Wild Aces

by Marni Mann

  “Not yet. He’s out of town.”

  I handed the driver a few bills and walked up her front steps. Then I rang her doorbell. “When will he be back?”

  “Hang on a sec. Someone’s at the door.”

  A second passed before I heard her breathe again.

  “Trapper, what are you doing here?”

  “We need to talk in person.”

  “I told you I wanted space. I shouldn’t have even answered my phone.”

  “And I gave you space, Brea. I don’t want to make you do something you don’t want, but if you just give me a chance and hear me out, I promise I can make this better for you.” I felt her eyes on me through the peephole even though she said nothing. “There’s a whole side of my life that you don’t know about. I don’t tell anyone about it. I want to tell you, and I want to show you. Let me show you, Brea.”

  She slowly opened the door, and we each dropped the phone from our ears.

  “You’ll hear me out?” I asked.

  “Yes.”

  I looked behind me; the taxi was gone. “You got a car?”

  “No. Why? Should I?”

  “Then we’ll have to cab it to my place to get my car, and then I’ll take you to the compound.”

  “The compound?” she asked. “What the hell is that?”

  I laid my hand over hers while she clung to the door. She didn’t pull away, but I saw her hesitation.

  “It’s where you’re going to get all your answers.”

  Her eyes told me she was still so torn. I got that. But she was going to have to trust me.

  “I won’t hurt you, Brea. I never meant to hurt you. I was trying to protect you. You have to believe that.”

  She looked at me real suspiciously, which gave me the feeling she might never fully trust me again. I hoped seeing the compound would help change her mind.

  “Let me just get my jacket and purse,” she said finally. When she returned, she locked the door behind her and stood next to me.

  “You ready?” I asked.

  “I…have no idea. I think so.”

  I asked myself the same question and came up with the same answer. We didn’t let outsiders into the compound. Not even buyers. They had their own room where that part of the business was conducted. Roman was the last outsider to go in, and he had caused such chaos that the imports who lived there had been shaken for days. I didn’t know what this was going to do to them, but I didn’t have a choice.

  If I wanted Brea to know who I really was, then this was something she had to see.

  Brea

  Maybe I shouldn’t have opened my front door. Maybe I shouldn’t have agreed to hear him out. Maybe I shouldn’t have gotten into his car, but as Trapper drove us out of the Back Bay, something told me I was doing the right thing. My need to see this compound was as strong as his need to show it to me. I didn’t ask him where it was or how long it was going to take to get there. He said that place would answer all my questions, and I believed him. I honestly didn’t know why. I just knew that I needed to learn what had really gone down at that apartment, who those women were and why they seemed to be working with him, and what they planned to do with that child. But how could it explain Trapper’s past, or what had made him so dark? How could it make me trust him again?

  He turned on his signal and glanced at me. “What are you thinking about?”

  “You.” I brushed my hands over the soft leather of the seat. When I realized how sweaty they were, I rubbed them against my jeans. This car was even nicer than Frankie’s, and hers did everything but drive itself.

  “What about me?”

  If I expected him to be honest with me, then I had to be honest with him. “I’m thinking about the hot sex we had at your place. The phone call you got right after. The one I got once you left. What I saw at that apartment…that little boy.”

  He smiled. His teeth weren’t all straight or sparkly white, but there was nothing simple or average about his smile. “The sex really was fucking hot.”

  He was avoiding all the darker topics I’d mentioned, the real reason we were even in this car.

  “And what about everything else, Trapper?”

  “It’ll make more sense when we get there.”

  “All of it?”

  “Most of it,” he said.

  “I need to ask you something before we get there…but I’m afraid to know the answer.”

  “Ask me anyway.”

  I gripped the door handle. “That guy and that woman, the ones at the apartment, are they still alive?” I cringed as I waited for him to answer.

  We came to a red light, and while he rolled to a stop, he looked at me. “You think I murdered them?”

  “I don’t know.” Shit, that wasn’t what I wanted to say. If I had thought he had murdered them, would I have gotten into his car? “That sounded wrong…I mean, I truly don’t know what happened to them. And I want to know, but I kinda don’t want to know.”

  “Listen, Brea, I’ve never killed anyone, and I don’t plan to. They’re alive. We just made sure they’d keep their mouths shut.”

  “And do I want to know how you made sure of that?”

  He finally looked away even though the light was still red. “Probably not.”

  “But he’s mobile?”

  “They still have both their legs, yeah.” The car was moving again. “But they’re bad fucking people, and they deserve to have them cut off. Their arms, too. But I didn’t do that, so don’t worry.”

  If they were raising that little boy in that environment and treated him as badly as I feared, then maybe I agreed. No kid deserved that.

  We were out of the city now and in a suburb. Although I knew the town, we were in an area I didn’t know that well. I tried to pay attention to the turns he was taking, but I was having a hard time pulling my eyes off him. There was something different about Trapper today. He was still all edge and roughness, still very much in control. But after he had showered at his place and met me in the kitchen, his hair all wet, smelling like sandalwood and fall, there was a thin layer of vulnerability in him. I felt it even more now that we were in his car.

