Chapter 32
Sipe was going to call Bug, but Bonnie said Merritt could get the money inside just as easily. Merritt didn’t appear so pleased to be roped into some extra task, but he did it. Went outside, called to Bug, then held the door open for Bug and then followed Bug in. Bug set the duffel bag midpoint on the tables, unzipped the duffel bag so all the green paper could breathe, trying to make eye contact with Sipe or Hope or Connie but only making it with Merritt, come around the table and standing there like a server only no one, Bug could see, was eating, not even drinking. The dark skinned woman sitting left of Quinn Dobbs and Merritt the only people looking at Bug and only the woman smiling. Bug had started back towards the door when Bonnie spoke up.
“How’s your mom doing?” she asked. Bug stopped up, already clear of the carpet, standing on the linoleum reflecting liquid-like with half the restaurant in the dark. He looked back.
“She’s. She’s fighting it. It’s a fucker though, you know?”
“I do. My dad.”
“Yep. I remember.”
“You want to join us? You don’t have to wait outside.”
“That’s nice, you to offer, but…Probably better I keep an eye out. Cops. Olympians. Shit. You never know.”
Bug went back outside, bell on the door jingling.
“It doesn’t look like much.” Clay leaned forward, eyeballing the duffel bag contents. “You sure that’s all of it?”
“It’s $4200, dude,” said Quinn. “Unless it’s all singles…”
“Count it,” said Hope. “You can count, can’t you?”
Quinn laughed. Clay stared at him and Quinn shrugged like go ahead, tell him that Hope being Hope wasn’t at least a little amusing.
“Now,” Bonnie said, “we have a problem. Do you know what that is?”
Looking at Connie, Hope, and Sipe, like they’d been called in to stay behind after the rest of the class was dismissed.
In the bathroom, Quinn insinuating Sipe was older than shit, Sipe felt the cold thing in his gut. It put in appearances, especially in the presence of amateurs. Amateurs thought the playing field transformed at their say so. This was why so many amateurs didn’t make it to the transition point, turn pro. In all his years, Sipe never spoke up, never warned them. The Old Man liked it, watching fools run free. The payoff was the pleading once an amateur understood, oh, wait, there are rules. There is such a thing as only so far. As no.
“What is the problem?” asked Sipe.
“Interest.”
“Interest.”
“We owe a certain party interest,” said Bonnie. “We wouldn’t owe that interest and we wouldn’t potentially owe an upcoming penalty if that interest hadn’t been accrued.”
Clay stared beyond Hope, at the wall. The even bigger one, Bret, studied the duffel bag. Quinn and Faye continued apace, Quinn sullen, Faye looking right at Sipe. Waiting for Bonnie to say something she disagreed with. Something Portland wanted done a certain way.
“This,” Sipe indicated the duffel bag, “is what we told you we could give you. If you wanted something on top of that, you should’ve told us.”
“It goes without saying,” said Bonnie. “Surely. Given what you do, you’d know.”
“And what is it I do? What is it I should know?”
Bonnie laughed. Looked around the table like this guy, this guy, he’s killing me.
“See?” Sipe pointed at the duffel bag. “Now it’s like you’re telling me I’ve wasted my time and your time.”
“That’s not what I’m saying.”
“You said ‘problem’. You say ‘interest’. You say ‘a certain party’. You say ‘a penalty’. These things add up.”
“I don’t have anything else,” said Hope. “Honest. This is all I’ve got.” She reached for the duffel bag and grabbed it, pinched zipper teeth. She looked at Bonnie. “I’m not holding back. I’m not. I swear.”
“I know, honey. But you made a mess, all right? A big one.”
“How much?” asked Sipe.
“We were loaned money. We’re paying it back. Our loan payment late fee is set with 30% interest. At 30% interest, since the day Hope ran off with all this,” said Bonnie, “all together now, right now, we need $44,538.90. If the $4200 is really here, all here, right now, then we need $40,338.90.”
