by Sean Black
Hanger twisted his head and looked up at them. He spat on the ground, narrowly missing Ty’s right boot. Ty drew a foot back and soccer kicked Hanger just below the ribs.
As Hanger started to ball up, bringing his knees to his chest, Ty reached down and pulled him up onto his feet. He gave him a hard shove in the back, propelling him forward.
The three men came to a gap in the barbed wire fence that ran along one side of the track. Ty shoved Hanger through it. He grumbled and held his side where Ty’s toe cap had landed.
Fifty yards ahead was a bank that led down to a dried out riverbed. Ty kept him moving towards it.
When they reached it, Lock called a halt. “This’ll do.”
Hanger turned around, so he was facing them. Lock and Ty stared at him.
“So, what? You’re gonna shoot me? That your plan?”
They didn’t say anything. It was better to let him do the talking and see where he went than try to force information from him. They could do that later if they needed to.
All three of them knew that killing Hanger and leaving him here was a dead end. It wouldn’t help them locate Kristin, but right this second that was beside the point.
“Look, I don’t have her,” said Hanger.
Lock maintained his silence. Ty drew his weapon.
“Turn around,” said Ty.
“Nah, man,” said Hanger. “You wanna shoot me, you can look at me while you do it.”
Ty glanced to Lock. Lock brought his hands up to cover his ears and took a few steps back.
“Fine by me,” said Ty, stepping in close to Hanger, just beyond arm’s length, raising his gun, taking careful aim and pulling the trigger.
71
Hanger screamed in pain as the bullet ripped through his sneaker and into his foot. Still screaming, with real tears leaking from his eyes, he hopped up and down on his working foot for a few seconds before sitting down hard.
“Man,” said Ty. “He’s making more noise than Lady Gaga’s dog walker.”
“You motherfucker!” shrieked Hanger. “I told you, I don’t have her.”
Lock stepped in closer so that he was looming over Hanger.
“We can see that,” he said. “So, where is she?”
“Like I’m going to tell you so you can finish me and leave me out here for the coyotes,” Hanger said, rocking back and forth.
Ty raised his gun again. “You’re not answering the question.”
Hanger rocked back and forth, doing his best to reach down to grab his foot. “Why should I?”
“Look, we can kill you out here, head back into town and we’ll find her eventually,” said Lock.
“That’s a good point,” said Ty. “We don’t really need this guy, do we?”
Hanger began laughing. “You’re not gonna find her.”
Something about the way he said it made Lock think that this wasn’t a bluff.
“Oh yeah, and why is that?”
“Because I sold her, and I’m the only person who knows who I sold her to. Without me, you got no chance.”
Lock was about to correct him, but stopped himself. Soothe would likely know. Maybe Hanger was assuming that she was dead. Not that it mattered.
“So, who’d you sell her to?” said Lock.
Hanger clasped his bleeding foot and shook his head slowly from side to side.
“Oh, no. I ain’t telling you.”
“Then what’s the point in us keeping you alive?” asked Ty.
“You have to get me something for my foot. Something to take the edge off,” said Hanger.
“We can do that,” said Lock. “A bullet in the head will certainly take your mind off your foot.”
“Or we could shoot him in the gut and leave him out here,” suggested Ty.
“That’s another option.”
Lock stepped away and waved Ty over to him. They spoke in whispers, but loud enough that Hanger would pick up what was being said.
“He’s full of shit,” said Ty. “She’s out on the track. Metro will pick her up. Maybe not soon, but in the next week for sure.”
“I think you’re right. But let’s not leave him out here. Let’s find somewhere quieter where we can bury him.”
“Okay, man, you want to do it, or do you want me to do it? I’m easy either way.”
“Why don’t we flip for it?” said Lock. “Winner gets to do the deed.”
Ty dug a quarter out of his pocket, ready to flip. “What you want?”
“Heads,” said Lock.
Ty flipped the coin, caught it, and slapped his hand over it, making a show of the whole thing. If Hanger hadn’t heard them, he would get the general idea.
“I’ll take you to her,” shouted Hanger. “I know where she is.”
Ty ignored him. He lifted his hand. “Tails. Lucky me.”
“I’ll take you right to the door,” pleaded Hanger.
72
Now that they’d done the deal, Lock wanted Hanger to loosen up, to start to believe that he was safe. Or, at the minimum, safe for now. If he didn’t, if he thought that he and Ty would kill him as soon as he’d given them the information about Kristin’s location, then there was more chance that he would change his mind.
Lock had cleaned and bandaged Hanger’s foot from the medical kit he and Ty always carried in their vehicles. He’d found a morphine lollipop in there and let Hanger suck on it just long enough to take the edge off his pain, but not enough that he was completely out of it. It was another calculated solution. Drugs loosened the tongue, morphine not as well as cocaine or amphetamine, but those were drugs that weren’t to be found in Lock’s medical kit.
Once they’d got Hanger back in the car, they set off back down the rough desert track. From there, they picked up the narrow service road that led back to the freeway.
