Pretty Like an Ugly Girl (Baer Creighton Book 3)

by Clayton Lindemuth

  Boy squirms, tries to get to his feet with no hands. I grab his shoulders and square him on his knees.

  “Stay like this a minute till I get these cuffs off.”

  He obey, like he senses my words is true even if he don’t ken their meaning. I pick at the handcuffs in the hole and have no success. So I switch to the heaviest Leatherman tool I got, a flathead screwdriver built wide and thick. I look for a place to pry and find none.

  Last I figger it must be a ratchet inside that holds em. You can always jam a ratchet. But it makes things worse before they’s better. I go back to the awl tool and feed it in the hole. Damn near impossible to see. I got to spin the boy for the best moonlight over my shoulder.

  “Gotta squeeze the cuffs tighter on you. Hold on.”

  I push in the awl and the cuff arm at the same time. The awl rides up in ’tween the teeth and the shebang looses. I peel it off his wrist.

  “All right, that’s one. Get the other off in no time.”

  The boy’s still, save the shivering. I’ll give him my coat when I get off the second.

  Only take a minute now I’m smooth. I pull the cuff off his other wrist and he pops away, spins, and goes to a fight stance.

  I back off a step.

  “Fuck boy. Easy. You’s loose now.”

  He looks like the dead boy, pretty like an ugly girl. Maybe queer.

  “Hold on. I see you’s set to take off. Here.” I peel off my jacket and toss it. He’s got on a t-shirt and shorts, some kinda thin sandals. Seeing the feet, I wish I kept the jacket ’cause with no more’n that he’s good as dead anyway.

  “I’ll take you back to camp. Got a fire. Food. You can take the sleeping bag. Got a dog and the whole shebang. Taker easy. You be all right.”

  Still crouching low he backs off, turns for a glance at what he’s walking into. But keeps his wary eyes on me. Steps silent and low and, in seconds, he’s no more’n a flash of gray on black night, smaller and smaller. He’s set off at a run.

  Mebbe come light I’ll look his body and get my jacket back.

  Shame.

  I think on how evil work. See it everywhere, every one of us. ‘Ventually it’s the first we expect, we seen it so much. Survival is keeping the guard up. Get in a bind and help come along, we got no way to trust it. Helluva predicament for the soul of man.

  Back at camp, I smell the smoke but don’t see the embers. I’ll leave it die off complete. Start cold in the morning.

  I stop at the tent door ’fore unzipping it and listen to Stinky Joe snore. Mebbe he forgot his fear of the gunshots, having a bullet cut part his bone out, flipping him midair. Mebbe he dream he’s in a pasture eating cow pies or some other dog delicacy.

  But I bet his dreamland’s dark as the one I walk in. Got the dead Mexican boy two hundred yard off and the other set to freeze to death and can’t trust the fella that’d save him.

  I go inside and don’t got the heart to move him. He’s curled up and somehow wiggled hisself inside the sleeping bag. Stinky Joe’s a Carolina dog, not quite got an arctic coat of fur; I shoulda got him a wool blanket at the outfitter. I get him out the bag he’ll snuggle agin me, and he’ll have part the sleeping mat. But I’s troubled anyhow and leave him the king size to himself.

  Grab a liter jug of shine and a wool undershirt from the backpack. Get ’em both to work.

  I sit at the stone circle and when I got heat in the belly and the moon’s about passed out the sky, I get a shiver up the back says it’s time for fire. I think on that boy and how about now he’s prolly making a bed out leaves, freezing. Some point, he’ll get so cold he don’t shake no more. Then sleep.

  Real sleep.

  Poke around the coals till I spot the red, just a couple ember here and there. Bunch ’em together so they can cooperate and add some pinecone I gathered for this very purpose. Twigs, sticks, logs. Got the whole party built, and all I need’s the spark make it dance.

  I get down and blow.

  Old lungs only carry so much air and after two puffs the coals glow brighter but I need resuscitation. I wait on it. Fill up on air and blow. A couple more and I’ll have flame. Inhale deep and huff so long I got the dizzy on.