“What?” asked Hope.
Bonnie smiled.
“The interest, well, the penalty goes up each day. By 30%. You ever hear the story, in math class, about the man that hires a worker to work starting at a penny a day? A penny? Sounds like a deal. Caveat being, the wages double each day? Still. Sounds great. This guy willing to work so cheap is an asshole, obviously. Well. A penny becomes two cents. Four cents. Eight cents. Sixteen. Thirty-two. Sixty-four. A dollar twenty-eight. $2.56. $5.12. $10.24. $20.48. $40.96. And right there that’s what? Day twelve. Of thirty. Here we are, on day…eight? Nine? And this is the penalty we’re working on. Because of you.”
She smiled again. Tilted her head at Hope.
“You want a pen? Some paper? A calculator? You can add it up. You can count, can’t you?”
“Oh my god.” Hope’s shoulders sagged. Like rain in a movie she started crying, instant tears down her cheeks, hiccupping, shuddering, the whole production, like that.
“What about the penalty?” asked Sipe. “On top of the interest?”
“I don’t know,” said Bonnie.
“It’ll hurt.” Faye spoke up, voice quiet. Knowing it drew attention on her, away from Bonnie.
“Ten grand?” asked Sipe. “Fifteen?”
“Ten is the base payment each week.”
“Wait. So what about-“
Faye put a hand up, cut his question short.
“We – they – Butcher’s Camp – covered the fifty-eight hundred last week. Portland only penalized the missing amount.”
“But the penalty?” asked Sipe.
“They might go high as twenty-five.”
“Maybe round up,” said Sipe. “In this case. It gets bad like this. Make it a whole seventy-five you owe. Just so you feel it.”
“Sounds right.”
“When?”
“Supposed to be ten days in.”
“Day after tomorrow?”
“Right.”
Sipe closed his eyes. When he opened them he said, “No. At that point, late fee on top of interest…They might ding you ninety. And if they’re going to do ninety, why not go for a hundred grand?”
“How much?” Hope squeaking when she spoke.
“$100,000,” said Sipe. The big guy in black stared at Sipe. Butcher Camp’s muscle. The Old Man had a dozen like him. Portland probably about the same.
“At your peak, how much were you hauling in a week?” asked Sipe.
“Ten grand,” said Bonnie.
Sipe ticked his head left, at Hope.
“And she took $4200. Your whole haul for that week?”
“Right. We’ve been…Borrowing from other sources. Trying to maintain our revenue. We’re,” Bonnie flitted her hands about, “rethinking our business model.”
“And if we get enough to zero out the interest, get it to you to get it to them, this penalty you’re looking at goes away?”
“Probably,” said Faye.
“Probably or yes?”
“Yes,” said Faye. She looked at Bonnie. “I talk to Portland all the time. They know GreenBlo’s gone. They got some sense of reality. They’re not monsters, not a hundred-percent.”
Back at the other end of the table, Bonnie cleared her throat, smiled. Looking at Sipe she said, “If you can do it, fine, but until then,” pointing at Hope, “she has to come with us.”
“Why?” asked Sipe.
“Collateral.”
Sipe heard the snap on the holster. At least Merritt wasn’t so dumb as to have a Velcro holster.
Those things made so much noise it was like a baby shriek.
The Outpost owner looked at Sipe looking at him standing there with his hand on his hip, right above the butt of his gun. Sipe wondered which Clint Eastwood movie Merritt had studied, trying to perfect the look now informing his face. Difference being, Clint never looked scared.
Hope grabbed Sipe’s left arm. It was like a nature documentary, one of those things you can’t take your eyes off of, the python wrapped around the crocodile. Please, she kept saying. Please after please after please.
“What are you going to do with her? While she’s collateral?”
“She can work if she wants. We’ve got customers, sorry, we have clients with certain tastes. Some miss her.”
Hope moaned, her forehead pressed against Sipe’s shoulder. At the other end of the table Quinn snorted, dismissive of her whole routine.
