by Hamel, B. B.
We both knew I wasn’t there to be friendly.
“Hello, Larry,” I said and approached across the sticky floor. In the far corner, a bald guy in his fifties sat on a stool. He wore sunglasses and was staring down at a phone cradled in both his hands. Ralph the bouncer was a fixture at Larry’s joint—but I didn’t need to worry about him.
“What can I do for you?” Larry asked, and glanced back toward where Ralph sat, nose still buried in the phone. Larry’s face was locked in a smile, and it turned into a grimace when he realized Ralph wasn’t paying much attention.
Tara lingered back near the door, and I could feel her watching me closely. If she wanted to run, now would be a good time.
“We need to talk,” I said, and stopped a few feet to the side of him. He swiveled and spread he hands out nervously.
“What about? You doing okay? I keep saying, you’ve got to come down to my club sometime and take advantage of—”
I moved faster than he could react. His long ponytail was the perfect target as my hand flashed out and grabbed it tight. I halfway expected it to come right off—whether Larry wore a wig or not was a matter of some debate between Dean and me—but when I yanked as hard as I could, the hair stayed put.
Dean owed me fifty bucks.
Larry toppled backwards off the stool. He crashed to the floor and dollar bills fluttered up into the air. I slammed him into the dirty linoleum floor and his head bounced off with a crack. He groaned and I held on to his ponytail, raising my head to stare at Ralph.
The old bouncer tilted his sunglasses down, frowned at me, then went back to typing on his phone.
“What the fuck?” Larry groaned. “Oh, fuck, I think you broke my goddamn fucking back, you piece of shit scumbag. Oh my god, oh, fuck.” He rolled side to side like a pig in mud. “Ralph! What are you doing, you dumb asshole! Waste this motherfucker!”
“Ralph is apparently much smarter than he looks,” I said, and knelt down onto Larry’s rotund chest.
Normally, this sort of work was beneath me and the Don knew it. When I was a younger man, I did a lot of intimidation work, and made a name for myself. I was brutal but efficient, and fair when I could be. I caused only as much pain as was necessary to make a point, and didn’t lose myself in bloodlust. I quickly moved up into killing work, but the old instincts never quite left.
I had a feeling this job was a sort of gift and a punishment at the same time, a lot like Tara. I glanced back over my shoulder, and she was still there, staring at me with wide, horrified eyes. She probably never saw something like this before. It probably scared the hell out of her.
Good. I wanted her to watch this. Maybe then she’d understand.
“God damn it,” Larry moaned. “You’re going to kill me. I think my head’s bleeding.” He reached up to touch it.
His head was definitely bleeding.
“You know why I’m here,” I said. “And you know I don’t normally do this sort of thing, so you really pissed off the Don. How much do you owe him?”
“I don’t owe him anything,” he said, and stared at the red on his fingertips. “Fuck, I’m bleeding. I’ve got a concussion. Ralph, I need the hospital quick.”
I slapped him in the face then and pulled his hair harder. He groaned and touched his cheek with his bloody fingers, leaving red trails from his ear to his mouth.
“Pay attention, Larry, because this is going to get worse very fast if you can’t think,” I said, staring into his piggy eyes. “How much do you owe the Don?”
“Thirty,” he said. “But I can—”
I slapped him again, harder, and he groaned, eyes tearing up. He was about to cry, the fat piece of shit.
I wanted to kill him. The urge came over me suddenly, like a tidal wave. I knew what this man made his living doing, and I hated him for it, hated all the bastards in this city that got paid by abusing women’s bodies, by selling sex by the pound of flesh. Larry owned a series of strip clubs all over the Philadelphia area, and his girls were notorious for doing a lot more than lap dances in the back rooms. I heard rumors that Larry got his girls hooked on junk, on crack, on pills, and withheld their drugs if they refused to fuck and suck for cash.
He was sick, and I hated him with a fucking passion.
