“Never mind that,” I told him. “What you want to ask is where’s your money.”
“All right,” he said. “Where’s my money.”
“I have it right here,” I said. “If I give it back, then this business with you and me is done, right?”
“Now you’re finally being sensible,” he said. “All I ever wanted was what was rightfully mine.”
“Meet me in the lot behind 2372 Saco Street. You know the place, don’t you? It’s where your useless nephew didn’t kill me.”
“Right,” he said. “I know it.”
“Meet me there at midnight tonight,” I said. “Come alone.”
I ended the call and turned the phone off.
I sat there, gripping the wheel for what felt like forever. My whole body was shaking, my stomach roiling. Midnight? Why the fuck did I say midnight? That was sixteen hours away. I couldn’t imagine what the hell I was going to do with myself for sixteen hours.
The hours passed. I drove around. Bought food and didn’t eat it. Bought shoes and tossed the broken-heeled boots. Stared at the bland, familiar Valley mini-mall landscape. It wasn’t too late to blow town, but I didn’t. I waited until midnight.
My plan, such as it was, was a simple one. I was going to plug Ridgeway as soon as I saw him. I didn’t care if he had snipers secretly covering him. Let them shoot me after I shot him. At least the son of a bitch would beat me to hell.
Just before I got on the freeway to head downtown, I opened up the duffel bag on the seat beside me. My blue cup was broken into three pieces. The little robot was broken too, its smiling head and one arm detached from the dented body. My own little stack of cash was gone, probably still sitting on the nightstand at the Palmview where I’d left it. All I had left now was the Lakers t-shirt I didn’t want to wear because it reminded me of Lia, the gun I used to kill Jesse, and Ridgeway’s money. In a way that seemed weirdly fitting. I threw out the broken things in a 7-Eleven trashcan, traded my current garbage-stained t-shirt for the Lakers shirt and stuck the gun into the waistband of my jeans.
I got to the abandoned warehouse an hour and fifteen minutes early. There was no one there. I parked Malloy’s car over near the mercado and then cautiously walked back to the meeting place. The money was way heavier than you’d think just money would be, but the walk was still much easier than the last time I’d traveled this route.
There was still nobody in sight. The run-down industrial neighborhood was just as deserted now as it had been on the day Jesse shot me, but I still felt like I had a neon sign over my head that read I HAVE A BAG FULL OF HUNDRED DOLLAR BILLS!!!
I made it to the lot without incident. No one else was there. So I waited. In a way, the waiting seemed almost worse than getting shot. All the second-guessing, the doubts, all the bullshit running through my head. But I wanted so badly to be that badass avenging angel, so there I was. Waiting.
In the end, it wasn’t Ridgeway who showed up. It was the weasel. Lia’s boyfriend. Vukasin.
“What the fuck?” I said to him as he rounded the corner into the lot. I pulled out the gun and drew a bead on the center of his chest. “I told your boss to come alone.”
“Hello, Angel,” he said, smiling. He was wearing an expensive, new leather trench coat over yet another awful shirt. “Nice haircut.”
“Fuck you,” I said. “You get your boss on the phone and you tell him the deal is off without him.”
“I would,” Vukasin said, talking a smiling step closer to me. “But you see, I forgot to charge my cell phone. How stupid of me.”
“Stay the fuck away from me,” I warned.
“You really will shoot me now, won’t you?” he said, cocking his head and stepping back. “Our little girl is all grown up, eh?”
I caught a quick flicker in his gaze as it darted to my left and then back to my face. Alarms went off all through my body and I spun to the left just in time to meet something hard and heavy slamming into my temple. The smug and mocking thought that chased me down into blackness was... some avenging angel.
30.
I came to in another trunk. This one was much nicer than the Civic, better than the Sebring even, but it still sucked. I was bound and gagged, again. My head hurt worse than it had ever hurt before and I felt a drowsy kind of spinning sickness that made me wish I were already dead.
What the fuck was I thinking, trying to be some kind of badass tough guy? I was a porn star for Christ’s sake, not a Green Beret. I could almost see Malloy shaking his head, smirking and making some deadpan comment about the shit I’d gotten myself into now. I hated him in that moment, for making me need him and then leaving me.