“Hope,” Bonnie had both forearms on the table, her head tilted a little to the side, almost informal, almost friendly-like. “Honey? It’s the way it has to be. It didn’t have to go like this. You did this. You did it to yourself. At any point in time you could’ve stopped, you could’ve come to us, called us. It would’ve been a mess, still, but it would’ve been a lot less of a mess.”
“What about Collar?” asked Merritt. “Bug.”
“What about him?” A certain tone in Bonnie’s voice like she could bat down minor annoyances all night long, but still, she’d let you know they were minor annoyances.
“He’s with the girl, isn’t he? I don’t want to mess with him.”
“It won’t be a problem,” said Sipe. He didn’t look at Merritt.
“See?” Bonnie flopping her wrist, palm splayed at Sipe. “It won’t be a problem, Merritt.”
Hope released Sipe’s arm. Wiped her nose with the back of her hand. Her entire head flushed, and beneath the blue swathed hair, the flesh the color of a pink eraser.
“I could. My parents. Maybe. If I told them.” She swabbed snot with the back of her hand. Bonnie looked at her. Said nothing. “Quinn,” said Hope. “Do something.”
He produced a little snort, a quick look around the table like he was just as confused as anyone else, this girl, practically a stranger reaching out to him. Hope laughed. Sniffled. She didn’t scream, she didn’t ask him again. She got it. His abandonment of her out at the cabin, plus this, she got it.
“Well. This was nice. Civil.” Bonnie looked down to the other end of the table. “Quinn. Could you get the bag, pretty please? Bret? Hope.”
“I’m not going.”
Bonnie looked at the girl. Delight informed her features.
“Hope. Hopehopehopehopehopehopehope. Honestly. All the options are ours. If you struggle and fight and somehow make yourself unavailable to do the work you need to do, then, we’ll find your little friend. And scoop her right up. You know, the fat one. The fat one with the baby chick colored hair. The one with tits even bigger than yours, we get her and we take her out to Butcher’s Camp, and put her in a room. Bret will break her in. Then Quinn, maybe. Then anyone else willing to pay for the pleasure of something sweet and fresh.”
Sipe stood up. Before he stood he put his hand inside the left inner suit jacket pocket, pinched the magazine Merritt Lowry had looked at minutes ago, during the pat down. That People magazine Tiffany had been browsing hours ago, waiting outside Butcher’s Camp Massage. Stepped on. Ripped. Taped together now.
“I gotta crap,” said Sipe. “Somebody hold this for me?”
He threw it towards the table. Pitched it high. Center creased, it turned end over end and landed on top of the duffel bag. The same time everyone watched the magazine, Sipe reached inside the same suit jacket pocket and drew out Millie’s stun gun.
The top of Bonnie’s baby bump stuck up higher than the edge of the tabletop. She’d looked away from the landed magazine back to Sipe. Sipe almost nose to nose with her the moment he pressed the stun gun against her swollen stomach and pulled the trigger.
The sound she made like something from olden times. Surgery without anesthesia. The booze poured in, the leather strap between teeth not enough. You couldn’t ever deaden the sensation of having a cancerous breast hacked off. Veins in her neck stuck out. Her wiring. A smell circulated. The chair, the carpeting, the duffel bag vinyl melting. Or maybe the fetus, glowing inside her womb, blue, like an alien baby, something shimmery and aquatic-like, otherworldly even, right before the blue gave away to a bright light, some static charge leaping looping feeding on itself, frying the unborn into something resembling a hot dog, a victim of negligence, held over a camp fire for far too long. Lava dipped. Seared. Burnt. Black.
The two big men to Bonnie’s right were coming out of the shock phase. Sipe pulled the stun gun away from Bonnie’s bulge, cupped the right side of her head with his left hand, gave her a temple a quick jolt. Let go of her, and stuck Clay in the side of the neck right as the big man rose up out of his seat. There were shouts. Bret getting up now. Movement, Sipe, if he wanted, could glance towards the north end of the table, some noise like a single pool ball rolling across the pool table. No time to check. Sipe stepped right, pulled the stun gun away from Clay, the big man slopped to the table like the rope holding all his heft severed.
