I welded my body to the rifle stock, married it to the hard rock below me. I let the breath leave my lungs slow and easy. Waited, felt the trigger break on its own. My muzzle jumped as a .50-calibre armour-piercing shell started a supersonic race to save a Marine’s life. At that altitude the Shahi-Kot was a four-second bullet ride, ridge to ridge. I settled my scope on him again before my shell finished the trip. There is nothing clean in a sniper kill. A 50 hits hard, fast, and ugly. I watched a tangled mess of detached arms, legs, and rifle parts spin in the air and fall out of sight. I re-racked. A brass shell popped, and Ronald was back on the cross.
“So now we repo. This spot is on fire,” he said, as he fingered the crucifix.
“You saw him, Ronald. He was on the trigger. Guys down there are in it, bro. That’s why we’re here.” I said. “Take us half a day to find another spot. How many of them you think will die in that time? How many did we just save?” I looked at him.
Ronald was sure three was the best-before number for a sniper hide. You kill the first one, the other side starts thinking about you. Number two, they start looking. By number three, they’re looking hard. We’d taken out the tenth target at dusk the day before. The guy we’d just put down was number sixteen since we first set up. I figured this was the sniper hide that just kept giving. He figured it was scorched earth. I watched him squeeze the cross between his thumb and index finger. He kissed it and dropped it back inside the ghillie.
“You shoot better than anyone out here, but you’re definitely an asshole, Cam. It’s in your white-trash DNA, some hero flaw. Can’t be helped, I guess.” He smiled and gave me the single-finger salute as he moved back to his scope.
I returned the gesture and settled back into prone, hunting for number seventeen. We stayed quiet, searched the ridge line for movement.
“Got one,” Ronald said. Then, the world turned upside down.
The rock below slammed into my chest. I sucked down a mouthful of that sweet Afghan death, wondered if it was mine. Rock, dirt, and shrubs pounded me. Thick smoke stung my eyes. We were tucked beneath a brush-filled overhang. The dry wood cracked and popped as a fire spread through the bushes. I recovered just before the second mortar hit. A chunk of rock took the scope off the 50. My gun was dead. We were out of the war and into a fight for our lives. I crawled to Ronald, pulled his arm, and shouted, “We gotta get back, come on. Let’s move.”
My hand came away bloody. I rolled him over. Blood poured from a three-inch gash above his hairline. A wet stain grew across his chest from an ugly hole there. We didn’t wear helmets or flak jackets. Recommended but not required for sniper teams. I always thought it made us hard.
“Hang in there, man. I’ll get help.” I crawled over him and grabbed the radio from his kit. It was in worse shape than my gun. An Apache helicopter rose into view a hundred metres away. Drawn by the smoke. I locked eyes with the pilot. He gave me a thumbs up, and spun the chopper around, hunting. A beautiful bird of prey.
“We’re good, Ronald. See that, easy ride home, man. No humping out for us. Hang on.” I pulled him further under the overhang to wait for the Apache crew to kill the motherfuckers lobbing shells at us.
Sparks flew from the helicopter gearbox. Oily black smoke trailed as it spun lazily and plunged below the ridge line. I could hear the quick rattle of machine guns getting close. I grabbed my C7, flicked off the safety, and set it for three round bursts. I leaned across Ronald for his. He grabbed the front of my ghillie. I dropped the rifles and held his shoulders. His eyes locked on mine. I didn’t see fear. I did see death. Not a distant sniper death. This was up close and personal. His bloody right hand worked the tiny crucifix at his neck. I reached over and squeezed his hand and the crucifix. Felt the life leave his body.
“Grant him eternal rest, Jesus. Let your perpetual light shine on him. May he rest in peace.” I knew it wasn’t exactly right. Wished I’d listened more carefully when he said it. I reached behind his neck and unhooked the chain, put his crucifix in my pocket, grabbed the C7s and got ready to die.
