BABY FOR A PRICE: Marino Crime Family

by Kathryn Thomas

  He tosses Charles like a toy onto the seat and then swaggers from the restaurant. For a second, as I watch him go, I’m just stunned. But then anger rises in me like fire. He can’t just come in here and risk my job and then walk out like that! He can’t just disrupt my entire life and then leave! And what about Dad? Has he done something to Dad? My anger propels me out of the front door, into the parking lot where Hound is climbing into his jeep. It’s another sweltering day, the heat making me all the angrier, making it hard to think after the coolness of the Shack. I go to his car and slam the door before he can climb in.

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I yell, and since the parking lot is quieter and less busy than the restaurant, a few people turn and look at me. But I don’t care. I get even angrier when Hound just turns his smile at me. “Don’t give me that cheesy grin, Hound! What the hell’s the matter with you? This is my job, my job, this is how I pay bills, rent…this is how I live. Do you understand that? What makes you think you have the right to just barge in here and put all of that at risk? What makes you think you have the right?” On the last word, I slap him in the chest. He doesn’t stagger, or even look like he notices it.

  “You’re angry?” He tilts his head at me like he can’t understand it. “I don’t understand why you’re angry. That freak was grabbing at you and—and how can you be angry? I don’t get it.”

  “I just explained to you why I’m angry,” I say, turning my back to him. “If you don’t understand that, then maybe you’re just as dumb as you look.”

  I know it’s a low blow and even through my anger I feel mean, but I don’t take it back. We stand like that, me looking away from him at the Shack, at Marsha taking my place at the table and placating Charles, at the restaurant thrumming along in my absence. I’ll have to work through my break when I return, I know, but at least Hound’s performance hasn’t resulted in anything disastrous for me. But this annoys me even more, because now it means my anger might be unfounded; the foundations are slipping away and if I don’t quickly rebuild them, I’ll sink into apologies and meekness like I always do. Fold in upon myself and become the Shack girl, the waitress, the high school dropout.

  I turn back to Hound and see that he’s just watching me. He’s very good at hiding what he’s feeling, but I’m sure his expression is wounded. I feel the word, “Sorry,” on my lips and know that if I want to win this argument, which suddenly seems important, I have to spit something out else instead. “And I know you’ve killed my dad,” I say, even though I don’t know anything of the sort. But he’s missing, and Hound is the man I witnessed threatening him. What have I been doing? Why have I been falling for this man? Just because I have to be his wife-slave, it doesn’t mean I have to like it. “Here’s what you thought: Oh, she’s just a silly girl, almost a hooker, so I’ll just make her my pretend wife and tell her I’m getting rid of her father’s debts and then I’ll just go ahead and kill her dad anyway. That’s what you thought, isn’t it, you sick bastard?”

  Hound watches me calmly, which is about the most infuriating thing a man can do when you’re trying to have an argument with him.

  “You killed my dad!” I snap, taking a step to him and standing on my tiptoes so I can look right into his eyes, or as close into his eyes as a five-something woman can with Hound. “Didn’t you? Just admit it!”

  Chapter Ten

  Hound

  It shouldn’t bother me, what she’s saying, the way she’s looking at me like the scummiest thing on Earth. It shouldn’t bother me that she’s angry with me. She’s meant to just be a fuck toy, a fake wife I’m using so I can get into her pants every once in a while. For the Hound before all this book-learning shit, before I decided I wanted to be something other than a thug, this would’ve been a laughable encounter. So some hole I’m drilling is angry with me? Who the fuck cares? But now, for some goddamn reason, I feel my chest getting just a tad tighter, a tad tighter than is comfortable. I feel guilt, deep in my belly, even if what she’s saying is wrong. And I feel a strange urge to wrap my arms around her and hold her to my chest even though she’d push away from me. I picture myself explaining this to the guys at Mac’s bar, try and imagine what they’d say. I’m pretty sure they’d laugh me out of the place.

