No Shelter (Holly Lin, No. 1)

by Robert Swartwood

  4

  “Easy, baby, everything’s okay. Just need you to come out slow-like, press yourself flat against this wall.”

  “Against wall?” I say, using my broken English. At the sight of the gun I’ve raised my hands and do my best to look frightened and confused.

  “That’s right, baby, against the wall. I need to pat you down, make sure you ain’t carrying something.”

  “Carry something?”

  My hands still raised, I move slowly toward the wall. I press myself against it. The man isn’t alone, he has two other buddies watching, and they grin as he steps forward, starts to frisk me. I’m surprised at first that he actually does a good job of it, like a professional, but then he has to go and disappoint me by making sure he squeezes my breasts and pinches my ass.

  He steps back, says, “Okay, good, you’re clean. Sorry about that, baby, but we just need to make sure.”

  “Okay,” I say, stressing it into two syllables.

  He laughs through his nose, shakes his head, motions to one of the men behind him. “Phil, take her in.”

  Phil steps forward, grabs my arm, pulls me not so gently down the hallway toward Delano’s suite. He has on really strong aftershave that makes my eyes want to water. He asks, “What you got under that coat there, little lady?”

  I smile but don’t say anything, knowing that he’s not worth the time. Then we’re standing in front of a door and he knocks twice and the door opens and another man is there with a gun pointed at us. He motions me in and the man holding my arm pushes me into the room.

  The smell of marijuana hits me first. It’s heavy and pungent and as I step into the main area of the suite I see a thick cloud of the stuff floating up by the ceiling.

  A man stands up from the couches and raises his arms. He’s wearing a plush maroon robe and smiles at me. “Welcome, welcome,” he says, and I know at once this is Roland Delano, my target. Around his neck the gold coin of his flash drive shines in the light.

  There are six other girls lounging on the couches or standing by the windows. Two are white, one is black, the rest are either Latina or Mexican. They wear tight dark dresses, so short they barely cover their crotches, and all of them have on stilettos.

  Delano’s bodyguard, the large black man with the fetish for Asian women, sits on one of the other couches. Unlike his boss, he’s wearing a suit. His eyes meet mine and he gives a slow, steady nod, like he approves.

  Roland Delano approaches me, his arms still raised. It’s clear that he’s drunk by the way he stumbles, and when he takes me into an embrace, tells me how very happy he is I could join him, I can see the residue of cocaine around his hairy nostrils.

  “Please, please,” he says, “let me take your coat,” and before I know it the coat is being ripped off my body, revealing me in my schoolgirl outfit. I lock eyes again with the bodyguard and see another nod of approval, this time even a slow smile, the man showing off a gold-capped tooth.

  I look around the room again and notice the other girls noticing me. Their glares are full of menace. I doubt any of them are over twenty-five, but the years of work have worn them down, trampled their spirit, their dreams. And while many of them could be called attractive—I have no doubt both Nova and Scooter would think so—they also have a rough edge that I’ve managed to keep off.

  Roland takes my arm and leads me to the wet bar, saying, “A drink, please, won’t you have a drink? And please indulge yourself in some of our other party favors. I insist. I have everything—weed, coke, even some X. Please, please, I want you to enjoy yourself.”

  One of his men stands behind the wet bar, looking bored. I smile at him, say, “Beer?” and he produces a bottle of Bud.

  When I turn back Roland has disappeared, gone back to the couch where two of the girls are waiting. He sits down and places his arms around their shoulders, smiles at them as he continues telling a story my entrance must have interrupted.

  I take a sip of the beer and look around. Music is coming from the sound system, a rap beat, and on the widescreen TV a porno shows some lesbian action. The fireplace is on, the flames dancing inside.

  The bodyguard catches my eye. He motions me to come over to him. When I get there he tells one of the girls beside him to scram and then I’m sitting on his right, his large arm around my shoulders, the man telling me his name is Jerold, what’s mine?

  “Cho,” I say. When he smiles—the gold-capped tooth gleaming in the light—and says that’s a beautiful name, what does it mean, I tell him, “Means butterfly.”