In less than an hour they were on the road back to Vegas and Hanger had started talking.
“Where’d that lollipop go?” was the first thing he said.
“You can have some more in a while,” said Lock, studying him in the rearview mirror. “We don’t want you nodding off on us.”
Hanger sucked in some air. “Still hurts like hell.”
“Usually does when you get shot,” observed Ty.
“So how did you guys know where I was?”
“Should we tell him?” Lock said to Ty, who was sitting next to Hanger in the back seat.
“I’d want to know if I was him.”
“Your boy, Andre,” said Lock.
“Get the fuck out of here,” said Hanger.
“He gave us your apartment too,” said Ty.
Hanger cursed.
“Think he might be looking to take over business when you’re gone,” said Lock.
That prompted a fresh round of cursing from Hanger and a long diatribe about snitches being the lowest of the low. Lock let him run his mouth.
“None of this would be happening if it wasn’t for that little punk,” said Hanger. “He was the one that brought her to me. Told me she was eighteen too.”
Lock didn’t believe the second part for a single second. Going by his expression, neither did Ty.
“You call the cops?” said Hanger.
“Sure did,” said Lock.
“So why call ‘em if you weren’t going to let them arrest me?”
“You’re a smart guy,” said Lock. “Why do you think?”
“Flush me out without having to walk in there yourselves and risk getting capped,” offered Hanger.
“Ding, ding, ding. We have a winner,” said Ty.
“How d'you end up doing this, Carl?” Lock asked. “Like I said, you’re smart, there are a lot of ways to make money, especially if you’re prepared to break the law.”
“Grew up around the life. My momma was on the street, my papa was her pimp. She was his bottom girl. Then they got married. When he got killed, she took over. Then she died, and it was just me. Guess it was that, and it’s a lot easier to stay out of jail doing this t
han if you’re selling drugs or robbing banks.”
The morphine must have really been kicking in. Lock hadn’t expected Hanger to be quite this forthcoming. He didn’t know if he was aiming to gain their sympathy, but if that was his intention it wasn’t going to work. Lock had never considered a shitty childhood as some kind of magical free pass to heap misery on other people.
“I saw the same shit growing up, only it didn’t make me want to be an asshole,” said Ty, echoing Lock’s attitude.
“Yeah, well, different strokes,” said Hanger. “I know you ain’t cops. How come you’re so desperate to get this girl back? What’s the deal? She family or something?”
“Something,” said Lock.
“Okay, don’t tell me.”
“What about this guy that has her?” asked Lock. “We likely to run into any static when we roll up on him?”
“The Freak?” said Hanger. “Nah, he’s just some weird old dude. Used to be a stage magician. You shove a gun in his face like you did to me and he’ll piss his pants.”
That sounded fine to Lock. They’d already pushed way beyond their limits with law enforcement. They were firmly in vigilante territory and the law tended to frown on that, no matter how good a person’s intentions.
“You’re going to let me go when we get there though, right?” Hanger asked.
“You can go when we have her,” said Lock. “Not a second before.”
“Yeah, I don’t like the sound of that,” said Hanger.
“Well, that’s kind of too bad,” said Ty.
73
Even with the searing pain from his foot, Hanger knew the game they were playing. Hit him with a stick, or in this case shoot him with a bullet, and then be nice to him.
He knew the game because it was the same game that he played with every girl he’d ever turned out onto the track. Keep them guessing. Mix up the brutality and the softness. Be their best friend and their worst nightmare.
He’d believed he was going to die back there. He’d been ready for it, or as ready as someone could be.
Getting shot like that in the foot hurt like a son of a bitch, but it was better than getting shot most other places. It also told him that they needed him alive, for now anyway, and that was good information to have.
These guys were smart, but they weren’t as smart as they liked to believe. That could prove fatal for them.
They’d eaten up his bullshit story about growing up in the life like it was candy. The truth was his upbringing had been pretty regular, privileged even. He just liked pimping. The money was good, better than good. You set your own hours. And, the one part he hadn’t lied about, it was easier to avoid prison than a lot of other shady stuff.
The only time that a girl was ever likely to take the stand was if she’d be encouraged by some do-gooder. That was part of the reason why he’d gotten Andre to torch that shelter. As for these two white knights, if he had his way then they’d be going the same way as the woman who ran that shelter.
The reality was The Freak may have been old and decrepit, but he was a dangerous man. Like most people with money out here, and things to protect, he was armed. He wasn’t a dude who walked around with a gun, but his house was stoked with a pretty formidable arsenal. The Freak could shoot too. That had been part of his act when he was still drawing in the big crowds. And his house had its share of surprises. You didn’t do the kind of weird stuff that he did behind closed doors without making sure your security was on point.
If burglary had been his game, there were a few mansions that Hanger might have considered breaking into in Las Vegas. The Freak’s wasn’t one of them. These two boy scouts were about to find that out for themselves.
He leaned forward a little as they came up on the last turn.
“Make a left here,” he said. “His place is right at the end of the road. The one with the gates and the big-ass wall around it.”
