I sighed. “I’ll be running forever. His guys won’t turn on him. And everyone else is afraid of him.”
Miguel wiped a tear I didn’t realize had fallen from my eye. “You don’t know that. This capo sounds like an abusive asshole, even to his own men. And what? He’s having them killed because they can’t find you fast enough? Someone’s got to be willing to turn. Maybe the next one he sends for you. You can remind him that three of their own boys were offed by this Jorge.” Sometimes Miguel’s optimism was such a pure, beautiful thing.
“I don’t know. Maybe.” I pursed my lips thinking. Everyone else remained silent, allowing me the perceived space to ponder my future. After a while, I said, “Thank you for everything, guys, but I need to get home and weigh my options.” I got up and grabbed my bags. Never having touched the steak Miguel made and, for once, not hungry. “I’ll get in touch with you all later.”
I started to walk away, but Jill stopped me, “Let me at least drive you home.” That was a favor I was very thankful for after all the news I’d received.
I turned to wave goodbye to the guys, but they’d already started doing their own things. Miguel was cleaning up the table. But, oddly, Jack and Frank were leaning in toward each other, whispering conspiratorially. Once Miguel had gathered everything and walked away, Jack handed the file to Frank and Frank reached into his pocket and pulled out an envelope much like the one he’d given me. He handed it to Jack who stuck it in his own pocket.
Jillesa grabbed me by the elbow and pulled me the other way. “I wouldn’t pay attention to that if I were you. You’ve witnessed enough bullshit in your short lifetime.”
“God-shit-dammit, Jill. Are they...?”
“They are grown men that’s what they are. Whatever they’ve got going is for a good reason. I promise you that. Now let’s go.”
I gave up and let her lead me out of the store and to her car, praying that none of these people were doing anything illegal just to keep me out of trouble. I was probably praying in vain, and that worried me the most.
I'm Still Hot, Even Covered In Blood.
After Jillesa dropped me off, I entered my building deflated but determined to find an answer. Immediately, I saw something on the wall to my right and realized it was probably a good fucking idea. I stepped over to the maintenance drop box, grabbed one of the slips of paper and the tiny pencil, and wrote out a request. If Hernandez got that close to me that he’d found my workplace, who knew how close the next one would get. I needed to add extra locks to my door and one of those bar-thingies that was bolted to the floor and could attach to the door to barricade you inside. I would sleep better at night knowing I was well protected.
Hopefully, whoever does maintenance here got to the job quick. Lord knows I’ve never asked for a damn thing in six months. Of course, I haven’t seen anyone here either. It’s like the landlord and maintenance person moved through here like ghosts. I dropped in my request with a prayer, even though I was hardly religious, and went into my apartment ready to sit down and come up with a feasible solution to my situation.
I dropped the bags with Jillesa’s returned items on the couch, but I pulled out the shoes, cradled them once again, and reverently walked them back to my room and laid them gently under my bed, in the beautiful turquoise box they belonged in.
After that, I went back to the kitchen. I had eaten with all the news, so I poured myself a glass of the “juice” Miguel made me and slapped a raw, unseasoned steak on a plate. Sitting at my bar counter seat, I laid into it all with no prying eyes to watch. I held the meat in my hands and ripped into it with teeth that had seemed to be sharper recently. I guzzled the drink, allowing some of it to spill down my chin and neck. When it pooled in the space between my breasts, I noticed that it felt erotic. Like a caress. I’d definitely lost it, but I no longer cared. I had more important things to worry about.
How was I going to get physical evidence on Jorge?
Jorge never touched anything with his own hands. He never touched the drugs. Never personally spoke to the law enforcement officers and politicians he bribed. And abso-fucking-lutely never tortured or killed anyone himself. He ordered his lieutenants and sicarios to do it all.
