Hard Case Crime: Choke Hold

by Christa Faust

  I ignored them both and checked out the club. They had pretty much given up the whole oasis theme by the time they’d gotten around to the interior design and had gone with a cheap black and gold faux deco look that was dated before I got into the business. Lots of dusty gold mirrors with black stripes.

  There was a decent-sized main stage with a long catwalk to the left and four smaller go-go stations with poles on the right. There was no one on the stage at the moment, but all four smaller stations were in use and another six women worked the floor, trawling for lap dances or who knew what else.

  The girls were surprisingly high-end. A lot of painfully obvious surgery and some pretty hard faces under the warpaint, but for the most part they were under thirty and better looking than some girls I’d worked with in L.A. The girls on the poles were full nude while the ones working the floor wore breathtakingly tacky stripper gowns in cheap, stretchy fabrics. I watched as one of the floor girls sat down beside a mustachioed guy who looked like an extra from a narcotrafficante movie, unzipped his jeans and started giving him a casual handjob. She wasn’t making any attempt to hide what she was doing. That’s when I noticed that every table had its own complimentary gold tissue box.

  The girls all mad-dogged me as we passed, like I was gonna move in on their action. The men looked me up and down like I was the blue plate special. Hank grinned and shook his head, wrapping a protective arm around me. Like I needed to be protected from that sort of thing.

  He led me past the DJ booth and more armed guards, then through double swinging doors into a different world.

  The cavernous back room was unfinished, just concrete floors and exposed drywall, ghoulishly lit with buzzing fluorescent school-lunchroom fixtures. At the center of a circle of cheap folding chairs was a caged ring. In it, a thick, darkskinned Mexican girl straddled and pummeled a bloody blonde ragdoll while a troll in a black and white striped shirt stood over them looking like he was about to take his dick out. Every seat would have been taken if the crowd weren’t up on their feet howling and cheering in a cacophonous mix of Spanish and English.

  Hank led me around behind the last row of seats. The concrete beneath our feet was mottled and stained and a sticky scatter of bloody feathers in the corners implied that humans weren’t the only ones who fought in this room. We passed through a cheap blue plastic shower curtain hanging in a doorway and into a sort of makeshift holding area for fighters.

  There were about six guys, two American and the rest Mexican. I recognized the Americans as students from the school. Hands were being wrapped and wounds stitched. Fighters stretched, sparred, and worked focus mitts. There was a heavy locker room funk, underscored by the hot penny smell of fresh blood.

  “Wait here,” Hank said. “I’m gonna go have me a little talk with Mr. Lovell.”

  He turned, taking a minute to slap shoulders and shake hands all around before slipping back out past the shower curtain.

  Then, from a small closet-sized toilet in the back, there was Cody.

  Shirtless, grinning, alive and unharmed. He wore fingerless gloves and loose knee-length black and red shorts slit high up the outside seam. As loose as they were, it still looked like he was trying to shoplift a Mexican papaya inside his athletic cup. He came over and hugged me like a long-lost best friend, holding on to me longer and tighter than was really necessary. I could feel that huge unyielding Tupperware container in his pants digging into my gut. He was a little sweaty and smelled faintly like a woman’s perfume.

  “Angel, wow, I’m so glad you made it.” He pulled me back in for a second hug. “Is Hank with you?”

  I nodded, frowning and pulling away.

  “Are you okay?” I dropped my voice. “I thought those guys were gonna kill you.”

  He laughed, eyes way too bright.

  “Nah, that was just a big misunderstanding. It’s cool. Lovell just wanted to make sure I didn’t leave town before the match tonight. He plays like he’s all hard all the time, but he’s really not a bad guy.” He threw a couple of quick combinations in the air. “It sucks that this’ll be my first fight that you get to watch. I’d much rather you get to see me kick some ass! Well, there’s always next time, right?”

  “But Cody,” I asked as he bobbed and weaved, making me feel a bit seasick. “What about the missing supplements?”

  “What are you talking about?” He stopped moving, eyebrows drawn together. “You mean the steroids? They aren’t missing, I put them in the locker last night, just like always. Who told you about that anyway?”

