Painkiller, Princess

by Chester Gattle

  This time, Gregory stayed put in his Nissan, slumping low in his seat while Jacob, Missy, and their pug headed off into the woods.

  Gooseberry Falls was another tourist hotspot, but it had miles of trails with long, secluded stretches. If she could catch Jacob in one of them, she could put him down. Then she could call Avispón and report that everything had been settled. Back to work. So long as her third and final concern didn’t prevent her from doing so. Could she actually pull the trigger? She grabbed the pistol from under the seat. Time to find out.

  Gregory, his head buried in his phone, didn’t even glance at her as she passed.

  She’d barely breached the entrance to the park when she came within earshot of the psycho, or more accurately, within earshot of the psycho’s girlfriend. Missy’s voice could really carry. Soon, though, not even her excited pitch could compete with the park’s main attraction.

  Jacob pointed through a cluster of evergreens and led Missy through an opening to the base of the waterfall. They’d walked into a dead end. There was nowhere to go. Emmelia had him.

  But the people.

  There were just so many people. It was an absolute circus.

  Emmelia brushed past the opening and went ahead to where the path crossed over the falls. She squeezed in among the gawkers at the railing. They watched the water rush by; Emmelia watched Jacob and Missy snap selfies.

  When the two social media mavens put their phones away and started back on the path toward the bridge, Emmelia skipped over to the other side and hid among a guided tour group.

  At the bridge’s apex, Jacob lifted his pug over the rail à la Michael Jackson and tried to take a selfie, but Missy snatched Quincy away. She said something that dropped the grin from Jacob’s face and ushered him off the bridge without another photo.

  Using the tourists as a shield, Emmelia let Jacob and Missy pass. Quincy looked at the group, but he only wagged his tail and continued on.

  Emmelia counted to ten, then abandoned her tour group.

  As she followed the three of them deeper into the park, the trail lost its pavement. It split once, then split again. The tourists thinned, and the woods grew thick. The rush of the falls was replaced by the softer hush of the shallow river that fed it, and after wandering for a good half hour, Emmelia couldn’t remember the last person they’d passed.

  Jacob and Missy stopped to take a selfie at a bend in the river. As Jacob tried to get Quincy in the shot, struggling to hold the squirming dog aloft, Emmelia rested her hand on the pistol, a compact Beretta Nano 9mm, tucked under her shirt.

  It wasn’t a loud gun. She could shoot him and Missy right there, drag their bodies into the woods, and walk away. They’d be found within no time, but there’d be no witnesses. She’d get away with it.

  But is this still too close to Duluth? At least it wasn’t right smack in the middle of town.

  Missy ventured out onto some exposed stones in the river, then turned around and posed for Jacob.

  I’ll probably have to kill the dog too. Should’ve just let the little turkey fry in the fire.

  Drawing out the Beretta, Emmelia considered the last of her three concerns: could she actually kill them? Sure, she’d shot that lady in Chicago, but that had been one of the worst things she’d done in her life. It still haunted her. She regretted it every day. Could she do that again? This time it wouldn’t even be for love. It’d be to stay alive. Reason enough. If she didn’t kill Jacob now, he’d just come after her later.

  Or will he? Is he really coming after me? The psycho seemed pretty clueless. He was just wandering the North Shore, checking out nature. Just like he said he’d do.

  He wasn’t coming for her.

  He had no idea who she was.

  So why kill these two (and maybe also the pug)? Because Avispón said so? That wasn’t enough for her. She could figure some other way out of this. She didn’t need to kill anyone.

  The Beretta went back under her shirt.

  Backing away, she retreated down the trail, leaving Jacob and Missy to play in the water. Gregory was dozing in his car when she passed.

  ~

  The first surveillance job Gregory ever did was at no charge. He’d been in middle school. His client was himself; the target was a dark-haired girl a grade above him. She wore black nail polish and thick eyeliner, and he was crushing on her hard. He just had to talk to her, but what to say? Did she have a favorite food? What music did she like? How about movies? Books? He had nothing in his arsenal, so he went about changing that, standing near her in the hall, spying on her at lunch, following her home. By the end of the school year, he’d put together quite the dossier. Then he lost the file.

