The Starr Sting Scale

by C. S. O'Cinneide

  Malone gets up and looks through the crack in the door again. I’ve been passing the time trying to snap off split ends with one hand.

  “There’s only one guard out there now,” she says.

  “The other one probably went to take a whiz.” Perhaps he’s washing his precious hands with the softened water right now, his Walther P99 pistol parked on the basin.

  “You could create a diversion. Yell out that you’re sick and need the washroom.”

  “I don’t get sick.”

  “Well, then yell out that you’ve got to have a bourbon or you’re going to rip the handcuffs out of the wall. Come on, Candace, work with me here.”

  “And then what, Malone? What are you going to do? Strangle him with your pantyhose?”

  “There has to be something here we can use,” she says, pacing around the room. She looks in the water softener, but it’s only full of salt. Then she tries to unscrew the intake pipe for the water heater, but she’s not strong enough. I am, but I can’t reach that far.

  “What about your flask?” she says. “I could hit him in the face with it.”

  “Be my guest,” I say, throwing her the flask. “But I’m not creating a diversion. All this caper is going to gain us is a load of lead in our bellies. And I already ate.”

  Just then we hear something fall to the floor with a slump on the other side of the door. Malone runs over and stands behind it against the wall with the flask raised. I stand up as well as I can with my wrist handcuffed halfway up the wall. We hear the sound of a key in the door, and when it opens I’m blinded by the light that pours in. I almost don’t see him in time to warn Malone.

  “Well, you took your sweet time,” I say. My smile is warning enough for her. She lowers the flask. Marcus stands in the doorway and runs one hand through his fade, the fallen biker guard sprawled on the floor behind him.

  “I told you, Candace,” he says, stepping into the furnace room, his deeply delicious brown eyes melting me for a moment. “I’m not one to leave a lady behind.”

  Marcus has been trying for a while to get me free, but he can’t budge the pipe any more than I could. Malone is frantic.

  “Can’t we use the gun and shoot off the handcuffs?” she says. She has the guard’s snub-nosed Ruger in her hand, having relieved him of it as he lay dozing on the floor. Marcus doesn’t use firearms. He said he had enough of them in the army. He just uses a sleeper hold to incapacitate his targets for a minute or two while he jabs them with a tranquilizer dart. It puts them out for at least an hour. After all, you don’t get the bounty if you bring a bail jumper back in a coffin.

  “You’ve been watching too much TV, Malone. The bullet will just ricochet off the metal and I’ll end up with a slug in me. Are you sure there aren’t any handcuff keys in Sleeping Beauty’s pockets?”

  “I checked them three times. Even stuck my hands down his pants.”

  “Do you see, Marcus? There’s nothing this woman won’t do for me.” I smile sweetly at Malone then spit on the floor. “And there was nothing on the dude upstairs?” Marcus took him out first. He’s lying on the linoleum floor in the shitter.

  “Sorry, Candace,” Marcus says.

  “How did you know I was here?” I ask, after he’s booted the pipe with his tan hiking boots a few more times.

  “I track people for a living, Candace,” he says, taking one last kick. “With all the stuff you had going on, you think I wouldn’t keep tabs on my best girl?” Shit, I’d blush if I wasn’t so worried about being shot at any moment. Marcus is good, but there are security-alarm booby traps all over this bunker of a clubhouse. Chances are pretty high that one has remotely alerted a biker at the Freaker’s Ball, and they’re on their way back right now, cursing at all the girls and beer they’ll miss.

  “You got to leave me, Marcus,” I say, looking deep into those fabulous eyes. I hope he doesn’t notice the stray hair between my brows.

  “We can’t leave her here,” Malone says. “We just can’t.” But Malone understands as well as Marcus and I do that staying would be a losing game for everyone involved.

  “The faster you bring the reserves in, the better chances we all have. Including me, Malone.”

  Marcus leans into me with one hand braced against the wall and kisses me on the lips like a gentleman. No tongue. “I’ll see you soon, Candace.” And I hear the promise in that.

  “Not if I see you first,” I say and lick him behind the ear. The wiry bristles of his fade feel rough and reassuring, like a cat’s tongue.