  I told him what the kid at the school told me.

  “Aw, Beto’s full of shit,” Cody said. “Lovell didn’t mention anything like that to me. Anyway, the steroids were just a side thing for extra money. I don’t use that shit, I’m all natural. I have to be, y’know, for the show. Lovell’s not even that pissed at me about the last fight. And you know what else, he told me he didn’t have anything to do with what happened at the diner. He even joked about it, said if he wanted me killed, he’d do it right and I wouldn’t be walking around like I am. Not that it’s funny, what happened, I’m just saying. Anyway it’s no big deal with Lovell. Everything’s cool. It’s just too bad you won’t get to see me kick some ass.”

  He started up again with the lightning-fast combos while I started to feel a creeping cold sickness twisting in my belly.

  “Cody,” I asked. “Are you high?”

  When he flashed that fucking Thick Vic smirk, I wanted to punch him in the face.

  “Of course not, baby,” Thick Vic said inside my head, just like he had a thousand times while we were together.

  “Nah,” Cody said. Then the smirk again. “Well maybe a little. It’s no big deal. Lovell just had some girls over that wanted to party before the fight. It’s not a problem or anything. It’s really no big deal.”

  No big deal. Vic was dead, the same guys had tried to kill Cody, too, and suddenly the kid didn’t seem to think anything was a big deal. I was starting to fear that all of this was, in fact, a very big deal. Something just didn’t sit right about Cody’s story. Not that I thought Cody was lying, but I felt sure there was more going on here than any of us knew. I didn’t like that Lovell was giving Cody coke and the fact that the guys who shot Vic had been coked-up too made me wonder if Lovell really didn’t have anything to do with the events at the diner.

  Before I was able to voice any of this, a morose-looking Mexican with a stubbly gargoyle face stuck his head around the edge of the shower curtain.

  “Noon y Guzman!” he called.

  “I’m up,” Cody said with a wink. “Catch you later.”

  As he walked away, I noticed the word OUTLAW was spelled out on the back of his shorts, mirroring the tattoo on his belly. I wondered what the hell I was thinking, coming here.

  I didn’t have an answer, so I followed Cody into the main room as the rowdy crowd cheered and whistled, chanting, “Out-LAW! Out-LAW! Out-LAW!”

  Cody’s opponent Guzman came out then, a tall, weedy kid with a fierce Conquistador’s profile. The two of them entered the ring through a narrow door in the cage and the ref swiftly checked them both over, speaking to them in a voice too low to be heard above the howling crowd. Cody and Guzman touched gloves and then the fight began.

  Both fighters came out cautious, circling. Cody seemed tightly wound and humming with aggressive energy while his opponent was more wary, hanging back and waiting for Cody to make the first move. After a series of feints and false starts, Cody finally let loose with a few fast, wildly aggressive punches and Guzman bobbed and weaved, countering. Cody ate a hard right that made the crowd hiss and whistle but he barely seemed to feel it. He lunged forward, shoulder aimed at Guzman’s midsection and next thing I knew, Cody had lifted his opponent up over one shoulder and slammed him down on the mat.

  Whatever they were doing down on the mat was hard for me to follow. I could barely see over the spectators’ heads. When I could catch a glimpse, it looked like nothing much
had happened, except that Cody was now sort of sideways on top rather than the missionary, belly-to-belly position he’d started out in.

  I stopped watching the ring action and started looking through the crowd. I was surprised to see more American faces than Mexican. There were a lot of gorgeous women, and guys in expensive suits. There was some serious money flowing through this place.