Jorge was smart. Hell, he’d learned from watching one of the best: his own capo from when he was young. He moved billions of dollars’ worth of drugs and was never caught. He was killed because he was betrayed by his own lieutenants who wanted to fight over the top spot themselves. But Jorge was different. Jorge was like my stepfather. A full-blown, psychopathic narcissist. I’d read a book on Narcissistic personality disorder once, and it fit them both to a “T”. A narcissist could brainwash you, like my stepfather did my mother and like Jorge did me. A narcissist could make you believe anything they told you. A narcissist could make you pray for an order from them, not because you wanted to do it, but because you wanted to please them.
Everyone today seemed disgusted by the fact that Jorge’s men let him scar and brand them, but they didn’t know how good it felt to have it done by his hands. It made you think you’d won the ultimate honor. So, the second option of another eyewitness was equally as ungettable.
No, Jorge’s men wouldn’t turn on him. Not unless...
Clearly, Jorge had been initiating new men. One of the victims I vaguely recognized from the photo of the corpse in the file, but the other two were new. And Hernandez was so new that his brand was still healing. What if Jorge was beefing up on sicarios to find me and maybe others he needed taken care of, and all those new brains weren’t fully under his control yet? At least one of them was killing off the others to have sole rights to the bounty. I’d bet anything that he watched them, took notes on how close they got to me, then offed them and used the info to ensure that he was the one to kill me himself.
It was a dumb plan, the one I’d come up with while covered with bovine blood, but it could work. I happened to know the code to Jorge’s safe. My only real talent in the entire world was being able to tell which numbers were being punched by the sound of the beeps. Weird, I know, but it was the one thing I did exceptionally well and that weird talent was going to save my life.
My handler, Peter, would need to help with the legal side of it, and I would definitely call him later, but I was going to offer this guy Jorge’s fortune in exchange for turning state. All he’d have to do was admit that he was a Xolotl, that Jorge was the capo, and that he had put out a bounty for me. They’d give him immunity, for sure, and I would give him the code to the safe so that he could clear it out before the Feds started cleaning out all of Jorge’s properties.
Yes, this could work. My friends would be safe, and I would finally be free. Now to figure out how to talk to this guy before he killed me, I thought to myself as I walked to the bathroom to clean up. I looked in the mirror. Pieces of flesh that I’d missed littered my face. Bloody juices from the meat was all over, including in my hair—which I’d apparently ran my hand through while thinking. It stood out prominently due to the new light color. The fake jamaica covered my chest and stained my lacy bra.
But you know what? I was still fucking hot as shit, and no man was going to take anything from me anymore. Especially not my life.
You Mean "WitSuck".
“This is Whitehead.” He was named after a zit, yet my handler still insisted on answering the phone with his last name.
“Hi, Peter. It’s Kiera, I mean, Kayla Smith.”
“God damn it to hell, little girl. This is not our time to call.” Jeez, he was a stickler for the rules and used the Lord’s name in vain more often than I did, which is really saying something. It irked me that he’d called me “little girl.” He was in his late-fifties, and older men had a tendency to refer to me like that. It’s like when I first met Freddie and he called me “young lady.” He sounded like an elderly man in the beginning of our conversation that night.
I sighed into the phone while fiddling with my refilled-but-now-empty-again cup. “It’s a totally different
burner than normal. Plus, this is really important.”
“What in the holy hell is so goddamned important that you’d call me now?”
“Jorge knows where I am.”
I heard something fall in the background. Then he cursed up a storm about hot coffee, new suits, and goddamned paperwork. When he came back to the phone he said, “Jesus-fucking-Christ, Kayla. Are you sure? How did you know?”
There was nothing to do but give him the entire run-down on everything that had happened and what I’d found out. I told him about the dead sicarios, the shooting, Gray Eyes. Hell, I even told him about the blackout I’d had and how everyone thinks I was attacked.
“Someone knocked you out and brought you back home and you didn’t think to call me until you’d run your own fucking investigation? What is wrong with you?”
I needed to set this POS straight. “First off, I didn’t say that’s what happened. I said people think that’s what happened. I don’t even know why I bothered telling you. I know for a fact that I fell and got myself home.”