  The shot rings out less than a minute after Malone and Marcus have taken off up the stairs. I try my hardest to pull away from the pipe, hoping that Marcus may have loosened it a bit, but I’m just as trapped as ever. When the guy in the heavily creased biker jacket comes down the steps, I’m still yanking on it.

  “Looking for these?” he says, dangling the handcuff keys from his right hand. They jingle a bit, like Majd’s door at the E-Zee Market, but not really. More like a wind chime made out of bones. In his other hand he has the Ruger revolver that Malone took off the guy in the hall.

  “I’m sorry if you thought your friends would find a way to get you out. They’ve been detained. My buddy’s upstairs with them. Or at least one of them. The other’s permanently incapacitated.”

  “I’m surprised you know such big words, Chuck.” His name is stitched on his biker jacket. “I figured a guy like you wouldn’t have made it much beyond the vocabulary in See Dick Run.”

  “Oh, you’re a funny one, aren’t you, Candace?”

  “Fucking hysterical,” I say. He takes the gun and clocks me hard across the face with it. I can feel the hot blood start to leak from my nose.

  “You weren’t laughing that other night.” I don’t know what night he means. I’ve never seen this fucker before today.

  “I tell you what. You want these keys, funny girl, you come and get them.” He unzips his pants, drops the ring inside, and pushes me down to my knees.

  When he pulls his filthy junk out, I do what I’m supposed to do. He has a gun to my head, after all. I try to pretend it’s Marcus, but it’s difficult because he’s not as well hung or as clean. I gag more than once. The keys are so close I could grab them with my bottom teeth.

  “Oh yeah, you weren’t laughing that night after the party.”

  After the party.

  He leans against the wall with his free hand and grabs my head with the other. The gun hangs off his thumb. “No one had you pegged for a virgin, Starr. Figured your daddy or that Newfie uncle would have had you as a kid. But we broke you in good, didn’t we, the boys and I.”

  If I thought I was going to throw up before, I’m definitely going to now. I can taste what I drank from the flask coming up in my throat, and it’s burning worse than it did on the way down. I’m crying, too, something I never do. The Daybreak Boys. It was those bastards all along who cracked my head open and took turns. That’s why no one was talking. Not because they didn’t know anything. But because they were too fucking scared.

  I think about the fact that I was a virgin. And about how I lost the year at universtiy and just about everything else after that. How a bottle became my only friend, just like my dad, who was trying to heal his own wounds he couldn’t talk about. I think about what my life might have been like if it all never happened.

  And then I bite down so hard I chip two of my perfectly even teeth, although I don’t realize it until later. I spit out his junk on the cement floor like a limp worm.

  Chuck staggers and turns around, a reflex of the body when it’s confronted with a lethal force it needs to distance itself from. He’s spurting blood like one of those baking-soda volcanoes in science class they used to make erupt by adding vinegar. He’s in shock from both the loss of blood and the loss of his shaft. I stand and pull him in close to me from behind, whispering in his ear, before I use both the handcuffed arm and my free one to yank his head around and snap his neck, going for a lower vertebra. Then I dro
p him to the floor. He lies there staring straight up, paralyzed and unable to breathe, but still alive. I reach down into his crimson-soaked underpants and pull out the keys. They work just fine despite being coated with Chuck’s hemorrhage.

  The gun is on the floor. I put on the black leather gloves in my pocket and then pick it up, spitting a few more times, before stepping over the guy in the hallway and making my way silently up the stairs.

  I hope as that rapist prick runs out of breath, unable to move on the floor of the furnace room, that he hears over and over again in his head the words I whispered in his ear.

  “Who’s laughing now, Chuck? Who the fuck’s laughing now?”

  CHAPTER 21

  THE MAIN AREA OF THE CLUBHOUSE is dark when I get to the top of the stairs. The only light is coming from a neon sign behind the bar that reads GIRLS, GIRLS, GIRLS. It casts a yellow glow across the empty club room. They are in the foyer, where the spiky-haired Fu Manchu prospect was supposed to frisk me. I can hear Pauly Strachan’s voice, low and threatening. I can’t hear anyone else.