  A huge roar of excitement made me look back up at the ring. Cody was standing, hunched over and clutching his crotch. The ref didn’t seem interested in this development, although even I, who knew virtually nothing about this sort of thing, was pretty sure that you weren’t supposed to hit the other guy in the nuts. When Cody said no holds barred, I guess he wasn’t kidding. Guzman was lying on his back with his bent legs in the air like he was waiting for a diaper change. Cody reacted to this indignity by kicking his downed opponent repeatedly, then dove in between Guzman’s waving legs with an elbow to the face. I worried for a second that Cody had gone too far again, that maybe he just didn’t have it in him to throw a fight. But instead of going in for the kill and finishing his stunned opponent, Cody backed off and gestured for Guzman to get up, playing the audience with broad, cocky showmanship that would have made Vic proud. He had that crowd eating out of his hand. In a way I was more impressed by this than his ability to execute complex grappling maneuvers. This, to me, said that Cody really did have what it took to be a star. If he managed to avoid whoever it was that wanted him dead.

  Then a bell rang and the fighters were sent to their corners. I saw Hank step into the cage to assist Cody, so I figured the kid was in good hands.

  On the far side of the ring, I noticed a small folding table with a locked cash box and a dry-erase board full of fight stats, matchups and odds. A mannish Mexican cougar in a low-cut black dress sat behind the table ignoring the action in the ring and reading a small, square romance comic book. There was another guard with an AK47 beside and slightly behind her, either trying to look down her cleavage or trying to read over her shoulder. Clearly the betting was closed now that the fights were on.

  On the other side of the betting table were two doors. One was closed and marked Private. The other was open and led to a small storage area. From where I stood, I could see stacks of identical cardboard boxes inside.

  When I moved casually around to the other side of the open doorway, I could read the labels on the boxes. UltraSalud: Proteína de Soya. My Spanish wasn’t great, but that had to mean soy protein. These had to be the infamous supplements. I decided I needed a closer look.

  The bell rang and the fight resumed. Cody immediately shot in with another showy takedown. The armed guard looked up from the cougar’s cleavage, stretching up on his toes to see over the heads of the standing audience, and I swiftly slipped in through the open doorway before I could think about what an astoundingly bad idea it was.

  Inside the small storage room, the boxes were stacked higher than my head, but one box sat over on the far side by itself. It had obviously been opened and re-sealed with different tape. I squatted down beside it, picked a corner of the cheap tape loose and peeled the box open.

  Inside, jars of protein powder, vanilla flavor. I pulled one out, cracked it open and shook it, tasting the vanilla dust on my lips. It seemed to contain what it claimed to contain. I took a moment to make sure no one had noticed me, then dipped my fingers into the jar, combing blindly through the powder. I shook the jar again and dug under the surface of the stuff until my fingertips hit paydirt.

  Now I’m no expert on steroids, but I’m pretty sure that the stuff comes either in the form of a pill or an injectable liquid. I’m positive that it doesn’t come powdered and tightly packed into white bricks wrapped up in clear plastic.

  I wasn’t looking at steroids. I was looking at cocaine.

  16.

  I stuck the brick of coke back into the wide-mouthed jar and shoved the protein powder back over it. I was screwing the lid back on when I felt the cold snout of a gun against the back of my neck.

  “Up,” someone said. I assumed it was probably the armed guard from the betting table but was too scared to look back. I stood up.

  The guy stripped my go-bag off my shoulder and gripped my arm, leading me out of the supply closet and into the room marked Private.

  Finally, Mr. Lovell.

  He looked nothing like I expected. I don’t even know what I was expecting, but I certainly wasn’t expecting Nick Manning’s cowboy brother.

  Lovell had that same half-up, half-down shoulder-length hairstyle that Nick sported during the height of his career “dropping loads” on the adult industry. Lovell also had a similar long, handsome face, but his eyes were dark and flat. He wore a black-on-black western-style suit with narrow, glossy leather lapels and onyx buttons that matched his onyx bolo tie. There was a black cowboy hat sitting on the desk. Anyone else wearing that kind of over-the-top western fetish get-up would have come off way more camp and sleazy, but this guy seemed chilly and soulless, like a mannequin being used to display the clothing of a dead country-western singer. There was something oddly ageless about him. He could have been thirty or sixty or anywhere in between.

  “Who is this?” he asked the guard, like I was a piece of junk mail. I was expecting a Southern accent, based on the fancy cowboy drag, but his deep voice was as bland and generic as a newscaster’s.

  “Don’t know,” the guard said with only the lightest Mexican accent. “She was messing with the shipment.”

