“Aleksei Uryevich” Fantine fought the tears. “He and his son, Peter. They put this together.”
Placido laughed. He pinched between his eyes with his fingers. “To steal what? We have no money here.”
“They were going to steal the, uh, product. The sperm.”
“The product?” Placido grabbed her by the arm and lifted Fantine to her feet. “Far be it from me to assume your strength, Miss Park, but I do not believe you or your people planned your approach very well.” He pulled her to the office’s door and kicked it open. The room filled with the hum of machines. “Take a look. Can you have moved product at this scale on your own?” Placido released his grip and motioned out the door. “Go ahead, look. You try to run; it’s a bullet to the back and another for the old man.”
Fantine nodded and shuffled towards the open door. She leaned forward and peeked out.
This was no clinic. The place was as large as a warehouse space. Lit from above by fluorescent lights on vaulted ceilings. White on white was the theme—like an Apple commercial. A forklift drove by with a tank marked hazardous materials. To the left and right of the office were more doors leading to smaller, enclosed offices. Fantine swore she could hear panicked voices a door down—even a scream. Ahead of her were what looked like silos— a head taller than her and made of steel. They were connected to massive generators with hoses. They were also marked as hazardous materials.
“I don’t understand.” Fantine turned to Placido. “This is like a factory. I thought this was a clinic—shit—are we even at your clinic?” She had to wonder, if Placido was running this much product, how did Aleksei expect her to transport any of it? Where did he receive his information?
“We are below. Semen can be very sensitive to stress. We try not to move the product until it is time to ship.” Placido took a seat and motioned for Fantine to go back to her own. “Enough about the logistics of my business. Please. I have more questions.”
Fantine sat back down. “I can’t imagine what else I would know. Looks like I didn’t know a fucking thing, to be honest.”
“This part is more for my own benefit really. Personal curiosity.”
Fantine remained silent. Studied the floor.
“What were you told about this place?”
“That you had product that would fetch some crazy cash overseas.”
“And?”
“That was about it.” Fantine nodded to her father. “They held him over my head just like you have.”
Placido stared at Jae. “You should have maybe avoided people like us then, no?”
“I’ve tried.”
“Not hard enough.” Placido aimed the gun at Jae.
“No, no, wait!” Fantine lunged and slid in between the gun and her father —arms stretched out. “Maybe you can use me for something else?” She was reaching, but if she could delay the inevitable for one more minute.
Placido smiled. “What could you possibly do for me?”
Fantine’s jaw twitched. Her eyes felt as if a thousand red hot needles were hovering millimeters away. She hadn’t thought that far out, but the idea came to her. “I can...I can steal back from Aleksei. He has to have something, anything that you’d want. Money, information. If it’s in a safe or a hard drive—I can get it for you. The man’s been in business forever.” She locked eyes with Placido. “There’s a big storm tomorrow, right? We were going to use it as a distraction against you. It’ll be easy—Aleksei will probably be out of town for all we know.” Guys like Aleksei always had an apartment someplace far away, more often for the mistresses or to sleep off a hard night of drinking. Pete had at least hinted at that, but who knew how honest he was being.
Placido slipped the safety back on the gun, but didn’t lower the piece. “What do you get in return?”
“Just let us live, please. We’ll disappear.” Fantine snapped her fingers.
Jae shifted on the couch. Fantine bent over and wiped his brow. “Be easy, Dad.” She looked back to Placido. “Name your price.”
“You know I have more than enough money?”
“Not contacts, not clout. I’m not joking. A player like Aleksei had no idea how this operation worked. You’re an unknown—which may be good for this business—but what if you want to branch out? I can get you whatever it takes to put that asshole in the gutter.” She smiled. It was an appeal to the man’s greed—a shitty gamble if he was making millions off this product.
“That he has,” Placido finally conceded.
“So let me make it even—square. It’s win-win for everyone.”