  I flatten myself against the side wall and creep along it slowly toward the sound of Pauly’s voice, inching my way around the corner until I stand flush behind the door to the foyer, the gun raised in my hands. Blood trickles out of my nose and onto my T-shirt, which is already soaked with the gore from Chuck’s groin. I don’t think Charlotte will ever be able to get the stains out.

  “Tell me who sent you,” Pauly says.

  No answer.

  “You know, you’re not getting out of here,” he says. “Nobody leaves my clubhouse until I’m ready for them to leave. But you, you’re not going anywhere. This place is like fucking Hotel California for you.”

  There’s a sickening crack as he pistol-whips whoever he’s talking to. A woman cries out. It’s Malone.

  “But I can make your stay last a long time if I want. So long you’ll be begging for your hotel bill, sweetheart. When the rest of the boys get back from the party, we could have a lot of fun with you.” I bring my eye up to a crack in the door jamb where the frame’s a bit splintered at the hinge. Probably the result of a friendly bar brawl where someone slammed the door a few times into a fellow biker’s face. I can see that Pauly has the drop on Malone. She’s on her knees on the floor, her head down. The pretty dark-brown bob hangs over her face. Marcus is on the rug by the front door, not moving. Pauly reaches down and lifts Malone’s chin, forcing her to look up at him. Her face is streaked with blood and her left cheek is already beginning to swell like an overgrown tumour where he hit her with the gun.

  “Now tell me why you and that little slut Candace came into my club. And I’ll do you a favour and shoot you right here.”

  The space in the door jamb is probably big enough to fire through. If it isn’t, I’ll just get massive kickback and splinter it more. The bullet’s trajectory will get messed up and the shot will angle away. I could hit Pauly. I could hit Malone. I could hit the moose head on the wall. But if I take a shot from the open doorway, I expose both myself and Malone. Pauly’ll have that split second to shoot her, and even if he doesn’t, we’ll end up in a Mexican standoff until the rest of his buddies get home and call it off.

  I’ll only have the one chance. I lift the pistol to the opening by the hinge, trying to take my aim through the slim crack. Squeezing the trigger, I ready myself for either the death of Pauly Strachan or the splintering of wood that might mean my own.

  The gun fires. Wood does splinter. When I come into the doorway with the Ruger trained on him, Pauly stands there holding his neck, where his carotid artery is spurting fluid. He’s still holding his own gun, but now it hangs at his side. When I shoot him between the eyes, he finally drops it. Malone dodges his beefy body as it slumps to the floor.

  “Candace,” she says.

  I run over to the front door and look through the crack it’s been left open. The street is empty. Then I kneel beside Marcus and roll him over, but there’s no reason to try to take a pulse. His brown eyes stare blankly up at me, and there’s a bullet hole behind his ear where I licked him. I close the heavy lids with the long lashes and turn to Malone, raising my gun.

  “Okay, Malone, we’re done.”

  She sees the snub-nosed revolver in my hands. The liner and mascara I applied have smudged, making her look like she has two black eyes. Or maybe Pauly did that.

  “What are you doing, Candace?”

  “I’m doing what I should have done right from the beginning.” I walk over and stand towering above her, the gun trained on one of her green eyes. “Tell me who killed my dad, Malone. Tell me now.”

  She doesn’t lower her head. Doesn’t look as frightened as she should. She just looks sad. Sad and tired.

  “I can’t,” she says.

  “It was that bastard Wolfe, wasn’t it? You and your homicide buddies covered it up, protecting one of your own.” We’re wasting precious time with this. The rest of the Daybreak Boys will be showing up any minute. But I’ve got to know. “That’s why you won’t tell me,” I say.

  “No, Candace.”

  “Then why? I’ve done what you wanted. It’s obvious the club took out those kids. I’ve solved your case. Now tell me.”

  “I can’t,” she says. I think I can hear the roar of bikes in the distance. I move the gun lower, so it’s aimed at her heart.

  “Why the hell not?”

  “Because I know what you’ll do,” she says. “You’ll kill them.”

  “Well, of course I’ll kill them,” I say. She must have known that all along.