  From the other side of the door, came a massive wave of hoots and whistles.

  “I don’t have time to deal with this now,” Lovell said. “My hands are full with this Cody situation.”

  He picked up a walkie-talkie from his immaculate desk.

  “Am I happy?” Lovell asked.

  “He tapped,” replied a crackly, disembodied voice.

  Lovell nodded.

  “Good boy. I want him in this office as soon as he’s out of the ring.”

  “You got it,” the voice said.

  “What do you want me to do about her?” the guard asked, poking me again with the rifle.

  He turned and looked at me without blinking.

  “She’ll just have to wait.”

  What the hell else was I gonna do? I waited.

  The little office was hot and stuffy, even with a small, noisy air conditioner running full blast. My pal with the gun was sweating through his cheap cologne and the resulting olfactory experience was less than pleasant. Lovell sat down behind his desk and waited without moving, like a stonefish.

  When a knock sounded on the door, my pal with the gun was so startled, I was afraid he was gonna shoot me.

  “Come on in,” Lovell said, placing his palms flat on the desk.

  It was Cody, escorted by a huge Mexican biker with a thinning ponytail. Cody had changed from his fight gear into track pants and a t-shirt that read HAYABUSA and featured the silhouette of a flying bird against a red sun. He had a towel around his sweaty neck and his handsome face seemed shiny and unevenly swollen, eyes squeezed down to slits. His big hands were red and wrinkled from being under tight wraps and gloves.

  When Cody walked into the room, something happened to Lovell that I would not have believed if I hadn’t seen it with my own eyes. His cold blank face flushed pink, spilt wide by a big, friendly smile. It was as if someone had flipped the humanity switch behind his eyes.

  “Cody,” he said. “Fantastic.”

  “What’s up?” Cody asked. Then he turned and noticed me. “Oh hey, Angel.” He paused and did a double take when he saw my pal with the rifle. He turned back to Lovell, brow creased. “Um...”

  Lovell nodded to the meathead, who grabbed Cody’s arms and held them behind his back.

  “Whoa, hey,” Cody said. “What the fuck?”

  Lovell came out from behind his desk with a compact nine in his hand. He pressed the barrel to Cody’s forehead, making his eyes cross. Lovell was still smiling.

  “What the fuc
k?” Cody was saying again. “I did just like you said!”

  Lovell lowered the gun, slapped Cody lightly several times on the cheek and shook his head like an indulgent uncle.

  “Cody, Cody, Cody,” he said, gun still pointed in Cody’s general direction. “You’re breaking my heart right now. You know you are.”

  “What...” Cody said. “But I...” He turned to me, fear and anguish in his eyes. “Angel...”

  “This your woman?” Lovell asked gesturing towards me with the gun.

  “No,” Cody shook his head. “No, I mean, she’s just a friend. But...”

  “A friend you sent to steal from me?” Lovell asked. “Haven’t you stolen enough from me already?”

  Cody looked at me, then back at Lovell. “I don’t understand.”

  I was watching Cody’s face this whole time, trying to get a read. He was either the best actor on earth or he had absolutely no idea what this was about.

  “He had nothing to do with that,” I said. “I wasn’t gonna take anything, I was just being nosy.”

  “Nosy?” Lovell turned that awful smile towards me and it made me wish I’d kept my mouth shut. “And was it also you who was nosy in Cody’s locker this morning?”

  Lovell came over to me and pressed the muzzle of his gun against my sternum, eyebrows raised in mild curiosity.

  I had my nipples pierced back in the mid-nineties. Got sick of the rings after about five years and took them out, but that’s not the point.

  See, when the needle went through the first time, it was shocking, like lightning. The pain was intense and sudden and astounding and then the ring was in and my heart was racing and I thought, Wow, I did it. It’s over. Then the piercer started prepping the other nipple.

  That second nipple was a thousand times worse. The first time I had no similar experience to compare it to, no idea what was coming, but that second time. That second time every single nerve in my body knew exactly what was coming. That was the worst pain I had ever experienced. Well, before the whole vigilante thing, anyway.