  They’s feet behind me.

  Lightning quick.

  Up on me and something knock my shoulder, bounce off the noggin. I fall part to the pit. My shoulder took most the blow so I got my wits back quick and somebody’s right fucked. I’m on my feet with Smith ready and randy, but it’s the blackhair boy.

  He shakes. Goes to his knees. Violent body wiggles. Head bobbin’, shoulders, knees, the whole works in a giant nonstop shiver.

  “Helluva way you got, askin’ help.”

  I get on my knees and blow one more time like the dumbass I am, and flame curl up about a pinecone. In a minute it flares up big, and that excites the other pinecones and soon it’s an orgy down there, flames licking and lashing. Pure ass chemical fornication. Make a man wanna visit Ruth about six minute.

  Side my noggin aches when I stand. Wonder if that little shit busted something in my head. Good thing about that is you don’t know ’less yer dead, so they’s no use to worry on it.

  “C’mon up here and get warm.”

  The boy convulses. Tries to knee walk forward but falls over. Never see shakes like that—not on account the cold.

  This little fucker tricking me?

  I touch his elbow. Feel the muscles vibrate under the skin. Seem real enough.

  No good asking. He don’t know the language, won’t show no red or give me the juice. But I ask anyway.

  “Boy, why don’t you come up by the fire?”

  I connect with his eyes and get the feeling something in my world is a touch off center. Something ain’t lining up right.

  “C’mere.”

  I get behind him. Lift the lower shoulder and get under the arms and across.

  “The fuck?”

  Them’s tits.

  Pretty boy’s an ugly girl.

  I lift her just same. Get up close the fire. “Hold on a second.”

  Unzip the tent. “Joe, we got company. That’s good work on yer part, keepin’ watch and all, so I don’t get clubbed on the head. Much appreciate the diligence. Now get up out the sack. Get up, puppydog. Got a girl out here like to freeze to death.”

  I lift the top part the bag, and Joe stretches long and sighs hard.

  “Joe, lessgo.” I cuff his ass gentle. He see it time to wake up and get a move on.

  While Joe find his motivation, I fetch both spare wool socks.

  Carrying the bag, I feel along for Joe’s blood and it’s all dry. I unzip the whole bag and the Mexican girl found my sitting log. The flames is tall and bright. Now I worry on who’s looking for light in the woods. She stands and I put the bag open on the log so she can step in it. Cover her shoulders and she grabs the flaps and wraps herself. I feel in along her lower legs and undo the shoe buckles on her feet, slip on them inch-thick wool socks. Then open the flaps to put em on her hands. She only shakes occasional, now. Her eyes follow my every move and now we got some light she ain’t so ugly as in the dark, and if they’s ever a place it’s better to look good, it’s the light.

  She ain’t got the hood part the mummy bag over her head. I get behind and lift it up, settle it down over her. She shake again, and I think on what she saw and come through. Mebbe that was her fella back there, dead. Mebbe she was too much trouble and they saw fit to leave her there too. Cuffed and tied with the rope, had the tape on her mouth. Expected to die. And born to look like a boy at night. Whole world agin her.

  From behind, I put my arms around her arms and get up close the sleeping bag and figger if some warm gets through that’s good, and if some kindness finds it way in, mebbe for this girl that’s better.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  Wayman Graves wore denim and flannel. A tight beard and long, straight hair. He looked every bit of his family’s history: rancher, meat cutter, businessman. They’d turned their talent for cut
ting animals into steaks into a thriving business; then, learning another venture lay within easy reach, built upon existing infrastructure and satisfied other, more basic appetites.

  Wayman’s father Luke didn’t want to shit in his own back yard, and sent his son to Salt Lake City.

  After a year attempting to liaise a relationship between his father and local operators, he served a three-year stint for possession with intent to distribute. They were at a party. Police closed off the exits. In a misguided stab at proving nobility of character, Wayman took the rap for a man who promised to make a key introduction.

  While imprisoned Wayman had the good fortune to meet an optimistic stoic. The seventy-year-old former refrigerator and coolant specialist had hacked his cheating wife to pieces. Coming from a butchering background, Wayman spoke his language.