  He searched for it for months, the fear that someone had found it becoming more and more real with each passing day. Someone’s snooping fingers were turning his pages. Someone’s prying eyes were moving over his notes.

  Worst of all, though, they were going to use it against him. They were going to show it to his crush and ruin him. By August, he was absolutely certain of it, so he’d hunkered down in his parents’ basement, hoping the cursed sadist would lose interest. But then the school year began, and he was forced from his hole.

  He’d been right. Someone had found the dossier. The girl with the black nail polish had found it.

  That first day of school, she’d been discussing it with some friends. She claimed not to know who the notebook belonged to, but he knew she knew. And she’d held it over him like a blade for the rest of their school days.

  He’d learned a couple of things from that: no dossiers that weren’t written in code and no more freebies, even if he himself was the client. Freebies clearly made him careless. There had to be a cash component if he was to take the job seriously. Now Tina Turner was getting the benefit of that lesson.

  She was paying a pretty penny for his services, and he’d also taken extensive notes (all coded in his own made-up language) on JW during the drive up the shore. The last in a long line of notes concerned JW’s caffeine addiction (the VIP had stopped again at the Coffee Princess before heading back to his hotel).

  Gregory wasn’t judging, though. He could relate. He was suffering from his own bout of withdrawal right about then as the Burger King drive-through girl was telling him that they didn’t serve French toast sticks after 11 a.m. And given that it was well past dinnertime, no amount of pleading was going to work. His face started to twitch.

  “Have you tried our Impossible Whopper?” she crackled through the speaker.

  “What’s that?” Gregory asked, thinking something akin to a dessert burger. Maybe ice cream between two cinnamon rolls.

  “It’s our new plant-based hamburger.”

  “What the fuck? No.” He stared at the menu. “Just give me a sundae pie.”

  With at least some form of sugar in his hands, he scooted across the street to the Days Inn and backed into his typical spot facing the building. At the far end of the lot, Jacob and Missy were unloading Target bags from their trunk while Quincy watched swallows swoop over the grass in the empty field beside the hotel.

  Deciding the pie could wait, Gregory stepped out of the car. He’d noticed JW favoring his shoulder all day and figured he could use something for the pain. These VIP types were always taking so many pills that Jacob would surely jump at the chance for another. ABC.

  And also, Gregory had heard the big-time Chicago bruiser—What was his name?—wasn’t around anymore, so the coast was clear. That guy hadn’t even gotten close to tracking the fentanyl back to him.

  Gregory intercepted Jacob and Missy as they crossed the lot. “Hey, JW. Just wanted to report I saw no suspicious activity today. Everything looked good.”

  They stopped, bags in hand. Missy said, “Good job?”

  Gregory jammed his hands in his pockets and teetered on his toes. “Yep. No problem.”

  “These are kinda heavy.” Jacob shook his plastic bags.

  “Yeah. Yeah. Sure.” But Gregory didn’t step
away. “You got some shoulder trouble? Looked like you were rubbing it a lot today.”

  “I do. Yes.”

  “Does it hurt? You taking anything for it?”

  Jacob sighed. “Sorry, man, but I’m not selling you any.”

  Gregory chuckled. “Not looking to buy.”

  “Probably wants to sell you some,” Missy said, adjusting her grip on the white-and-red bags.

  Gregory nodded, shifting his eyes to his pocket.

  “If that’s true, you’re fired, and I’m calling the cops,” Jacob said.

  Gregory pulled his hands from his pockets, showing empty palms. “No. Not true. Not true.” To prove his harmlessness, Gregory went to give some attention to their dog, whom he’d ignored all afternoon. “Hey there, puppy.” The pug opened his mouth in a wide grin, welcoming the attention, but Gregory cried out and withdrew his hand. “Gross. What’s wrong with his eye?”

  Missy nudged Quincy with her foot toward the hotel. “He’s got a little cherry eye.”

  “Uh-uh.” Gregory stood back, watching the pug follow Missy away.

