Dark End of the Street - v4

by Ace Atkins

  “C’mon, let’s go,” the black man said. He had freckles and high cheekbones like an Indian. Mean eyes.

  “Leave me alone,” Abby yelled. “Where the hell am I? Who the hell are you?”

  “C’mon. He wants to see you.”

  The black man grabbed the front of her shirt and yanked her to her feet. He twisted her arm behind her back and pushed her into a concrete tunnel. She gritted her teeth in pain — her shoulder screaming loose in the socket — as they marched her through the narrow passageway. The tunnel took several twists through a dozen curves with fluorescent lights beaming overhead.

  At the end of another tunnel, the boy opened a side door into an office with dark wood paneling and dimly lit with Tiffany lamps. The shades looked as if they were cut from shards of colorful hard candy.

  The black man shoved her onto a brown leather coach.

  When she straightened her head, she gazed right into a shadow sitting in a leather chair. He was hard to see. His features were obscured by bright light and smoke from a cigar. She could see the orange glow of the butt and hear his rapid, uneven breath.

  “Hello, Miss MacDonald.” His voice country and weathered. Someone who drank too much bourbon and had smoked since he was ten.

  She tasted the blood in her mouth and heard the dull sound of locks pinging in the concrete room where they’d kept her. She tried to squint through the hot light.

  “You got to be tired,” he said.

  Abby could hear her own breath now. Way too fast.

  “Haven’t stopped since the death of your parents.”

  Abby bit into the side of her cheek and listened.

  “Truck stops, cheap-ass motels. Always wondered, why the highway? Why not the beach? Or another country? You like bein’ anonymous? You like blending in?”

  Abby felt the blood heating in her chest. This was it. This was it. “What the hell do you want?” she yelled. It was someone else’s voice. Someone stronger.

  Above them there was a buzz of laughter and the sound of electronic bells. More laughter. Heavy footsteps.

  “We need some help finding something belonging to your father.”

  Her duffel bag sat open on his desk and her dirty underwear on the floor. She felt naked and embarrassed.

  “You killed them. Didn’t you? You goddamned son of a bitch.”

  “Help us find what we need. And let your parents die with grace.”

  She saw his hands reach for the bag and pull it from view. The light was so bright that even when she squinted she couldn’t make out his features. A blue halo pulsed in her vision.

  “Where does your daddy keep his papers?” he asked.

  She shook her head. “You’re just gonna kill me anyway.”

  “Nope. I don’t kill little girls. I just make ’em bleed and hurt like hell till they tell me what I want.”

  Abby stared down at her hands. She breathed quick, her heart ticking. She began to pray silently again. It was the prayer she’d said the entire way in the car about appreciating every second the Lord gave her.

  “Abby?”

  She kept her eyes on her hands. She felt the gentle stroke of fingers across the back of her neck.

  “Go on,” the man said to someone behind her. “Y’all have your fun.”

  Out of the darkness two people walked between her and the man. One was the older black man with freckles. The other was Ellie.

  At least it seemed like Ellie. In Abby’s scattered vision, the face and the body were the same. But she looked different and held herself in an unusual way. She even seemed to breathe like another person as she studied Abby with squinting eyes.

  “Shall we go get this filthy bitch cleaned up?” Ellie asked.

  The door to the security office was closed and I was about to walk back to the lobby when a black woman dressed in maid coveralls sauntered by and jiggled a set of keys in her pocket. She opened the door.

  I followed.

  The office was tiny with a cheap desk and seascape prints hanging on the walls. Besides the smell of stale cigarettes, you couldn’t tell if the place was ever used. No loose papers on the desk. No bulletin boards. No appointment calendars.

  “You know where I can find Humes?” I asked.

  The woman jumped as if touched by a live wire. Her face was round and flat. Reddish brown skin.

  “Sorry,” I said, my palms outstretched to show I was cool. Didn’t mean her any harm. “Lookin’ for my old buddy Mr. Humes.”

  “Shiiit,” she said. She was very old and very short. Didn’t even come up to my chest. “You up to no good.”

