Strings

by Dickson, Allison M.

  Jenkins supposed it was acceptable enough for someone to just withdraw completely from society and become a hermit if they were rich enough. Howard Hughes had done it, and he wasn’t the only one. But it was just damn odd. If he was killing prostitutes, or fucking them up to within an inch of their lives, this went beyond a simple transaction between two consenting adults. Someone else needed to look into this, like the cops. He still had a couple good contacts back at his old precinct. The kind who weren’t too deep in the Cassini billfold. Maybe they could make some calls upstate, and then he could wash his hands of this whole matter and tell the horrible woman in Des Moines that her daughter’s fate rested in the hands of New York’s finest.

  But not yet. He wouldn’t kick that hornet’s nest until he had a damn good reason. Right now, the matter of Nina Quick was still that of a grown woman who may have just skipped town because she didn’t want to go home to her bitch mother. Furthermore, he didn’t have an ounce of real proof on any of Kelly’s claims, and she would make a terrible witness. But if he took a drive up there and poked around, maybe found something suspicious, like a girl tied to a bed, then he’d have something to take to the police.

  Not too late to let this go, you know. You could just fuck the whole thing and go pick up your kid for a surprise visit. Pretty sure the wife wouldn’t throw up too much of a stink about it not being one of your designated days. Maybe you can use your new pocket change to buy him an ice cream at his favorite place uptown that mixes custom flavors with fresh cream and freezes it with liquid nitrogen right in front of the customers.

  Those were warm thoughts, welcoming thoughts. Safe ones. But they wouldn’t pay the bills, and ice cream didn’t equal child support.

  The drive up was quiet and almost relaxing once he was out of the city. Most of the brilliant foliage had fallen by now, but there was still enough to dot the landscape with occasional bits of orange and yellow. An hour and a half later, he was pulling into the Ballas driveway. There was a gate, but it was rusted and covered in dead vines. It was also standing open, and it looked like it had been for quite some time, given the drifts of leaves settled against it.

  He weighed his options one last time before driving through. Hell, he wouldn’t even have to get out of the car if he didn’t want to. At the very least, he could just say he was lost if anyone saw him.

  It was darker back here, though he couldn’t say why. The late October sun was being generous enough, and the lack of leaves on the trees shouldn’t have occluded any of the light, but it was dismal nonetheless. Maybe it was the mood of the place creeping into his heart. There was nothing even remotely pretty or lifelike about the place. The tree trunks were so lifeless they looked petrified. Tufts of yellow and brown decayed weeds stood between packed dirt wheel ruts. Even in the late fall, when everything was going to sleep for the winter and had the excuse of being less than pastoral, this place just felt . . . dead.

  Jenkins crested a small hill and saw the Ballas house for the first time. His heart lunged into his throat and he hit the brakes.

  “Christ almighty,” he whispered. No way could anyone live in there. The tile roof was in shambles, the stucco was cracked. Graffiti marred everything, undoubtedly left by the junkies and transients who probably slept there among the rats and pissed in the corners.

  Just how many junkie transients do you think there are this far out in the middle of nowhere? He pushed the question away. It didn’t matter. If Hank Ballas still lived here, he was a complete madman, and that was all he needed to know to get the cops involved. He’d just circle around this swampy old fountain, get the hell out of here, and call Holmes at the precinct. Done and done.

  But then he saw the face peeking at him from one of the lower level windows and stomped the brakes again. When he looked closer, he didn’t see anything. Just a black curtain behind wrought iron bars and dirty glass, but he was sure it had been there only a moment ago. A pale and emaciated face framed with black hair.

  You’re only seeing what you want to see.

  Bullshit. He didn’t want to see anything. He wanted to put about a hundred miles between himself and this place yesterday. Nonetheless, he’d seen the girl there, and she looked a lot like the one in the picture riding in his breast pocket.

  This is where you stop your bullshitting, get on your phone and call the goddamn cops. You’re not a hero anymore, and you really weren’t even one when you had a badge. No sense in starting now, especially for a hundred and fifty bucks.