  The man explained his life philosophy to Wayman:

  You wave your arms around the house and it’s hot, right? The refrigerator doesn’t turn hot into cold somehow. It pumps out the hot, and what’s left is cold. So you feel the hot, but in between is the cold. It was there all the time, but you didn’t know. Prison is like that. Pump out the bad and you find the good.

  The philosophy kept Wayman grounded in an optimism that suited him. There was always something good to take from the situation.

  Upon his release from prison, he learned the man he’d taken the fall for had succumbed to the next sting and went to prison anyway. Further, the man’s boss wasn’t inspired by Wayman’s loyalty—said it looked more like stupidity.

  He’d gone to prison for nothing but the optimism it taught him.

  Wayman pumped out the bad and found the worthwhile. Eliminate from mind everything he didn’t have, and he was left with what he did have: a father who could supply cash and girls from Mexico. Wayman enjoyed nightlife and had a talent for fast, profitable decisions. Best of all, Salt Lake City—like every sizable city—had a large male population that wanted to fuck kids.

  Luke and Wayman’s original goal was to use their capacity to transport meat from the Mexican border to also traffic kids. Buy them low, sell them high. Unable to connect with buyers, Wayman became the buyer. Vertical integration, upstream, no less.

  Within a year, Wayman opened The Butcher Shop Restaurant and Nightclub, each with a separate entrance. On the left was the restaurant, which served few sides but every imaginable kind of meat. On the right side, a pulsing, pounding, flesh market of a nightclub. In the highly secured apartments above, prostitution, and more.

  The Butcher Shop was the first building block of an empire constructed in Wayman’s mind. He’d chosen it first because it would serve two vital purposes. Being an often-cash business, the restaurant and nightclub allowed him to launder money. More important, it was a surreptitious marketing system that put him in contact with the kind of men who would value the exotic menu of services deeper in Wayman’s portfolio.

  Drugs, of course. Not participating in the drug trade left easy money on the table. But drugs were never going to be a large profit center. Too much risk. Too many unsophisticated, violent competitors.

  Prostitution, of course. Very early in Wayman’s vision, prostitution had been the main profit center. But that was when his vision was still comparatively small, when all he wanted was a little lucre.

  With his father’s refining wisdom, Wayman quickly saw regular old prostitution was not the most exclusive, high priced, highly sought-after service he could provide.

  Child prostitution was where it was at.

  As Luke had taught him, business was always supply and demand. There’s no end to the people who eat meat, right? A lot of demand. But there’s no end to the people who feed them meat. When supply equals demand, you’re a slave, not a business man. But when demand is great and supply is short, you’re king. For the long term, the only way to assure limited supply is if someone limits it for you. For that, you need a cartel. Like the doctors and dentists. The unions. Every trade organization that puts up barriers to entry. The beautiful unintended consequence of the police state is that everything considered a vice is of limited supply. So that’s the true capitalist’s revenge on big government types. They help us make more money by restricting supply. All we need is the balls to tell them all to fuck themselves, and start a business.

  But was there a market, Wayman wanted to know. Screwing kids was kind of sick.

  Luke had said, you’re missing the point. You’re not supplying the kid. You’re supplying the safety.

  “Any pedophile could find a kid and fuck it—if he knew he could get away with it. What did the movie director Roman Polanski say? Judges want to fuck young girls. Juries want to fuck young girls. Everyone wants to fuck young girls. But there are a lot of newbies out there, a lot of guys who would do it if they thought they could get away with it, but don’t even try because they fear the risks. Remove the risk, you own the market.”

  Wayman and his father turned wealth into riches. A monthly truckload of girls and boys from all over Latin America fed their machine. The meat truck arrived at The Butcher Shop kitchen every week. Every fourth week, it carried a different kind of meat. The girls were escorted to the upper apartment levels. They signed contracts that had no legal power. They showered, put on new clothes, and visited with a doctor whose payment was first stab at his pick of the new girls.