  His hand touched my leg. It only stayed there for a second, as if he were trying to get my attention. “You don’t have to look away, Brea. I like it when your eyes are on me.”

  He’d felt my stare. I wasn’t surprised by that. I also wasn’t going to talk about it.

  “How do you know Max Dawson?”

  “Dawson was a client. We’ve worked something out where he gives me tips.”

  “Tips…on the children who live there?”

  “Yeah, and their parents or guardians, not that you can really call them that.” He glanced at me again. “We research them, get to know them on paper to make sure they’re right for us. We find out what they need, and then we proposition them. Once they agree, we set up a date. Rarely do we have surprises…but we obviously ran into one that night.”

  The car came to another stop.

  “Trapper, I don’t understand.”

  “You will.” He pointed out the windshield and toward the two-story building in front of us. It was all brick with almost no windows, sitting at the bottom of a dead-end street. It looked like a small factory or a storage facility. “Welcome to the compound, Brea.”

  “What is it?”

  He didn’t answer. He just got out of the car and opened my door, holding out his hand for me to grab. I clung to it as we walked across the path toward the wooden door.

  “I’m nervous,” I said. “I’m not even sure why.”

  “I am, too.”

  I stopped moving, not liking the sound of that. “Trapper, what am I about to walk into?”

  He looked down at his feet, and I could almost see him processing my question. Then the storm was back and staring at me, the vulnerability even thicker now.

  “It’s a place that I wish someone would have taken me to when I was a kid. But instead, I went from hole to hole, my worl
d getting uglier and darker each time. No one wanted me. They just wanted someone to beat on, someone to scream at, someone to treat like shit. I had no way out of the system.”

  “Oh my God.” I shivered and started to wrap my hands around my stomach, but I stopped and wrapped them around him. Snow hit my face, trickling into my eyes. The wind was burning my ears. My teeth chattered…and I didn’t want to move. As difficult as it was to hear, as much as it hurt to know this, I didn’t want to leave this moment.

  He pulled us under the overhang to stop the snow from hitting our faces. “I’m happy Cody was the one who was saved, that his childhood was nothing like mine. I wouldn’t change that. I don’t wish he had been out there, living in those holes with me. If one of us had to go through it, I would want it to be me.” He squeezed my sides, as if he were emphasizing what he was saying. “It makes me feel better, knowing the other half of me had something good going on and a better life. That he was a real hero.”

  “So are you.”

  I didn’t know what really went on in that building behind him, but anyone who survived a childhood like his had to be heroic.

  He shook his head. “Nah, I’m no hero, Brea. Believe me. I’m only doing what’s right. Those imports deserve a shot at a real life; they deserve food and shelter, love and attention. Not the abuse and all the suffering they had before they came here.”

  “Imports?”

  “I’ll show you.” He punched a code into the pad near the door.

  Once we were through it, we were greeted by another door that required another code. And through that door was what looked like a living room. There was a huge TV, a sectional, and lots of bookshelves filled with colorful children’s books. Toy baskets aligned the walls, overflowing with stuffed animals, balls, and games.

  A woman approached us. It was one of the women who had been at the apartment that night. She and Trapper kissed on the cheeks before she reached for my hand.

  “Brea, this is Adrianna,” he said.

  Rather than shaking my hand, she held it softly between hers. It was something my mother would have done if she were meeting one of my friends.

  “I wish we had met under better circumstances,” she said. “But it’s wonderful to see you again. I’m so happy you’re here.”

  Her brown eyes were so tender. I felt comfortable with her immediately.

  “Adrianna was my social worker,” he said. “She was the only person who cared about me back then and the only one who saw that I had more potential than the scum I was living with.”

  She brushed a piece of hair out of his eye, and the gesture almost melted me. She was beautiful and fit, classy in the way she dressed. Nothing about her felt threatening. And even though I didn’t know anything about her, I was grateful for her, grateful that she had seen the potential when Trapper was a little boy and cared enough about him to stick by him now that he was a grown man.

  “He’s one of the few who stayed in touch with me after he was adopted,” she said.

  “When I got the idea for this place, I went to Adrianna and asked her to help me build it.” He looked at the ceiling and at each of the walls. “This is hers as much as it’s mine.”

  “You’re giving me too much credit, Trapper.” She looked back at me, her cheeks a little red. “This was his dream, and he’s changed the lives of so many kids.”

  Adrianna referred to them as kids, and there was no question that this room was designed with them in mind. But there was still so much I didn’t understand.

  “Why do you call them imports?” I asked.

  “I’m going to leave you two now, so he can answer that himself.” She reached for my hand again. Her skin was still so warm. “We have a transaction taking place in about an hour. I would love for you to come to it. But if I don’t see you before you leave, it was a real pleasure, Brea. I hope to see you again soon.”

  “Yes, same here.”

  Adrianna walked away as Trapper guided me down a hallway. We stopped in front of the first door we came to. The lights were on. It was a small bedroom, the walls a light pink with animal decals on them. Stuffed giraffes were in the corner; kangaroos and rhinos lined the shelves. There were lions on the comforter, and a little girl slept underneath it.