“And the shoes?”
“One of the sicarios saw me fall, break my shoes, and followed me home.”
“But didn’t kill you then? They don’t even know where you live,” he shouted.
“How do you know that?” I shouted back.
He paused. “Because I assume you’d be dead already if they did.”
“Oh. Yeah, that. Well, anyway, I didn’t call you earlier because I figured WitSec would swoop in here and take me somewhere else.”
“That makes you a smart little girl because that’s exactly what’s going to happen.”
“Listen, old man—” I wondered how he liked it? “— I’m not going anywhere, dammit. I have real friends, Gina is still recovering, and I like it here.”
“You like it in that shithole? People born and raised on the South Shore don’t even like the South Shore.” He was wrong. He was so wrong.
“I don’t care what you think about where I live.” I stood up and stomped my foot as if he could see me. “This is my home, and I’m not leaving. Besides, clearly you people at WitSUCK can’t keep me safe if all this is happening. What kind of protection are you giving me? I’m better of chancing things on my own.”
He snorted into the phone. “So, you’re just going to stay there and let yourself get killed.”
“No. We’re going to catch Jorge and put him behind bars.”
He guffawed into the earpiece. “I suppose you think you can magically do what no other federal agent has been able to for the last three years?”
“Actually, yes. I do. I have a plan—a good one—and I’ll tell you it.”
Peter stopped laughing then. He even lowered his voice. “Listen, if you really think you have a way of catching him and you want me in on this, I’m willing to hear you out. I could use a good collar to get myself out of this department. But we can’t discuss it over the phone. We need to meet somewhere. Public and crowded. I don’t want to risk being seen or overheard.”
I nodded. That was smart. “Just tell me where, Peter.”
“Millennium Park. In one hour. We’ll meet by the fountain with the kids’ faces.”
If I showered quickly and left in ten minutes, I could take the Metra straight there and be at the spot he mentioned right on time. “On my way.”
I THOUGHT I MADE A good choice with what I brought on the train to keep me occupied for the twenty-minute ride—my earbuds and a good Rockabilly playlist—but I wasn’t in the mood for the up-tempo beats once they started blasting in my ears. I had too much on my mind. Too many plans to make. And those plans made me think of why I had to make them in the first place. This wasn’t the life I should have had. I don’t know what would have happened had I stayed at home with Mom and Stepfreak. Or if I’d gotten up the nerve to talk to someone official about what was happening. But anything was better than this. Sure, it led me to the wonderful pseudo family I had now, but what it took to get me here was pure torture.
No, not torture. I, unfortunately, knew exactly what torture looked like...
Two Years Ago...
It’s the heat of summer in the Inland Empire, and here I am caking on makeup, trying to cover up the bruises he left on my face. Again.
Jeez, at least hit me below the collar bone. I don’t know why he is so rough with me. Why he always wants to fuck after he goes off and beats the shit out of me. Why he has to choke me to come. It’s some fucking weird shit. But I lie there, not breathing, and let him. If I go very still, he comes quickly.
I need therapy, I think to myself as I dab more orange color corrector on the big black mark across my face with a beauty blender. I’ll tell them that I stay with him simply because I love him, and he treats me good most of the time, but really I have no other place to go.
He isn’t ever really mad at me anyway when he hits me. He’s mad at his boys. The boys that fuck up a deal. The boys that let someone else move in and sell heroin in his territory. The boys that let a targeted kill get away.
Hell, it’s their fault we’re at the property in Riverside now instead of poolside at the mansion in The Hills, with Jorge doing laps in the pool, and my pale, Irish ass sitting poolside in a kimono with a sun hat and one hundred SPF sunblock. Somehow the Feds found out about shipment of coke coming over the border yesterday and were waiting to seize it. He screamed on the phone for an hour at the assholes who manage this branch, the ones that were accepting the shipment. The border agents had been paid. The car was hooked up, and the coke stashed properly. Shoulda been easy. He says there’s no reason they shoulda got caught.
