by David Nees
Chapter 20
As soon as Lori Sue heard that Leo was out of town, she excused herself from the conversation at the militia bar. The corporal she had been talking to was disconcerted, and she knew she was passing up a sure transaction that would have gotten her two days’ worth of rations. She spent another minute in conversation with him, enough to leave him looking forward to a happy conclusion in the next couple of days. Then she stepped out onto the sidewalk, took a moment to work up her courage, and headed down the street to the hotel where the guard stood waiting.
She hadn’t seen Donna for some time. Donna was important to her. Lori Sue wasn’t exactly sure how yet, but on matters of survival she trusted her instincts. Donna was an intelligent woman connected to Leo, a powerful figure. That made Lori Sue want to be on Donna’s good side. And it would be easy. Lori Sue had seen her sadness and distress. Donna needed a friend, and Lori Sue needed influence.
The door guard wasn’t a man she knew, and she wondered if he was from Joe’s gang. He turned out to be easier than she had expected; after five minutes of flirting and hinting that he might get lucky soon, she was able to cajole him into letting her in. She made her way up the stairs to the fourth floor, with the aid of one of the basket candles this time. At the door of Leo’s suite, she took a deep breath and knocked firmly.
No answer.
She knocked louder. Still no answer, but she thought she heard a faint sound from inside, an odd, clinking sound, metallic, like steel nails dropped in a pile. She knocked louder and longer this time.
“Go away, Leo’s not here,” came a muffled reply.
“It’s Lori Sue. We met a couple of weeks ago. I haven’t seen you around and thought I would stop by.”
“How did you find this apartment? What do you want?”
“You’re with Leo.” She hadn’t quite known what word to use. “I know he lives here. I get to learn a lot talking with everyone. Can I come in?”
“What do you want?” Donna asked again.
“Just to visit with you. Maybe we can get a drink across the street. Have girl talk. Like I said before, we girls need to stick together.”
“I can’t go across the street.”
“Why not? Look, rather than yell through the door, can you open it so we can talk?”
She heard the dead bolt retract. Donna opened the door a few inches. She was dressed in a light blue dressing gown. It was sheer enough to see through. She wore nothing underneath. “I can’t go across the street,” Donna repeated, looking Lori Sue in the eye. She then made a point of looking downward. Lori Sue followed her gaze. Donna had moved her left foot forward, and above it a metal cuff was locked around her ankle.
“He locks me up when he’s gone for some time. I guess he doesn’t fully trust me,” Donna said. Her lips pressed shut, and she turned and walked back into the room, letting the door swing further open. A chain rattled along behind her. “Close the door and close your mouth. You don’t need to keep it hanging open.”
Lori Sue came in and closed the door. The windows filled the room with afternoon light. She followed Donna into the kitchen.
“The chain lets me move from the bedroom to bathroom to kitchen, but it doesn’t reach much into the living room,” Donna said. Her voice was dull and flat, without emotion. “We’ll sit in here.” She sat down at the little table and pointed to Lori Sue to sit across from her. “If you want anything to drink, help yourself. Don’t feel bad if I don’t serve you. It’s a pain to walk around like this.”
Lori Sue didn’t know what to say. “I’m sorry…what’s going on? I thought you were his girlfriend?”
“You did?” Donna’s face had a hard expression on it as she looked at Lori Sue. “Guess you’re not much of a judge of character. You think I’d be that monster’s girlfriend? That what you thought?” She shook her head. “I’m his possession now. He thinks he owns me. How does that strike you?”
Lori Sue just stared at Donna.
“I told you to get away when we first met. Remember? Get away from this block, from these men. You didn’t listen. Stupid girl. You might wind up with an ankle bracelet like mine if you’re not careful.”
“I’m sorry…I didn’t realize. I thought you were okay with being his—”
“His slave? Certainly not his girlfriend.” Donna’s face now looked sad.
