With Bridgett nestled against me, I finally got some sleep.
*****
It was hours after I woke up when Bridgett finally came down from the sedative, but she fell back asleep almost immediately afterwards. I made her drink some water before she dozed off again and then just watched her for a while. When she woke up the second time, she seemed a little better, even with her black eye and bruised cheek.
“Do you know who it was?” I asked.
She didn’t answer.
“Was he a regular john? Someone you’d seen before? Can you describe him? Or…um…them?”
Again, she said nothing.
I watched her carefully as the edge of her eye constricted a little, and her lips pressed together tighter. She knew who it was – she definitely knew. Why wouldn’t she tell me?
There was really only one possible answer.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” I asked. “That pimp of yours.”
“It doesn’t matter,” she said quietly.
I brushed a bit of hair off her forehead and was pissed off at her reflexive flinch from my touch.
“It was him, wasn’t it?” I pressed. “Who else?”
“I don’t know,” she said quietly. “I never saw them before.”
I shoved myself off the bed, found a pair of jeans, and hauled them up over my hips.
“Evan, what are you doing?”
I didn’t answer. I grabbed a T-shirt out of the drawer and pulled it on over my head. My boots went on my feet without socks, and I didn’t even bother with my watch or anything like that. This was going to be a short trip.
“Evan!” Bridgett called out.
I glanced back to see her sitting up in the bed, her bruised face making her nearly unrecognizable from the girl I was used to seeing there. Before she could say anything else, I walked out of the bedroom and out the door.
I could hear her calling my name and telling me to stop, but I ignored her.
The pimp was easy enough to find – right there on the street corner with his bitches all around him. He reached into a car window, pulled out some cash, and then shoved one of the girls in the backseat. There were at least three guys in the car, and they drove off with a screech of tires.
My fingers tightened around the steering wheel, and my teeth ground together. There wasn’t any actual parking on the street, and I wasn’t about to go find a garage, so I pulled right up over the curb and onto the sidewalk. I got out of the car, leaving it running, and headed right for him.
“Mister Arden!”
Ignoring his words, I walked up to him quickly, grabbed him by the collection of gold chains around his neck, and shoved him backwards into the alley. Two of the girls started screaming, and a blonde one grabbed my arm. I flung my fist backwards, and she hit the sidewalk with a grunt and her heels in the air.
Melvin the pimp clawed at my hand, drawing blood. It didn’t even register in my head that I was bleeding – I was far too focused on getting him off the street where we could have a little private moment. The most convenient place was the alley right next to his usual hangout, so that was where I dragged him.
I stepped around a foul-smelling puddle next to a dumpster and shoved Melvin up against the brick wall on the other side. He gasped and grabbed at his throat.
“Mister Arden,” he croaked.
“Do you think being polite is going to help you right now?” I asked calmly.
Moving forward, I pushed my forearm across his neck, pinning him to the bricks and partially cutting off his air supply. Again he clawed at my skin, but I just leaned forward and stared him in the eye until he stopped struggling.
“You scratched my car,” I said quietly as I stared into his widened eyes. “Maybe it was a rental car, but you still scratched it. Now when I drive it, it just won’t quite be the same.”
I used my free hand to punch him in the face.
“I-I-I…” he stammered. “I didn’t touch your car!”
I shook my head slowly at the asshole’s ignorance and then punched him in the gut twice. He struggled to breathe as I shoved him up against the wall again. His skull knocked against it, and his eyes rolled for a moment before he could focus again.
“Okay! Okay! You mean that bitch…that girl of mine you like – Bridgett.”
“Aren’t you clever?” I replied coldly.
“I thought you were done with her!” he exclaimed. “You hadn’t been around…she’s been acting up and not bringing in her worth, ya know?”
“I have no idea,” I said, “but I know little boys who don’t take care of their toys end up losing them.”
“I’m sorry, man,” he said. “I didn’t know…I didn’t know you still wanted her…”
I stopped listening to his blather. My hand reached behind to pull my piece from the back of my jeans, but it wasn’t there.
I’d left so quickly, I hadn’t even taken a gun.
Mario was pretty good at beating people to death when it needed to be done. There were several ways – collapsing the trachea could do it, and you could always punch someone in the head enough to cause brain damage. I could have strangled him as well, but that took a lot longer than it looked like in the movies.
If someone were to ask, I’d probably admit to being a lazy killer.
“You have a piece on you?” I asked.
He blathered nonsensically until I punched him in the face again, busting his nose and spraying my shirt with his blood.
“I said, do you have a gun on you?”
“Y-y-yes!” he cried. “It’s on my right ankle!”
“Raise your leg up,” I instructed.
He obeyed, and I kept a good grip across his neck and chest with one arm while reaching for his pistol with the other. I pulled it out and put it in his face.
“You don’t take care of your things,” I told him bluntly. “I don’t think you deserve to have them.”
“It was just business!” he cried out. “They paid good money!”
“Oh yeah?” I asked. “How much?”
