They ain’t gonna see, old man. These windows are tinted blacker than your asshole.
Oh, but they might see. And what if one of them pulled over? Some Good Samaritan on his way home after a long day at the paper mill, wanting to see if Ramón needed a jump or help changing out a flat. Worse yet, what if it was a cop? He looked at the Madam’s oozing, unconscious face. She didn’t have long for this earth anyway. It was a gamble letting her go alive, but he lived for the odds.
He opened the door and pushed her out onto the weedy gravel. Looking in the backseat, he grabbed the black purse sitting on the seat. Inside, as she’d promised, was her own firearm. And an enormous one at that. He plucked out the .357 Magnum and then tossed the otherwise empty handbag out the door. He watched it land in the tall grass about five feet away from her body and then slammed the door shut.
Distantly, he felt sticky dampness on his shoulder and chest. Blood from where she’d stabbed him in the neck with whatever weapon she’d been concealing in her hair. Clever bruja, right up to the end. But he’d deal with his own cuts and scratches soon enough. The money wasn’t far from here, and if the injury was worse than he thought, well, he could always buy himself a doctor.
Chapter 6
Madam’s Punishment
She was first aware of a hot meteor of agony on the right side of her face when she opened her eyes to find she was lying in her own bed. No, that wasn’t right. Eye. She opened her eye, for there was only one now. The other, once she reached up tentatively to confirm it, was nothing more than an empty socket covered with thick gauze and she remembered exactly why that was so, remembered the moment the orbit popped, and the gush of fluid and blood running down her cheek. Her body shrieked for the other one, like a mother frantically calling out for her lost child. That thieving and traitorous spic shot it out with his little pop gun and left her for dead on the side of the road. And now only one thought stood out in her mind, amid all the rabble. I'm no longer whole. Part of me is now gone forever. But she’d survived, by some stupid luck. If the beaner hadn’t tossed out her purse along with her body, the outcome would have been very different. She had a vague memory of hearing her phone ringing a few feet away from where she lay, in a ditch alongside the highway, and then dragging herself into the weeds to answer it. It had been Victor calling to hector her about the incident with the guido earlier that morning, the guido who was now the very least of her problems. Of course, her dear brother soon found out there were much bigger fish to fry. Their trusted little dog had turned on its masters, provoking a war with the family that could bring down everything she had spent years building.
She lay on her expensive sheets trying to piece everything together. Not only what happened in the car, but before that. How long had he been planning this? She refused to believe this was a last-minute thing. This level of fuckery had to take some serious planning, even for a veteran like him. But the more she tried to think, the foggier everything became. Part of it was the trauma of losing one of her eyes and taking a severe beating to her ego and dignity, but the other was the knock to the head. Among other horrors like “penetrating eye injury” and “major tissue damage to the right breast,” she’d heard the words “moderate concussion” passed between Victor and Corwin Huxley, a trusted man who, due to a minor oversight during a c-section twenty years ago, lost his medical license but was still quite serviceable as an off-the-books family doctor. Huxley was the one who made sure all the girls who came back from the Ballas house didn’t bleed to death in the Weeping Willow’s basement. He was also good for removing bullets or, in the case of the Madam, a few dozen birdshot pellets.
During another brief break in the morphine fog, she heard Huxley tell Victor if she’d taken the full load of shot to the face, she would be breathing through a straw, if at all. Lucky her.
There were other injuries she was acutely aware of, but did not want to examine too closely. Her broken teeth. Her burnt and pockmarked neck and shoulder, but most of all her ruined right breast. The latter felt like it had been flayed open and seared with a branding iron. It would be quite some time before she would be able to bring herself to even look at it, but she didn’t need a mirror to know Ramón Gutierrez had succeeded in not only stealing a half million dollars of her money, but he’d also stolen half her sight, half her breasts, and the entirety of her livelihood.