  He checked his phone. No signal. Naturally. He put the Taurus in park and shut it off and got out, feeling every bit as much the horror movie idiot everyone in the theater would be rooting for to die because he was so stupid. He should be backing his ass out of here, driving until he had a signal, and then calling the police.

  But what if Ballas, or whoever had her in there, was torturing her right now? Punishing her for peeking out the window and alerting the visitor to her presence? She could be suffering right now because of him. By the time someone made it all the way out here, Nina Quick would be so much ground meat on a dilapidated floor.

  A high-pitched scream erupted inside the house. “Help me! Help me please oh please help me!”

  Jenkins dropped all pussyfooted notions of leaving and calling the cops. He dashed up the porch steps in a single bound and turned the old brass knob on the enormous double doors. Amazingly, it wasn’t locked, and he stumbled into a house smelling of old dirt and piss and moldy towels. It was dark, but well-lit enough to display the piles of junk, the filth, the enormous stretches of spider webs strung all across the ceiling.

  That doesn’t look like web, exactly. What is it?

  He ran in the direction of the screams, his feet stomping on ancient and filthy tiles, doing his best to ignore the strange insignias in red paint (or blood), and the skeletons of small animals nailed to the walls. And he heard wheels rolling behind him. A skateboard or something, a gliding roar echoing off the cavernous walls, accompanied by a mad cackle turning his blood to ice. But he refused to look behind him. To do so would send him over the cliff to Gonzo City for good. He just ran faster, praying to whoever was listening he wouldn’t slip and fall.

  Finally, he reached the door and pushed his way through. The screaming stopped, and he came face to face not with the girl from the picture but a twisted old hag, frail and filthy in a flimsy old baby doll gown. But it’s her! See the mole her mother told you about?

  His shock did battle with the more logical part of his brain for a few seconds until finally, yes, he could see this trembling waif was in fact Nina Quick, and that someone had ruined her. Her hair hung in her face in great, sweaty gobs. Her cheekbones stood out in sharp relief, the flesh below looking shriveled and deflated like old balloons. Jenkins thought of those old black and white photos of emaciated concentration camp victims, and she was well on the way to being just like them, if she lived that long. Dried blood streaked her quivering thighs and she had deep red ligature marks going up and down her arms.

  She swayed like a fighter on the ropes.

  “Nina? Nina Quick?”

  “I’m sorry,” she said in a trembling, rasping voice. “They made me do it.”

  Jenkins realized it wasn’t a tremble of fear in the girl’s voice. It was a laugh. A strange little titter. There was madness in it. He felt his bowels cramp. “Who?”

  “Daddy’s very angry with you,” she said, and Jenkins heard a shrieking laugh from behind him. Or was it above him? Don’t turn around. Don’t be like that woman in the Bible who looked back and turned into a pillar of salt. But turn around, he did. And he saw a woman in red and a thing hanging over her shoulder. A human-sized spider.

  Jenkins’ last real thought, before the screaming began, was that his son would never get that ice cream.

  Chapter 15

  Ramón and the Honey Trap

  In bed, they made a pile of sweat-covered exhaustion. Ramón lay against Jessie’s bare breasts, letting her run her han
ds all over his bald head, as if she could drink in every drop of him through her pores.

  “This isn’t getting old yet, is it?” she asked. “Fuck if it isn’t getting better.”

  He agreed with a long kiss before rolling over onto the springy mattress with a satisfied groan. “I won’t be able to move after this.”

  “I’ll make sure to rub you down with Ben-Gay later, old man.” She got up to shower while he lay in bed gazing at the ceiling, wondering what the hell he was going to do now.