74
She had fallen asleep again. In his experience, hours of terror would do that. After a while the body became completely exhausted and simply shut down.
He would let her rest. He needed to rest himself. In a few hours he would find a new and terrifying way to wake her, and they would begin again.
His watch pulsed. He looked down to see a red dot flashing on the display. It was likely a false alarm, but it always paid to check.
Hurrying out of the room, he grabbed a bath robe and quickly put it on. He peeled off the mask and climbed the stairs where he could hear the alarm.
Walking into the small cupboard he’d converted into a security monitoring room, he switched on the main display. A sensor had been triggered, probably by a coyote or a jackrabbit. He didn’t have any visitors scheduled, and the staff were still on a paid break.
He tapped the screen of the main display and looked at the various camera feeds outside the property. At first, he couldn’t see anything out of place. Then he saw it, a car rolling slowly up to the gates.
Checking to make sure the gates were closed, he switched back to the feed where the car had been. It was still moving towards the front gate. There was a man driving and what looked like two other men in the back.
The car stopped short of the gate and the driver got out. He skirted around the gate and started to walk around the wall, looking up, scoping it out, like he was casing the place before he tried to rob it. Only something told him that this man wasn’t here to commit robbery.
The Freak had a bad feeling about this. A very bad feeling. He walked out of the cupboard and headed for the gun safe.
75
The wall had to be twelve feet high, and it was smooth, tough to scale. Lock took a step back to get a better view. Even just getting to the house was not going to be easy.
They could always hand this over to the cops, but the cops would need a warrant to go inside and that would take time. It also meant that Lock would have to explain to them why he believed Kristin Miller was inside, and that was an awkward conversation. Judges tended not to look too kindly on evidence acquired after you shot someone. Nor did cops, for that matter. It wasn’t the kind of thing that stood up in court.
As he took another step back, his phone rang. He saw the name and thought about letting it go to voicemail. He decided it was better to answer it.
“Ryan Lock.”
“This is Beth Adorno from the Vice Unit. You remember me, don’t you?”
“Of course. How are you, Detective?”
“Well, right now I’m super pissed is how I am. And I’d like you to bring Carl Gaudi to me.”
“Sorry, I’m a little confused, I thought you already had him in custody.”
“Well, I sure would have if you hadn’t put him in the back of your car when we raided that place.”
How the hell did she know about that, Lock asked himself. Not that it mattered.
“Now you’ve really lost me.”
“Don’t try to be cute. One of our patrols caught you on dash cam. It took us a while to work out it was you, but we did. Now, unless you want to spend the next five years in Ely prison, I strongly suggest you hand him over. I really don’t like being used, Mr. Lock.”
Lock knew he didn’t have time to think this over. He needed to make a decision, and fast. He could either come clean, tell her where he was and why, and ask for her help. But that way, they ran into the whole search warrant problem.
The alternative was to play dumb, stall, get inside this place and get Kristin, assuming she was even alive, which wasn’t a given.
“Detective Adorno, I want the same thing that you do, to find Kristin Miller. I think her life’s in grave danger, and I can move a lot faster than you can to make sure she goes home in one piece.”
“So, you do have him,” said Adorno.
“I didn’t say that.”
“You didn’t have to. Now you can either tell me what’s going on right now, or I can have every cop in Vegas looking for you, and that doesn’t help any of us find this kid.”
> Lock took a moment.
“Hello? Are you still there?”
“I think I’ve found her,” said Lock.
“Excuse me?”
“You heard me. I can’t be certain, but I think I know where she is.”
Adorno’s tone changed, and the way it changed told Lock that she took this as seriously as he did. “Where is she?” Adorno asked him. “I can be right there.”
“Give me a half hour,” said Lock. “If I’m wrong and I haven’t found her then I’ll come in and hand myself over and you can do what you want with me.”
“No, that doesn’t work. Where is she?”
“I’m sorry,” said Lock, hanging up on her and walking back to the car as Ty opened the door.
“Who was that?”
Lock told him, then added, “She knows about us snatching up this asshole. Look, they can probably trace where we are from my cell phone, so we need to figure out how we’re getting inside this place and fast.”
“I have an idea,” said Ty. “But we’re going to have to leave him in the car. It’s gonna take both of us.”
“That’s okay. You have another pair of cuffs?”
“Yeah, I can secure him. Anyway, how far’s he gonna get with that bad foot?”
76
“Turn around, put your hands behind your back,” said Ty.
Hanger did as he was told, shuffling around on the back seat so that his back was to Ty. Ty leaned inside the car, grabbing Hanger’s wrists as he got ready to zip a fresh set of PlastiCuffs on him.
“What’s the big plan?” Hanger asked him. “One of you climbs the wall at the back and one climbs the wall at the front?”
Ty didn’t respond.
“Or you ring the bell and pretend to be a delivery guy?” Hanger continued.
“What’s it to you?”
“I’ll tell you what it is to me. I don’t want to be sitting trussed up like a turkey in the back of this car when the cops roll up.”