Chapter 4
Thursday, noon
Lolita Shines raised a cigarette to her lips with a shaking hand. She looked into the mirror and adjusted the white ribbon on one of her pigtails. She closed her hand around the cool hair and ran it to the end then reached across with her left hand, and repeated the move with the pigtail on the right. Both were smooth, black, and shiny. She pulled open the front of her white shirt, revealing more cleavage. She retied the shirttails, knotting them just above her plaid skirt, making sure to leave just a little skin showing. She looked down. Both white stockings stopped just below the skirt. Dressed to undress.
She turned from the mirror and dropped into a tattered couch in the corner. She looked down. Fuck, her stockings had slipped again. She ignored them and listened to the music coming from the front of the bar. The rolling bass line soothed her. Not because she liked the song, but because she knew it meant Sheilagh was dancing to the final tune in her set. She needed Sheilagh right now. A healthy distraction. There were dancers in the rotation between them, so they’d have time together. Lolita smiled for the first time today. She knew Sheilagh would fill that time with non-stop chatter, mostly about her daughter but also about the life. Sheilagh didn’t have a clue about the life; she never left Halifax. That’s what Lolita loved about her.
The Fog Bank was like every other strip bar in Canada. It kept a stable of local dancers who were more clock burners than cock teasers. Something to stretch out the space between the shows put on by the headliner of the day. The men bought more beer and spent more time at the poker machines when the local girls danced because most of the local girls weren’t worth watching. Well, the pervs would stay in perv alley next to the stage. They never left their seats when there was pussy to stare at.
Lolita shuddered and took another pull from the cigarette before stuffing it out in an ashtray shaped like an oversized dick. Definitely designed by a man. She had seen enough to know it would take two and a half men to fill that ashtray. She’d also danced long enough to know the club owners didn’t even like headliners. They needed them to fill the club but resented them because they had to pay them top dollar. Well, not Lolita, but the others, the porn stars especially. The stingy fucks didn’t like to pay anyone. Most of the locals danced for tips. Lolita, at least, got a room, some food, and cigarette money on top of her tips.
She would headline here at The Bank for two more weeks, then it was back to Montreal for a short stint before heading to Vancouver and starting her cross-Canada tour all over. She wished she could leave today. She wished her mind would stop racing and her hands would stop shaking. She wished Sheilagh would get the fuck off the stage and come distract her. The bass line stopped, and she could hear the familiar vocal from “Sheets” fade out behind it. It was Sheilagh’s final number. Imagine closing the set to a Carleton Stone tune. Only Sheilagh. Lolita smiled again; she wouldn’t mind dancing for the shaggy-haired singer, but dance on stage to his music? Never. That was Sheilagh. She had a crush on a local singer she’d never met and thought she was doing him some solid by closing to his music. Lolita was the little schoolgirl who packed The Fog Bank, but Sheilagh was the one with the schoolgirl heart.
Lolita reached for another cigarette. She waited for Sheilagh to walk around the bar wrapped in a towel. She’d go from table to table, hoping one of the men would hire her for a private dance, the real money-maker. She’d be here soon. Just as the wavering flame reached the dancing tip of the cigarette, she heard a faint knock on the dressing-room door. Fuck, fuck, fuck. The only person who knocked that softly was the biggest man she’d ever seen. Phil Murphy. If the giant was at the door, the midget who pulled his strings wanted her. She glanced up to the ceiling where she knew the hidden camera was. Fuck, why wouldn’t someone put a bullet in Jimmy Williams? She retched and coughed out smoke as she slammed the full cigarette into the dick on the table.
She glanced at her locker. Her purse was inside and so was her switchblade. Maybe she should just stab the little fucker. She stabbed a man outside a Boston strip club once, and it was pretty cool. He’d tried to rape her, but she stuck hers in him first. The club freaked and had her in a van halfway through New Hampshire before the guy got out of surgery.
The dressing-room door opened and Sheilagh walked in, smiling and clutching a small bag full of tips. Not a single piece of paper showed. Lolita could see Murphy, his back to the open door.