  “No, ma’am.”

  “Yes, you is.” She smiled. “What you wantin’ Humes fer? He fucked up again?”

  I smiled back.

  “You gonna kick his ass?”

  “Just want to talk to him.”

  She looked up at me and studied my eyes. She squinted one eye and then patted me on the arm. “C’mon, he ain’t never in here. But don’t you be tellin’ him how you found him.”

  She left the office door open and led me down a long hallway to a metal door by an emergency exit. Hundreds of tourist pamphlets sat in a nearby bin. Everything from Graceland to the Delta Blues Museum in Clarksdale.

  The woman unlocked the metal door and held it wide open.

  “Go on,” she said. “Last door on the left. That’s where he sit at, pickin’ his ass and lookin’ at Playboys.”

  I leaned down to the short old woman and kissed her on the cheek.

  Ever since the truck stop, Perfect had had the uncontrollable desire to scrub Abby MacDonald clean. She stank. She smelled of body odor and gasoline and coffee breath. She had stubble underneath her arms and probably had long hair growing on her legs. Her eyebrows were unkempt and long cuticles grew over her nails. How could she live like that? How could she even think this was acceptable?

  Perfect hated everything about the girl. She hated her greasy dirty-blond hair and her unmade face and her sinewy little body. Probably some kind of runner or athletic freak. Abby wasn’t curvy. The girl didn’t understand that women were supposed to be full and rounded.

  In the concrete room, Perfect studied Abby. The way her head hung down in her hands, the mud splattered on her wide-legged jeans, and those awful running shoes. And, God, how she wouldn’t shut up. The little girl kept on crying and calling her Ellie and asking her to disappear.

  Perfect, now dressed in hip-hugger cords and a white T-shirt with a sequin heart, moved closer to the girl and watched her cry. Humes sat on top of a blackjack table, a gun on his hip, drinking a cup of coffee. That bastard was waiting for the show to begin. Oh, well, guess she’d have to deliver.

  Perfect grabbed a good handful of greasy hair from Abby’s head and pulled her to the stainless-steel tub. She tore the horrible-smelling T-shirt from her body and told her to take off those dirty jeans or die.

  The girl kept sobbing but did what she said, lightly pulling them down over her knees, shaking.

  Perfect knew the girl was expecting rape or some kind of sexual kicks from them. Instead, Perfect shoved her stinking ass down in the tub filled with scalding water. The girl, just wearing white bra and panties, pressed her back to the wall and covered her breasts with folded arms.

  Perfect shook her head, put on a pair of Latex gloves, and lathered up a loofah.

  She pulled up Abby’s armpit and began her long overdue cleansing process.

  The room at the end of the hall was more than just an additional office. Think Mission Impossible crossed with Dr. Strangelove. At least thirty black-and-white televisions showing various scenes from the casino were arranged along a gray cinder block wall. One had a closeup of the blackjack dealer’s hands and another showed some kind of warehouse where men unloaded an eighteen-wheeler. A narrow desk with microphones and a couple of rolling chairs sat close to the monitors. A coffee mug stamped with the Magnolia Grand logo and a crumpled pack of cigarettes lay on the desk.

  I felt the mug.
Still hot.

  I took a seat in the chair and picked up the October Playboy sitting by the mug. Girls of the SEC and some pretty lame music reviews. I skipped past the reviews and some kind of rich man’s guide to stereo gadgets and went right to this month’s centerfold before leaning back in the chair and studying the wall of televisions.

  A woman stood by a slot machine picking her nose and a young Hispanic boy was sitting on his father’s shoulders as the man danced in a disco. Two security guards hung out on the hood of a Pontiac, smoking cigarettes and talking shit.

  “Hey,” someone said. “What the fuck are you doing back here?”

  Perfect ran a towel over Abby’s reddened skin, the dirt scrubbed away with the hard loofah. The girl was crying because she’d gotten a little chapped and was bleeding. How else was Perfect supposed to get that stench away? God, that girl smelled so rotten and awful.