  “And then I’d have to arrest you,” she says, then spits some blood from her busted lip onto the floor.

  So, there you have the crux of it. I’m the one who kills, and she’s the one who arrests killers. We’re the damn fable played out in the foyer of a biker gang’s clubhouse with a moose head looking on — imprisoned by our own natures as much as we’d been imprisoned in the furnace room.

  “You were never going to tell me, were you?” I say. “You were playing me for a fool all along.” My finger twitches on the trigger of the gun.

  “I was going to, in the beginning. But now, Candace, I care about what happens to you.” She spits again, runs her tongue along her teeth to see if she’s missing any. “I didn’t before. But I do now.”

  “You’re a bitch of the highest order, Malone.” I put the gun level with her gorgeous eyebrows, right in the middle, where there’s not one stray hair. She lowers her head.

  “I’m sorry, Candace.” The sound of bikes is getting louder. I need to get this over with. Do what has to be done. So I do.

  I go over to Marcus’s body and put the biker’s gun in his hand.

  “We’re done here, Malone,” I tell her.

  Then I run out the door and into the night, leaving Malone to her nature.

  Shots ring out soon after I take off down the street. One rockets past my cheek so close it takes care of a couple of split ends I missed. The sun will be coming up soon, but for now it’s too dark for me to see where the gunfire is coming from. I run down an alley, use a skip to climb up on a fire escape. It’s greasy from the rain, and I slip and bang my knee on the slick metal so hard it makes me wince. But I keep going. I can hear a clang as someone else jumps onto the fire escape from below.

  Once I reach the roof, I can see down into the street. The one-eyed lights of the Harley Davidsons are advancing in the dark. I can hear boots on the fire escape. The next few buildings are either on level or slightly below the roof of this one, with gaps between of only twelve feet or so. The real estate is too expensive even in this shitty part of the city to leave even a few square feet not built up. We used to jump across these as kids, back when we were too young and stupid to understand death could catch us, even if we could run like the wind in our Keds.

  I take a running start and leap from the one roof to the next. My long legs and experience as a child playing deadly games serve me well. I make it across three buildings, each
time with a running start. The last one I barely make, scrambling my way up the ledge, my injured knee throbbing like a bugger. After I pull myself up, I turn around and see the faint figure of the shooter come up onto the roof of the first building in the grey light of pre-dawn. I deke around the far side of the apartment roof and down the fire escape, jumping the last few feet onto a parked Subaru. It makes a nasty dent in the hood. Then I’m using those long legs my mother gave me to run toward the rising sun. To the side of town that Malone’s living-room windows look out on in the distance.

  I run like I couldn’t that night the Daybreak Boys knocked me unconscious and ripped my new life away from me. So I couldn’t fight back. So I couldn’t see their faces. But I’ve seen their faces now. And whether Malone arrests me or not, I’m going to fight back. I’ll fight back long and hard, with the vengeance of a scorpion.

  Rory is asleep in his bed when I break in the door. He jumps up when he sees me. Then runs protectively over to Bubba’s aquarium.

  “I swear, Candace, I told you everything,” he says, pleading.

  “I don’t care about that,” I say. “I need firepower. Serious firepower, Rory.”

  “What the hell for, Candace?” He knows I don’t normally use guns, even though my dad taught me how to use all of them. The semi-automatics, the high-powered rifles, even a sawed-off shotgun he took off a target expressly for my lesson. He felt a girl needed to be schooled in such things, just in case the need arises. And the need is arising big time.

  “You don’t need to know what for, Rory.” I grab him by the collar of his T-shirt. “You just need to get me some artillery.” I notice he isn’t wearing any pants. His limp unit dangles as I raise him off the floor by his shirt. Seeing it gives me a nauseous feeling deep in my belly, reminding me of Chuck. I lower him to the ground. “Get some fucking pants on,” I say.

  He scrambles in the corner, grabbing and yanking on a pair of track pants. I start to feel bad. Rory is a nice guy. He was a friend of my dad’s. And here I am threatening his turtle and breaking down his door all in the same forty-eight hours. This is a new thing for me, feeling bad about my behaviour. I decide to go for a different approach.