Ensnared

by I N Foggarty

  “Quiet, Girl,” Ramone spat in her ear. His words must have been louder than he intended as the flamboyant florist snapped his head back around to gaze up at him.

  “Mister, Gonzalez!” he declared in amusement and recognition. “I did not see you back there.”

  “Pirelli,” he replied coldly. Everything else around them stopped. A pin could have dropped and echoed like slabs of concrete. Instead, words, heavily laced with meaning filled the silence.

  “I must admit I did not expect to see you tonight. Especially…” Pirelli paused and tilted his neck from right to left. Starting with Paul and ending with Ramone. “…in such a, shall we say…diminished capacity.”

  Anger burned inside Ramone as he swallowed the insult. He could not afford to lose his temper. Out of the corner of his eye, he saw one of Pirelli’s suits twitch a jacket. So he too understood the possible avenue this tension could traverse. “Got to give the kids a chance sometime.”

  The man let out a high pitched laugh. “Z’is is true my friend. If we don’t let Los niños out to play they never become hombres. Still, I think Sergio would have been wise to keep you in la casa. I hear rumour from my boys that ze last time you went to play an entire ship got blown right out of ze water. Boom!”

  A howl of laughter echoed around the warehouse and Ramone could tell that not all of it came from Pirelli’s men. Before the anger inside him managed to boil over one of the suits interrupted. “Do you want to have a closer look at this one, Boss?”

  The question averted the Italians attention back to the girl. “I think I’ll pull apart z’is one's petals… just to make sure the bunch we’ve picked i’z not starting to rot.”

  Ramone lowered his sidearm as the two men dragged the hazel-eyed girl out of line. Though she tried her feet found no traction on the ground yet that did not stop her from thrashing herself between her captors. At the halfway point the men turned her to face Pirelli. While one of them held her firmly from behind the other tore what remained of her oversized t-shirt from her chest. Her large breasts bounced slightly and her body recoiled from the force. A hoot sounded out from one of the Los sin techo men but he was quickly silenced by a glare from Paul. “Nothing rotten about her,” the man from Michigan then grunted.

  “Any good looking apple can still be rotten at z’e core. Take her to z’e limo and I’ll z’ee for myself.” At his command, the two men once more began to drag the girl in the direction of the limo, only for a scream towards the far end of the Los sin techo line to halt them in their tracks. Ramone, along with everyone else turned his head in time to see a blonde haired girl break from the line past her minder and head for the exit.

  “Stop her!” Pirelli yelled. Instinctively Ramone and several others of the Los sin techo crew moved to run after her. In her condition and barefooted even adrenaline would not take her far. It was not an emergent situation. A gunshot rang out around the warehouse.

  The blonde lurched forward a few paces, arms outstretched before she crumpled to the floor. By the time he reached her a thick pool of blood had already begun to spread out across the concrete from where her head lay. No one bothered bending down to check for a pulse, she was dead.

  “THE HELL DID HE DO THAT FOR,” Paul roared, advancing on Pirelli, completely bypassing the solitary figure holding a smoking gun.

  The flamboyant man let out a cold laugh. “No one i’z going to pay for a whore that run’s,” he said as if that explained it.

  “Oh you’re going to pay for her,” Paul declared, pressing his face up against the other man's. “You’re going to pay every single cent for her.” Sensing disaster Ramone barged through the crowd and thrust his arm between the two men and forcibly dragged Paul backwards. Glancing towards Pirelli, Ramone could see he remained unfazed.

  “I think not, Mister Paul,” he said, bitting down on the end of his toothpick. “I do not pay for damaged goods. After all what use is a dead whore to me?”

  “She’s dead ‘cos of your trigger happy morons!” Paul spat and Ramone struggled to keep an arm around him. “You break it you buy it!”

  “I grow tired of z’is. Load z’ese girls into the truck and pay z’em for eleven.” With that, the flamboyant businessman turned and headed back towards his waiting limo.