  Jacob eyed Gregory for a second, then joined his girlfriend and their dog.

  Gregory called out, “I’ll let you know if I see anything suspicious.”

  When the three of them were gone, Gregory sauntered back to his car and dug into his sundae pie. At least JW knew where he could get some painkillers if he needed them. What a dick, though. Call the cops. “Sheesh.”

  XIII.

  Day Twelve, Monday

  Two Dead

  Avispón’s squad stepped out of their SUV. The woman, Xiaolian, was counting the days until she could return to Tianjin. Rubén, Oscar, and David were monsters. They hadn’t an iota of conscience, and when paired with their belief that their association with Avispón made them untouchable, they were like Justin Bieber at peak Justin Bieber. David even looked a bit like him with his string-bean figure and pop-music hairstyle. His wispy, neatly trimmed mustache pushed the resemblance more into pedophile territory, though. Maybe early twenties Bieber.

  Rubén and Oscar liked to say David’s mustache flair was an attempt to distract from the inadequacy of his manhood.

  David argued that even if that were true, it was better than having Rubén’s pockmarked face or Oscar’s misshapen head, both of which could only attract dollar whores.

  This sort of exchange was an hourly occurrence that inevitably escalated into swatting and punching until someone cried out, “Fuck!”

  But these provocations were nothing compared to when they turned their attention to Xiaolian. Crude jokes and stories about the women they’d killed in Mexico were just the tip of the iceberg. Xiaolian was certain they’d have murdered her already if Avispón hadn’t specifically told them not to. Or at least they would’ve tried. It was one thing to go after unsuspecting women in rural Mexico; it was another to go after her.

  She’d kill all three of them before a single hair on her head was put out of place again. So in a way, she thought, Avispón is actually keeping them alive.

  At the moment, the clueless heathens were slapping and jostling one another as they headed toward a strip mall for lunch. There were three restaurants: one Chinese, one American, and one Tex-Mex. After giving David a solid thump on his shoulder, Oscar told Xiaolian they’d see her in thirty minutes. She nodded, happy to be alone.

  But that was short lived. They all went for the American burger joint, and Xiaolian could only shake her head as she held the door open, stuck now, since if she went elsewhere, ROD would read it as intimidation and the harassment would only intensify.

  She’d just have to make sure they didn’t slip anything into her food again.

  The restaurant, a narrow space with wood-paneled walls and a tin ceiling, smelled of grease, beef, and bacon as tendrils of steam poured from the semi-exposed kitchen.

  The group took an open booth halfway between the entrance and the back door emergency exit, since a local turf war had recently been fought, and they needed to keep their options open. The CJNG had pushed out both the Sinaloa Cartel and the Beltran-Leyva Cartel, but there were still some pockets of holdouts, like over in Commerce City, so ROD and Xiaolian were keeping their eyes open and their escape routes numerous.

  Xiaolian counted eleven patrons: three teenagers (private-school bookworms, maybe track and fielders), three men (road construction workers; their trucks are out front), and one family (middle-to-upper class; they have the Porsche). Everyone was shooting sideways glances at her and the men, but these people presented no danger, so she sat and grabbed a menu.

  Oscar had picked up on the glances as well, but unlike Xiaolian, he stared them all down one by one until they averted their gazes. All except for the little green-eyed girl quietly munching on her burger at the nearby table. She wasn’t judging them; she was just watching, and she continued to stare.

  Oscar’s lip curled, and he pounded his fist on the table, making the girl jump. “Quit looking at me, you brat.”

  The girl’s father threw Oscar a dirty look.

  “Eat your lunch,” Oscar scolded the man.

  Xiaolian doubted this accountant (or maybe wealth manager) had had many serious altercations in his life. He’d likely grown up in neighborhoods where the worst confrontations culminated in a raised voice and a lame insult (“Boot licker!”). Had he grown up in some rougher environment, like the Daxing district of Beijing where she’d been born, he would’ve known how to handle such outright aggression, but instead he cocked his head and asked, “Excuse me?”

  “Eat your damn lunch,” Oscar growled.