  “Butterfly, huh? That mean you like to fly, or are you tasty like butter?”

  I do my damnedest not to roll my eyes and just smile, take a sip of my beer. In my ear Scooter says, “I think I’m g-g-g-going to puke.”

  The girl on Jerold’s left glares at me, angry that the attention has been taken off her. What I wonder is why she cares, she’s being paid either way, but I’ll never understand hookers.

  Jerold takes his arm away from my shoulders, places his warm hand on my thigh. “I really dig the outfit, you know. Nice touch. Didn’t know I could have requested that shit or else I definitely would have. I’ll have to remember that next time.”

  I smile at Jerold but say nothing, while in my ear both Scooter and Nova chuckle softly. Fucking assholes, I swear I’m going to break their pinkie fingers when I see them next.

  Jerold raises his bottle of Perrier, taps it against my bottle. “Cheers,” he says and leans forward, plants his lips against mine. It’s a quick kiss, a peck, but it’s enough for me to taste absolutely nothing. No alcohol, no liquor, not even weed, which just adds another hurdle.

  Five minutes pass, ten minutes, and I do my best to nurse my drink, to only take limited hits of the weed when it’s passed my way. I smile and smile and listen and listen but keep my eyes open for all possible exits, weapons, interferences. It looks like all of Delano’s men are packing, maybe even Jerold.

  Finally the rest of the girls arrive, two of them. Roland Delano does his greeting act again, taking their coats, leading them to the wet bar. Jerold’s hand hasn’t left my thigh. It stays there, squeezing, rubbing, working its way toward my crotch but quickly moving back, like it’s a game.

  I’ve sized him up and figure breaking his neck is out of the question. A big guy like this, he’s protected by layers of fat and muscle.

  Roland silences the rap music with a remote, letting the porno run for a few seconds, two girls on screen playing with a dildo. He stares at it a moment, a wry grin on his face, and then shuts that off too. He clears his throat, pats his chest, then speaks.

  “Welcome again, ladies. It’s my pleasure to have you join us tonight. The party has begun, yes, and now it is time for the main attraction. Some of you will be coming with me, some of you will be going with my associate. Some of you will have to wait your turn. But don’t you worry, ladies”—smiling even wider, winking—“you’ll all get to play.”

  Then the smile slides off his face and he points at three girls, motions for them to get up and follow him toward the one bedroom. The girls who were picked look at each other, shrug, and reluctantly follow.

  Jerold’s hand leaves my thigh for the first time tonight. He stands up, turns, extends his hand to me and helps me up. I’m already visualizing the bedroom, the possible weapons, the different ways I can take Jerold out, and I turn and start that way.

  I only stop when I hear Jerold’s deep voice behind me—“And you too, sugar”—and turn back to see him helping the Mexican girl who’d been sitting beside him off the couch, smiling as he takes her arm and leads her toward me.

  5

  This Jerold is one sick bastard.

  The first thing he has us do is bend down at the end of the bed, leaning so our asses stick out. He shuts the door, dims the light, turns the music up on the stereo. I expect rap but what comes out of the speakers is some kind of jazz, a contemporary number with saxophones and drums and bass.

  “You know wha
t you girls are?” He takes off his suit jacket, lays it across the back of one of the chairs. “You’re my slave girls. And like all bad slave girls, you need to be punished.”

  He unbuckles his belt, slips it out from around his waist. He folds the two ends together, then steps forward and raises it back behind his head.

  He does the Mexican girl first. One solid slap with the belt across her ass. From the corner of my eye I see her jump, clench her jaw, squeeze her eyes tight. She tries to hold back a yelp but still it escapes her mouth.

  “Yeah, baby, you like that shit?”

  He steps behind me, raises the belt behind his head. I brace myself for the impact, staring ahead, and then—WHACK!—it’s over with and I grit my teeth against the pain, I manage not to yelp or make any noise at all even though I know it’s stupid.

  It’s stupid because it makes Jerold want to hit me again.

  Which he does a second time—WHACK!—and then a third.

  Still I don’t make a sound.

