by I N Foggarty
“…Matt!” His foot came down heavily on the ground floor and Natalie reclaimed his attention. “…Are you even listening to me?” She sounded slightly pissed off.
“Sorry,” he said unapologetically. A rookie mistake.
“Urgh. Why aren’t you listening to me?”
Because I don’t really care about why things suck for you right now, was what he wanted to say. How could she be so self-centred while his best friend and sort-of-girlfriend were missing? “I’m sorry. I guess I’m just bummed out about Anna and Dylan.”
If he had thought ignoring her had brought about her wrath, it was nothing compared to the venom with which she spat her next words. “What the hell has she got to do with all this? Are you still seeing her?”
He stopped dead, one foot inside the kitchen. “What!” he asked, confused.
“Well are you?” she spat at him accusatorily.
Anger welled up inside him. It had become far too common an occurrence of late but he did not have time to dwell on it. He pushed it to the back of his mind to deal with later. It would soon be standing room only back there. He took a breath and said in a shaky voice as he tried to stay calm, “I haven’t seen her at all, let alone spent time with her.” He headed for the fridge.
“You still have feelings for her. Don’t you.” The second accusation conjured up an image of her twisted features from when she had duelled with Anna the previous week. He knew her face would look somewhat similar had he been able to see it.
“I…” Matt paused. He had hoped to explain things to her under better circumstances.
His momentary silence quickly put pay to that. “I knew it! How could I have been so stupid as to fall for you and not realise that you still cared about that freak! For fuck sake Matt she doesn’t care about you. She never did. Hell, she broke up with you via text message. What sort of cold-hearted bitch even does that?”
Though he now had his phone at arms-length he could hear each and every one of her hateful words with crystal clarity. On hearing the part about the text message a small light clicked on in his head and illuminated a tiny speck of the fog that still hung around the events of Friday night. He did not know what it showed but one thing he knew for certain, he had not told anyone bar Dylan, who had actually been present, about the manner in which Anna had broken up with him.
His hand slid down the thick silver handle of the fridge door and without opening it he put the phone back to his ear. “How do you know Anna broke up with me via a text?”
It was Natalie’s turn to fall silent, if only for a split second. “Dylan told me at Raymond’s,” she snapped. “Besides what does it matter?”
“You’re lying,” he practically shouted at her. “I still don’t know everything that happened on Friday but Dylan didn’t hang around long enough to say that much before he went off to do his usual party routine and he definitely didn’t mention how Anna broke up with me.”
“I wasn’t with you all night. I spoke to him in the kitchen when I went to get a drink.” Though he could hear the panic set into Natalie’s tone her words had been enough to confirm the lie.
“No you didn’t. You told Janine that the last time you saw him was when he arrived at Raymond’s and before he went off by himself. The exact same time I last saw him.”
“How do you know what I told her?”
“She’s my sister, Natalie. I spoke to her briefly during lunch. We all saw Dylan last at exactly the same time.” A glint of triumph sparkled in his eyes on revealing his cards. He had her now. “What really happened on Friday, Natalie? Why are you lying to me? What did you do?”
No sooner had he asked the question the line went dead. She had hung up on him! “Damn it,” Matt cursed and quickly tried to call her back to demand an answer; it went straight to voicemail.
Absentmindedly he paced the length of the kitchen. The only two people who had known the nature of his breakup with Anna was Dylan and himself. Neither of whom had told anyone that he knew of.
He himself could have told Natalie. But if that had been the case why would she lie about it? Therefore if neither himself nor Dylan had told her, and Anna would not have, then the only logical explanation for her having that knowledge would be that the text had not come from Anna. It had somehow come from her! However, the texts had come from Anna’s phone and he doubted that Natalie could have stolen it. In fact, it was impossible. He had been the last person to see Anna before she showed up at Raymond’s and she had definitely had her phone then.
Scrolling through his list of conversations he found the one labelled Anna. Opening it he read the two messages she had sent, along with his attempt at an apology. He had sent a whole host of others over the weekend but naturally received no reply. When he tried to scroll further up he paused. The first breakup text was at the top, making it the first message he had got from her. That couldn’t be right. Anna rarely had credit on her phone to text him with, but they had shared a few brief messages since the start of the year. Where had they gone?
It took him a while to look through the rest of his conversations but eventually, he found one that had no name, only a number. He opened it and there they were. They were few in number but most definitely messages between himself and Anna. One of them, pertaining to Mr Steven’s being a smelly old fart, made him chuckle. To be sure he hit the call button only to be greeted with a message that asked him if he wanted to unblock the contact. Someone had tampered with his phone. Casting his mind back there was only one option, Dylan. Only he would have the brains to cook up such a brilliant, near flawless scheme. Not to mention the only one who would have had access to his phone; while they had been showering on Friday night… He hit the call button again.
Anna’s voice answered immediately. “Hello.”
“Anna?” Matt exclaimed excitedly. However, it was short-lived.
After a short pause, Anna’s voice continued. “Had you going there for a sec. I’m not here, leave a message.” The obligatory beep followed.