  “Your father’s missing?” I ask.

  She’s so close to me, staring into my eyes like men do before they want to fight, that I could lean forward a couple of inches and kiss her. But I don’t. Because something has happened to me with this green-eyed, bouncy, should-just-be-for-sex girl; I don’t want to disrespect her. Not unless she wants to be disrespected, like the time in the alleyway.

  She snorts and backs away, shaking her head. “Like you don’t know!” She laughs forcibly. “Like you don’t know, Hound! Are you really going to stand there and tell me it’s a coincidence that one second you’re threatening to bash his teeth out and the next I can’t find him? And it’s not just me who can’t find him, either!” She tells me about calling his friends. “So he just vanishes from his life and you want me to believe the one man I know for a fact was threatening him had nothing to do with it!”

  “Listen to me,” I say slowly, carefully, slower and more careful than I’ve ever been with a woman. I think of Gatsby and his Daisy in the hotel room when he gets angry with Tom and how it’s too late then, because he’s showed what he really is. I tell myself I have to be calm, calm as a still pool of water. I wish I could sink into myself like I do when I’m on a job, but I find I can’t, not with Daisy. “Listen,” I go on. “If your dad’s missing, this is the first I’m learning about it. I haven’t been following him or—or anything. I’ve just been focusing on you and books and…I don’t know where he is. I swear it.” As I speak, my mind is working overtime.

  I had no idea Dean was gone, that’s the truth, which means he either skipped town or somebody’s taken him out. But if it was one of Mac’s guys, I’d know about it. So he must’ve ran, just upped and ran leaving his daughter to deal with his mess. This pisses me the hell off, first because I was a fool not to keep taps on him in the first place, and second because it shows what a rotten excuse of a dad this man is. And maybe if I’m starting to care for Daisy, I’m starting to care for things like that. Dean just basically abandoned his daughter to the wolves, prancing off somewhere far away from Austin, maybe far away from Texas.

  Daisy watches me, and then says, “And what? I’m just supposed to just believe you?”

  She speaks in a softer tone. Maybe she wants to believe I’m telling the truth.

  “Look at me, Daisy. Just look at me.” I step forward and take her face in my hands. She gasps, but she doesn’t try and bat my hands away. “Look into my eyes and tell me if I’m lying. I swear on every damn thing in this world that I had nothing to do with your dad going missing.”

  She stares into my eyes and I get the feeling that she’s staring into place no woman has before. My initial urge is to run away, get the hell out of here so I don’t have to feel these uncomfortable feelings. But I manage to force myself not to look away.

  “I think you’re telling the truth,” she says. “But I’m scared you’re lying to me. If you hurt him, Hound, I could never forgive you.”

  “I didn’t,” I say. “Seriously.”

  She sighs, and then nods. “Okay, then where is he?”

  I shrug. “I don’t know, but I’ll look into it. In the meantime, I’ve got another house I want us to check out.” What an idiot…I feel like a fool for bringing it up the second I say it. I let go of her face and wait for her to snap at me.

  But she just smiles, a small, shy smile, and says, “Okay, then we’ll check it out sometime. But I have to get back to work now.”

  She turns and leaves me in the parking lot, clicking on her heels back toward The Lady Shack. I watch her go, feeling like I’ve got whiplash from her moods, anger and then a smile… I watch the entrance until the asshole I throttled leaves. I think about following him and doing some damage,
something I would’ve done before, but I don’t have the taste for it. I’m just glad he isn’t in there anymore, bothering her.

  I get behind the wheel of the jeep and make my way back toward my apartment, stewing over Dean. Just up and leaving her, just flying the coop and leaving the only family he has left to deal with the massive shit he left in his wake. I don’t have kids so I guess I can’t judge, but I like to think I’d be more loyal than that. This is the first time in my life I’ve truly cared about something like this: about hurting a woman’s feelings. There’s something special about Daisy, something different, something that makes it so the idea that she might be in pain causes me some pain, too. It’s too confusing for me to understand. I’ve never been the best when it comes to knowing what’s going on inside myself. But I think I might be falling for this girl, falling for her more than the whole fake-wife thing accounts for. Fucking Dean, leaving her like that!