  He told himself, before that first lunch date with Jessie, he was going to leave town the next day and just head south, try his luck elsewhere without the Madam lurking a couple blocks away. No way was he going to let himself get mired down here, or anywhere, with a girl practically young enough to be his kid. But when a simple boardwalk lunch gave way to dinner, which then gave way to nearly a full night of the best sex he could ever remember having, things changed. And when she woke up beside him late the following morning, the second date became nearly a clone of the first. After that, all the days blurred into one sweaty exertion after another, all of which were leading him inexorably closer to his doom. She did continue going to work, but when she was gone, he paced his room in a constant debate with himself. Should he stay a little longer? One more night? Or should he just take the money and leave? He attempted a few letters to her on the room stationary, but when four consecutive drafts all came out sounding like the “it’s not you, it’s me” speech, he gave up. Expressing himself in writing just wasn’t his strong suit. If he couldn’t find the courage to tell her the truth face to face, he would be better off just leaving without a word. And it was usually around the time he would come to a decision to dig the black suitcase from under his bed and go that she was unlocking the room door with the spare keycard he had given her. Five minutes later, the whole cycle would rinse and repeat.

  Their conversation between rounds in the sack was easy and constant, but he’d managed so far to avoid revealing much about himself. She seemed content with him remaining mysterious and somewhat aloof, and he was content with obliging her. Jessie, however, was an open book about all the ups and downs of her life, as if the one thing she’d really been seeking was someone to hear all her problems instead of the way things usually went at her job as the priestess in the booze-filled confessional. She did have a kid. He’d guessed right about that. But the boy’s father had full custody and they lived in Connecticut so she only saw him maybe four times a year. Holidays, mostly.

  “He’s nine, and he hates me. It’s what I deserve,” she told him on the third night, followed by a long one-sided discussion about how her ex, a lawyer, had managed to win everything in the divorce, leaving her penniless and without even hope for an alimony payment. “All the money was on his side, and I was stupid. I didn’t think he would actually try to screw me, but I learned eventually if someone can screw you, they will. I had to move in with my sick grandfather here to avoid being homeless. He was all I had after six years of being a stay-at-home mom. A shut-in with no friends. I couldn’t have Noah living in this rat hole, so I didn’t fight for custody. I send money when I can. Clothes, video games, the latest and greatest in Nerf guns. I guess he likes it. I never hear one way or another.” They were eating cold Chinese carryout on his bed, naked and voraciously hungry after three straight hours of lovemaking. She spoke of the tragedy of losing her son’s love as a simple fact, the way one discusses the weather, but Ramón could sense something volatile and malleable just beneath the surface. He was careful not to tap into it, as much as she apparently wanted him to. Over the last two weeks, he’d come to see Jessie as a bucket of tears and rage looking for a shoulder, and that was the last thing he wanted to be. Becoming that shoulder would make her more than just a fuck partner, a quick distraction on his way to the open road. So he just decided to listen quietly and nod in all the right places and wait for her to warm up again or decide to fall asleep. Mostly it was the former. Sex became a mutual exercise in lust and spleen venting.

  He couldn’t remember a time in his life when the act felt almost addictive or when the woman, at least a woman who wasn’t demanding payment for services rendered, wanted it more than he did. Jessie wasn’t satisfied unless it was hard and fast. She wanted pain. He left bruises and bite marks on her breasts and inner-thighs, not because that was his intent, but because she wanted him to. Begged for it. And it awakened that old brutish anger of his, a machismo long buried after years of living broken and in servitude. It was hard to leave that behind, as was saying goodbye to such an enthusiastic partner. Maria hadn’t been, and so Ramón had to take his libido elsewhere, usually to the card tables and to the whores lingering around them for good luck.

  But finding a great lay was not good enough reason to remain here. If the Madam or one of the other Cassinis found him here, Jessie would be in just as much danger. Then why the hell are you still here, old man? You got a car, you got money. Get the hell out of this armpit of a city before you blow everything! Maybe he could get her to leave with him. Sure, she had a kid, but it wasn’t like she had any kind of relationship with him. Of course, the money wouldn’t stretch as far with two people sharing it. He would be right back in another Nina situation, taking care of a needy girl who would slow him down and remind him of the things he was trying to escape.