“A grand for an hour!” he told me. “You pay that for the whole night! You can have her right now – all night! No cost!”
I hummed and tilted my head to one side, lowering the gun a bit.
“Yeah, all right,” I agreed. “I think I will take her tonight, no cost to me. Tomorrow, too.”
“Anything you want!” he promised with a quick nod of his head. Sweat poured from his temples and down his neck.
“I think she’s gonna keep the money from that last trick, too.”
His brow creased, and for a moment he looked like he was going to argue. He thought better of it, though, and agreed with me.
“Whatever you want, Mister Arden,” he said. “She can have it.”
I nodded.
“Whatever I want, huh?”
“Anything!” he confirmed.
I nodded again.
“Okay.” I raised the gun, kicked back the safety, and blew his brains into the bricks.
Several feminine screams came from behind me, but they were lost in my own personal disgust at the blood and tissue that sprayed back at me. I hated close range shots like this – as if that actor dude hadn’t been bad enough. At least I had the manhole cover as a shield then. I hadn’t thought enough about this one to avoid the mess, and I hated the mess. I needed to kill someone from a distance again. All this up close and personal shit didn’t settle well with me.
I tore off the bottom of his shirt as I let him fall to the ground and used a bit of it to wipe off my face. It was better than nothing, but only barely. I threw the torn cloth to the side, skipped back around the puddle, and headed out of the alley past the hysterical whores.
One of them grabbed at me like she was going to be able to do something to stop what had already happened. I looked her in the eye, and she stepped back away quickly. Running around to the other side of the car, I jumped into the driver’s seat and sped off without another word.
B
ridgett was still lying on her side in my bed when I returned. Our eyes met, and I knew she had been crying. I didn’t understand that, though. I didn’t understand why she would cry for that shithead of a pimp.
I glanced down at my blood-covered hands and shirt.
“I’m going to take a shower,” I said quietly.
Her eyes watched me, but she said nothing. I took off my bloody clothing and dropped it on the bathroom floor before stepping into the shower. I hoped it would clear my head a little, but it didn’t work. I was just as tense as I had been before, and my head was full of…of…what was this?
Confusion?
My stomach was uneasy, and not from the blood that washed down the drain. There was a bizarre feeling of near-guilt, but that wasn’t quite right either. I didn’t regret killing that asshole. I never regretted anything, so I didn’t know what this feeling was.
I guess that made it confusion.
Since Bridgett still had my robe, I walked over to the dresser naked, pulled on a clean pair of boxers, and then climbed into bed beside her. She didn’t move to look at me when I wrapped my arms around her and pulled her against my chest, but she didn’t resist, either. I lay my head just above hers on the pillow, inhaled the scent of her hair, and pressed my lips to her temple.
“You killed him,” Bridgett whispered, “didn’t you?”
My fingers trailed up her arm, over her shoulder, and to her lips. I didn’t press down because of the cut there, but still made the point.
“Shh,” I replied.
She turned then, and her red-rimmed, black-and-blue eyes turned to mine.
“Why?”
“Why what?”
“Why did you kill him?”
I raised an eyebrow at her. I wasn’t going to answer a question when I had already refused to admit there was anything she could ask about anyway.
“What am I going to do?” Bridgett’s voice cracked as her hand moved to cover her mouth. “I can’t be on the street with no protection!”
“Carry a gun,” I suggested.
“I’ve never even fired one!” she exclaimed.
“Then find another pimp,” I said. It occurred to me that I could teach her to shoot, but making this about more than the sex had already caused an issue once. I didn’t want to do that again. “That isn’t the only street corner in the city, you know. You probably don’t even have to go anywhere – some other dude will come up and take over the girls there.”
“What about the other girls?”
“I don’t really give a shit about the other girls,” I said.
She glared at me.
“What if the new guy is one of the ones from across town?” she asked quietly. “The ones over by the warehouses.”
I narrowed my eyes.
“You don’t work for the fucking competition,” I snarled.
“What competition?” she asked with feigned innocence. “You don’t seem to actually have a job.”
A couple hundred potential rebuttals went through my brain, but I knew when I was being baited. I also knew when a situation was likely to escalate quickly, and silence was the best way to combat it. We watched each other for a full two minutes before she sighed and put her head down on my shoulder.
“What am I going to do?” she asked again. “Even that apartment is in Melvin’s name.”
“I got some money for you,” I said. I hadn’t actually taken any cash from Melvin, but she didn’t have to know that. I had twenty or thirty grand lying around in the back of my closet. “You already earned it.”
“I’m not taking your money,” she said.
I took her chin in my hand.
“First off, you will take the fucking money because it’s yours, not mine. It’s the money from those fucking bastards who hurt you. Secondly, if I decide to give you fucking money, you’re going to fucking take it.”
“Fucking am I?”
I tried to scowl, but she grinned at me.
“You can earn that money, too,” I said. “As soon as you’re up for it. You don’t even have to have any other clients.”
She gave me a strange look, like she wondered what the hell I was suggesting. I wondered myself until I heard it come out of my mouth.