  Humes had his gun pointed at the girl’s chest and licked his lips looking at her wet bra and chest. He smoothed his hands over her little stomach, soaking in the control he felt. Perfect smacked the gun away, told him to go back to his seat, and bound Abby’s wrist with handcuffs to a metal water pipe.

  The girl now lay lengthwise on an elevated bed the casino used to give guest in-room massages. Abby was still crying and bleeding when Perfect dripped the hot wax into the girl’s armpits and spread it with a plastic spatula.

  “Abby, don’t worry, I’ll take care of you. You’ll be fresh and smelling like honeysuckle when we let you go. Don’t worry,” she said, caressing Abby’s face in her hands. “You and me will be just fine.”

  Perfect spread strips of cotton paper on her armpits, smoothing it in the direction the hair grew. She held Abby’s face in her hands, feeling the blubbering and whimpering, as she quickly ripped the paper backward, taking away a thick collection of dark hairs by the root.

  Abby screamed and cried more.

  “I remember the first time my mother made me get all dolled up,” Perfect said. “I was eight. She made me sit in a hot bath till my toes turned to prunes, and then rolled me in baby powder. She put gobs of blue eyeliner on me, painted my lips fire-engine red, and dressed me in my Sunday sailor suit. Told me I had to look right for my uncle. Said he liked sweet little girls. Are you sweet, Miss Abby? Are you my sweet little girl?”

  The girl coughed and then spit right into Perfect’s eye. Perfect just smoothed away the spit and poured more of that hot yellow wax into Abby’s armpit. Abby was yelling and screaming and kicking now.

  Perfect nodded over to Humes and they tied her legs to the table with some torn bed sheets. She used a short piece to gag the girl. Didn’t even know this was good for her.

  She applied the wax and another strip just like she was taught and ripped it back away. Abby screamed a muffled scream, her eyes reddened and full of tears.

  Perfect found a comb from her purse and then started roughly pulling away the tangles from the girl’s wet hair. She whistled a little bit as she worked.

  She liked to feel good about helping someone be clean.

  I turned to the door where I saw a kid in his early twenties with slick black hair, wearing a blue blazer and khaki pants.

  “Sent back here to see Mr. Humes,” I said.

  “No one told me,” the kid said.

  “Are you Mr. Humes?” I asked.

  “No,” the kid said, studying my face.

  “Then maybe that’s the reason.”

  “Nobody likes a smart-ass,” the kid said.

  “You’d be surprised,” I said.

  The kid’s jaw muscles twitched and he grabbed a radio at his hip.

  “You stay here, buddy,” the kid said. “Don’t leave.”

  I made a pistol with my thumb and forefinger and dropped the hammer. The kid shook his head and walked back down the hall.

  Maybe Humes didn’t handle collections or maybe they’d already found Clyde. Or maybe I was wasting my fucking time. At least this was better than sitting in my warehouse in New Orleans rearranging vinyl.

  I walked over to the cooler and poured some water into a paper cup. Really was pretty cool the way they had all these monitors set up. I laughed at some white dude in a white suit trying to dance and at some old lady who was beating the shit out of a losing slot.

  I was about to turn back to the Girls of the SEC when something in the far right corner of the monitors caught my eye.

  The scene wasn’t in the main casino. Looked like it was in some storage area with cinder block walls filled with old slots. Two people talking.

  A woman leaned over a young girl who was lying down on a long table. I stood and walked toward the screen, transfixed and sickened by what I saw.

  The girl was almost naked and tied down. Her arms were cuffed above her head to a water main and her legs were attached to the table by some kind of strips of cloth. Her loose hair fell into her eyes and she was twisting her head away from the woman’s face. I could feel my heart pound faster and heated adrenaline shoot through my body. The woman mashed a revolver in the girl’s eye as she poured something down the length of her legs.

  Below the monitor was an imprinted plastic tag reading #102.

  Chapter 13

  PERFECT LEIGH WANTED to tear into Abby’s cuticles so bad that her temples throbbed, but the little girl was flailing about and screaming so much that it’d be tough. Maybe she could work on her hands with them still attached to the water pipe, she thought, as she tore off another strip of hair from Abby’s leg causing another muffled scream and another laugh from Humes. He was really getting his jollies watching a young girl twisting about her in her little undies. Sick bastard.