  Nina. Where all of this had begun. He wondered where she was now and if Ballas used her up and buried her in the backyard of that horrible place. No way could anyone survive six days of torment in that place, let alone six weeks. He hoped, for her sake anyway, that he was right.

  It’s your fault she was even there.

  Bullshit! Nina made her choice, even knowing what it would cost her. All those girls did. He’d been trapped like the rest of them in that brothel, doing what he was told, whatever it took to stay alive. He was done feeling guilty for that. But Alejandro’s face haunted him, those eyes that saw him for what he was. Alejandro would never be fooled by stupid jokes, would never mistake him for being a real father figure, and it was his voice that haunted him.

  What you did was like opening the door for an agoraphobic cat. They wouldn’t know how to run or what to do once they were out. They wanted someone to take care of them because that’s the only way they understood the world. When a man was calling the shots. Alone, they would’ve been scooped up within a day or dead. Yeah, you’re a great moral beacon, all right, old man. It’s always someone else’s responsibility. Never yours.

  That settled it. He rubbed his face and got out of bed. After dressing, he grabbed his shirts off the hangers and stuffed them in his bag. Then he started gathering up the other belongings he’d collected over the last few weeks. A couple books, a few decks of cards, small bottles of whiskey and vodka. The only thing left after that was the money. He hadn’t spent much of it. One advantage of falling into the clutches of a woman like Jessie was she kept him away from the casinos. Since he got here, he’d only dug out the suitcase from under the bed twice, and the next time would be the last. He would send her out to get them something to eat, and while she was gone, he would make his escape.

  Man, fuck that. Go now, while she’s in the shower. Beat shit or just admit you don’t really want to leave. Lay down and fuckin’ wait for them to come for you. Either way, make a decision. Right. Just go. Just beat shit. Better than waking up one morning to find a gun in his face and Jessie’s brains splattered on the wall.

  But he was too late to escape undetected. The water shut off in the bathroom just as he was hunkering down to grab the suitcase under the bed. So he sat down on the bed and waited for Jessie to come out. A few minutes later, she emerged in a cloud of steam, partially wrapped in one of the motel’s thin white towels. There wasn’t quite enough cloth to cover all of her, and that was normally just fine by him, but he looked away so he could stay focused.

  “Dressed already? What’s the plan?” she asked.

  He sighed. “Leaving.”

  She turned to the
mirror and started combing her wet hair. “Wanna grab some dinner? I know a great Polish place not far from here. I could go for some pierogie.”

  “No, I’m leaving. I have to leave, Jessie. I’ve stayed here too long as it is.”

  The comb paused mid-stroke, but she didn’t turn around. A minute later, she started combing again, this time harder, ripping at the tangles. “So, just like that, eh? I know we hadn’t exactly planned a wedding or anything, but I thought we were . . . I dunno.”

  “Look, it’s not you.” And there it was. What was it about that line that was both so very honest and so very deceptive at the same time?

  She slapped the comb down onto the counter and gave him a cold grin through the reflection in the mirror. “Don’t worry, I’ll be out of your hair in a jiffy. Just let me at least get dressed before throwing me out like the whore you obviously think I am.” Her words were clipped and sharp now. That was fine. Let her be angry. As long as she left.

  “You take all the time you need,” he said. “I’m going to finish packing and get going.”

  “Sure, whatever.”

  The air was soupy, not just with the steam from the shower, but from the tension between them. He felt like he was wading through it as he grabbed his shampoo, soap, and razor. When he zipped his suitcase closed, he sat down and waited for her to get dressed. She wasn’t moving very quickly, and he restrained the urge to tell her to hurry. He didn’t want her to see him retrieve the money from under the bed.

  She finally pulled on her shirt and pants and buttoned them, and then just stood there looking at him. “You clearly aren’t going to tell me what’s going on unless I pull it out of you, so I don’t see how I have any choice. What the hell is going on here? Ten minutes ago, I was riding you like a Preakness jockey, and now you’re running me out of here on a rail so you can skip town.”