The car I was in eased into a slow stop. Footsteps came around to the rear and I cringed as the trunk lid sprang open. There would be no hesitation from Vukasin if he decided to pop a cap in my bitch ass.
But the person who opened the trunk wasn’t Vukasin. Presumably it was the man who had cold-cocked me back in the lot behind that warehouse. I figured he must be the replacement for that blonde redneck thug Malloy had killed back in Vegas. This one was younger and better looking, his dark hair meticulously gelled into trendy dishevelment. The body under his basic black outfit was built more like a model than a power lifter but he lifted me out of the trunk and slung me over his broad shoulder easily and without comment.
Hanging upside down with my cheek pressed against the thug’s back, I saw that the car whose trunk had been so nice was a slick black Chrysler 300. I was getting to be a regular trunk connoisseur. I made a mental note to request the Chrysler 300 for all future abductions.
I also saw that we were behind one of those awful, trashy post-war apartment complexes that fill the low-income neighborhoods of the northern Valley. Grimy stucco. Chipped paint. Indistinguishable from hundreds of others throughout Southern California.
Vukasin was there, holding my duffel bag and talking on a cell phone.
“Yes,” he said into the phone. “I’ve got her and I’ve got the money.” He looked over at me. “Yes, I understand.”
He ended the call and gestured to the man holding me.
“Boss says we meet him at Sneaky Pete’s on West 98th by LAX,” Vukasin said, putting the duffel bag into the trunk in my place and slamming the lid. “He said it’s right next door to the meet. You load up the outgoing girls, drive out to the meet, park the van behind the warehouse and then go over and meet the boss at Pete’s. I’ll deal with Angel myself.”
“But I thought the boss said he wanted her included with the outgoing,” the thug said, adjusting me on his shoulder.
“She will be,” Vukasin said. “Only she and I have a few things we need to discuss together first.”
He caught my eye and winked.
The thug carried me through a security gate and up some stairs and then stood in front of a unit on the second floor. The place was a standard low-rent garden apartment complex, all the units facing a central garden if by “garden” you meant a single rickety bench and some weedy dirt. The interior was not visible from the street. You could do pretty much anything you wanted here and no one would see it.
Vukasin unlocked the door. Inside wasn’t a normal apartment. It was a crummy little dungeon. Bad fake stone pattern painted on the grubby walls. Rickety wooden equipment slopped thick with matte black paint. A large X bolted to one wall and studded with eyelets. A thinly padded bench with locking steel cuffs dangling from each of its four legs. Cheap, skinny floggers and flimsy paddles hanging from nails driven unevenly into the far wall. There were stains on the carpet that I didn’t care to study. I thought of Ulka and her classy set-up and wondered what she would have thought about this place.
“Just put her down anywhere,” Vukasin said.
The thug obliged by dumping me on the carpet at the foot of the X and quickly making himself scarce. One of the stains that I didn’t want to think about was now an inch from my nose.
I wondered, were all the other units in this grim complex done u
p as cheesy fantasy sets like this one? Was this where they shot all the Naughty Teens videos? Did the girls turn tricks here too?
Alone with Vukasin now, I quickly assessed my situation. I was lying on my side. My hands were bound behind my back with a single short piece of nylon rope. Ditto my ankles. I was tightly gagged with a knotted handkerchief that dug deep into the corners of my mouth.
Vukasin hung his leather trench coat on a hook by the door and then squatted down beside me and pushed up my Lakers shirt, exposing my breasts. I had not had time to bind them down when I bolted from the Palmview and anyway at this late date it had seemed kind of beside the point to continue with the drag charade.
“You are really much too old for me, Angel,” he said, gripping my breast and giving it a painful shake. “But you intrigue me. Your friend Zandora, she was intriguing too. For a time.”
He reached behind my head and unknotted the gag, pulling the wet fabric from my mouth. He abruptly yanked me upright so that I was balanced on my knees, facing him. Pulling a straight razor from his pocket, he swiftly cut away my t-shirt, nicking the skin beneath more than once in the process. It was enough to pull me out of the stupor I’d been in. I had pretty much resigned myself to being shot; I’d even managed to convince myself that it would be a noble, tough guy kind of a death. But slow death by straight razor is a whole different ballgame.