  The man ran some calculations in his head, then pushed himself up from his chair and sucked in his gut. “I think you owe my daughter an apology.”

  The little girl, a hunk of burger and cheese and bun bulging her lips, looked from Oscar to her father to Oscar.

  A low, rolling rumble emanated from Oscar’s throat.

  Xiaolian laid her menu down and kicked Oscar under the table.

  He didn’t react. Probably still amped up on adrenaline. They’d killed a guy—a trailer-park meth manufacturer up in Bailey who hadn’t been playing the game the way the CJNG wanted it played—just before this. Oscar had gotten so pumped up over the hit, fidgeting nonstop on the way there, that when it had ended without incident, he’d grown agitated and restless.

  Xiaolian blamed herself. She should’ve known to make it harder for this group. Induced a chase or a struggle or something. Instead she’d disconnected the battery in the man’s truck the prior night, so when he popped the hood to make the fix in the morning—because he knew his truck as well as any man who couldn’t afford to pay someone else to take care of it—Oscar had only needed to walk up and shoot him in the head. Done and done. As Oscar stood over the body, though, his hands fiddled with the gun, itching to do something more.

  She should’ve just given in and let the men dismember the mountain meth man like they’d wanted. The limb hacking would’ve worn them out. Now, needing to burn off the adrenaline, Oscar wanted to fight an accountant (or wealth manager).

  Rubén and David were watching with bated breath, ready to step in and get some action as well. Rubén’s eyebrow-less left brow twitched in anticipation as Oscar put his hands atop the table and started to rise.

  Xiaolian kicked Oscar again, much harder this time, and he turned to her, scowling.

  “Don’t you dare,” she said, loud enough for the father to hear and hopefully realize he should rethink his request for an apology.

  Oscar’s pupils shrank; he slapped his palms on the table.

  “Don’t,” she repeated.

  “Order me a double with cheese,” he barked, then stormed away to the restroom.

  The father slowly sat. “Chew your food, honey,” he told the girl.

  Xiaolian shook her head and brushed some hair from her bruised cheek. She glanced at Rubén and David, who leaned back in the booth.

  The restaurant settled.

  When
Oscar returned, the server was standing in his way, scribbling Rubén’s novel-length order on her pad. He waited, glancing down at the accosted family. The father refused to acknowledge his presence, but the little girl, nibbling on her squished burger, looked up. She smiled.

  Oscar knocked the burger from her hands.

  The father yelled out. The girl teared up.

  “The little brat was looking at me again,” Oscar said.

  Xiaolian jumped from the booth, pushing the server aside, and grabbed Oscar by the back of his neck, pinching the nerve. As he howled, she guided him out of the restaurant.

  She left him standing in the parking lot while she went back in, handed the father enough cash to pay for his family’s lunch, and corralled Rubén and David outside as well.

  As they walked back to their SUV, Rubén asked, “So what about lunch? I’m fucking starving.”

  “You dumbshits aren’t getting out of the car until Duluth.” Xiaolian pointed at a Wendy’s across the highway. “Figure out what you want.”

  “Bitch,” Oscar hissed.

  Xiaolian walked to the driver’s-side door, wishing she could kill them all right then and be done with this nonsense. Just wait, she told herself.

  ~

  The AdWords brought Gregory another inquiry. Oh, happy day. He was out on surveillance at the Days Inn, sitting in his car with a bag of Flamin’ Hot Cheetos when the call came. With his non-Cheeto hand, he picked the phone up and said, “G Man Private Investigators,” then crunched down on another Cheeto.

  A woman’s voice: “Yes. Hello? Are you there?”

  Gregory chewed. For a moment he thought the voice belonged to Tina Turner’s assistant—sounded just like her—but the area code wasn’t LA. It was a 312 number. Just a couple digits difference but half way across the country. He swallowed the mushed lump of junk food. “Yep. I’m here.”

  “I was on your website,” the woman explained.

  Gregory set the Cheeto bag on the passenger seat and watched a bald, egg-shaped man struggle to pull his suitcase from the back of an Audi coupe.