Matt sighed dejectedly and he hung up. For that one brief moment, everything had been ok. Reality was, unfortunately, not that kind and as it often did in these situations it made things worse. In his case, it came in the form of realisation. Had he not been so stupid he would have been with Anna on Friday night. Meaning she would not have ventured to Raymond’s party and been out on the streets when she had been kidnapped.
His face fell. It was all his fault… all of it.
Slowly his phone slipped through his fingers and bounced on the floor; miraculously not shattering the screen. Anna had done so much for him and he had repaid her with… this. For being the only person in her life who cared about her, he had done a spectacularly shitty job.
Any doubt there had been about going back to Walker’s that evening quickly evaporated. He was going to find Anna and bring her home. If Dylan happened to be there, so be it. He owed him something now too. That thought joined the others from earlier.
Picking his somehow unbroken phone up off the floor, he went back to the fridge. He would need all his strength to make it through tonight in one piece.
Doctor’s orders
It had once been said that a life without stress was an empty one. In the case of Sergio Gutierrez, a life with stress only led to empty liquor bottles and bullet holes in his furnishings. Since his quiet Saturday, he had created two of the latter, three if you counted members of his own crew and lost count of the former. It had been a hectic two and a half days.
At present, he was driving. Under the influence of alcohol, narcotics and blood loss no less. Earlier that evening Pete, a now ex-member of Los sin techo, had argued with him over his quota for the month. After the previous week’s debacle, Sergio had been forced to cut quotas, due to having an excess of merchandise and one less buyer. Thus also the share of the profit everyone received. Pete, the son of a bitch had barged into his office with the audacity of asking for his full cut for only half the work. An intense argument had then end
ed with a jagged knife wound in his own arm and a bullet buried in Pete’s skull, the bastard.
As if it understood that he’d thought about it, blood slowly began to seep through the makeshift bandage he had wrapped around his arm. Curse the fucker Sergio thought, his attention returning to the road only just in time to swerve and avoid a collision with a blue pickup truck. His arm throbbed and protested at the sharp movements needed to guide the car. The quicker he got to Jasper’s the better, blood had started to dribble down his arm through the saturated material. The sawbones was still due his fee for patching up Paul’s crew and since he had a gash the length of a dollar bill down his arm, he had decided to do the honours himself. That and the doc had left a message saying that he needed a word. A three bird’s one bullet sort of thing.
Turning the final corner Sergio haphazardly parked the car beside the sidewalk and made his way up the rotten wooden steps that led to Jasper’s front door one of them creaking horribly underfoot. If all Doctor’s surgeries looked like this house of horrors, it was no wonder people despised going and that was before being robbed blind. Sergio sighed and holding his sticky arm up using his good one, he jabbed a thick finger against the intercom button. Though expensive, Jasper really was one of the best mob doc’s going.
He received no reply. After a few seconds, he impatiently tried again. From inside he heard a loud slam and the sound of hurried footsteps before the door opened creakily. When no one appeared from behind it, he cautiously stepped inside holding his injured arm up and sparing half a thought to his gun.
Like his previous visits, few as they were, the hallway looked bleak and uninviting. The repurposed gas lamps dimmed down to a point where the orb of light emitting from each barely extended beyond its own glass housing. It gave the room a creepy almost disused quality. He chose to ignore the doctor’s penny-pinching ways, closed the front door behind him and made his way into the lounge.
He took a moment to glance around this room too, with its peeling moss green wallpaper and battered antique mahogany panels. No one occupied any of the mismatched wooden chairs though that did not surprise him; business did not properly start for another few hours. Even if there had been it ought not to have mattered. The clinic of a mob Doc was supposed to be neutral ground and so even worst enemies kept their guns in check. In that vein, he had kept his own firearm holstered, despite what instinct told him. The door to the old dining room that Jasper used for an exam room sat ajar so he took it as an invitation to enter. Jasper had not told him to take a seat after all.
Poking his head inside he could see the doctor in front of the washbasin; furiously scrubbing his hands. The water dripping off them had a dark pink tinge. He wore a long lab coat that came down to his knees and buttoned to his throat.
“If I were dying you would just have lost a patient,” Sergio grunted, crossing the threshold and closing the exam room door behind him.
Jasper jumped, spinning around he grabbed the washbasin for support and glared at Sergio. He visibly relaxed on seeing him. “What are you doing in here? I didn’t call for you.” He sounded quite agitated and snatched up a rough towel. Irately he rubbed his hands dry then bustled from the basin to his desk.
Sergio raised an eyebrow. “You didn’t tell me to wait either.”
The Doc took stock of him, glancing from head to toe then back again. “It is a waiting room, Sergio, therefore implied,” he scoffed but kept his eyes trained on the blood dripping down the other man’s arm.
“Yeah like I said if I were dying you would just have lost a patient,” he grunted again and pushed himself into the chair across from the man.
“Yes well if you had died on my doorstep I’m sure I could have found something on your corpse to cover the cost of disposing of your carcass.” Just like that the doctor's composure and with it his sneer returned. “I hope you closed the front door. The riff-raff around here are becoming far too opportunistic.”
