that you’re done with this,” said Ty.
“I don’t know if I can,” said Lock.
“You think you can rescue all of them?” said Ty.
Lock didn’t say anything for a moment. It was a question he’d given some thought. There were so many kids caught up in this world that it was way beyond the scope of one person. Ty was right about that. But maybe that was missing the point.
“No,” said Lock. “I can’t rescue them all. No one can. But maybe I can rescue one.”
Right on cue, about nine minutes after they’d left the tattoo studio, and a few minutes before they were going to go back in to speak again with Gilman, a patrol car with two uniformed police officers rolled slowly into the strip mall and pulled into the spot they had vacated outside the restaurant.
The cops' heads were on a swivel, scoping out the lot. They hadn’t seen Lock and Ty sitting in Lock’s car, but it was only a question of time.
Lock started the car. As the doors of the patrol car popped open, he eased out of the space and rolled to the exit.
“That solves that mystery,” he said, watching the cops in his rearview as they went inside.
“Wait until they’ve gone and roll back in?” said Ty.
“Yeah, that would work,” said Lock, picking up speed as they blasted through an intersection. “You hungry? Might be our last chance to get something for a while.”
Ty raised his Oakleys.
“Sorry, who am I asking?” said Lock to himself.
“Hey, I have a question for you.”
“Go ahead,” said Lock.
“Would you really get my name inked on your ass cheek?” said Ty with a grin.
“Hang on,” said Lock as his phone trilled with an incoming call.
It was Angie.
He picked up, putting her on speaker so Ty could hear what she had to say.
“Give me some good news,” said Lock.
“I think I’ve found her,” said Angie.
31
Soothe hammered her fist on the bathroom door. All she could hear was water running. Kristin had gone in there about a half hour ago and still hadn’t come out. There was at least one guy downstairs in the parking lot waiting for Soothe to give him the room number and another John had just called, some weird sounding old dude who’d asked a lot of questions, and was on his way to the motel.
If Hanger walked in right now, it wouldn’t just be Kristin that would be in trouble.
Soothe could take care of the guy in the parking lot herself. Once a guy was horny enough, it didn’t much matter who greeted him at the door. But that wasn’t the point. Hanger had texted her that he was dropping by. He was almost always late, usually by an hour or two. Wouldn’t it just be her luck that this would be the one time he was on time?
She banged on the door again.
“You better open up,” she shouted.
No sound apart from the rush of water.
Kristin had been upset after they’d left the tattoo place. Soothe had known that much. It wasn’t unusual for new girls to throw a little tantrum, make life difficult. Soothe had been like that herself at the start.
“You don’t open up and I’m gonna break down this door. You hear me, girl?”
Suddenly aware that her foot felt wet, she looked down. Water was leaking under the bathroom door, pooling on the sticky bedroom carpet and soaking through.
Soothe cursed again. They’d have the manager
here any second. Places like this were cool with business being conducted as long as you kept to yourself. Soon as there was a problem, like the cops being called, or a bathroom flooding into the room below, you got kicked out.
Retreating to the edge of the bed, she ignored her phone ringing, and took off her heels. She aimed a kick at the bathroom door. She could feel it give. She kicked again. This time she caught the handle with her toes, pain ripping up her leg.
Now she was really mad. The phone rang again.
She picked it up. It was Hanger’s number, or one of them. She put the phone back down on the bed and squared up to the bathroom door. This time she shoulder charged it and it flew open.
Her momentum carried her skidding on the wet floor into the tiny bathroom. There was blood and water everywhere.
Kristin was slumped against the far wall. Her eyes were closed. Next to her was a pill bottle that Soothe recognized as belonging to her. Ambien for when the booze wasn’t enough to put her to sleep.
A lady’s razor lay on the floor, smashed up. Soothe knelt down to see where the blood was coming from.
Kristin had dragged the blade across both her wrists.
“You dumb bitch,” Soothe muttered as someone knocked on the motel room door.
32
Whatever pain Lock was in had disappeared, knocked out by a one-two punch of Vicodin and the thrill of knowing that he was minutes away from Kristin Miller. He swerved around a semi, blasting through a red light as they hurtled toward the motel.
“Easy there, Ryan,” cautioned Ty, slamming his hand against the dash to steady himself as the car rolled under them. “It’s no good if we crash before we get there.”
Lock eased off the gas, but only by a fraction. He wanted this done, and they were so close he could taste it. Things weren’t over when they had Kristin. He still wanted some personal time with Hanger. But that could wait.
The call from Angie was about an ad she had spotted, similar to the one they had seen for Shanice. Only this one matched Kristin perfectly.
Rather than make the call and risk someone recognizing either their number (calls from withheld numbers as a rule went unanswered) or their voice, they had quickly grabbed an elderly man. In return for a fast hundred dollars, he had made the call. His questions had confirmed, as best they could, that it was likely Kristin Miller on offer.
He had been given the address of a motel on the outskirts of Bakersfield and told to call for the room number when he arrived. They had taken the elderly man’s number and set off for the motel, the promise of another hundred bucks securing his continued cooperation.
The plan was simple. Get to the motel. Have the old guy call for the room number. Go in and extract Kristin Miller. If Hanger was there, all the better.
Lock’s grip tightened on the steering wheel. Adrenalin surged in him. This beat advising the kids of wealthy Chinese businessmen on home security, or babysitting Russian oligarchs, hands down. It was a feeling that beat any drug, natural or manmade.
A flash of red light behind them pulled him back to the present. The whoop of a siren confirmed the bad news.
Lock slowed, studying the patrol car tucked in behind him. It was the same two cops they’d narrowly avoided back at the tattoo studio.