  Hmm. It seemed the heaviest concentration of blond hair was on Abby’s calves, but that would come off with just a quick spread of wax and a flick of the wrist. Perfect stopped for a moment, pulled Abby’s wet, now-detangled hair into a ponytail, and stood back to admire her work.

  Yes, there were possibilities. Her armpits were clean and her legs were almost done. She’d work on the cuticles next and then apply the makeup. Perfect found a long strip of what looked like stubborn hair and loosened the gag around Abby’s mouth. “Just a word, darlin’,” Perfect said. “Just a word. Where did your daddy keep those papers? Y’all have a bank? Or does he have a hidden safe at his office? Come on. You’re about all clean and then we gonna have to start li’l things that are much, much nastier. Mr. Humes over there is kind of kinky, too.”

  Humes smiled, gave a short bow, and walked out the door. He’d be back. He’d be back because he didn’t think Perfect could handle getting what they needed. She looked down at Abby who was turning kind of a bluish color.

  Perfect traced her bare white belly with the pistol and watched her try to stretch from her bound hands and legs. “All right, girl, your choice. I would like to put you in a nice little black dress before he starts. And we’ll have to burn that nasty T-shirt and jeans you got.”

  She put down the gun for a moment on a stack of clean white towels and concentrated looping sticky gobs of wax up under the girl’s calves as she hummed along. “You’re going to be so pretty, Abby. Don’t you worry, I’ll make sure you are the belle of the ball before you take that last breath.”

  I ran through the twisted concrete corridors searching for the room I’d seen from the monitor. Everything I’d come for seemed unimportant now. A girl was strapped to a table with a gun to her head. Hell, I didn’t know what I’d do if I found her. Kick in the door, pull a fire alarm. Something. I couldn’t just stand back and let everything shake out.

  Jesus. Most of the room numbers were out of sequence. And most of the ones I looked into were storage filled with cans for vending machines, stacks of toilet paper, or new towels.

  Just as I thought I was getting close, hearing my boots clacking on the hard concrete floor, the number jumped from ninety-nine to one hundred eleven. Shit. I ran back down the corridor, searching, but the hall was a dead end.

  Suddenly, I heard anoth
er set of footsteps running down the tunnel and pressed myself close to the wall. A black man in a suit jogged past me, staring straight ahead. I took a deep breath and when I couldn’t hear footsteps anymore, I continued the search.

  The next tunnel was dank and bare and the floor muddied with footprints. I was about to turn back when I heard something at the far end. Sounded like the feral cries of a wounded animal.

  Abby tried to focus away from the pain. With each rip of her hair, she could feel numbness spread throughout her body. She tried to concentrate on that, imagining the dead feeling coat her skin in a protective layer. She bit down on the cloth gagging her mouth again and tried not to scream as the woman worked on her back legs, pulling more hair out by the roots.

  She’d never felt such sharp pain in her life. She bit down harder on the cloth, tears streaming down her cheeks.

  “My sweet little girl,” Ellie said, playing with the edge of a gun in her ear. “Get it all out. Purge yourself of all that filth in your mind. Were you Daddy’s little girl? Is that it? You know Daddy died for something that wasn’t his business.”

  Abby wished Ellie would just shoot her and be done with it. She’d never tell them about the little safe in her father’s office, the files she’d found there, or even utter a damned word. This is what happened to her father and she’d let the damned thing rot in that nasty truck stop before she’d say a word to these freaks. She closed her eyes and concentrated away from the pain. They could poke at her some more, rape her, or dump her body into the Mississippi. She didn’t care.

  “You are filthy,” Ellie said. Then she matched her screams with Abby. “Come on!”

  She slammed the pistol against Abby’s ear, carefully placed it back with the towels, and pulled some makeup from her purse. Abby flexed her body, tied at both ends, and turned her head to the door as it flew open.