“Just stay here,” I said.
So much for keeping it only about the sex.
Immediately, the atmosphere between us changed, electrified, and heated the air. Bridgett’s tongue darted over her cut lip as she processed what I had said.
“You want me to…what?” she asked. “Stay here and be your personal whore?”
I paused, thought about it, and decided that yes – that was exactly what I was suggesting. It made sense, in a way. She was here often enough before, and she wouldn’t have to worry about bills and food – just fucking me. That way, it was still just about the sex.
More than anything, I’d sleep better if she was here every night, and I couldn’t help but see that as a positive thing.
I looked in her eyes.
“Stay here,” I said again. “No bills, no pimp, no worries.”
“You’re asking me to move in with you.”
I hadn’t quite thought of it like that.
“I’m saying, instead of me picking you up on some other street corner, you just stay here, and I can fuck you whenever.”
“You can’t be serious.”
I watched her look at me and saw the last thing I wanted to see – the desperate need for it to be true. She wanted it. She wanted to stay here – to live with me – not because it was convenient, but just because she wanted to.
“It doesn’t change anything,” I told her. “This is still what it is.”
“You don’t even try for anything else,” she said quietly.
She was right, of course. I didn’t.
I wouldn’t, and I won’t – ever.
My fingers moved a strand of her hair away from the bruise around her eye.
“I don’t have anything else to give you, Bridgett,” I told her. “This is all there is.”
There was just no way to make it something it wasn’t.
Chapter 11 – Painful Betrayal
“You better git yer ass over there,” Jonathan informed me. “I didn’t get the deets, but Mario was on edge and Rinaldo wasn’t sayin’ a damn thing. I read through his email but didn’t see nothin’ there.”
“You hacked the boss’s email?” I rolled my eyes at the phone as I slid into the back seat of the bus. “Are you crazy?”
“What? It ain’t hard – the password’s always ‘Luisa’ with a number after her name. He just increments it every month.”
“Why does he do that?”
“I told him it was safer to change it every month instead of leavin’ it the same.”
Another eye roll before I hung up the phone. I could have sworn he did that kind of shit just to prove he could get away with it. I remembered that I hadn’t given him the Save Ferris T-shirt yet and made a mental note to toss it in my car when I got home.
It was the first really hot day of spring, and the jacket I wore to conceal my Beretta was too warm for the afternoon sun. I rolled the sleeves up, but I was still sweaty and uncomfortable. I wished I had driven myself for once, but I jumped off the bus and walked the three blocks to Moretti’s office.
Mario was there and Terry was just leaving. Rinaldo was standing behind his desk, waiting for me. He motioned for me to come in the office, and Mario stood just to one side of Rinaldo’s desk chair. He gave me a nod, which I returned as I stood at-ease in front of them both.
Moretti didn’t waste any time.
“You want to tell me why you decided to take out a pimp on my payroll?” Rinaldo asked simply.
“No, sir,” I replied. I wasn’t surprised by the question – I kind of assumed it was why Jonathan had told me to high-tail it over here. The only real surprise was that it had taken a week for him to call me out on it. I’d made two other kills for him during that time and had been glad to get bac
k to sniping.
“You know his whole stable is all over the place now – a bunch of trained birds scattered to the winds and looking for a cage to nest in. It’s not my favorite line of business, but now some of his property – property I had a vested interest in – is lost.”
I looked up at him carefully but couldn’t see any actual anger in his face or posture. He wasn’t thrilled, but he wasn’t all that pissed off, either. I hadn’t expected him to be, but I had still prepared myself for the conversation.
“My apologies,” I replied. “You want me to pay for it?”
Rinaldo laughed, and the tension in the atmosphere died down.
“No,” he said, “I had another task in mind. Something more along the lines you’re most comfortable with achieving. I’ve received some troubling information that a woman has been giving information about my business to Greco’s men. No one seems sure exactly who she is, and I’ll need you to find that out and take care it doesn’t happen again.”
“Yes, sir,” I replied.
Rinaldo handed me the picture, and I tried not to show any reaction in my face as my mind starting jumping around and doing flips in the air.
“You sure this is the target?” I asked. I tapped the edge of the picture with my forefinger. “This girl?”
“You think my sources are unreliable?”
“No, sir,” I replied. “I’m just…not sure what they’d want with her.”
Rinaldo stared at me through narrowed eyes.
“Evan, do you have something to tell me? You know this bitch?”
I was going to have to play this very carefully.
I kept my expression completely lifeless, shrugged one shoulder one time, and then looked to Rinaldo’s face as I tossed Bridgett’s picture back onto the desk.
“I’ve been fucking her,” I said simply. “So finding her isn’t an issue.”
Rinaldo’s eyes narrowed and his eyebrows tried to meet each other in the middle of his head.
“Explain,” he said quietly.
“She’s a hooker.”
“A hooker?” he repeated.
“Yes, sir.”
His face darkened, and his jaw tightened. He took a step over to his desk chair and sat down heavily.