How long had she been here, fading in and out of consciousness on a steady stream of morphine? She guessed it had been a day or two, but only because that was the maximum amount of lost time she was willing to accept. Any longer, and Ramón was likely south of the border somewhere. That didn’t mean she would give up the search. She’d have every man at her disposal sniff that armpit of a country so long and hard they’d come out smelling like tortillas and speaking Spanish. And after they found him, they would drag him right back up here so she could put him back to work. Not in the cushy little driver’s job he had before, but as her personal boot cleaner, licking every speck of dirt and dog shit off the soles until they shined like mirrors.
First, though, she needed to find out who was minding the place while she was sacked out up here like some pathetic invalid. She sat up and immediately the world swayed back and forth, acid scalding the back of her stomach, churning like an old washing machine. There was a large ceramic bowl on the bedside table, and she made it just in time to puke up a caustic glut of water and bile.
The door opened and Victor peeked his head in. “Ah, she awakes!” He let himself in, his dentures glowing in the room’s dim light as he smiled. The Madam’s stomach gave another lurch at the sight of him, but it was an empty one. She spat into the basin and set it aside. This particular visitor didn’t improve her mood, but then again it rarely did. Victor Cassini was the vainest man she’d ever met, not a single dyed strand of hair out of place on his perfectly manicured head. He’d just pushed past sixty and was nearly twenty years her senior, but after a few lifts here, tucks there, and strategic injections of Botox, he looked almost younger than her forty-two. He reminded her of a falsely genteel politician, the kind who waxed folksy with the commoners, but behind closed doors would slit throats between sips of coffee. And he had done that, quite literally, on dozens of occasions.
“Who’s running my business?” she asked as her brother walked toward the bed. She wanted to get up, not let him stand over her as he so often did, but she was afraid of vomiting again.
“Not to worry, Tessa. Your flock is all in order. I’ve been seeing to everything since your unfortunate decommissioning.” He unbuttoned his suit jacket and sat down on the side of the bed with a sigh. “Look at you. My dear, beautiful Tessa.” He reached out to caress her cheek with a hand that looked about twice as old as his face, age spots and all.
She slapped his hand away. “Don’t patronize me. I know I’m exactly where you want me to be.”
He affected another disappointed sigh. “You think so little of me.”
“I may be short an eye, Victor, but I can recognize bullshit when I see it. Now where are my cigarettes?”
“I don’t think you’ll want to do that with your head injury.”
“And what are you, my father?”
A brief look passed between the two of them, acknowledging the sickening irony of that otherwise flippant remark, and the Madam swung her legs out of bed. “Never mind, I’ll get them myself.”
Victor reached out to steady her, but she pushed him back down on the bed. “I don’t need your help.” She didn’t even want to look at him. Would have risked fainting or vomiting on the floor again just to avoid it. Luckily, neither thing happened. After a brief wash of wooziness, she made her way over to her vanity table, where the Dunhills waited for her like patient little lieutenants.
She didn’t want to look in the mirror when she sat down, but it was inevitable that she examine the damage at some point. At least the damage to her face. She didn’t think she’d ever have the courage to look at her breast again. The missing eye she co
uld probably handle eventually, but she’d built a livelihood on everything below the neck, and even if she didn’t plan to use it for such ends anymore, seeing it destroyed would be like sifting a priceless heirloom out of the remains of a fire. What she saw when she glanced into the mirror made her want to puke all over again. The bandage over her obliterated right eye was crusted around the edges with blood-tinted yellow fluid. Red welts from the shot pellets peppered her cheek and neck like angry acne. Her teeth weren’t as bad as she thought. Incisors still intact, but she had two jagged canines and a couple of others that would have to be addressed before she cut her tongue to ribbons on them. That was all she could stomach. She turned away from the mirror and lit her cigarette.
“How long have I been out?”
“About a week.”
She choked out a lungful of smoke. “A week? That Mexican son of a bitch.”
Victor raised his hand. “Dear Tessa, don’t upset yourself.”