“I didn’t know.” Lori Sue lowered her gaze. She didn’t know what to say. It had all seemed so simple when she assumed Donna was a willing partner.
“Of course not. No one knows. No one wants to know. He has my son. That’s how he controls me and gets me to do anything he wants.” She leaned forward, her eyes now blazing with anger and hatred, “Anything…do you understand?”
Lori looked at her, her bravado gone. “I think so.”
Donna turned away in her chair. She seemed to sag. The fire seemed to have left her and now she just looked defeated. “What do you want from me?”
“I…I wanted to be your friend…I mean I still want to be your friend. But, honestly, it was because I thought you had influence.” Donna smiled sadly and shook her head. Lori Sue almost stopped there, but a thought came to her unbidden; one that scared her. It forced its way forward until she blurted it out. “But now I think you need my help.”
Donna jerked back around and stared at her in disbelief. “What kind of help can you give me? Are you going to change Leo? Make him let me go? Appeal to his finer instincts? He doesn’t have any.” She spat out the last words.
“What about your son? You said he has your son.”
“He does. I get to see him occasionally, if Leo thinks I’ve been good.” Suddenly her eyes reignited. A new fire burned in them, not one of hatred, but one of excitement, maybe even hope. “That’s it! You can visit my son. Let him know how much I love him, that we’re going to be together again, soon. You can check on him, make sure he’s fine. Could you do that?”
Lori Sue nodded. “Where is he?”
“He’s at the school. He stays there like the orphans do. Of course you have to be careful. Not arouse any suspicion. If Leo finds out, it won’t be good for either of us.” Donna locked her eyes on Lori Sue. “Are you up to it? If you want to help, that’s what I need.”
Lori Sue nodded again, gulping inwardly.
“Let me hear you say it. I want to hear you say you’ll check up on Danny, his name is Danny. Say you’ll help him.”
“I’ll help him.”
Donna sat back. “That gives me some hope. Thank you.”
This hadn’t been what Lori Sue had set out to do. She’d been hoping to curry favor, get access to more resources, find an easier way to survive through a connection to one of the big guys—as big as any of the top militia officers, maybe the biggest guy she knew of outside of Joe Stansky or that director, Frank Mason. Now there was nothing in this situation for her except danger. What was she thinking?
Lori Sue knew the answer to that. She was thinking of the ankle shackle and chain.
She shuddered. “Look, I’ll do what you said. But what about Danny’s father? Do you have a husband?”
A curtain of sadness seemed to fall over Donna’s face. Her voice was flat, without emotion. “He’s dead. Leo had him killed.”
Lori Sue thought about that for a moment, digesting the finality, the brutality implicit in that statement. Finally she came to a decision. “I can help another way, if you want.”
“What’s that?”
“I’ve got a gun. A pistol. I could sneak that to you. You know…to use, if you need it. If things get too bad for you.”
“And have my son killed? No, that won’t help.”
“Still, maybe you should have it around. It might make you less afraid.”
“I don’t have any privacy. You see how I’m dressed. It’s part of his routine, no privacy, no modesty allowed.”
“Maybe you could hide the gun somewhere here in the kitchen. He makes you cook for him, right? I’ll bet he don’t do anything in the
kitchen. I bet he never opens some of those cabinets.”
Donna was silent for a moment. “That might work. But you have to bring it sometime when he’s gone again. I can’t get it from you on the street and bring it back, not if he’s in the apartment. He’d…he’d know.”
Lori Sue smiled. “I’ll know when he’s gone. I’ll get it to you. I’ve got the door guard wrapped around my finger. I’ll probably have to give him a tumble, but I’ll get the run of the building.” She felt a strange surge of energy running through her. Something like excitement. It felt good. “That bastard may get his due yet…treatin’ us like this. We girls got to stick together.”