But dead men didn’t pay their debts, and the Don would be annoyed if I murdered a man without orders.
“You owe more than thirty,” I said through clenched teeth. “You owe him fifty, you lying sack of shit. How about from now on, you assume I know everything.”
He sucked in a sobbing breath. “Okay, okay, yeah, I got it. You know everything. I owe him fifty.”
“How much do you have in here?”
“Twenty,” he said, and flinched away from me. “I swear to fuck, I’ve got twenty.”
“Tell Ralph to get the money.”
“Ralph,” he snapped, almost pleading. “Man, the safe in my office, the combination is 22-33-24. Bring down everything in there.”
Ralph got up lazily and shrugged. “Sure boss,” he said, and walked off.
“That’s an awful combination,” I said, and put more weight on the asshole’s chest before pulling away. I stood up and seethed for a minute, and I glanced back at Tara. She stood near the door and it looked as though her body were tugging her outside, but she was torn between watching me hurt the pathetic asshole on the floor, and getting away.
“Come here,” I said.
She hesitated, but then she obeyed, like someone else owned her feet. I steered her to a table and sat her down, then went behind the bar and poured two drinks. Larry climbed unsteadily to his feet, dabbing at his bleeding head. I threw back one of the whiskeys, refilled it, then carried both glasses to Tara. I put one in front of her, and took the chair on her left, where I could still see Larry.
“Drink,” I said without glancing at her.
She lifted the glass and sipped it without a word.
I hated this. I had a pit in my stomach. Not because the violence bothered me—frankly, Larry deserved it, and I would’ve been glad to do more. No, I hated this because Tara was here watching, and she only understood a quarter of what was going on.
Larry sat at the bar without speaking. He groaned a few times and poked at the steadily bleeding wound on the back of his head. His collar turned red, and his ponytail looked like it was dyed pink.
Ralph came back a few minutes later with a duffel filled with cash. He dropped it on the table in front of me. “You got any extra for an old working man?” he asked.
I laughed and that helped break some of the tension I felt. Ralph was a clever bastard and had some serious balls. I reached into the bag, took out a stack, and handed it to him.
He winked at me and tucked it into his waistband.
“What the fuck, Ralph,” Larry said. “That’s my money, you fucking bastard.”
“And you don’t pay me enough,” Ralph said, shaking his head as he returned to his stool. “Messing with the goddamn Valentino family. They sent fucking Ewan and there you are, bitching about your money. You’re lucky you’re alive, you moron.”
Larry’s face turned crimson as Ralph settled himself and went back to looking at his phone.
I stood up and slung the bag over my shoulder. I nodded at Tara, and she followed me.
I lingered in the space between the table and the door and looked back at Larry.
“I’m going to say this once.” I watched him carefully, and he didn’t move, like he was afraid I’d change my mind and end his life at any moment. Which was probably smart of him, since I was considering it. “Pay the Don what you owe, or I’ll come back, and we won’t have a conversation next time. I will take great pleasure in ending your life.”
He nodded like a chicken eating worms. “I will. I’ll pay. As soon as I can.”
I turned and left. I felt like I had a rotten stink stuck up my nostrils as I got back into my car and threw the bag into the back. Tara got in the passenger side, and I peeled out, ripping in
to traffic.
Tara didn’t speak and I wasn’t ready to break the silence. I drove aggressively, but aimlessly, circling around the block with nowhere to go.
That was a punishment, all right. The Don knew how I felt about guys like Larry—and he knew it would piss me off to deal with that scumbag and not end his worthless life with prejudice.
“You want to talk about what happened back there?” Tara asked, and it surprised me. She didn’t sound so much afraid as curious.
I glanced at her and tilted my head. “What the fuck do you think happened?”
“You look upset, is all,” she said, biting her lip. She looked away, out the window to the brick houses that flashed past. “I don’t really understand who that man was in there or why you seem so upset about it.”