“Who you brought here, I might add. The one you said was such a trustworthy little lapdog, the one who just ruined me, he’s likely kicking his feet up in some roach-infested cantina on the other side of the Rio Grande on my dime.”
“Tessa. Shut up.” He didn’t raise his voice. Victor Cassini rarely had to. But it was now sapped of that congenial old man cheer, so like Ronald Reagan, that would reel in so many schmucks over the years and make them feel secure right before he strung them up and divested them of their dignity and their testicles, or their sexual freedom if they happened to be of the female persuasion. The Madam didn’t take orders from anybody except Victor, the only one who could use her real name without impunity. She closed her mouth and ran her tongue along the jagged edges of her ruined teeth. It hurt and felt good at the same time.
“We have a larger issue than the whereabouts of Ramón Gutierrez right now.”
She gaped at him. “You have to be joking. What could be more important than nabbing that bastard?”
Victor looked at her for a moment, and the temperature in the room seemed to drop a few degrees. But she wouldn’t shiver. Wouldn’t look away. “You know, I remember Hank Ballas. Nice guy. A little squirrely, but nice. Long ago, he handled some trading for Dante. He dropped out of the public eye after awhile, but I know occasionally he would order some companionship from this here little establishment. Particularly after his wife vanished like that. It was a long time ago, not long after you took over here, but you remember that, I’m sure. He paid a lot. Liked to rough up the girls a little, but nothing too serious. Nothing that would require, you know, serious medical attention or anything.”
Her stomach dropped down into her pelvis. She knew where this was heading, and it wasn’t good. Not at all. Don’t look down. Don’t you dare fucking look down now.
Victor stood up and started pacing a little. It was a thing he did when he was winding up, and the Madam could feel her ass sinking into the bench she sat on. “Then we didn’t hear from him at all after 1990 or so. Withdrew from all his business and everything. Hell, I thought the man was dead. He’d certainly be old enough, and living like a hermit in that old house of his. . . It’d kill just about anybody after awhile, wouldn’t it, Tessa?” He stopped pacing and looked at her, and she realized it wasn’t a rhetorical question.
“Yes.” That’s all she would say, all she would allow right now.
“But then, when was it, sometime around Christmas of 2001, he started contacting the Willow again, asking for girls again?” He looked at her, waiting for another answer, and it was then her eye finally dropped to her lap, unable to fully support the load that two eyes used to share in this battle of wills.
“I suppose.”
Victor laughed and then shook his head. “You suppose. That’s cute. That’s the same wording your little accomplice Doctor Huxley used when I spoke with him about this just a little while ago. While he could still talk, that was. Before I made him stop talking, he told me a lot. Oh did he tell me loads about what has been going on around here on your watch. You know, I thought you were every bit as cold and twisted as me, but even for you, Tessa . . . this is low. So very low, on so many levels.”
Fuck. How did he even find out? The only record she kept of the Ballas-related transactions was in her safe deposit box. With the money. Her money. Of course he took the opportunity with her brief coma to snoop into her private affairs, not the least of which was a certain box locked away in a vault at First National Bank. Victor had somehow gained access to it, which shouldn’t have surprised her, but it did. Some things had to be sacred, dammit! But Victor always got what he wanted, and because of that she was now in her least favorite place. Up against the wall. If she made him out to look a fool, he’d hurt her, or worse. Huxley had been a trusted member of their inner-circle for years. Victor had helped put the man’s son through college. And now he was just another casualty.
“If you want your cut of the proceeds, take it and get the hell out of here.”
Victor got up from the bed and came to her. He squatted down on his hunkers with the sort of ease that belied his age and placed his hand on her knee. There was the barest amount of steel in that grip, telling her a wrong move would be her last. Any other time, she may have been more of a match for him, but not now. She was already weaker than a runt kitten. But who was she kidding? Even when she was at her prime, Victor always won. It was all Victor knew how to do. He was like a slot machine that always hit the jackpot. “I know you only have a passing familiarity with the concept of principle. You whores don’t have much use for it, I know, but you have to at least know what it is intellectually. Don’t you?”