“Just like you then,” Sergio said, dumping a small boot bag atop the desk. “Your recompense, Doc. And before you ask there’s enough to cover this.” He indicated his arm.
Jaspers' eyes flickered from the bloodied clump of material to Sergio, the gaze intense. Instead of the obligatory, ‘I’ll be the judge of that’ routine, the doctor gave him a sinister smile. “That isn’t self-inflicted by any chance? I did not think you still bothered with grunt work.”
He ignored the comment and fumbled with the knot. “Just patch me up and I’ll be out of here.”
The doctor took one look at the wound before he swiftly stood up. “The table,” he said indicating the exam table in the centre of the room. Sergio grunted as the Doc busied himself with fetching the necessary supplies. He stood again and making his way over pulled himself one-handed onto the crinkling paper that covered the old worn leather padded monstrosity.
The doctor pulled a metal tray of equipment closer and turned on a light overhead that caused Sergio to groan and screw his eyes against the sharp burst of pain it caused across his temples. The skeletal figure in white crossed the room again and rummaged in a cupboard. “Playing with knives is going to get you killed one of these days. I thought the last time would have taught you that they are not toys.”
Sergio gritted his teeth at Jasper’s reprimand. The ‘last time’ that he spoke off involved a serrated blade tearing through his leg. He still had a foot long scar to remember it by.
Out of nowhere, the doctor appeared by his side again and a seized the arm with a latex covered hand. Without thinking, Sergio tried to snatch it back but Jaspers grip held firm. The man was a lot stronger than his wiry frame gave him credit for.
When he turned to look at him Sergio could see that rather than being annoyed by the movement the man seemed amused. The smile on his lips would have given children nightmares. “You people are all the same you know.”
Sergio growled deep in his throat as Jasper pressed a handful of gauze against the gash and began wiping away the dirty blood. “You’ll cut each other to ribbons and still smile. Yet afterwards when you come crawling into the doctors you try to scamper away like little children afraid of getting their shots.”
There was something about the doctors nasally tone that always rubbed him the wrong way Sergio thought. However, if he were a kid he too would run from his shots if it were this bastard administering them. The creep now peered at the wound and ‘hmm’ed’ to himself. He released his grip and moved back.
“Press this against the wound while I prepare the suture.” Jasper held a second wad of gauze out to him.
Sergio took the slightly damp material and pressed it against his arm. “Fuck!” he cursed. Realising too late that the wet feeling had been antiseptic.
The doctor shot him a look that clearly said he was being a baby. “I know you find it difficult but try and sit still. Otherwise, I might poke this into your wound.”
The tip of the suture glinted menacingly in the light Jasper had positioned over his arm. So focused on it Sergio did not pay much attention when the doctor used a syringe to numb the area and then expertly ran the suture up the gash knitting the two halves of skin together.
“While you are here there was something I wished to discuss with you.”
Great, he had been hoping the Doctor had forgotten about wanting to speak with him. He already knew what it would be about of course. If not a price hike, Jasper would only be interested in one thing and not something Sergio liked to discuss. He did not concern himself with what people did with his merchandise, however, a thought towards the doctor's purposes always sent a chill up his spine. Unfortunately, with their recent business problems, he could not afford to turn him down. Not that he would have anyway.
“Oh yeah?” Sergio stated as he watched the man tie off the suture.
Jasper gave him a stern look over the top of his thin round spectacles. “I am in need of some of your merchandise.”
The doctor’s piercing gaze made Sergio uncomfortable enough that he broke
it off and looked down at his now repaired forearm; the blade had unfortunately ruined one of his favourite tattoos. At least he would be able to get rid of one excess piece of stock.
“I’ll send some of my guys over with one tomorrow.” As he spoke, he felt a jab in his arm. He froze and growled when he caught sight of the hypodermic. It was promptly removed and replaced with a dressing that Jasper pressed firmly down onto his arm.
“Actually I’m in need of a…” Jasper paused and pulled his gloves off with a snap. “…stronger specimen. Like the one you gave me back in January… if you catch my drift.” The knowing look the doctor gave him felt just as unnerving. The way he spoke irked Sergio no end.
He knew what he wanted. Though if you were going to purchase such goods you should at least have the decency to talk straight about it.
“It’ll take time… and cost extra,” he replied. Jasper scowled darkly at him. “Mi amigos need time to find and grab someone who won’t be missed. They don’t normally pick up what you’re looking for.” Sergio smiled, a thought occurring to him. He might already have exactly what the doctor sought. Maybe it was his turn to rob the bastard blind.
“Very well,” Jasper grumbled, turning his attention to the boot bag and quickly counting its contents. “That injection costs extra, Sergio. You are fifty dollars short.”
“Pay me in advance and I’ll have my best men fulfil your order sooner.”
The doctor hastily zipped up the bag and removed it from view. Well, that answered that question. “If there is nothing else please see yourself out. And refrain from exerting that arm. You don’t want those stitches to burst.”