  “So you think you’re tough?” Jerold chuckles. “Okay, baby, we’ll see just how tough you are.”

  He steps close, grabs a fistful of my hair, yanks me back. He puts his tongue against my cheek, gives it a good lick, and whispers, “I’ll save you for last.”

  He pushes me away. I stumble backward at a bad angle, lose my footing with my heels and fall to the ground. He looks at me and smiles, laughs, then leans forward and whispers something to the Mexican girl. She whimpers. He laughs even louder. Then he’s leaning back, dropping the belt, loosening the knot of his tie.

  He grabs the Mexican girl’s hair, yanks her back, says, “Ready to have some fun?” then pushes her down on the bed.

  I’m frozen on the floor. My heart is pounding.

  Jerold gives me a glance. He grins, showing me that gold-capped tooth of his, then winks.

  He gets onto the bed, slowly, like an animal approaching its prey.

  He grabs the front of the Mexican girl’s dress, pulls it down.

  I look around the room once more, try to spot something to use as a weapon, but the lighting isn’t good, it’s too dim.

  The Mexican girl whimpers again and Jerold whispers, “Shh, baby, shh,” and my eyes fall on the belt he’s dropped on the floor, the thick leather thing he used to punish us, his slave girls, and with the jazz playing from the stereo and the girl whimpering as Jerold places his big hands on her breasts, I jump to my feet, hurry forward, grab the belt, turn and launch myself onto the bed.

  I come down hard on his back, wrap the belt around his throat. I cross it behind his neck and squeeze it, the best I can, I squeeze it even as he tries to stand back up, tries to buck me off. His hands move away from the Mexican girl. They reach beneath the belt, try to give his Adam’s apple some breathing room, try to give his fingers some kind of leverage. He keeps one of those hands there and with the other grabs at me, finds my hair, pulls, yanks, rips.

  But I don’t let go. I can’t let go.

  Jerold is big, and strong, and determined, and with me holding onto his back he steps off the bed, twists back and forth like he’s a bull and I’m riding him for eight seconds, and then when he realizes that won’t work, he rushes backward into the wall.

  It knocks the wind out of me. The back of my head strikes the wall, making me see stars. The world tilts. I start to lose my grip. Just a little slack but it’s enough for Jerold. He rips the belt away, turns, lets me drop to the carpet. He kicks me in the gut with the tip of his designer shoe.

  “Stupid fucking cunt,” he says, and kicks me again, and again, and again.

  The world tilts even more. My wind still hasn’t returned and I keep wheezing. The pain is immense, raging in my ears like Niagara. And still he keeps swearing, spitting, kicking, kicking, kicking.

  The Mexican girl attacks him without a sound. She comes from the left, the house phone in her hand, and smashes it into the back of his head. It doesn’t drop him, it hardly fazes him at all, but it’s enough to make him pause in his kicking, to allow me to get my wind back, to make the world slow its spinning.

  He turns away. Glares at the Mexican girl. Balls his hand into a fist. Raises that fist—

  I reach out and grab his ankle, sit up and shove the heel of my palm into the center of his shin. It’s a bad angle but I’m a pro and the bone snaps, just a little, enough to cause the bodyguard to cry out, stumble, fall to the ground.

  I’m on my feet a second later, the world still spinning, the floor tilting back and forth, but I step forward and raise my right foot, bring the sharp end of my heel down on his head. He tries getting back up but I do it again, then again, then again.

  The Mexican girl drops the telephone. She places her hands to her face. I glance at her briefly and see tears in her eyes, ruining her mascara.

  I have a crazy thought that I don’t want to ruin my heels more than I already have. So I step away, bend down and grab the phone, turn back and smash that once into Jerold’s face.

  The Mexican girl is murmuring something. I can hear it just beneath the jazz that keeps going and going, someone now doing a saxophone solo. Her hands are still to her face and it takes me a moment to realize she’s murmuring the Ave Maria.

  I start to stand but the room tilts again and I have to throw a hand out to the wall to stay balanced. I look down at what’s become of Jerold, all his blood soaking into the plush expensive carpet. I place a hand on my stomach, know I’m going to be sore for a couple days.