  And even if it wasn’t a huge fuck you to Daisy, it’s going to cause me some problems down the line. Not right away, since I bought myself some time with Mac, but sooner or later he’s going to start wondering where that money is.

  I grip the steering wheel, knuckles turning white, Daisy’s words echoing in my head: Just as dumb as you look, just as dumb as you look.

  Maybe I shouldn’t let them get to me, but the more they echo, the angrier I get. Not at her, because I’m sure she said them just to piss me off in the moment, but angry that she might be right. That maybe it is a bit of a fucking joke that a man like me thinks he can live any other life. It is a bit of a fucking joke that a man like me thinks he can do better. Maybe this whole thing is a fucking joke—the home out of town, a job where my knuckles don’t get bloodied, a life where I don’t cause pain—just a massive joke of a massive man thinking he can do better.

  I’m almost at my apartment when my cell starts to ring. I think it’s going to be Daisy so I answer it without checking. When I hear Mac’s voice, I veer to the side of the road and bring the car to a stop outside a gas station.

  “Boss,” I say.

  “Hound,” Mac replies, his voice unreadable. “Come by the bar. I have a job for you.”

  “Alright.”

  The bar is in the opposite direction, so I turn the car around, thinking to myself: So much for the peace of my apartment.

  I say hello to Nora, ignore the smell of piss coming from the toilets, and try not to let my anger get out of control when Ripper tries to put his hand on my elbow to lead me to the office. “Want your nose broken twice?” I say, not angry, just telling him how it’s going to be if he puts his hand on me. He quickly snatches his hand away, knowing better. He leads me into Mac’s office, where his brother stands in the corner, gripping those knuckle-dusters.

  Mac is counting cash, but he deigns to find the time to swipe a hand at the empty seat opposite him, letting me know I can sit down. I drop heavily into the seat and wait for him to talk, which takes about ten minutes of him just leisurely counting the cash. I know why he does this: to prove he’s in charge. I remember that I respect this man, and yet as I sit here, tracing the lines of that faded tattoo on his forehead, I struggle to remember why. He’s not out of the life, not really, not if he’s pulling shit like this. Finally, he says, “Did you know I was the champion in my block? The bare-knuckle boxing champion. Time passes, but I still think I could go a few rounds.” He smiles, one of the few times I’ve seen him smile. It doesn’t look natural on his face. “But that’s beside the point. Sometimes we have to let our minds wander, don’t we?” He sighs. “I remember when you came to me, Hound, after your father died. Do you remember what I said to you?”

  I shift in the seat. I remember it all right. “You looked me in the eye and told me I didn’t need my father because I had you.” And I believed you, you sick bastard. I let you make me into a weapon. Hell, I let Dad make me into a weapon.

  He smiles again. “So I know you’ll find Dean Dunham, wherever he is. I know you have contacts you don’t tell me about, which is as it should be. The owner of the abattoir scarcely gets down there with the pigs, does he?” He laughs, which is about as odd as him smiling. “Yes, you’ll find him, but that’s not why you’re here tonight. I need you to teach a few guys a lesson. They’ve forgotten who I am. Just a regular beat-and-remind job. Nothing too taxing. Make sure to tell them Mac says hello. Hitter, give him the address.”

  Five minutes later, I’m behind the wheel of my jeep heading toward the other side of town. Yes, you’ll find him. Loosely translated, you better find him. But at least he’s given me some time, at least he isn’t pressing me to get it done right now. Which means he still has some trust in me. I’m angry with myself as I drive through the city, angry at the pathetic pride I feel at him trusting me. Some asshole cash-counting big man, and he makes me proud. What a fucking joke.