Hopefully, they can’t trace it back to Jorge. If they do, he’ll run. He’ll run back over the border to his homeland and drag my ass with him, beating me the whole way.
My makeup done, I walk back to the locker room area. At least this property has one. It’s an old meat packing plant, and this is where the female workers changed into whatever godawful get-up they had to wear to sling dead flesh around. There are also showers where, I assume, they’d clean off the equivalent of the disgusting juices left on that period pad at the bottom of packaged meat before returning home to their loving families.
Christ, I can smell the lingering scent of dead flesh from long ago. I’ll probably need a shower myself soon. It’s enough to make me consider going vegetarian. I don’t crave a steak once a month now that Jorge makes me take my birth control pill on a schedule that makes my periods skip so he can fuck twenty-four-seven. It shouldn’t be too hard to give up meat.
Either way, I can hide out in here for most of the time until he decides to parade me around like his prized white horse. The gringa he has under his thumb. I hate that shit. “Look at my bitch,” he says. He’s fucking proud to have people think of me that way. I’d rather be his “old lady” like some of the Xolotls call their girlfriends and wives. It seems to have more of a ring of respect than “my bitch.”
As I sit on one of the locker room benches, waiting for my time to prance, I hear someone crash through the doors out front. Damn, who else brought a girlfriend? I really want to be alone in here.
But it’s not a woman’s voice I hear speaking in hushed tones. It’s two men. I start toward the bathroom portion of the locker room, ready to berate the fuckers for coming in the women’s bathroom like a couple of pigs, but a comment from one of them stops me.
“If he finds out, he’ll kill you.”
I stand quietly with my back to the wall that separates the two areas.
“I have to do this, Marco. It’s my job.” This is said by a man that sounds slightly older than the first.
I know of a couple of Marcos, but this one is probably on a low rung of the Xolotl ladder. A halcone. I’m more interested in finding out the name of the man in danger of death-by-Jorge.
“Listen, mi amor...” Shit. That isn’t a name, but juicy gossip nonetheless. “...you don’t see how ruthless he is. The things he’s done. This is big. You didn’t directly have an
ything to do with the transfer. You can still run before he figures it out.”
“I won’t go anywhere. I was put undercover to bring him down and—”
“Hold up. Undercover?” Marco shouts, and it earns him shushing noises from his...boyfriend, I guess. “I thought you were just an informant. Now you’re telling me you’ve been five-oh all this time? Shit, motherfucker, you been lying to me like that?”
“I didn’t lie. I just didn’t tell you the full truth. The less you knew the better for you.”
“Bullshit, Esteban!” Marco finally gives me a name. I turn my body and lean my ear into the wall. Not that it makes a difference with the way everything echoes throughout this entire locker room. But I can’t help myself. I’m already formulating a plan.
“I haven’t told my bosses anything about you. I can get you out of here before I have definite evidence on Jorge. Before we decide to set up a raid. You won’t get caught up in any of it, and when this is over, you and I can be together.” Esteban smoothly tries to calm Marco down.
“Did you use me?” Marco asks the same question on my mind. “Did you fuck me to get deeper in? Did you want me to introduce you to the right guys, ones that would get you in on jobs I deserved but can’t do because I’m still too young?”
“Mi dios, I swear that what we have is real. I truly love you, and I want you safe.” I hear the falter in his voice. The omission.
“Was this always real?” Marco heard it too. The silence from the pause is deafening.
“...No. Not always. I could tell you were gay at the party after I was first initiated. You hide it well, but you know we can always sense each other no matter how machismo we act.” I hear Esteban pause again to take in a long gulp of air. “I approached you because I saw the way they respect you even though you have a couple of years before Jorge will consider you for promotion. I knew you’d be able to get information I couldn’t. Yes. I used you at first.”
Kiss Me, I'm Undead Page 14