  “Let it go, Paul,” Ramone grunted in the man from Michigan’s ear. He slowly loosened his grip. “You heard him get these girls out of here,” he then said, turning to the other assembled members of Los sin techo. “Carlos, collect the payment. We’re done here.”

  “WE ARE NOT DONE!” Paul bellowed as he darted out of Ramone’s loosened grip and made a b-line straight for Pirelli. “YOU’RE GOING TO PAY FOR THAT BITCH OR I’M GONNA TAKE IT FROM YOUR WHORE-MOMMA’S CUNT!” He watched Paul reach his mark and clamp a hand down on his shoulder.

  The grip hadn’t achieved much for the man in bottled green had already frozen. Cane poised in his right hand. “What did you just say about my mother?” he snarled dangerously.

  Ramone immediately darted towards the pair, heart pounding and sweat now pouring down his back. He was too slow. “I said… I’m gonna take payment from her whore cunt.”

  In a blur, Mr Pirelli spun round his white coat flowing out behind him. In one swift motion, he withdrew a shining silver blade from his cane and slashed it across Paul’s throat. “NO ONE INSULTS MIA MADRE!”

  Blood spurted towards the ceiling in a manner not too dissimilar to a fountain and the man’s shocked expression froze on his face. Flopping backwards he fell to his knees. Everything then happened at once. Guns fired, men grunted, girls screamed and people began running in all directions to try and find some form of cover. Ramone dived into a roll towards a stack of wooden crates on the left-hand wall of the warehouse, letting off a few shots in the process. How the fuck had this happened he grimaced, getting himself behind the rotten wood an instant before a bullet hit the floor where his head had just been. As more shots peppered the rotten wood of the crates he readied himself for a volley of his own. Raising his gun to the top of the box Ramone poked his head over the top for a split second and fired three shots at the first black-clad figure he could see; he never saw if he hit him or not.

  This was madness he thought, this time poking his head around the corner and emptying two rounds into a retreating figures’ leg. Though not exactly in the middle of State Street the warehouse wasn’t exactly at the back of beyond either. The chances were that someone would hear all this gunfire and call the cops. He had no intention of shooting down any investigators who came to source the noise. They needed to get out of here and fast.

  He racked his brain for some way out of this mess the sound of an engine bursting into life. Cautiously Ramone poked his head out from behind the crate. It had come from Pirelli’s limo. The vehicle reversed backwards and the engine of the truck it had been parked beside followed suit. They must have reached the same conclusion Ramone deduced, electing not to fire on a pair of men rushing to the back of the vehicle. A moment later the last of the gunfire ceased and the truck hastily backed out of the warehouse.

  Standing up but not holstering his weapon Ramone cautiously made his way out from behind the crates. The light level may have dropped, owing to half of its sources having left, however, he could clearly see that the warehouse’s collection of barrels and crates had taken most of the bullets. Two more of the twelve girls lay in pools of blood having obviously been caught in the crossfire, while a third sat clutching at what appeared to be a surface wound on her right arm, her cheeks damp. Aside from that, there were no other obvious fatalities; excluding Paul and the blonde girl.

  “Pirelli told them to bail,” the voice of Carlos offered, drawing level with Ramone. “I got one and so did Oscar though they managed to drag the carcases out. I guess they didn’t want to risk the cops finding them.”

  “What about our own?”

  “Pierez bought it and Mikey took one for the team. He’s not looking good, Ramone.” The concern in the other man’s vo
ice was enough to tell him that Mikey would probably not survive.

  He swallowed and did another glance at the mess of a warehouse. “We’ll get him to Jasper,” he said firmly. “Along with anyone else needing to be patched up. He’ll probably think he’s won the fucking lottery, yet still complain about it.”

  Another voice, belonging to someone Ramone could not name then chipped in. “Maxwell is closer.”

  “Closer but probably pissed by now. Besides, he’s not a proper saw-bones.” He took a third look around. “Round the girls up and get everyone back in the truck. I want out of here in five.”