“That man was a lowlife piece of shit,” I said. “And I’m upset because I didn’t get to kill him.”
She shivered slightly as she shook her head. “That’s not it,” she said. “You could’ve killed him, if you really wanted.”
“You make murdering sound so easy,” I said. “What do you know about it?”
“I know you killed my dad and burned down my house,” she said, eyes turning hard. “So I don’t really think taking a life is all that much of a problem for you.”
I let out a wild, angry laugh. I was on edge and I knew it, but I couldn’t seem to calm myself down. The car screamed around a curve and I parked behind a truck with its four-ways on. I turned to face her, and put my arm around the back of her seat as I leaned closer. She shrank away slightly, and I showed her my teeth.
“You’re right, killing is easy for me. Killing your dad was particularly sweet, because your father is the same breed of fucked up as Larry. Did you even know that, or have you been living in your own little fairy-tale world?”
I heard the loathing on my tongue and wished I could stop. I knew I got like this sometimes when I was around guys like Larry. The world was unfair, and there was a twisted part of me that wanted to enact a form of revenge for all the women that couldn’t do it on their own—but the Don gave me orders not to make a mess with Larry, and instead I was frustrated, and I was taking it out on Tara.
“I don’t know what the hell you’re talking about,” she said, eyes narrowed in anger. “But I want you to get the hell out of my face.”
I leaned closer. “Your dad sold girls, just like Larry.” I barked a single laugh when her mouth came open in defiance. “My god, you really didn’t know. Jermaine Donnelly was one of the most notorious girl smugglers in the city, and his own daughter didn’t even realize it. I knew the guy was good, but that’s something special.”
“You’re lying,” she said with venom. “He was an accountant. I saw him work on taxes.”
I barked a nasty laugh. The idea of Jermaine Donnelly doing taxes was almost too absurd to imagine. “He might’ve prepared some bullshit soldier’s taxes, but he wasn’t an accountant,” I said, shaking my head.
She glared at me. “You’re in a pissy mood because you beat up some old guy and didn’t get what you wanted out of it, and now you’re going to make up lies about my dad to feel better. I think you’re sick and you’re a liar.”
I sneered at her. She was right, I was sick, but I was also telling the truth.
“I took pleasure in killing your father for the hundreds of girls that he’s trafficked into sex slavery over the years. You can plug up your ears and pretend like I’m not telling the truth, but I promise you, little Tara, your father was the deepest, darkest scum in this city, and the world’s better off without him.”
She stared at me with an angry defiance and I slammed the car into drive again. I took off, flying into traffic, and sped through the city. Some reckless, suicidal part of my brain wanted a cop to pull me over right then and there so the girl could get away and I’d end up rotting in prison for the rest of my life like I always imagined I would.
Instead, I made it back to the apartment. She got out and didn’t speak on our way back inside. She disappeared back into her room and slammed the door shut, and I left her alone. I poured a drink and stood out on the balcony, and by the time the sun set, I felt a little bit better, but Tara stayed in her room.
4
Tara
He was a liar.
I didn’t believe him. I couldn’t believe him.
My father wasn’t a nice man. I couldn’t dispute that. Growing up with him was hard, and weathering his moods was sometimes like running head-first into hurricane winds. He got violent a few times, but he never beat me, not exactly. He was abusive in other ways.
But he was an accountant. I saw him doing taxes every single year. He worked with lots of Irish guys, and although most of them were related to the Healy family in some way or another, that didn’t mean he trafficked women into slavery or whatever Ewan said.
My father was an asshole. He drank too much, and yelled when he was in a bad mood, and slapped me a couple times when I was a teenager and talked back, but I couldn’t connect the man I knew with the monster Ewan said he was.
I stayed locked in the room all night. I fell asleep at some point and woke up alone, staring at the ceiling. I tried to think about my life with my father, but he left during the day to work, and came back at night when he was finished. I never asked what he did for a living—I assumed he went to some office for accountants.