Placido slipped his gun into his waistband—a sign the deal was almost there. He beckoned to Fantine with a finger. “Follow me.” He walked out of the office and down three doors.
Fantine followed. She met Placido outside a wooden door. Behind it, the sound of machinery. Reminded her of an industrial vacuum. The smell of the place still assaulted her sinuses. As if someone kept poking cotton swabs in her skull.
“It is like a stud farm, only more humane, no?” Placido grinned.
Fantine nodded.
Placido opened the door to the other office. Inside, it was more like a dentist’s working space. Cabinets filled with medical supplies, signs to wash hands or dispose of hypodermics. Dead center was a reclined chair. In that chair, a naked and sedated Peter—a tube latched to his dick. That tube was connected to the machine she heard. That noise must have been coming from every other office in the working space.
“I know about Uryevich, and I know this is his son. I recognized him when he walked in.” Placido cleared his throat. “The boy had a habit of causing problems with a lot of the more troubling element in this city.”
Fantine blinked. Pete was beaten to hell, his face bloodied and swollen. His fingers red-rimmed—at least he fought back when he could. The tube attached to him twitched rhythmically, a light pink liquid being sucked back into the machine. This was something out of a horror film. She half expected there to be a Rube Goldberg machine set to tear Pete’s entrails out if he tried to escape. “Holy hell.”
“We milk our ‘studs,’” Placido said it with a laugh in his voice. “Takes too much time to have them do it themselves.” He walked over and shut down the machine. Unlatched the top of it. “Unfortunately, our newest stud is not a producer, even with the machine set to ‘high.’” He stared down at the collected product. “He’s barely added to this batch and is already bleeding—what a shame.”
Fantine cringed. She avoided looking at Peter. “Why would you do this? Wouldn’t you need more people?”
“We rotate. Our buyers believe this all comes from a group of twenty men. As for stimulation.” Placido removed the tube on Pete’s dick and lifted a group of wires that ran under Pete’s ass. “We provide the prostate with stimulation—electric shock.” He reached over and opened the top of the machine that was collecting Pete’s materials.
“What?” Fantine stared at the wires. Couldn’t understand why anyone would run a business like this.
Placido grabbed Peter by the back of the neck and in a single motion lifted him up and face first into the vat of collected semen. Pete was limp as a raw bacon strip. He didn’t fight back—he barely made a noise. Peter merely hunched his shoulders as he drowned in cum. The liquid bubbled weakly and went still in short time. Placido pushed Pete’s head in further and grimaced. It was an odd sight; a flaccid corpse with a twitching erection.
Fantine backed away. She didn’t know what to say or do. There was nothing she could say or do. There was a choke at the back of her throat, but it refused to emerge. A charge of energy ran through her spine and limbs, but she couldn’t move. All she could do was turn her gaze.
“You watch!” Placido roared.
Fantine turned back to face the scene.
Placido had his gun trained on her again, his eyes wide and bloodshot. There was a vein throbbing on his left temple. “You watch,” he hissed the words.
Fantine did as she was told. The
tears flowed freely, but she was too afraid to make a noise. She kept her mouth clenched as the sobs trying to emerge made her tremor. As angry as she was with him, Pete didn’t deserve this—he was still her friend.
Placido leaned over Pete. Checked his pulse. Satisfied the deed was done, he let go of Pete’s neck and let the corpse flop to the floor. Product leaked from Pete’s ears, eyes, and mouth. His entire head glistened under the harsh fluorescent light.
Placido crouched and yanked the electrodes out of Pete’s ass in a single motion. A cartoonish pop sounded. “They call me Leiteiro. Do you know what that means?”
“No.” Fantine stared at Placido.
Placido frowned and stood up, still holding the wires. “I guess that doesn’t matter, but what does matter, Miss Park, is a simple fact.” He pointed a finger at Pete’s body and then back to her. “Nobody fucks with the Leiteiro. Am I understood?”