  Carlos barked his orders to the other men and Ramone headed straight for the crumpled corpse of Paul. Stupid bastard he thought, hefting the body over his shoulder. For once he did not relish the opportunity to tell Sergio and Tanya ‘I told you so’. In fact, the very idea of having to tell Sergio about this whole mess almost made him wish he was the one being carted off on Paul’s shoulder. Making his way to the back of the truck, he unceremoniously dumped the carcass inside next to a group of shaking girls. Awkwardly he fumbled about in his jacket pocket and withdrew his zippo and a smoke. Gripping the roll-up with his teeth he managed to catch it alight on the first attempt.

  “Ramone, we got a problem,” Carlos said as he appeared around the side of the vehicle; a dead girl clutched under each arm. “We got three dead ones.” He indicated the inside of the truck and then each of the corpses in turn. “And only eight live ones.” He shoved each corpse inside.

  “Shit!” He scanned the heads of each girl both dead and alive in the truck yet he needn’t have bothered. He already knew which one would be missing; hazel eyes. “Any chance Pirelli got her.”

  “Doubt it. His suits dropped the one they had to get him outta the way while the others chose guns over girls. We don’t have time to look for her Mikey’s not going to hold out much longer and Jack isn’t looking too hot now either.” As if on cue Jack limped up beside them, another member propping him up. “That’s everyone. It’s your call, Ramone.”

  The seconds passed and Ramone puffed hard on the lit stick of tobacco in his mouth. He could not quite forget the comment Pirelli had made, ‘Boom’. He was right things had exploded then…and now just in different ways. He still had time to fix part of this. He made a call.

  “Forget the bitch. We need to get these men to Jasper. If we see her on the way out fair enough. If not…” He didn’t want to think about the ‘if not’.

  The girl had been lucid, there was no question about that now. Had she been paying enough attention when Paul and Pirelli had independently given both halves of his name? Would she then be able to attach a face to it? The questions filtered through his mind while he climbed into the truck and the engine began to rev. The vehicle backed out of the warehouse and Ramone caught sight of the first few rays of dawn trying in vain to break through the heavy dark cloud bank. The air was warm and filled with tension both situation and weather-induced.

  He hauled the doors closed and sighed to himself. It appeared he would be witnessing two thunderstorms very soon. The evening's work, so simple a job, had turned out to be a bust.

  Winners can lose

  This morning had on all accounts been rather good for Matt Taylor. Perhaps, he would go so far to say, even a great one in comparison with the others thus far this week. A drop in temperature from yesterday’s blistering heat, courtesy of a thick cloud bank that had moved in overnight, had contributed to a new personal best for his daily run. A stolen batch of pancakes, at Donny’s expense, coupled with finding five bucks on the way to school had given him cause to think his luck had turned a corner.

  However, excellent starts seem to prove only one thing, it’s all downhill from there. He encountered the first downturn after homeroom. With the tale of the ledge leaper still very much in the minds of the masses, it appeared that Anna’s social standing had rocketed from ‘Lame’ to ‘Legend’ overnight. The only snag being that as her boyfriend, Matt had been caught in the gravitational pull of the event and had fallen victim to an unforeseen side effect. Over the course of the morning, he had been unable to rid himself of people who wanted to talk to him, shakes hands with him, offer him snacks, pens, cheat sheets and just generally annoy him. To make matters worse he had not failed to notice that scarce few people had actually been bothering Anna, the centre of their adulation.

  It was no secret to Matt that the majority of the student body were afraid of Anna in some way. Though she had never done anything to deliberately instil fear amongst her peers, Anna had not exactly made herself approachable either. The tipping point Matt theorised had probably come near the start of their sophomore year when they had received a martial arts lesson in gym class from a local instructor.

  Anna had refused to implement the self-defence technique he had been trying to teach and instead, used her own to send Natalie to the crash mat. An argument had ensued, followed by a declaration by the instructor that Anna’s so-called ‘limb destruction’ would not work against a properly executed attack from a professional like himself. A demonstration had of course, been obligatory.