“Hey, hon, Phil wants you,” Sheilagh said, as she dropped her towel and walked naked to her locker. She dumped her tips into a pink plastic container and pulled out her robe. Lolita felt a pang as she stared at Sheilagh’s simple beauty. Skin whiter than Lolita’s and perfectly clear. Green eyes, waves of soft red hair on top, a perfectly groomed red landing strip below. She could be a money-maker if she didn’t have that telltale sag below the navel. Mommy dearest was what men wanted to forget. Lolita walked over and reached up, pulled Sheilagh close, and kissed her long and hard. God, she wanted to stay here. She walked to her locker and slipped on a navy blazer: the finishing touch in her stage outfit. She grabbed Lucky; the ragged one-eyed teddy bear worked the stage with her. Best to take him in case Fuck Head kept her in the office too long and she had to go directly to the stage.
“I’ll try to shake the midget and come back before my set, sweetheart. But don’t count on it.” She turned for the door.
“It’s okay if you can’t.”
God, with Sheilagh everything was okay.
Lolita followed Murphy down a narrow hallway. The man filled it with his wide shoulders, and she wondered absently if maybe he could fill the ashtray. They walked to the back, away from the music out front. She knew there was an exit beyond Murphy and fantasized about walking past him out into the sunshine. The Fog Bank sits in the side of a hill above Halifax Harbour in the Burnside Industrial Park. It’s a short hop over the MacKay Bridge from the Satan’s Stallion clubhouse. That was enough to keep her from running. She’d danced here a thousand times and still didn’t know the place well enough to hide if she tried. Burnside is an ugly cluster of warehouses and industrial shops shoved into the side of a hill. The Fog Bank sits halfway up, giving it a perfect view of the bridge and the city beyond. Not the view the customers come for. Dancers strutted and stripped from 11:00 in the morning until 2:30 the following morning. The lunch crowd was out front now. Truckers mostly. Big rigs run in and out of the industrial park all day and all night.
Murphy stopped and turned, sadness in his eyes as he opened the door to Jimmy Williams’s smelly office. Lolita sighed and walked into the four-by-five metre room behind the club’s kitchen. There was a riser built into the floor along the wall to her right. Williams sat behind a cheap metal desk on top of the riser. He was turned from the doorway with his cowboy boots perched precariously on the edge of the desktop. His greasy I-want-to-be-Snake hair draped over the back of the chair. A black leather couch sat beneath a bank of security monitors opposite the desk. Lolita glanced up to see the parking lot, the stage, the area behind the bar where the cash register sits, and the tables where customers watch the dancers. She knew if she wasn’t in the room one of those screens would be showing Sheilagh walking around in the dressing room. What kind of sick prick runs a strip bar and needs to peep at his dancers? God, they were naked most of the time, anyway.
The solid bass thump of AC/DC shook the walls. Lolita dropped into the leather couch to wait for his fucking majesty to address her. She toyed with Lucky and tried to remember the name of the dancer whose set opened with that song. Williams continued to ignore her.
“What do you want?” She couldn’t stand the wait any longer.
“What I want is some answers.” Williams stood behind his desk, making sure to use the riser to full effect as he glared down at her. He still had to look up at Murphy, but so did everybody. “What the hell were you doing at the clubhouse last night and who were you with?”
Lolita picked at Lucky’s remaining eye and said nothing.
Williams pulled a handgun from a drawer and tapped the barrel on the desktop.
“I asked you a question, bitch.”
She kept her head down and picked at Lucky. Making the little man and his big gun wait on an answer.
“Wasn’t near the clubhouse.” She flipped Lucky over and adjusted the yellow ribbon around his neck.
“The fuck you say?” Williams moved around to the front of the desk still not leaving his riser, she noticed. The gun slapped the side of his leg as he stared down. Lost for words. “Wasn’t there,” he finally said, seemed to be trying to put menace in it. Even the gun didn’t give him menace.
Shit, even that shiny new Stallion cut with the prospect patch didn’t do it, Lolita decided. She thought about her switchblade and smiled.
“The fuck you grinning at?” Williams demanded. “You lie to me again, you little whore, I’ll put a bullet in your head. You’re on the fucking video, and Grease spoke to you at the door.”