  Then they met their new daily taskmaster, a nineteen-year-old chica who’d risen from the ranks and taken the bubble gum name Amy, who told them the length and quality of their lives from this point forward depended on their willingness to embrace every form of sexual corruption or deviancy presented them.

  Business was very good until a banker choked a girl to death while singing Back Door Man loud enough other patrons complained.

  Then business got exceptionally good.

  The banker pumped her corpse with Wayman at the door, providing Wayman enough time to see the upside. The girl was young, relatively new, with many months left before she washed out. She was pretty, docile, and seemed to take to the life. She had unnaturally large breasts for a kid. In short, she was a prize.

  Wayman thought on his feet.

  The inherent contract in all pay for pedophilia schemes was anonymity and silence. You pay to fuck our kids, and you move along when it’s done with a rebar-reinforced concrete assurance it’ll never come back to haunt you.

  But, in an inspired moment Wayman understood the product was potentially much larger. It wasn’t just the extraordinary number of men who wanted to have sex with kids and get away with it.

  It was the number of them who would pay an extreme sum to kill one.

  He’d test his theory. Right then. Although several cameras already monitored the rooms , Wayman pulled out his phone and took video of the banker pumping the dead girl. Her arm hung limp from the bed.

  “What the fuck?”

  Wayman came up and lifted the girls head, took video of her rolled back eyes.

  He turned and captured the man’s face. Stopped recording and said, “Come see me when you’re done.”

  Wayman closed the door behind himself and stationed a lieutenant to wait.

  A half hour later, the man arrived at Wayman’s office. Three-piece suit, gray hair, glasses. Pudgy belly accustomed to pheasant and twenty-year scotch.

  “Sit.”

  The man did. “I was assured absolute privacy and I demand that video. I absolutely—”

  “Fine. No worries. But … that girl was worth at least seventy thousand to me, what she’d bring in. Docile, big tits. Still fresh. Plus the fifteen I’d sell her for. So you’ve cost me a lot. Shit happens, I understand. But you also subjected me to a new risk, outside of what we bargained for. Now I have to eliminate her body and sanitize a room you turned into a murder scene. Last, you dropped this mess in my lap unprepared. You’re making me scramble, and in this business, that’s not comfortable. We’re at a hundred fifty thousand. That’s the price of the video.”

  “I anticipated thi
s conversation—but not your number. She’s a Mexican, for Christ’s sake.”

  “I’m not a religious man, but you didn’t kill her for Christ’s sake. Here’s my final word. You coerced my involvement in both a crime and a business transaction. You threatened my freedom and robbed me of property. I don’t think you understand how antagonizing that is.”

  Wayman looked at the lieutenant standing by the closed door. The man stepped forward.

  “It’ll take time. I have to move some things around. No one has that kind of liquidity.”

  “How much time do you need?”

  With that, Wayman established a new product line.

  He was surprised how quickly other patrons began asking about the service. In the space of two years, it became his largest profit center. He dedicated the entire fifth floor: covered each room with linoleum, replaced the furniture with racks, cages, tables, and other devices obtained through S & M outlets. Installed special lighting, video cameras, the works.

  Soon, the other services took second place. He abandoned the drug business and phased out adult-aged prostitution.

  A final refinement to the business came with the pricing. As word spread, Wayman realized the risk he was taking demanded a tremendous premium. He needed to fully vet every client. That created costs. But more than that, the value wasn’t in the girl. It was like goodwill. The intangible value created by a brand.

  Thinking the first man’s willingness to pay $150,000 might be fluke, Wayman had originally set the price at $50,000. Since then, he’d increased that number again and again, and so far hadn’t located the price point that would slow demand.

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  Never sleep so terrible in my life. Barely any mat ’tween me and the ground. Got all my spare clothes on but I only ever use the one I wear and the one I wash. Girl’s in the bag and I try to get close. Don’t want in the bag with some girl kid. Once she got the shiver off, they’s no need to be so close. So I freeze one side and flip so I freeze the other, back and forth, till I’s ready to go rebuild the fire and crawl in it.