Fantine found the strength to look down at Pete’s corpse. The urge to vomit returned. Her eyes felt like they were on fire, but the tears had stopped. There was a faint smell of bleach in the air—or at least she thought that’s what she smelled.
“Do you understand, Miss Park?” Placido walked over to a sink and washed his hands. Opened a garbage can next to him and disposed of the electrodes—as if this was business as usual. “Your things are back by where we left your father. Minus your knives, of course. Be sure to say whatever you need to say to him in case this doesn’t go your way. I will not accept half-assed work. You hold up your entire end, and I will let your father live. If it is not to my satisfaction then you and your father die.” He pulled two squares of paper towels from the roll above the sink and dried his hands thoroughly. “This is no threat, but a promise.”
Fantine nodded. “You’ll get it by tomorrow night.”
12
October 28th, 2012—Amityville, New York
There would be no more planning, not like there was much before.
Fantine went straight from Placido’s stud farm downtown to Long Island. She’d emerged from the sperm bank and into the early Sunday morning hours. It wasn’t a normal Sunday afternoon, though. People were moving, going to destinations to avoid the storm. It felt like a typical Monday morning commute.
Two subway trains and the Long Island Railroad. The subway was packed with city pilgrims, all headed north or west. The trip into Long Island was the opposite—she even had an entire two benches to herself. She heard a few people chatting about “storm of the century” and “coastal surge,” but she ignored it. There was so much more to worry about than wind and rain. What would she do if Aleksei was there? Not like she’d kill him—even if she would have been overjoyed at the prospect. No, his neighborhood was right on the water, surely they would have been evacuated.
The loss of Peter hadn’t settled into her head. Fantine found herself thinking of him, but couldn’t find a moment that his death that wouldn’t replay for her. She closed her eyes and saw him twitching—weak—with his head dunked into that tank. What a pathetic way to die. Even with those visions in her head, she didn’t feel like she was mourning. Maybe something was wrong with her. Maybe she didn’t really have it in her to feel any sense of loss for the one friend she ever had. Fantine wished she could be mad at anyone else, but it was impossible. Every single bad decision she made led her right here. The only person she could be angry with was herself.
“Ticket?” One of the train conductors walked over and held a hand out.
Fantine handed the conductor her ticket and watched him punch holes into the row of numbers printed along its front. It felt strange that this guy might be one of the last people—not involved in this mess—to interact with her while she was alive. She wondered if she should tell him—have him bring her to the cops and explain everything. That would be the smart thing to do, right? If she worked fast enough, they could save her father and then they could disappear.
“Miss?” The conductor held the punched ticket to Fantine.
“Thanks.” She took the ticket and turned to stare out the window as Kew Gardens flew by. The sky was heavy and grey, but it didn’t look like anything bad was on its way. It felt like a typical, dreary New York afternoon—almost normal. She closed her eyes and tried to stop thinking about what would be in store for her, or worse, her father.
There was nobody at Aleksei’s house. No cars in the driveway—no open curtains. Fantine was surprised by how normal it looked. She’d expected wrought-iron gates or a massive wall, but her expectations came crashing down when she spotted the two-floor colonial on a side street in the middle of Amityville. Brick-face. Those fancy windows that pop out just a little bit—Fantine didn’t know what they were called. The mailbox looked like a smaller version of the house.
“How fucking quaint,” Fantine said as she checked the mailbox. There was still mail inside. This was good. Nobody had been home since Saturday.
She jogged up the three steps towards the front door. There was a sticker on the frosted glass of the front door advertising a home security system, but she knew it was bullshit. The name of the company was a goof—there was no company called USA Secure anywhere. No surprise Aleksei would be so cheap as to not have an alarm system, but confirmation worried her. Would he be dumb enough to keep anything important at home? If he didn’t, would she be able to find a lead to where he did keep sensitive materials? Fantine busied herself with the what-ifs while she pulled her picks from her jacket. She looked around to see if anyone was watching. Not a soul in suburbia was out. Most people were either hunkered down and watching the weather reports or ducked out for a long weekend someplace land-locked. Fantine envied the latter group.