She turned her slate-grey eyes up. She knew there wasn’t a prospect alive with the balls to shoot a Stallion money-maker.
“Grease is a meth head. He don’t know me from any of the other girls. I wasn’t there. Shoot me or let me get ready to work.” She turned her attention back to the bear.
Williams jumped down from the riser, grabbed a pigtail, and yanked her head up. It hurt, but she’d felt worse. He shoved the gun against her forehead. It was warm. He must have been playing with it before she came. She cringed at the thought.
Murphy moved toward the sofa.
Williams glared up at the big man. “The fuck you think you’re doing?”
Murphy backed away.
“I am not fucking with you here. This is Stallion business, bitch. We need to know who killed that preacher and why.” He slid the gun barrel down over the bridge of her nose and rested it against her lips.
“I wasn’t there.” She reached up and caressed the barrel with her fingertips as she parted her lips and began to lick the underside of the gun. She hoped he hadn’t really played with it, like ever. Slowly, she took it deep into her mouth, looking up at Williams with nothing in her eyes. Every stripper had that look.
The gun cut her upper lip as he pulled it from her mouth, jammed it into Lucky and pulled the trigger. The tiny bear did little to dampen the gun’s heavy blast. “Get the fuck out.”
Lolita stood and pulled the still-smoking Lucky from the couch. She smiled as she walked out. She’d get a little time with Sheilagh after all.
Sheilagh smoked on the couch just inside the dressing room. She still wore the tattered robe. Lolita sat beside her, felt the familiar warmth as Sheilagh moved close and dropped her head onto her shoulder. It didn’t stay long.
“Oh my God, what happened to Lucky?” She grabbed the bear from Lolita.
“Little asshole shot him. Trying to prove he’s the big man,” Lolita said, looking at the damage for the first time. Lucky’s light-brown belly was scorched, stuffing leaking from a small hole in the middle. He could be fixed.
“Why’d he do that? My God, did he hurt you?”
Lolita grabbed a cigarette and lit it. Her hand was no steadier.
“No, just Lucky. Let’s forget about him and enjoy a few minutes before I go on.” She pulled Sheilagh’s head back onto her shoulder and took a long pull on the cigarette. That soft knock on the door again.
“For fuck sakes. He can’t be serious.”
“You can’t go.” Sheilagh pouted. “Just tell him you have to go on.”
“Don’t worry, hon. I’ll go. He’s afraid to hurt me.”
She opened the door, and stepped out to join Murphy again. He shook his head and looked in at Sheilagh.
“He wants to see her,” he said.
“That little fucker. Why don’t you do something for
us, Phil?” Lolita touched his chest. He backed away. Sheilagh was standing beside them now. Her turn to say, “Don’t worry.” Lolita watched the two walk down the hall and disappear into the office. She looked back into the dressing room and then walked down the hall herself. As she passed the office the door opened, and a sad-eyed Murphy stepped out and closed the door behind him.
The sin was Lolita's, but she knew Sheilagh was about to pay the price. She glared at Murphy and walked to the exit. Outside, she leaned against a dumpster and let the sun warm her face as she finished her cigarette. She thought again about running and wondered if any of the squares in the real world would take in a nineteen-year-old dressed like a five-year-old. Fat fucking chance. She looked at the big rigs lining the parking lot. Spotless paint and shining chrome glistened in the sunshine. Could it be that easy? She could fuck a trucker all the way to freedom. She reached into the blazer pocket and pulled out her cigarettes, lighting a new one from the tip of the old. Her hands were steady. That was a sign. Her decision came in an instant. She’d do it.
Just as quickly, her hand shook harder. This time it was a sound, not a sign. Lolita sagged against the garbage bin as she watched the sun glint from a familiar coat of paint and even more chrome. She was no piece of patch pussy trained to recognize every Stallion ride. Still, even she knew the movements of this biker as he rolled into the lot shifting and making his bike bark and howl. Gunner.
Disposable Souls Page 10