After Lori Sue left, Donna sat at the kitchen table for a long time. After a while she put her head in her arms and began to sob, loud, harsh sobs. They shook her whole body. For the first time she felt the rebirth of hope, and with that rebirth came pain; the pain of her loss, the pain of her situation, her degradation. But, through the pain, the kernel of hope grew. Finally she began to smile, for the first time since she had been taken. That girl, she thought. Help could come from the most unlikely of places.
Chapter 21
It was fully dark when Charlie left the house, still weary from his trip to the farm valley. The route out to the water mill project was more difficult than usual, because he had the unaccustomed problem of having to avoid militia patrols. They posed no danger to him, but he didn’t want anyone to get word of this nighttime excursion.
When he reached the mill, there was no one to be seen. The building was black against the stars. He did not call out. He just stood there in the dark, waiting. Finally he heard someone speak from behind. He thought he recognized the superintendent’s voice.
“Don’t turn around. Just keep looking forward like you are.” Charlie did as he was told. He heard footsteps behind him. “I’m going to put a blindfold on you. I’ll lead you so you won’t stumble. We have to walk a little way.”
“Remember, I’m not a threat to you. No one came with me.”
“We’ll be the judge of that. I’m talking to you because we confirmed you weren’t being followed. Do what we say and you won’t be harmed. And you’ll get some information.”
Charlie did not resist as a bandanna was tied tightly over his eyes. His arm was taken in a firm grip. The voice was low and tense. “If we’re seen, I’ll tell you and leave. Keep walking for ten steps and then take off the blindfold and hide it. You can explain yourself to the militia, can’t you?”
“The police force never sleeps,” Charlie said.
His companion led him at a good pace. They made many turns, and he lost track of direction after they had gone a little way. He suspected that he was being led in a roundabout path in order to confuse him. He had begun to lose track of how long they had been walking when he heard a door open and he was jostled inside. They walked up stairs that turned and turned again. Finally, he heard a door open and they entered a different space; one that echoed a little. He was guided into position and pushed down onto a hard chair.
A different voice spoke. “Don’t take the blindfold off. Just listen. You can ask questions later.”
For the next ten minutes Charlie got an earful. He thought that there were at least five people in the room. They took turns speaking to him, their voices all hard, giving him terse, cold information that made him increasingly uncomfortable. They told him about other people disappearing, other families taken away. He didn’t recognize the names. With each new description, they asked him if he knew about it. Each time he told them that he didn’t. They told him about the doctor that had disappeared last year. Charlie had thought the man left to go to another town, but now he learned that he had been wrong. He was asked repeatedly why they weren’t having any town meetings to elect officials, why the militia was still running things. At length, there was a pause. “You wanted to know about Jim Bishop,” the voice that had first spoken to him after his arrival said.
“Yes.”
“Jim Bishop is dead.”
Charlie exhaled shakily.
“We don’t have a lot of good sources within the militia or Joe’s gang, but we're sure of that fact. We also know he was tortured during questioning. Maybe he died from that or was killed after. That no one knows.” The voice now seemed very close to Charlie’s face. “He was tortured, Chief Cook. You understand?” Charlie barely nodded his head. The voice paused. “We don’t know how much he told them. Did he confirm there is a resistance group? How much detail did he give them? We’re sure he told them something. He was part of our group so he knew what we know. We’re now fewer by three. He’s dead, and because of what was done to him, two others of our group have opted to leave us and go into hiding after they heard the militia had been asking around about them.”
Charlie was silent.
“You know about Jim’s wife, Donna?”
Charlie nodded.
“We figured that might be the reason you were nosing around, asking questions. Did you find out what’s happened to her?”
“She’s been taken as a prisoner. She was seen in the militia compound.”
“You know who Leo Stupek is, don’t you?”
“Yes.”
“I figured you would. Joe and Leo tend to go together, don’t they? But maybe you don’t know Leo all that well. He’s worse than Joe. And Donna Bishop is not being kept in any normal detention. Leo has taken her for his personal woman, his personal captive. You understand what that means? You understand just what’s going on in our nice little town?”
Charlie’s body stiffened in shock.