Once my shirt was out of the way, Vukasin wrapped one skinny arm around me and kissed me, mashing my sore lips into my teeth like an eager teenager. I let him, focusing everything I had into working my wrists loose. They wouldn’t give and wouldn’t give and then suddenly the rope went miraculously slack, just enough to slip one hand free.
I had one shot. I remembered that tacky shirt he’d worn in Vegas, the one with the cards and dice on it, and I remembered the pistol I’d found under it, tucked down the back of his pants. He was wearing a different tacky polyester shirt today, but it was untucked the same way. I could only hope that he was a creature of habit.
When he reached down to unbutton my jeans, I made my move. The pistol was right where I’d hoped it would be. In less than a heartbeat, I had it out of his waistband and up under his chin.
“Get the fuck off me,” I told him.
He dropped the razor and backed away slowly, eyes narrow and furious. I could see that he no longer harbored any doubt that I would shoot him.
“Back up,” I told him, keeping the gun pointed at his face.
No snappy banter now. No back talk. He just stepped backwards toward the chintzy little bondage bench.
“Lie on your stomach and cuff your wrists to the bench,” I said. He fastened one cuff around a wrist and then ineffectually fumbled, one handed, with the remaining cuff.
I freed my ankles and cuffed his remaining wrist and ankles to the bench myself. I put my spit-damp gag into his mouth, knotting it securely behind his head and then took his keys from his pocket. I took his trench coat too, since the sliced up Lakers t-shirt was a total loss. I put his gun in the deep pocket and grabbed an extra set of handcuffs and a roll of thick, heavy-duty electrical tape. Just in case.
I could have killed him without thinking twice. It wouldn’t have troubled me at all. But it also wouldn’t have satisfied me. No point wasting my time on wiping out all the rest of Ridgeway’s little errand boys. Ridgeway was the one who planned this whole mess. Ridgeway was the one who needed to pay.
Outside in the thick unnatural stillness of the deserted complex, I stood with Vukasin’s keys in my hand. I could get out of town in just the trench coat and my jeans, but if I was going to get Ridgeway, I needed clothes. If the girls were shooting videos and turning tricks here, they probably had a wardrobe room somewhere in this complex. In her scene for Naughty Teens 17, Lia had worn a sleazy hot pink hooker dress, but some of the other Naughty Teens had been in nondescript GND outfits so I was hoping I’d be able to find something besides stripper-wear and cheerleader costumes.
The first few doors I opened led to more sets. A schoolroom, an office, a prison with little wooden cells. By far the creepiest was a little girl’s bedroom, complete with cute plush animals and a pink canopy bed. There were also a few minimally furnished studio apartments that looked like trick pads. All of them were empty.
I went downstairs to try some of the doors on the first floor. The locks on these doors were expensive and new, and there was more than one on each door. The first door I unlocked led to what I initially mistook for an empty apartment. There was no furniture in the room I could see from the front door, yet the lights were on. I was about to shut the door and try another when a blonde head peered around the doorless entry to a second room on the left.
“Hello?” I said.
A girl came out into the main room. She was naked. She had a pretty face but was clearly exhausted and her skinny, underdeveloped body was mottled with bruises and scratches. She made no attempt to cover herself. Her eyes were skittish, like Lia’s had been. She didn’t say anything.
“Do you speak English?” I asked.
Her lack of response answered for her, but at the sound of my voice, two other girls appeared behind her. They were also naked, and also didn’t seem to care. Any dignity or shyness had long since worn away. They were silent, resigned.
I quickly searched the tiny unit and found absolutely nothing inside. No clothes, no furniture, no toiletries, nothing at all. Just these three naked girls.
It was a pretty smart set-up Ridgeway had going here. This was the perfect place to keep illegal girls locked down tight, providing privacy for the johns and the shoots. In a neighborhood like this, nobody thought twice about heavy security bars and multiple locks. The neighbors would never imagine all that security wasn’t to keep people out but to keep them in.