  The image of the pair standing across from each other was one Matt could still recall with unwanted precision. The blue crash mats atop the faded wooden gym floor and the two people squaring off opposite one another in the middle. Facing him the towering bulk of the instructor with his short, dark curly hair and chiselled features, dressed in a pristine white martial arts suit complete with a black belt embossed with three gold stripes. While with her back to him, Anna. Wearing a simple pair of black tracksuit bottoms and a baggy white t-shirt. Her shoulder length hair tied into a tight knot behind her head. Just before the combatants bowed to each other the gleeful voice of Dylan had whispered to him, “she’s going to look so stupid once he’s done with her”. From his other side, the stony voice of Mark fielded a curt reply, “don’t count on it”.

  No sooner had it begun it was over. The instructor had launched his attack with what Mark would later describe as great pomp and noise, Anna stepped silently forward and to the side, countered and...

  To this day Matt could still hear the snapping sound of the man’s arm breaking in Anna’s hands. “I told you it was a limb destruction,” he could recall Anna saying in a harrowing tone, while the man cried out in surprise and alarm on the floor before her; shock overcoming him.

  She said no more before walking out. Though unable to see her face Matt had it on good authority that her features had remained stoic and that her eyes had been devoid of any emotion. No one had tried to stop her.

  The debate about her being evil, uncaring or insane aside, everyone had been shocked when Anna had escaped punishment from both the school and the authorities. Though the details were never fully uncovered, despite the serious efforts of the grapevine, it was known that Anna’s mother had spoken at length with the principal. Afterwards, the instructor had left never to return and everyone from that point onward had been a lot more careful when approaching Anna. Things, as they had a habit of doing, subsequently returned to a semi-state of normality, but people never forgot.

  Back to the present and morning break had brought about downturn number two, a vending machine taking his money and refusing to part with the goods. Gym class had at least provided a glimmer of hope. After Mondays encouraging result he had reorganised his volleyball team and finally put Mark to the sword, winning the tie-break 15-13. Victory had never tasted so sweet Matt thought, failing to suppress the grin on his face.

  Making his way over to the usual spot he could see that everyone had already gathered with their typical lunches; everything normal just the way it should be. From the bottom end of the table, the sound of a guitar being strummed reached his ears. Another upturn he thought, Anna playing was normally indicative of a good mood.

  “Hey, Anna,” he said, turning to smile at her. “Did you have a bolt of inspiration?”

  “No,” she replied airily, returning the smile. She looked
tired, the dark circles under her eyes seemed wider and darker than ever but he ignored the thought as she spoke again. “I just felt the need to brighten up the place.”

  “She’s been doing it since we all sat down,” someone added.

  It was not so much the hostility of the speaker’s tone that caused Matt to jump but rather the identity of its owner. Turning his head his gaze fell upon the sour expression plastered all over Natalie’s face. Had he missed something that week that had brought about an increased level of hostility between the two girls?

  He knew they did not see eye to eye. However, unlike with Dylan, the pair generally remained civil towards each other. Before he had the chance to initiate peacekeeping mode Anna responded in her own way by striking up a new tune.

  “Will you quit with that infernal racket already!”

  Matt recoiled. Natalie’s voice reached a level usually reserved for Dylan at his most irritating. He had not been the only one taken by surprise he noticed; Dylan and Kitty had simultaneously jumped.

  “Why?” Anna replied softly. “With all the negativity you and Dylan have given off this week the table could use a pick-me-up. Besides with you lot being its only visitor’s day after day, it must get exceptionally board.”

  He shook his head at her sense of humour. Only in Anna’s head could the feelings of the table be considered justification for her actions. From across said table, he heard a chuckle that he immediately knew belonged to Mark; he and Anna often seemed to be in harmony when it came to humour.

  “Richards returns Johnson’s weak serve and scores the first point of the match. One-nothing Richards.”

  In vain Matt tried to contain himself as beside him Dylan too let out a howl of laughter. Mark smirked at them. Apparently, he still had volleyball on the brain.