  “She’s two and a half.” He stared at her as he spoke, “When Adrianna picked her up, she was in the basement of a house that had no heat. It was thirty fucking degrees down there, and she was naked. Hadn’t eaten in days. Covered in her own shit and playing with a dead rat. Our doctor had to treat her for weeks because Adrianna thought she had eaten some of the rat.”

  A knot lodged in the back of my throat as I looked at the beauty with the big golden curls, peacefully asleep under the lions.

  “She’d been abused by her father, her mother left her, and we’re pretty sure her brother molested her. She screams when she’s in the dark, so there has to be light wherever she is.”

  “Oh my God, Trapper, I can’t even…”

  “I can’t either.” He was now looking at me. “I can’t understand why anyone would treat them that way. But I was one of them, Brea. I was her at her age, so I know what she went through. I know what she’s feeling. I know…” He shook his head and pulled me to the next door.

  The little boy I’d held at the apartment the other night was inside. Now, he was all cleaned up. He was wearing the cutest pair of overalls and a striped shirt, and his little white socks had cars painted on them. He was playing with blocks now instead of a beer can.

  “I can’t call them by their names. I can’t refer to them as little girls and little boys because it hurts too goddamn much. Giving them an identity would bring me closer to them, make them more real in my head. I can’t take that risk because I’d want to take each of them home with me. I’d want to get them the best teachers and therapists and give them hope…give them the life I didn’t have. But I can’t do that, so that’s why I don’t get too close and why Adrianna and I came up with the term imports. All the employees here use it—not to the kids’ faces, but when we’re talking about them. It’s what’s best for all of us.”

  When the little boy looked at us, Trapper smiled and waved. It wasn’t the same smile he gave me. This was one I’d never seen before. It was soft and playful, honest and endearing. The little boy waved back, and Trapper waved again. Trapper was playing a game with him, and the boy loved it, giggling each time Trapper revealed himself and squealing when he hid.

  This was who he really was, the man behind all the darkness, the one who had been abused and tortured as a kid and now wanted to save children who were just like him.

  When I’d left the apartment that night, I had thought Cody was the hero for saving those kids who were playing in the street, and Trapper was a monster who sold them. That wasn’t the truth at all. He wasn’t selling them. He was saving them…saving them from becoming him.

  Trapper gave him one more wave before we moved on to the next door. There was a crib in this room with a baby sleeping in it. There were ladybugs painted on the walls and flowers woven in the rug.

  “Do I want to know?” I asked, pointing at the crib.

  “No. It’s bad…they’re all bad. That’s why they’re here.”

  We continued moving down the hall, passing more bedrooms and several bathrooms, and we stopped at a large kitchen at the end. Trapper grabbed two bottles of water from the fridge, and we sat at one of the tables. It was child-size and low to the ground. I honestly didn’t know if he’d fit, but somehow, he did.

  “The way it works is, we bring the imports here and get them ready for adoption. Some take days; some take weeks. We research the hell out of the buyers. We check financial records, and we go to their homes. We make sure they’re going to give the imports a good life. Then the transaction takes place in a room on the other side of the building. We don’t bring anyone in here.”

  “But you brought me here.”

  “I’ve shown you the living room and a few of the bedrooms and
now the kitchen, but I’ve been real careful about where I’ve brought you. Most of the kids are in the playroom right now.” He ran his thumb over one of the books on the table; it looked so small and delicate under his large hand. “They get attached real quickly to kindness and attention. They’ve never had it. Once they get it, they don’t want to let it go. They’re used to the staff here, but outsiders shake up the whole house, and it turns into one hell of a mess.”

  I leaned forward, so I could rest my hands on his knees. “We don’t have to go into the playroom.”

  “I only told you that last bit so you would understand what you’re walking into. I plan to show you all of it, like I told you I would. But to protect them, I’m only going to have you look into the playroom real quick. I can’t take the risk of them feeling abandoned by you.”

  “Will they remember any of this?”

  He shrugged. “Some are too young to remember; some will never forget.”

  “Like you.”

  “Yeah.” He lifted my hand to his chest. “Like me.”

  “Max can’t be the only person who gives you tips.”

  “He’s not. We have people all over the country who give us leads, like Max, who are looking out for the best interests of the imports and not their own pockets. Most come from out of state; very few are from here. We don’t like to do pickups where our business operates because we don’t want to take a chance of getting recognized on the street.”

  Trapper had said Max was a client. I’d met his wife several times, and he’d even brought his young son to my office. Max had told me he was their only child.

  “So, Max’s son Calvin is…”

  “Yeah, he’s one of them.” He looked down the hallway, as though Calvin had stayed in one of the rooms we’d passed. “We found Calvin when he was three months old. He was in a house in Baltimore that was a meth lab. He had burns on his stomach, and the chemicals had singed off all his hair.”

  “Jesus, Trapper.”

  I wouldn’t have known that by looking at Calvin. He’d been dressed in his baseball uniform and smiled when he answered my questions. He was loved, and he had hope…and that was all because of Trapper.