“Maybe you didn’t know. Do you know what Leo does?”
Charlie just sat there.
“That’s not a rhetorical question. Answer me.”
Charlie started at the sharp command. “He’s Joe’s right-hand man. He runs Joe’s gang.”
“Partly right. You mean to tell us that’s all you know about him?”
“I don’t know…I don’t know what you mean, what you’re asking.”
“He’s playing stupid,” another voice spoke out.
“I’m not. I don’t know what you think I should know about Leo other than that.”
“Let me educate you, Mr. Chief of Police,” the first voice said. “When the militia was set up, you weren’t directly involved. You just kept running the police department, right?”
Charlie nodded. “Frank was to organize the militia. It would be civilian run.”
“But Frank needed help so he turned to Joe.”
“He had the resources,” Charlie replied. “But we told him it had to be separate from his team…his gang.”
“Of course you did. But Joe had Leo doing most of the work, quietly, so you wouldn’t notice. Maybe that was one of the things you didn’t want to notice. Anyway, Leo pretty much runs the militia now, and from what we can tell, it’s hardly different from his gang. There’s a guy in charge that Frank talks to. But no matter what it may say in the City Hall paperwork, Leo’s been nudging promotions and recruitment from the beginning. The head of the militia takes his real orders from Leo. And Leo takes his orders only from Joe.”
“I…I..didn’t know,” was all Charlie could say.
“Apparently there’s a lot you didn’t know…or didn’t want to know.”
Charlie just sat there in the black. He had a knot in his gut, and his heart was hammering in his chest.
His worst fears were confirmed. He had thought that he and Frank working with Joe, who had corralled most of the resources, would help the town stabilize. He had thought that, through Frank’s control of the militia, they had maintained a balance of power with Joe. But that was just an illusion. The militia and Joe’s gang were both led by Leo. Joe was turning the town into a criminal operation, and he and Frank were actually helping Joe do it.
Charlie had grown comfortable with Joe over the years. He had felt that Joe’s taking on the role of helping the town might make him a more upright citizen, that the role might someh
ow reform him. Now that all seemed like a foolish rationalization. A wave of shame swept over him and he felt himself blushing. The pattern of the disappearances was starkly clear. Joe was treating the town like an extension of his gang. You followed the rules. If you stepped out of line, discipline came swift and hard.
“You got anything to say?” a new voice asked.
“I’m digesting what you’ve just told me,” Charlie replied.
“So you maintain this is all new to you?”
“Most of it. And the parts I knew about, I didn’t think were indicative of something wrong.” His explanation sounded lame, even to his own ears.
“It’s easy for you to dismiss these events. You get to live pretty nice.” The voice had a hard, rough edge to it. “We don’t get that luxury. We have to bust our butts, stand in line for food, get shoved around by the militia, and we’re expected to get the town going again.”
“Things have to change,” another man said. “We can’t keep supporting the authorities. Joe’s only going to get more powerful as people get more comfortable.”
“What do you plan to do?” Charlie asked.
There was a silence. Then someone said, “We’re not sure. But I’m afraid things may get worse before they get better.”
“Are you talking about a revolt? Why not bring these issues…your demands up at a committee meeting. I could get you on the Safety Committee’s agenda for one of our meetings.”
A couple of men laughed in derision. “And within a week we’d disappear. That what you want? Haven’t you even been listening? Who’s on your committee anyway? You, Mason, and Stansky? Or does his muscle Leo sit in for him? That’s a joke.”
“I told you this was a waste of time. Now he knows about us. Maybe he shouldn’t leave, ‘cause if he rats us out we’re dead.”
“Hold on.” Charlie recognized the voice of the superintendent. “I promised him safe passage. He hasn’t seen any of you, and I’m the only one at risk.”
Charlie sat in the dark, looking about even though he couldn’t see through the blindfold. He suppressed an urge to rip it off. If he saw them, that would only give them more of a reason to kill him. He was beginning to sweat.