I went down the row of doors, opening them one after the other. The girls were housed three per unit, fifteen total. They were all pale and scared and painfully young. I would have been very surprised if even half of them were over eighteen. The girls were all naked and there were no clothes or shoes in any of their units. Not so much as a blanket or a towel. There was something hideously brilliant about keeping them demoralized that way, leaving them naked, making them sleep on the floor.
It took a lot of non-verbal coaxing to get them all out of their little carpeted prisons.
“Does anybody speak English?” I asked, once I had herded all the shivering girls into the central garden.
“Yes,” a tall, awkward brunette replied.
“A little bit,” said a bottom-heavy blonde, indicating a little bit between her thumb and forefinger.
“Okay,” I said speaking slow and clear. “Where are clothes?”
The brunette pointed to a left corner unit on the ground floor. When I unlocked the door, I found a dressing room filled with racks of slutty dresses and costumes. It was not unlike the Sissy Boudoir at Ulka’s except the clothes were in smaller sizes.
“Everyone get dressed,” I said.
The girls obediently did as I asked and the ones who didn’t understand followed the examples of the ones who did. They were so used to doing what they were told that it made me angry.
I had hoped there would be some plain good-girl outfits but if there were any, they kept them somewhere else.
“Okay, I said. “Everyone dressed?”
I surveyed my little hooker army. Each girl was clad in a trashy spandex dress and plastic platform shoes or vinyl hot pants and a halter top. It was so preposterous that you had to laugh, but I suddenly thought of one particular motherfucker who would not be laughing when he saw them.
I led the girls up to the dungeon where Vukasin was manacled. In my absence, he had struggled so fiercely that he’d knocked the bench over on its side. His wrists were bleeding, but he had been unable to free himself.
I bent down to retrieve the open straight razor from the carpet and handed it to the blonde who understood English a little bit. She didn’t need her English to understand what I had in mind. I
was pleased to see, finally, flashes of defiance and life in fifteen pairs of eyes as understanding swept over the girls on a tide of foreign whispers.
As I turned away, I could hear Vukasin’s muffled, impotent squeaks through the gag and frantic thumping as he struggled to get away from what he had coming. I left the girls to their revenge. I had my own to think about.
On my way out, I stopped off in the wardrobe room. The bare bones of a plan were starting to take shape in my mind. I ditched my dirty jeans and wiggled into a g-string bikini with easy-off plastic clasps. Over the bikini I pulled on a shiny black stretch vinyl minidress. There was a plastic toolbox filled with Wet N Wild 99-cent make-up. I quickly slapped on a thick layer of war paint and topped it off with a cherry red Bettie Page-style wig. I jammed my feet into sky-high stripper heels and then covered it all up with Vukasin’s leather trench coat. The coat still smelled like him. It made me feel completely the opposite of the way wearing Malloy’s coat had made me feel.
As I turned to go, I found myself facing a full-length mirror. Looking in that mirror, I suddenly knew my plan would work. I understood exactly what I had been doing wrong. All this time I’d been trying to be some kind of action movie tough guy. I’d tried to be Malloy with tits and look where it got me. There was only one way I was going to get Ridgeway. It was the only way I knew. A girl’s gotta use her natural skills.
31.
Sneaky Pete’s is to Eye Candy what your local taco truck is to Spago. Cheap, nasty and lowbrow. Full nude and no holds barred. I never danced there; frankly, you can hardly call what the girls do there “dancing.”
As I pulled into the lot beside the sleazy little edifice, I checked my new face in the rearview mirror. I straightened the glossy red wig on my head, touched up my black cherry lips and pressed down my the corners of my false eyelashes. There was no time to spare. Only twenty minutes till closing.
I went inside and asked to see the manager. There was a familiar stink inside of sweat and baby oil and dead-end lives. The men clustered in the shadows, nursing overpriced soft drinks and pretending not to notice one another. A tiny, flat-chested girl worked the single stage. She was a brunette with big eyes, hardly more than a child. Her hipbones were so sharp they looked painful. She wore nothing but a silver g-string and moved her skinny limbs with a slow, spacey grace, like she was underwater. Van Halen’s “Little Dreamer” crackled through the cheap speakers.
Hard Case Crime: Money Shot Page 18