Ty checked them out too. “What you want to do?” he asked Lock.
“How close are we?” said Lock.
Ty scanned his phone, their position a red dot pulsing toward the motel. “Ninety seconds,” said Ty.
Lock flicked on his signal and slowed down. He needed a moment to weigh things up. Showing every sign he was pulling over achieved that. The last thing he needed was these two calling for backup.
Or was it?
Maybe it was precisely what they needed. A motel parking lot full of cops might not be the worst thing in the world right now.
The alternative was pulling over and a long, awkward explanation of what he and Ty were doing out here, with no guarantee they would dispatch anyone to go check the motel. That was assuming this was a crime they took seriously, which wasn’t always guaranteed. And who knew what kind of relationship they had with Gilman, or what kind of yarn he’d spun when he called for them to drop by.
Relative to LA, this was a small town, and small town cops could be a law unto themselves.
Lock looked over at Ty. “I’m going to run it. See if you can get the old guy to press them for the room number.”
Bracing himself again against the dashboard, Ty dug out his phone. Lock buried the gas pedal, pulling away with ease from the patrol car.
33
Hanger’s hand arced through the air, catching Soothe flush in the chest, and sending her reeling back.
“How the hell could you let this happen?”
She looked up at him.
“I didn’t know what she was doing. She seemed fine.”
“Fine,” spat Hanger. “Does she look fine to you?”
Soothe knew better than to say anything more. Hanger was crazy when he got like this. He was capable of almost anything. He’d killed a girl before. Right in front of her. She was only a little thing too. Maybe four feet eleven and like ninety pounds. Hanger had beaten her until she started bleeding from her ears and then left her for dead.
“This is all kinds of bad,” he said. “You know we got people chasing us down because of her. You know that, right?”
“Here?”
“Yeah, here. They were in at Gilman’s right after you left. They had a picture of her.”
“Cops?” she asked.
“I don’t know. I don’t think so. Maybe worse than cops.”
“So, what are we gonna do?”
“I’ll tell you what we’re not gonna do, and that’s stick around here. Help me get her down to the car.”
Soothe looked down at Kristin, laid out on the bed, her wrists wrapped with strips of bed sheet to staunch the bleeding, her eyes still almost rolling back in her head.
“Like this?”
He drew his hand back again. She flinched, and he relented, dropping it back down by his side.
“Yeah, like this.”
“Where we going?” she asked as she walked around, grabbing Kristin’s ankles as Hanger hooked his hands in under the girl’s armpits.
Together they lifted her off the bed and staggered to the motel room door.
“I don’t know yet,” said Hanger.
“We could just split, leave her here. Someone will find her,” said Soothe.
Hanger kept moving out of the door. He seemed to be weighing the idea.
“No,” he said, out of breath as they staggered with Kristin out onto the walkway. “No one’s going to find her. Not until I’m done with her.”
They could hear sirens in the distance.
“Come on, hurry up,” said Hanger, hustling down the stairs to his BMW. “Man, she is really going to make a mess of my car.”
“You could move her on,” said Soothe.
By move, she meant sell. It happened when girls had become more trouble than they were worth. Guys like Hanger would pass them over to someone new. For a fee. Usually someone who had a reputation as a gorilla pimp, a man who relied exclusively on fear and intimidation to keep his girls in line.
“Maybe,” said Hanger, unlocking his car with a simple click of a button. “Or maybe I could give her to The Freak.”
Mention of The Freak sent a chill running over Soothe. She wished now she hadn’t brought up the idea of moving Kristin on.
Hanger opened the back door and together they shoved Kristin into the back seat. She started to come round and put her hand out. Hanger slapped it away.
“Maybe I’ll give you to him too,” he told Soothe.
34
Lock could see the sign for the motel up ahead. He could also see three patrol cars parked horizontally across the road ahead, blocking the next intersection. He looked from the roadblock to the passenger seat.
Ty finished up his call.
“No l
uck,” said Ty. “He says they’re not answering any of his calls, but he’s just seen some white dude who sounds like our boy loading a girl into the back of his car with some black chick helping him. I’m guessing the black chick is Soothe.”
“That’s them,” said Lock. “It has to be.”
“Ask him what they’re doing now.”
Ty asked. There was a pause.
“They’re splitting.”
“They left yet?” Lock asked.
Ty relayed the question. “Not yet.”
“Okay, ask him to see which way they’re headed and text you with it. Then see if you can get these guys dispatcher on the phone and tell them we’re not looking for trouble, but we’re not stopping either,” said Lock, although he already knew the answer on the first part.
They’d almost certainly be heading for the freeway out of town. If they were spooked enough to be leaving the motel, they weren’t going to stay in town.
Lock eased off the gas, keeping an eye on the patrol car behind them in his mirrors. What to do next was a coin toss. They were close enough to the motel that if they could get round the roadblock, they had a chance of intercepting Hanger. Not much of a chance. But a chance none the less.
The alternative was to pull over and persuade the local cops to dispatch someone to chase him down. But that would take time. A few minutes at the very minimum and quite possibly longer. Assuming they agreed to do it at all.
“What do you think?” said Lock. “Try to go round? See if we can catch up to them?”
Ty hesitated, pulling the phone down from his ear as he spoke with the Bakersfield PD dispatch. “Okay, but get ready to duck. They’re loaded for bear.”
Lock followed Ty’s gaze to where one cop was drawing down on them with a shotgun from behind the open door of his patrol car.
Decision made, Lock kept his car moving, slowing a little more, before spinning the wheel hard as they closed in on the intersection, and careening off the road, up onto the empty sidewalk and then onto dirt, the tires spinning for a moment as they struggled to gain traction.