He was entering lecture mode. It was his favorite part, where he got high off the sound of his own voice before the real pain began. The Madam’s head throbbed in time with her heart, and she swallowed, her dry throat clicking like the cock of the gun that had stolen her face. “Of course I know what it is.” She hated the meek quiver sneaking into her voice. Hated it.
“Would you agree that it’s about rules? About certain governing tenets?” He squeezed harder, his fingers digging painfully into the thin flesh on either side of her kneecap. She jerked, and his grin widened.
“Y-yes.”
“And would you say that your recent actions have violated certain rules and governing tenets? Principles, as it were?” Don’t lie to me, bitch, his eyes said. Those eyes surrounded with artificially stretched and plumped up flesh to deny their age. Don’t you dare fucking lie to me or I’ll eat you.
“What do you want? Just tell me.” There she was, begging. Acquiescing. Disgust and self-loathing invaded her like a hungry virus.
His other hand stole out and wrapped around her throat. For the second time in recent memory, a man was choking her. Only this man wasn’t desperate and looking to save his own ass; he was crazy and lethal and he loved to inflict pain the way puppies loved to chew on shoes. “I want you to tell me why you’ve been holding out on me. Why you have almost ten million dollars stashed away from your dear old brother.”
With every word, he squeezed her throat tighter and tighter so when she choked out the only answer she could think of, it came out in a grating whisper. “A gift.”
His grip loosened. “Say again?”
“A gift. I was saving it as a gift. For you.” A truth wrapped in a lie, but maybe that would be enough.
He dropped his hands and leaned back, the coldness in his face filled so suddenly with warmth it was as if someone had flipped a switch behind his face. It was that ease with which he’d changed that frightened her and most anyone who associated with Victor.
“A gift! Ah, good. Well, the family thanks you for your generosity, sister. I’ll make sure we put it to good use.” He stood up, and the Madam breathed a heavy sigh. But this wasn’t over. She knew her brother. Knew him in ways that no woman should ever know her brother.
“But the money that Ramón stole. I want it back.”
He chuckled. “Of course you do. But I think we both
know that isn’t going to happen.”
The Madam couldn’t believe what she was hearing. “You just expect me to let him walk away with my—your—money?”
Victor stripped off his jacket and laid it on the trunk at the end of her bed. His leather shoulder holster, which held his trusty 1911, crisscrossed against the wrinkled white cotton back of his shirt; a man like Victor was always armed, but it wasn’t the gun that worried the Madam. “Like most of us, Ramón will get what’s coming to him eventually, but right now, I have to admit I kind of like him.”
“What? Why?”
“Because of what I’m seeing right here. As far as I’m concerned, Senõr Gutierrez did me a very big favor. After this incident revealed your surprise gift to me, I think I'll consider the five hundred grand payment to Ramón for services rendered.”
The Madam’s face grew hot with rage. “I cannot believe what I’m hearing right now!”
“I know you’re lying to me,” Victor said. “You know I know that. You had big plans. Ten million dollars. Why, that’s enough money to leverage against someone you don’t much like, maybe with the Commission? I’ve made some calls, but nobody wants to talk. Not yet, anyway. But I’m good at making people talk.” He began loosening his belt, and the Madam closed her eyes.
Not this. Not now. Not after this steady stream of insults and indignities. “Victor, you don’t have to do this.”
“You dumb fucking whore.” He slid his belt out so fast she couldn’t see it. Only hear the snap followed by the searing sting of leather across her cheek. Her empty eye socket gushed something hot and thick while the one remaining eye watered, blurring the vision of the raving lunatic leering over her. “You never did understand the rules, did you? Your mother understood, at least after a while, when she still had her tongue. But you . . . you whore freak, you never learned. Not after everything I’ve given you. Everything I’ve sacrificed to protect you from what people would do if they found out what you were, you still never learned your place in this family.”
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