Hope shouted. Not a scream. The sound something Sipe could recall hearing in sports bars. Uncultured. Primal. Back to when loose associations of apes protected resources from invading, alien apes. Negotiations accomplished by hand held rock and bone splintering, blood jetting.
Bret wobbled to a standing position. Clay still trying to solidify a hold on the table, maybe arrest his slide floor ward. Sipe didn’t know how much charge the stun gun retained. He hadn’t counted on it for an encounter with Bret. Bret the part of the plan that scared him most.
Sipe went down on his knees. Dropped the stun gun.
Bret’s pants generous around the crotch. None too tight. Air for the boys to breathe down there. Sipe made fists, and started punching up, straight up, wherever the meat might reside. He hit something, he didn’t hit it hard enough, and realized his mistake, he wasn’t planted, the punches barely effective, how much more effective this would be if he latched on to Bret’s belt with his left hand, and punched upwards with the right. Sipe corrected the technique. The boy’s soft warm belly against Sipe’s left hand, pulling Bret towards him, Bret’s balls, his taint, his pecker, mooshed and mashed by Sipe’s right fist. Sipe punching so hard the trail of muscles from shoulder to scalp tingled, threatened strain and rip if he didn’t stop. Bret tried to dislodge Sipe’s hand, slid into and clutching the space between belt and belly. The big boy’s left hand swatted at Sipe’s skull like he was doing the puncher a favor, brushing a spider away. Sipe visualized the testicles cracking, meat and seeds pouring out from compromised ripe melons. Bret lurched. Sagged. Sipe slid his hand out from beneath the belt, stood, stumbled back out of the way, tripped over Clay, pinwheeled, kept his feet. Bret gurgled, gagged, his right knee gave, 300 pounds tipping, gagging, dry heaving. Mr. Black collapsing. Sipe checked the rest of the room.
Seat vacated, stepped back from the tables pushed into one, Faye stood almost flush to the wall separating the dining area from the kitchen and restroom corridor. Her left hand cradled her purse, the right hand buried in the purse. Quinn still in his seat. Hope seated. Merritt Lowry lay on the floor. Connie stood over him. Connie looking at Faye, his eyes wild, pointing Merritt’s gun at her.
“Hand out!” He said it again. And again. Her hand slid out of the purse. Faye looked right at him, right at the Old Man’s kid, the gun, barely registering Sipe, coming over, sliding the purse off her shoulder, taking steps back away from her, putting the purse strap over his shoulder, taking the gun out, making sure it was loaded, then sliding the strap off, tossing the purse onto the table. On impact a lighter, a lipstick, some loose sticks of chewing g
um flew out. It almost looked like the purse and the ragged People had been tucked inside the duffel bag at the last moment.
Bret spit some foamy relative to vomit onto his thigh. Clay lay on the floor, grunted. At some point, Bonnie had rolled out of her seat, bounced, and rolled, and now lay on her back, facing the ceiling.
“Are we good?” Connie a little amped up, still aiming the gun at Faye.
“We’re good,” said Sipe. “Keep it on her.”
“You know it.”
Hope reached across the table, across the duffel bag, and gathered one of the pieces of gum. Gum in hand, she sat back in her chair.
She started to unwrap the gum. She stopped. She looked at Sipe.
“Can I?” she asked.
He nodded. Produced enough saliva to get out a “Yes.”
She stuck the stick in her mouth. Balled up the wrapper. The tear streaks on her cheeks shined like the foil. You couldn’t see what she did with the balled up foil. If she dropped it, down onto The Outpost carpet, Clay might’ve seen the little wax ball drop, bounce, roll a little, rest, that one falling star out of every million that didn’t burn up into nothing at all coursing through the atmosphere.