She was in the house quickly. The layout felt familiar—even if she’d never visited before. Aleksei had an office on the first floor with a computer and a safe sitting on another desk. Fantine chose to crack the safe first. Inside, the deed to the house, passports, and social security info. There were a few flashdrives as well. In the back, a little .22 and three boxes of bullets. She shoved everything but the gun into her bag, choosing to keep the firearm in her pocket in case of an emergency. When she bent over to inspect the undersides of shelves, she felt the knife she secreted in her bra poke her. Fantine forgot she even packed the knives before Placido got his hands on her. The other two were gone, but her bet on people being a little too prudish to give her a proper pat down paid off.
“So far, so good,” she muttered as she slid into the comfy leather chair in front of the computer. No password barred her from accessing any files, but there wasn’t much to find except for family pictures.
Fantine sighed and went through the desk drawers. Old papers and empty bottles of random liquors made up most of the contents. Then she hit pay dirt. In the very back of a bottom drawer, a little black book. Within, lists of numbers—telephone and other kinds. The non-telephone numbers were all nine digits long. Routing numbers. Fantine’s heart fluttered. This was good—very good. With nothing else to find in the office, she made her way through the rest of the house. Made the master bedroom her last stop. It was gaudily decorated—like the rest of the house. All paisley textiles and furniture with gold paint. Over-large frames held family portraits and paintings of old sailing vessels. If this were a robbery, Fantine figured she could make a killing pawing off the tchotchkes alone.
The master bedroom didn’t have much beyond clothes, but a painting of horses caught her eye. “Don’t tell me you’re this typical, Aleksei.” Fantine grabbed the lower edge of the painting and pulled—of course it was on hinge. Another safe. Electronic this time. No worries, Fantine knew these types. She examined the keypad. The software for these locks usually had a reset key in case a person forgot their input key—and a lot of the idiots that bought these safes did. Judging by the make of the safe, she figured it couldn’t be older than five years. There were a handful of reset keys she knew off the top of her head, so she entered each in order as she sang the numbers.
Somewhere around one
of her favorite keys—3028—the little red light on the upper right hand corner of the safe blinked three times. Fantine entered a new code and entered again. The light went green and the lock clicked. She smiled and opened the safe.
There were two shelves inside the safe. The top was packed with cash—all hundred dollar bills wrapped neatly with rubber bands. Fantine grabbed that first. After, she snatched at the folders and notebooks below. This had to be it. Even if it wasn’t everything, Placido had to be content with this haul. She didn’t want to get ahead of herself, but something like relief washed over Fantine. “Oh, thank you so much for being an asshole, Aleksei.”
“You’re welcome,” he replied from behind her.
Just like that, all the relief was gone. Fantine closed her satchel and slipped her right hand into the pocket she squirreled that .22 into before. She gripped the handle and swung around, producing the gun in the same motion.
Aleksei stood there with a smile and a cigar between his teeth. The Twins behind him. “Easy, girl.”
There wasn’t time for a dramatic talk. Fantine felt the blood rushing into her head—there was a severe giddiness fit to overcome her. She raised the gun to Mr. Brown—her least favorite—unlatched the safety, and pulled the trigger.
Fantine wasn’t ready for the gunclap—for how loud it was to be behind the gun. She winced and took a few steps back. Panic hitting her, she opened her eyes to see Mr. Brown crumpled on the floor, Aleksei and Mr. Black both staring down in wide-eyed surprise.
“Shit.” Fantine steadied her aim at Mr. Black as he reached to his side. She pulled the trigger as many times as she could. The bullets all met Mr. Black’s chest and he stumbled back before falling over to have a talk with his partner on the ruined carpet.
Aleksei held a hand up and crouched. Made himself a smaller target—like it would have done any good at that range. “Enough, enough.”
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