  Watching the Mexican girl, I say, “Scooter, can you hear me?”

  “Yeah.” His voice soft and tinny. “You all right?”

  “I’ve been better.” I clear my throat, take a breath. “The bodyguard’s out of the picture. I’m going for the target next.”

  “Good luck.”

  I turn to the Mexican girl. Her wide eyes are like spotlights shining down on the darkness that was Jerold. She looks at me and even in the dimness I can see the fear and terror there.

  “Hey,” I tell her, as quietly and calmly as I can, “it’s okay.”

  She keeps murmuring the Ave Maria.

  It hits me then she doesn’t speak English, and that if she does it’s not very good. I speak seven languages and Spanish is my third best. I take a step toward her, slowly, and in Spanish tell her that everything is okay.

  Her eyes go wider, and she takes a step back.

  “Please,” I say, “I’m not going to hurt you.”

  She stops murmuring the prayer. She shakes her head quickly, says, “Never like this.”

  “I know”—taking another slow step, then another, the world still spinning—“but he was a bad man. I had no choice.”

  “They will”—she places her thumb in her mouth, starts to bite at the nail—“they will kill me.”

  “Don’t worry about these men.” My voice has gone calm. The pain is still there but I’m to the point now where I don’t feel it. “I will take care of them.”

  “No, not these men.” More tears come to her eyes. “The men who run the ranch.”

  “The ranch?” I pause. “What ranch?”

  That’s when there’s a knock at the door, and a voice says, “Yo Jerold, you okay in there?”

  6

  For a moment the world stops spinning. Even the carpet pauses in soaking up Jerold’s blood. The jazz has gone silent too, and it’s not until another second passes and a new song starts up that I realize it’s not just my imagination.

  There’s another knock. “Don’t play too rough, man. You don’t want Mr. Delano to have to pay for any damages.” The man sounds like he’s laughing with his friends.

  I glance up at the Mexican girl and find that her hands have gone back to her face. Her eyes have grown even wider.

  “Jerold?” The man sounding puzzled now. “Jerold, you hear me?”

  I quickly dart my gaze around the room, looking for something—anything—to use as a weapon. Jerold wasn’t packing, but it doesn’t mean there isn’t a piece in one of those
drawers. Or in the bathroom.

  Thinking of this last, I whisper to the Mexican girl to go in the bathroom and lock the door. She doesn’t move. I step forward, point, repeat my order. Still nothing. I take another step, give her a soft slap on the face, and she blinks and nods and hurries into the bathroom.

  She closes the door when I hear the man out in the main room clear his throat, then say, “Jerold, man, I’m coming in.”

  I turn back and jump for a place just beside the door. I flick the switch for the lights just as the knob turns and the door is pushed open. I realize my heels are going to be a burden and pull them off, place the one on the floor, keep the other in my hand. I hold it with the toe pointed toward my wrist, the heel pointed out.

  The door opens wider, yellow light suffusing the plush expensive carpet. The man’s silhouette holds a gun at his side.

  “Jerold?” he says, caution now in his voice as he takes a step forward.

  I wait for him to take another step before I lean out and swing the heel. I aim for his face but luck out and strike him in the throat. His mouth opens and his eyes go wide and his free hand goes to his neck like it will do any good, which it won’t, because I’ve driven the heel right into his larynx.

  He tries raising the gun with his other hand but I grab it, turn it around so it’s aimed at his chest. I place one bullet there and push past him into the main room, see that with the four girls two men in suits have been lounging on the couches. The men are already scrambling to their feet, already reaching for their guns. I put two bullets in the one guy’s head, two bullets in the other guy’s, and then I’m running forward, the gun aimed at the guy behind the wet bar.

  He ducks behind the glass, comes back up with a TEC-9, sets it on automatic and lets it rip.

  I dive behind one of the couches for cover. I’m barely aware of the girls screaming and the rap music blaring and the deafening blasts of the gunfire. I eject the clip, see how many rounds I have left, pop the clip back in, rack the slide and wait a moment, a half second, before I make my move.