  I get to the apartment and pull my usual trick of talking my way into the building, and then, since this doesn’t have to be done quietly, I crash through the door, kicking it clean off its hinges, and charge into the room. There are around five men, two of them with guns. I don’t really see or feel or smell or taste or anything at all, not really. I just let my body do what it knows best, go into Violence Mode. I pick up the TV and launch it at one of the men with a gun, smashing into his face and causing him to fall like a rock to the floor. Already I’m on the second guy, snapping his wrist like a twig and smashing him in the nose with the barrel of his own gun. One of the guys jumps on my back. I flip him over, slamming him across my knee, and then grab the heads of the remaining two and knock them together so that they both reel, dazed. By now a couple are back on their feet, but they’re easy enough to put down with a few jabs, one right hook, and then it’s just a matter of mopping up, making sure they all stay down. When that’s done and the place is trashed and there’s blood everywhere and I’m breathing heavily and shaking with rage even though really, back here watching it all, I feel nothing…when everything’s in place, I stand over them all and say, “Don’t fuck with Mac again, or I’ll have to come back.”

  Just as dumb as you look. I look at my bloody knuckles as I drive, sinking back into my body, Violence Mode over now. As dumb as you look. By the time I’m in my apartment, a one-room place with books everywhere and a noticeboard with the word Learning Objectives at the top, my laptop open at the table where I’ve been doing work for my online course, I feel like an imposter. I just beat the hell out of five men, five men whose worst crimes were probably playing some blackjack at one of Mac’s clubs and not having enough cash. And now they might be seriously injured. Now they have to explain to their wives and mothers what happened to them. Now they might not ever be able to work again. And here I stand, amidst books and noticeboards and laptops, a fucking joke.

  I tear the books apart, ripping the spines in half and tossing them across the room, pages fluttering everywhere, and then I crack the noticeboard in half over my knee just like I slammed one of those guys over my knee, and finally I snap the laptop in half and toss it at the wall, where it explodes in a shower of glass and plastic and keys.

  Sliding down the wall, body aching from the violence, pages crumpled at my feet, I try and tell myself that it all wasn’t a waste of time, that a man like me can change. But that’s a little hard to believe with blood drying on my hands.

  Chapter Eleven

  Daisy

  “I’m so glad you’re here!” Jack Michaels claps his hands together, looking like someone from the 1920’s in his flashy suit, wiggling his nose hairs as his face crumples up in a delighted smile. “As you can see, we’ve cleared the place out for the auditions. We always do that.” As he speaks, he leads me into The Red Room. Last time, it was so jam-packed I could hardly get a look at it. Empty, it’s nothing more than a series of red lanterns and red couches, all set around a stage with a red-metal pole thrusting up from the floor to the ceiling. “I can’t tell you how glad I am that you decided to take me up on the offer. What made you change your mind?
You didn’t seem too, let me say, eager the last time we spoke about it.”

  “I’ve just been giving it some thought,” I say neutrally.

  “Well, giving it some thought and coming to a decision like this can’t be faltered, that’s what I say!”

  Jack leads me to a changing room with the word Auditions on the door, a printed sign fastened with a pin which looks grimy and not at all as glamorous as Jack is trying to make this seem. Why am I doing this? I ask myself as we walk through the hallways toward the changing room. And yet even as I ask the question, I know the answer. It isn’t complicated. I need the money.

  It’s been a week or so since the meeting with Hound in the parking lot, and since then I haven’t heard a word of Dad. Hound’s called me to arrange another house viewing, which we’re going to soon, but that doesn’t fix the Dad problem. I need cash: cash to hire a private investigator to look for Dad, cash to pay off his debts if anybody comes calling, and since he still has months left on his tenancy agreement, cash to pay his rent and bills. And if that means I have to get naked in front of men I don’t know, then I guess that’s the price I pay. And maybe if I can make some quick cash I can buy my way out of this thing with Hound anyway, and then all the confusing feelings will go away. Life will go back to normal, whatever normal means for me.