I hated my father. For years, I wanted to get out of there—but when I graduated high school, it became pretty clear that there was no way I’d go to college. He wouldn’t help pay for it, and tuition would put me a hundred thousand dollars into debt or more, with no guarantee I’d be able to pay it off. Instead, I got a job waitressing, and was saving up enough money to move out, and to hopefully figure out what I wanted to do with my life.
Until one day two men showed up, murdered my dad, and stole my life away.
And now Ewan wanted me to believe that my father was a monster.
This was insane. He was trying to gaslight me, and that only pissed me off even more.
I couldn’t run away. I knew that much from living with my father. The mafia guys were serious business, and a few times he told me stories about them, stories I assume he heard when he worked on their taxes, stories about them dismembering people that were disloyal to the family, stories about torture in elaborate and horribly painful ways, terrible and disgusting stories. I believed Ewan about one thing, and it was that the Valentino family would hunt me down and kill me if I tried to get away.
I was stuck in the same house as a liar.
I took a shower and went into the kitchen for coffee. Ewan was gone, and there was a note on the table. Help yourself to whatever you want. I’ll be back soon. E.
I read it then ripped it into shreds and threw it in the trash. I could’ve run away, but instead I made more coffee, scrambled some eggs, and ate sitting out on the patio.
He came home an hour later. I tried to ignore him, but it was hard when he sat on the couch and turned on the TV. I came back inside and leaned up against the sliding glass door, arms crossed over my chest. He glanced in my direction and tilted his chin up.
“You sleep okay?” he asked.
“I want you to tell me the truth about my father,” I said, and immediately regretted it.
He smiled slightly. “I guess you’ve been thinking about that.”
“You told me I grew up with some sick psycho that bought and sold human beings like cattle,” I said. “So yeah, I thought about it.”
“Just girls,” he said, looking away. “Didn’t bother with boys. You can’t get as much for them.”
“What’s wrong with you?” I asked, and sincerely meant it.
“A lot,” he said and switched off the TV. “I know you think I’m a liar, but I promise, no matter what, I’ll tell you the truth. That’s how this is going to work. I’ll be straight up so long as you are.”
“How can you expect me to believe that,” I said. “I’m your captive, remember?”<
br />
He stood up from the couch and I flinched away. I was afraid he’d hit me or take his anger out on me—and instead, he looked at me with the deepest, sickest sort of pity I’d ever seen in a man before. I clenched my jaw and balled my hands into fists.
“I’ll prove it,” he said. “But you won’t like it.”
“How?” I asked.
“I’ll show you the girls,” he said. “You can ask them questions.”
I opened my mouth to t ell him yes, absolutely, let’s go, because of course it was all bullshit, and once we got to wherever he’d take me, I’d find out just how insane he was. Then I’d know to be careful.
But I stopped myself, because there was a part of me, deep down, that didn’t want to find out. There was a part of me that worried this was real, and if it was real, then I didn’t want to know. I didn’t want to look through this door and find the seedy, disgusting truth behind my father.
The truth behind my own life.
“Fine,” I said, because I could help myself. If there was a possibility it was real, I needed to know, even if it would break me.
He hesitated though. “Are you sure?” he asked softly. “It’s going to hurt. You’re not going to like it.”
“I think you’re a liar,” I said. “So let’s get this little game over with.”
He seemed disappointed, but only nodded and walked to the door. He grabbed his keys on the way out and I followed.
We drove for a half-hour. He headed north, up past Temple University, up past LaSalle, and into the northeast. The houses were still row homes, but they were more spread out, and there were more trees growing in the little front lawns. Cars were parked along the street and in small driveways, and the tight urban density was a little less intense.
He pulled into a small strip mall and killed the engine. The stores looked normal: Panera Bread, a used bookstore, a secondhand clothes store, and all the way at the end, tucked around the corner, was a massage parlor with a generic sign and some close-up images of a hand rubbing up against a back.